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Obama Unveils Plan To Bring About Faster Internet In the US
An anonymous reader writes: President Obama is rolling out a new plan to boost the speed of internet connections throughout the U.S. For one, he'll be asking the FCC for assistance in neutralizing state laws (PDF) that prevent cities from building municipal broadband services. "At speeds of 4 Mbps or less, 75 percent of consumers have a choice between two or more fixed providers, and 15 percent can select among three or more ISPs. However, in the market for Internet service that can deliver 25 Mbps downstream—the speed increasingly recognized as a baseline to get the full benefits of Internet access—three out of four Americans do not have a choice between providers." The state laws laws restrict competition and give the major ISPs no incentive to invest and innovate.
Obama will also be directing other federal agencies to increase the amount of money they grant and loan to ISP-related projects. "Any effort by the FCC to preempt anti-muni-broadband laws will likely focus on a controversial part of the FCC's congressional charter known as "Section 706." That part of the law recognizes the FCC's authority to stimulate broadband deployment, which supporters of preemption argue the tactic would promote. If Section 706 sounds familiar, that's because it's also the legal tool some say should be used to promote net neutrality, or the principle that broadband companies shouldn't speed up or slow down some Web sites over others."
Obama will also be directing other federal agencies to increase the amount of money they grant and loan to ISP-related projects. "Any effort by the FCC to preempt anti-muni-broadband laws will likely focus on a controversial part of the FCC's congressional charter known as "Section 706." That part of the law recognizes the FCC's authority to stimulate broadband deployment, which supporters of preemption argue the tactic would promote. If Section 706 sounds familiar, that's because it's also the legal tool some say should be used to promote net neutrality, or the principle that broadband companies shouldn't speed up or slow down some Web sites over others."
More robust competition at the local level will raise speeds and lower prices. And one day, one bright, glorious day, I can tell Comcast to take a hike.
As soon as he no longer had congress. It's as if it's all just political posturing or something...
Privacy advocates are screaming about this. Yet, ./ is in the tank sucking down the kool aide.
I'm not sure how "the market" is going to work in this case. The major players in this market have already bought enough votes to pass local laws preventing competition in the regions where they operate.
At a minimum, these laws that have basically created government sponsored broadband monopolies need to be overturned to allow competition from smaller providers to occur.
I cannot get anything close to 4M. It is either dial up, ISDN or a T1. There are no other services. And frankly, I am not so far from a reasonably large town. There is some notion that service offerings are better than really exist.
Good idea and long overdue.
I vote republican the vast majority of the time and am no fan of Obama. However, I am excited about this, because I agree the market is failing us in this sector and there is no real competition between ISPs. I'm also skeptical, but still hopeful it'll be done right.
This. When the "market" consists of only a few providers, then all of the assumptions of profit-minimizing competition go out the window.
Libertarians should hate monopolies fiercely and should support their dissolution.
Stop giving money to mega companies and tailor your government "cheese" giveaway to companies who will build to new areas. The last stimulus scam that they tried contained so many impossible conditions that no small/start-up company could comply with them. The main deal breaker being giving the government first lien. Foolish to think any company wouldn't have a loan or two out there with a bank that isn't going to give up their lien. So either the people who draft those programs are fools or they are in the back pockets of the lobbyist who care not at all beyond what some money bags is paying them.
No kidding it's long overdue. I've always said if we separated the last mile of coax from the incumbent provider and forced them to interconnect we'd be better off.
The President has sent his people out over the land, finding things that don't work very well. He will now spend the rest of his tenure urging various federal agencies and Congress to "stop doin' stupid stuff", accompanied, if possible, by some form of federal largess. Rinse. Relather. Repeat.
"We receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us" - Faraday
Not sure if stupid or just trolling.
"The market" cannot work because of laws that have been pushed by politicians who have been basically bought by lobbyists. Lobbying is just another word for bribery. This used to be illegal and I'm not sure how or why it became legal in the first place.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
You need to do 3 things.
1 - Make "franchise agreements" in cities, towns and states ILLEGAL. Paying a kickback to the government to keep out competition and to just do business is wrong. time to smack the hands of all these scumbag politicians.
2 - Government funded and OWNED fiber everywhere. Dont let AT&T own it or Comcast. It's all government ownd so that a company can come into town and set up shop as an ISP without having to spend millions to run fibers right next to all the other competition. Plus this allows you to force regulate ISP's from being dicks and only offering their service to the rich parts of town.
3 - FORCE HONEST PRICING make Service Contracts ILLEGAL.. you can not find anywhere on comcasts website the real prices of internet, only their special sale prices that go up from 100 to 600% at a later date. No more of this bullshit, honest prices prominently displayed. no Contracts allowed in any way for any reason.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
The market is not failing us; there is no market. This is a step towards creating one.
The "Market" DOES NOT work in this case.
The "Market" only expands if they can sign exclusivity contracts.
The "Market" RARELY expands into rural areas and never into poor rural areas.
The "Market" overcharges depending on what zip code you are in.
The "Market" redefines words like UNLIMITED in ways that are completely opposite to the meaning of the actual word.
The "Market" wants to throttle us based on what we want to do.
"Can't do shit" with 6Mbps and no data cap?
