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Power and Free Broadband To the People

Posted by samzenpus on from the get-you-some-internet dept.

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes Slashdot member and open source developer Ben Kallos @KallosEsq — who is now a NYC Councilman — is pushing to make it a precondition to Comcast's merging with Time Warner that it agree to provide free broadband to all public housing residents in the City (and by free I mean free as in beer). Kallos, along with NY's Public Advocate, Letitia James, is leading a group of state and local politicians calling on Comcast to help bridge the digital divide in NY.

8 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. Just like "free" housing solved poverty! by CajunArson · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Just look at the loving way in which the residents of "free" public housing maintain their residences out of gratitude to the all-caring government.

    Truly, public housing solved poverty to exactly the same degree that free broadband will "solve" the digital divide. I'm sure that the upstanding U.S. citizens who live in public housing will take it upon themselves to learn how to code and contribute Open Source software to the world in complete gratitude for this benevolent entitlement.

    --
    AntiFA: An abbreviation for Anti First Amendment.
    1. Re:Just like "free" housing solved poverty! by Spy+Handler · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I'm sure that the upstanding U.S. citizens who live in public housing will take it upon themselves to learn how to code and contribute Open Source software to the world in complete gratitude for this benevolent entitlement.

      A new Motorola cable modem/wifi router buys how much crack?

    2. Re:Just like "free" housing solved poverty! by ZombieBraintrust · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Public housing resulted because of building standards. If you outlaw the homes that people live in and tear them down. You have to provide something in return or your going to have riots. Housing riots have resulted in goverements being toppled.

    3. Re:Just like "free" housing solved poverty! by meustrus · · Score: 4, Interesting

      You can pay taxes to give the poor public housing and opportunities to train for work (like having access to Wikipedia et al). Or you can pay taxes to arrest the poor when they start stealing the things they can't afford (like food), pay taxes to clean up the dead bodies from drug overdose and gang violence, and pay taxes for the grand public housing scheme known as our overcrowded prison system. Or you can pay taxes and your immortal soul to round them all up and kill them every few generations (and hope you don't get rounded up when this happens). You may think for some idiotic reason that being nice is morally the wrong thing to do, but being an asshole may just cost you more in taxes than it does to give the poor the same entitlements you got from your parents.

      --
      I sometimes ask revealing, often ignorant-seeming questions. Maybe they're harder to answer than you think.
    4. Re:Just like "free" housing solved poverty! by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "Natural monopoly" is a somewhat dubious term.

      Internet service is NOT a natural monopoly. ISP monopolies are a result of bad public policies. Water and electric service are natural monopolies, because pipelines and electric cables are expensive, and an incumbent with existing infrastructure has a huge advantage. But fiber is dirt cheap. The only cost is the initial installation of the conduit, then dozens or even hundreds of fibers can go in that conduit at little additional cost. So the conduit should be owned by the public, and any bonded company should be allowed to run fiber through it.

  2. I bet they will agree, but... by duck_rifted · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...it will be a single 1 Mb/s connection shared by all of them. As a result, more of them will spend the ten to fifteen bucks for a dialup subscription.

  3. Free housing could work by voss · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The problem is in the US working poor didnt qualify for free housing so basically what happened is you concentrated utter poverty in a small area.
    Combine that with inadequate security, poor maintenance and shoddy construction you have a recipe for disaster. So right now
    working poor pay well over 30% of their salary for rent. What would they do if they didnt have the heavy rent loads? They would spend it on consumer goods like washers and dryers and cars and perhaps even save for the down payment for a house. So an argument could be made that public housing might
    in the long run stabilize home prices and improve the economy.

    In Europe mainstream families live in public housing so public housing doesnt have the stigma that it has in the US so economic activity is maintained
    near public housing in europe because you have working families who spend money not just welfare recipients. Also because working families
    vote political interests have a vested interest in maintaining the quality of public housing.

  4. Poison Pill by T.E.D. · · Score: 4, Interesting

    There's no way Comcast (or any cable company) will ever agree to that. The fact is that cable companies make most of their money off of large apartment buildings. That's where they get access to oodles of customers without having to lay hardly any cable at all. Rich neighborhoods, oddly enough, with their spread out property, tend to cost cable companies more money to service than they pay in.