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20 More Cities Want To Join the Fight Against Big Telecom's Broadband Monopolies
Jason Koebler writes At least 20 additional American cities have expressed a formal interest in joining a coalition that's dedicated to bringing gigabit internet speeds to their residents by any means necessary—even if it means building the infrastructure themselves. The Next Centuries Cities coalition launched last week with an impressive list of 32 cities in 19 states who recognize that fast internet speeds unencumbered by fast lanes or other tiered systems are necessary to keep residents and businesses happy. That launch was so successful that 20 other cities have expressed formal interest in joining, according to the group's executive director.
this would be one of those times id actually go and vote if moving forward required consensus of the locals.
I'll start paying attention when, at a state level, they start declaring utility franchise agreements illegal.
Renting out lines?
Google Fiber seems to be rolling along in KCMO, and is expanding out into the metro area. Short of building their own networks, the cities should cut the red tape to make fiber installation as easy as possible. The $ cost should be technical, not wasting it on legal fees. Although they need to safeguard against evil companies (i.e. Comcast and Time-Warner). Still yet unknown if Google Fiber turns evil. They will be in my area (Overland Park, KS) soon.
Taking a quick look at their site I don't see anything about rules, a constitution, articles or incorporation, or any other provisions as to the way the new networks will operate. It has long been my opinion that a free Internet requires the last mile to be owned by the users. It is also my opinion that the last mile needs to be a common carrier to ensure there is no censorship.
I don't see those goals spelled out on the site. All I see is some cities striving to install fiber optics. That is great, but without steps taken to protect the user's rights I expect it will just turn into another self-serving telecom giant.
In Denver, CO we can choose between Century Link DSL (speeds suck) or Comcast (expensive and service sucks). If the city of Denver jumped in that would at least give us three choices. Competition is good, right?
Meaningful Competition Drives Progress: a vibrant, diverse marketplace, with transparency in offerings, pricings, and policies will spur innovation, increase investment, and lower prices. Communities, residents, and businesses should have a meaningful choice in providers.
I don't see how a government takeover will enhance competition. Mostly it will increase the cost of cable TV, at least until some other group decides that watching prime time TV is a fundamental human right.
I have a TV antenna in the attic, let them raise the cable TV rates.
I don't see how a government takeover will enhance competition.
Can you point me to where in any of the linked articles this coalition is talking about takeovers? I've assumed that their goal was to offer a competing service to the telcos, not to takeover any existing telco service(s).
Government (or really a quasi-public company) owns the last mile. Vendors compete to provide the content. You pay the government X dollars per month to cover the cost of upgrade and maintenance of the fiber coming to your house, and then you choose from Verizon/Comcast/TWC and the packages/bandwidth you select.
In practice this isn't too different from how my electric bill works - National Grid charges me for the delivery and the electricity, but I can shop around to get electricity cheaper from other vendors. It still shows up as one bill.
I think the key point is to decouple the content from the last mile network. when a house can choose between different cable suppliers and different internet suppliers, that's when the competition happens.
Expect to see the gloves come off for this fight.
:D
The Telecoms absolutely will throw a Godzilla sized tantrum since the high density metropolitan areas are their biggest cash cows they have. They would give two shits about losing some barely on the map town in the middle of nowhere, but you're talking about where the big $$$$ live now.
There will be lobbying, crying, arguments, pleading, secret back-room deals, and just mass hysteria for all the Telecoms. Hell, they might even get off their ass and start doing something now that they see a very frightening possibility of real competition to their profits starting to rear its head.
It will be glorious
Indeed, if there were existing telco services comparable to what they want to install, they wouldn't need to do it.
Since the telcos would rather take their ball and go home than improve service, it's a de facto takeover.
the discussion is about internet access, not cable tv. That they run on the same lines by the same companies is not part of the conversation - there are countries that were decades behind us in getting internet access, and are now (seemingly) decades ahead of us. Those countries have found that providing broadband access to nearly everyone dramatically improved the economies there. Yet here, we still have people who can only get 128k (or maybe slightly better) from DSL. I have a client that has a location (which I'm currently sitting in) where ~300 people use a 3mb connection. They're constantly losing calls, have problems with web conferences, etc - dramatically hurts their productivity. There just isn't decent access available in this area - and it's in a relatively nice area of Houston, a relatively modern metro in the US. This isn't the 90s, we can get speed not measured in kbps or single-digit mbps now...we should be looking at gig, like they've had for years elsewhere.
