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How Big Telecom Smothers Municipal Broadband
Rick Zeman writes: The Center for Public Integrity has a comprehensive article showing how Big Telecom (aka, AT&T, Comcast, Charter, Time Warner) use lobbyists, paid-for politicians, and lawsuits (both actual and the threat thereof) in their efforts to kill municipal broadband. From the article: "The companies have also used traditional campaign tactics such as newspaper ads, push polls, direct mail and door-to-door canvassing to block municipal networks. And they've tried to undermine the appetite for municipal broadband by paying for research from think tanks and front groups to portray the networks as unreliable and costly."
Group in power tries to maintain power...story at 11.
The fact that a 67-year-old grandmother from Tennessee has more progressive views on municipal internet than a large portion of the rest of the country, or that AT&T stepped in and threatened a 67-year-old grandmother over her attempt to provide municipal internet to her community.
Seems to me that stakeholders in municipal broadband are a more satisfied lot than the customers of the Telcos (with their paid lobbyists so nicely donating money to the boy/girls scouts to enlist their 'support' for crazy-ass mergers and what-not; nevermind that The Public has Clearly Told The 3 (is it?) commissioners at the FCC to take a flying leap).
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
How can anyone be surprised when governments and corporations get in bed together to monopolize a market, they resist any competition in all ways possible?
"And they've tried to undermine the appetite for municipal broadband by paying for research from think tanks and front groups to portray the networks as unreliable and costly."
So let me get this straight, per the broadband industry municipal broadband is costly and unreliable, but they, meaning AT&T, ComCast, CenturyLink, cannot compete with "Costly and Unreliable". I think this says more about broadband industry than it does about municipal broadband.
She's a republican? Offering something to her non-corporate constituents? What planet is this?
It's funny that when a free-market proponent says government monopolization of some good or service "crowds out" for-profit competition we get called names. It's also funny that when we point out that these companies with government sanctioned monopolies aren't really operating in a free-market environment we get accused of using the "no true scotsman" fallacy.
You can't allow it. If it works well, people might think socialism isn't always a bad thing. Who knows what other crazy, un-American ideas would then catch on?
Seriously, this isn't just to eliminate municipal broadband as an Internet delivery mechanism, it is to stamp out the idea that municipally owned utilities are possible and sometimes desirable.
There is only one reason for the government to step in: make it easier for smaller ISPs to start shop.
So you don't think the government should step in if the big guys are abusing their monopoly? You don't think the voters in a municipality should be allowed to decide for themselves if they want the government to establish broadband services for their own use? I know it's a popular meme to presume that governments are nothing but incompetent but the reality is that sometimes the government is the best way to get something done. If the existing ISPs find it not worthwhile to serve a population I see no credible argument why the local government couldn't fill that role if the taxpayers want them to. Might not be economically ideal but sometimes perfect is the enemy of good enough.
I'd love to start a small ISP in my area, but it is practically impossible.
Out of curiosity, why? It's a pretty tough way to make a buck. The margins in being an ISP are pretty thin unless you are able to obtain some form of monopoly. If there is any competition the margins plummet but costs don't. Huge fixed costs, lots of customer service, maintenance, etc. Maybe it's your passion but I've started a number of businesses and that is a seriously difficult business to get into. I can introduce you to several people who have actually tried to start an ISP and failed in spite of being well funded.
Start an L3C company, a type of company which is for-profit but for a beneficial purpose instead of simply maximizing income. The L3C's purpose would be to install and operate a high-speed fiber network. The company could then lease space on their network to companies such as Comcast, AT&T, etc allowing customers to pick which ISP they like (competition anyone?).
Or require the traditional communication companies to form a not-for-profit entity together to build out the fiber network in an area. They would each have access (competition anyone?). This entity could be called Federation of United Communications Companies for Universal Access (FUCC-UA, pronounced "fuh que eh").
The answer is pretty easy. Eliminate the ability of cities, counties or states to create monopolies. In jurisdictions where there is no monopoly and multiple offerings exist; prices are lower, service is better and customers are more satisfied.
http://www.pcworld.com/article...
http://cbpp.georgetown.edu/wp-...
http://www.uspirg.org/reports/...
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."
-- Pablo Picasso
What galls me the most is the panty-wetting over a government-granted monopoly trying to maintain its government granted monopoly when that very same government tries to compete using taxpayer dollars as a subsidy.
The outrage should be against government involvement period. If governments didn't grant local monopolies, there would be real competition among the real companies, and no perceived need for the government competition which is only competitive because it has the taxpayer subsidy.
Infuriate left and right
Just a reminder who really runs this country, for those people who though the US was a republic and voting matters.
Municipalities providing a critical infrastructure? What Lunacy! That will never work! What other crazy ideas do these municipalities have in store for us? Electricity? Running water and sewage? Gas heating? Paved roads? Balderdash! Best to leave these things to the large corporations and eliminate all of the regulations since they have nothing but the public's best interests at heart. To the free market fairy we pray for forgiveness. Amen.
With all of the money they spend lobbying politicians and rallying people against municipal broadband, they could've built out their networks and made them even better. Utter stupidity!
Free wi-fi municipal networks are springing up in Brazil since at least 2009. Nonetheless, as these networks are intended for public access to government services, people still buy 30Mbit+ broadband connections for their homes from the big telcos.