That is just so damn Un-American not letting Corporate monopolies rip you off
Exactly. There's only so much telephone pole space (or underground conduit).
I live in Provo and they created the iProvo network. It didn't go so well and we ended up paying for it through the energy bills. On the bright side, Google bought it and now the companies here are actually competing. So if the cities mean build a network and have google take over, then I'm all for that.
I don't see how a government takeover will enhance competition.
By dissecting the natural monopoly (the last mile) from the unnatural monopoly (the service provider)
Currently, I can buy electricity from three dozen loosely regulated companies that compete for my dollar. No matter who I buy from, that electricity will get delivered over the same physical copper connection to my house. That piece of copper is maintained by a single, strictly regulated utility.
Under this system, everybody's priorities are in the right place. The last mile utility can only make more money by connecting more customers, since the rates are regulated. The providers can only make more money by providing better service, since they can't stop their customers from using a competitor.
The rent-seeking behavior we currently have with Comcast gets eliminated.
That they run on the same lines by the same companies is not part of the conversation
You can't separate them. Take away half of the revenue that the existing connection brings in the other half will need to make it up.
Most of these companies are local monopolies because the local politicians were bribed to give them a monopoly. You don't have to build your own just get rid of the monopoly.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
Wish I could see a list of the 20 additional cities. I doubt any of those are in FL either...the entrenched good ol' boy network down here would never let that fly.
hmm that reminds, me what ever happened to internet over electric cables? The elect company's are not saving and replacing old infrastructure as they should be. I've seen plenty of news stories about how bad our grids are and how everything needs to be replaced but is not. Who owns the cables??
Jack of all trades,master of none
OK, let's say for sake of argument you bring gigabit to every doorstep. Or heck, even 1% of doorsteps. All of your uplinks are going to be so massively oversubscribed that it's essentially meaningless, except for content that's hosted on local caching servers. This is great for things like Netflix, but even ultra-high quality 4K video with uncompressed multichannel audio isn't going to consume that much bandwidth. 40Gbit connections are standard on the largest backbones, with 100 Gbit coming on-line, but that's some awfully expensive hardware right now.
So my question would be: what added benefit you expect to get with a gigabit local loop when it's still going into the same sort of congestion limits? i don't mean to sound like a curmudgeonly old bastard, but this sounds more like a marketing gimmick. Even governments aren't immune from spreading marketing bullshit; in fact it's sometimes easier when you know you won't be held accountable (advertising fraud vs political promises) and it's all other people's money anyway.
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hmm that reminds, me what ever happened to internet over electric cables? The elect company's are not saving and replacing old infrastructure as they should be. I've seen plenty of news stories about how bad our grids are and how everything needs to be replaced but is not. Who owns the cables??
The neighborhood grid is owned by a single delivery company (AEP in most of central Ohio), while the generation is provided by "competitors".
The U.S. generally does not have broadband over power lines for two reasons:
On the original article topic, I would totally vote to have an entity that is (at least lightly) accountable to citizens/voters in order to put a little competitive pressure on the current crop of duopolists. Digital/internet communication has transformed the way most of us work, and has become non-optional. I believe it's informative to note that many times that localities have tried to provide comms services, the entrenched players usually sue. I'm thinking it's a pretty good gravy train or they wouldn't be so protective of the turf.
I would totally vote to have an entity that is (at least lightly) accountable to citizens/voters in order to put a little competitive pressure on the current crop of duopolists.
Actually, where I live, there is at least a city employee who is responsible for collecting complaints about the cable & phone companies to whom the city has granted rights. I once sent this person an e-mail with TWC issues and received call-backs from TWC a few days after e-mailing that person.
"...fast internet speeds unencumbered by fast lanes or other tiered systems are necessary to keep residents and businesses happy."
just like rest of infrastructure in the city. Need good roads, schools, water, etc.
mfwright@batnet.com
Awesome! So which cities are among the 20?
Socia wouldn't tell me what cities have expressed interest, because they haven't formally joined yet.
So there's no news here, and this is just a pointer back to Vice's previous article.
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
I have a TV antenna in the attic, let them raise the cable TV rates.
Dvorak says that OTA broadcasting is going away. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2470378,00.asp
I didn't see "government takeover" in the portions of TFA that I read. Can you point it out? At worst, the government would compete in a free market.
Learn to love Alaska
I have a TV antenna in the attic, let them raise the cable TV rates.