\m/
Given a few common, yet unproven, assumptions about how markets operate. ISPs operate a lot like utilities in terms of fundamental market behaviors, and the prevalence of natural monopolies. Organizing the structure of the market to allow smaller competitors, to me, is one way a government could help. Not the only way.
Close, but not quite IMHO.
The ISP component does not have to be a monopoly: and by "ISP" I mean the routing of packets. What tends to be monopolistic in practice is the cabling, whether fibre, twisted pair, or co-ax.
I think that separating the part of current incumbent telcos and cablecos into separate entities, one which runs the physical stuff and the other which runs the packet routing (and telephone and television signals) would go a long way to improving things. At the very least forcing the incumbents to provide access like they have to do in Canada would be the very minimum for a proper functioning ISP market.
Ideally the company that runs the ISO Layer 1 and 2 stuff would completely separate and a nonprofit. Whether that entity is publicly owned or a private company is a minor point.
But separating physical access and network service (even by a "Chinese wall" with-in the current mega-corps) is the key point that needs to happen. Everything else is shuffling deck chairs.
So you are saying that you have no problem with the city folk subsidizing you. Sounds like that's what you are saying.
If you can't vote in the election, you can't contribute to the candidates in the elections. Eliminates outside money.
The solution is a major city doing a build out. NYC, Chicago, la. (Too many libertards for it to happen in sf)
These cities have to big dicks to beat these companies into submission.
Soros hasn't funded them in the last decade. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C... "They are not journalists" - they won a Pulitzer...
to portray the networks as unreliable and costly
I wasn't sure to which networks this was referring.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
Think of the profits from monthly "bowel data caps".
Ah yes, the age-old "if you can't attack the message then attack the messenger". The article was well researched and correct. Deal with it.
You just got smacked with the cluebat.
"They are not journalists" - they won a Pulitzer..
Obama won a Nobel.
You forgot to mention Al Gore, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
One of the many delusions that Americans have about capitalism is that it is more effective than socialism: Capitalism provides efficiency of manufacturing and supply. It is how the basic mathematics of capitalism, marginal revenue exceeding marginal expense, is achieved. But socialism and municipal governments are driven by completeness: Everybody pays and everybody gets the same deal. This ignores the capitalist attributes of exclusivity and profit. So the only way to encourage a for-profit venture to give everybody the same service at the same price is a monopoly. Refusing to create a monopoly means less research and development, fewer high-quality artists, less community infrastructure. That's makes a whole nation suffer.
Perhaps the problem with the current bevy of monopolies is their neo-liberal authority and lack of accountability. The US government has paid tel-cos to provide services which were never delivered. Americans demand frugality from their supposedly wasteful government but don't demand the same from corporations receiving government subsidies.
This leads into the next delusion suffered by capitalist Americans, "Their monopoly is good for me", where all the actors work very hard to ignore the fact a corporation has a monopoly. Also ignored is that the "invisible hand" used to defend corporations exists only when multiple vendors offer identical goods: A monopoly eliminates competition which eliminates the invisible hand.
And not one comment on how the big corporations are in cahoots with the government, actively allowing them to spy on you. It is much harder to get their little box of tricks installed in a municipal isp, whereas they can pretty much force a large corporation to accept it for appropriate "compensation".
It's the corporate-fascist way! Which unfortunately has become the way of "merica"... Hardly surprising!
Socialism essentially is: the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the many (it's not just from Spock.)
Capitalism's central argument is that long term, eventually, it benefits the most people and while imperfect, it does better than any other approach. This is also where the believers all go wrong, they turn it into an idealistic extreme which is the very downfall of all the other systems which capitalism cites in justifying itself.
We all keep getting sold this crap, that it's black or white, it's either communism or capitalism and there is nothing in between.
Born and died in London, 1748 till 1838, we have Jeremy Bentham, he did come up with something in-between, he called it utilitarianism.
Capitalism is 'every man for himself', screw you, me first. And communism is, 'my way or the highway', so can't we do anything better than those two opposing systems?
Basically utilitarianism translates to, 'the maximum amount of good for the maximum number of people, this does not mean the government running restaurants, or making people all wearing the same colour and style of clothes.
But privatising national institutions like railways, does not make any sense, because it almost costs the same amount of money to run a train empty as to run it full.
Public WiFi falls into the same category as, mass public transport, in fact, public WiFi, helps good business it does not hinder it. Privatized WiFi means once the infrastructure is in place, fat cats get fatter, without doing anything, for anyone else, except raping their wallets and purses.
It's called an elephant's trunk whereas it is in fact, an elephant's nose, a nose by any other name would smell as sweet
It does seem unfair to use public money to compete with private capital to get a good service to folks.
But what they don't say is:
If the private sector were doing a good job at providing service, then this would all be moot.
The only reason municipalities are looking at this is to fill a gap.
What's fair when the private money doesn't feel the need to be available in sufficient quantity to provide a good service?
What's fair when public money isn't being used?
Maybe a paid for by the house owner funding means would eliminate this argument.
The state's rights argument is interesting.
The basic idea behind this is local rule except where otherwise necessary.
In a sense, the feds are attempting to overrule the states to let local rule win.