Dvorak says that OTA broadcasting is going away. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/...
He also happens to be an outspoken critic of the current movement demanding "'Net Neutrality" by FCC / government regulation. He makes some good points, too. I won't repeat them here, because I always get hammered and flamed when I point out the flaws in the proposals in this space.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
My city is taking subscribers for gigabit service starting next week, and it's not on the list.
Most outgoing pipes are over subscribed anyway. Put the gigabit in place and let the markets sort out the demands on bandwidth for outgoing/incoming pipes. In the meantime, let the local markets invent and invest in providing content. Image all of your favorite local TV channels streaming live or 2way interactive class rooms from your local college. Enter into negotiations with Netfliks to franchise a local streaming data center. Start a new Wifi-cell phone service. There are thousands of ideas on could develop with gigabit to every home, business, individuals and hacker elites.
As someone how help start a kickass ISP back in the early 90s and that is still around today competing against the bigs, I'm all in on it. Build local, and buy local. Also be patent because if you build it and they will come.
Cheers!
I don't see how a government takeover will...
Sorry, I think you mistook slashdot for some Fox News forum?
I expect we'll probably see and hear the phrase "government takeover" quite a bit from the Fox News crowd on this issue. It's obviously incendiary; designed to spread fear and disinformation to the public. It's also totally baseless. As if municipal broadband is some kind of coup? As if the "gobmint" is going to prevent ISPs from doing business in this country? As if they are going to seize the assets of ISPs in order to control the information sent to the masses? As if they needed to and haven't already been doing that since the invention of the printing press?
Oh yeah, it's a government takeover. It couldn't possibly be people fed up with high rates, poor service, and no market forces present to correct this; willing to spend their tax dollars for a different system, possibly a better system, or simply to light a fire under those in control of the current system.
I'm sorry, but your opinion seems to be wrong.
Most of the comments I see are focused on monopoly issues. While relevant, it hides the fact that, except for the last mile (or ten miles, or fifty, or however far the nearest major hub is from you), the Internet performance we see is that of the whole net, not just the carrier we buy access from. It's high time that we quit thinking of the Internet as a communications service and realized it's as much a public good as highways, water, schools, or any of the other services we expect the government to take care of. its indirect benefit to us as citizens is as least as much as what we get from it directly.
I don't see how a government takeover will enhance competition. Mostly it will increase the cost of cable TV, at least until some other group decides that watching prime time TV is a fundamental human right.
Most people don't care about competition so much as they care about whether they can get decent service to begin with. Non-government monopolies have little interest in service quality, and frankly, it's not the highest priority in most cases for large non-monopoly businesses either. But Please Stay On The Line Your Call Is VERY Important To Us.
The major advantage to government monopoly is that government has a vested interest in listening to the customers, since unlike most corporations, consumer/voters can directly hurt them, unlike say, Comcast where the only voters who count have a few hundred thousand shares in their pockets.
I see no reason to assert, however that switching ownership would inevitably increase the cost of anything. Monopolies tend to charge the highest prices they can get away with anyway.
That in NC TimeWarner's service level has fallen off a cliff and prices jacked 20% and they are laughing at you.
Yes, and Deregulate, just like they did with Power and Gas over here. Then all the sudden we got to pay Dominion/Ohio Edison & some third party shit supplier and everyone's bill doubled. Yeah, De-regulation fixes everything. So Internet will be the same thing, You pay Time Warner Cable for "Line Access Fees" and Joe Cable Co for "Bandwidth" which then wouldn't be unlimited anymore. Why should they? The carriers have to buy the bandwidth from TWC.
Except they never actually have taken their ball and gone home. There are plenty of examples out there where municipalities have rolled their own networks out, and the cable and telco companies still operate there. I'm not aware of a single location where the cable companies have left, and the telcos aren't legally allowed to leave because of Federal law (not that there's any evidence they would if they were able).
Decoupling the content from the network won't help you when Disney & ESPN have a monopoly on content, and want to charge $4 for a single channel which Disney & ESPN contractually requires the network to put in a lower tier that everyone gets.
How about the FCC adopt a no-cost regulation that says content providers cannot require their channel to be in any particular tier? This way the network would be free to place those expensive channels in a separate, optional tier, which you don't have to subscribe or pay for.
to forward this information to the mayor of my small town. Then I found out that he is a retired VP from Verizon. He would simply shitcan the idea.
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