You got plenty of valid options, sir. Please shut the fuck up.
Signed,
a Canadian stuck with the local monopoly at 2Mbps with a 35GB monthly data cap.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
There is no market, at least not in the "free" sense that people tend to mean. The ISP landscape is a patchwork of franchises, gentleman's agreements, or both. There is nothing resembling a competitive market where consumers may choose a provider based on price, or quality, or any other vector; or where competitors can reasonably be expected to enter.
How did you somehow read the article and come to believe exactly the opposite of what it says? Like, really, the exact opposite: TFA clearly states he is trying to promote public broadband construction by striking down state laws that prevent municipalities from owning networks. There is nothing in there about giving ISPs anything.
Obama adds regulation: "Stupid Obama the Market will fix the problems!"
Obama removes regulation: "Stupid Obama the Market will fix the problems!"
Obama hands all regulatory decisions over to "the Market": "Stupid Obama what he is doing is unconstitutional!"
Obama does nothing: "Stupid Obama Why can't he just lead!"
I'm glad you enjoy being enraged so much, and also that you can always find a reason to be enraged, I hope that your high blood pressure removes you from the voting pool very soon.
GP meant the market for laws, thus s/he was right.
Fairly certain it was a sarcastic statement.
"The market" cannot work because of laws that have been pushed by politicians who have been basically bought by lobbyists. Lobbying is just another word for bribery. This used to be illegal and I'm not sure how or why it became legal in the first place.
It's called the 1st Amendment:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
It's both State created, and locally supported.
Take Texas for example. The State, many moons ago, put in place law against 'municipal' broadband creations: i.e., cities/neighborhoods/citizen groups can't form to create and implement infrastructure as an ISP. While private businesses can implement such, with pole tack and co-lo. barring agreements, you are at the resolve of local municipality, city public works, to get it installed since they're REQUIRED to do the work. Here's the kicker: there is no time frame required for them to get it done in, once you put a request in. Assuming you get the ok from the city officials, they schedule and complete the request, at their own time frame. You can't force their hand to get it done.
Source: tried to start an ISP with a friend, to provide DSL to under-utilized areas. Had capital, but after looking at the details, the city, and lawyers to try and force their hand, would have bled us dry before even getting a bucket truck next to a pole. Why? They're in bed with the well known phone monoply starting with the letter V.
For the area in question, there is no competition for DSL. It IS a monopoly. There is cable Internet, but on then it is 1 provider. There are a few WISPS. All in all, it's DSL, vs. Cable, vs. WISP, in that area. I guess you could call it competition...
This is a classic example of some people just hating on Obama, because he's Obama.
In 2014, Republicans were mad at Obama for pushing net neutrality. All we needed to do was to end the city and state laws preventing cities from creating municipal broadband. Let the market work!
In 2015, some of them (not all, but many) will be mad at him for sticking the fed's nose into state and city laws, forcing them to ... You get the idea.
And once again, our great socialist democrat commy leader does EXACTLY what Republicans would have done(cough war, gitmo, bailouts, etc). And they probably won't be happy with it, because it's Obama....
Isn't that precisely what is being proposed by Obama? To eliminate those sanctioned monopolies and to prevent state laws which seek to prevent civic or competitive broadband projects.
Upstream bandwidth is a necessary requirement for the net to progress. Right now we are stuck in the television model - what with facebook and others being central repositories. We need to get back to the mantra of the 90s internet - disintermediation. That's going to take bidirectional bandwidth.
Instead of hosting all our photos and other communications on central servers like facebook, they should just be hosted on our phones and we can cut out the middleman and just share stuff phone to phone. Over the air will be a slow fallback, but at home, at the office, basically anywhere indoors there needs to be highspeed internet connectivity for it all to work.
Thanks Obama!
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
"The state laws laws restrict competition and give the major ISPs no incentive to invest and innovate."
True. And out in the rural areas this is far worse with far higher costs and far lower speeds. A lot of the existing infrastructure that could be used is hoarded by those who have control of it such as tower space and poll space. Vast amounts of money is spent on ultra high speed to urban areas while rural areas are left out creating more of a digital divide which in turns pushes more people to the cities which is a large problem in and of itself.
ISPs do not exist without a gun. You can thank the government for Right Of Way access.
Ideally, the FCC would assert all authority related to the regulation of broadband, supplanting any local rules. IIRC there are already rulings to that effect, but they've never been applied specifically to regulation of municipal broadband.
4K video stream could revolutionize remote work. Having a meeting on a phone does not cut it and even seeing a "low quality" 1080p video stream doesn't cut it. When me or the other person is white-boarding, I need it to be crystal clear. Nothing more annoying that hearing "sorry, I can't see that", then I have to re-draw. It interrupts the flow.
Rule of thumb, it's not good enough until you forget it's even there. I don't want to look at a screen and say "that's looks better", I want to forget there is a screen in the first place.
Nonsense. Monopolies exist as the end-game of unregulated capitalism.
I guess you're right in that businesses as we know them couldn't exist without government...
The "Market" RARELY expands into rural areas and never into poor rural areas.
Funny thing. A lot of my family live in rural areas around the country, and many of these areas are gaining faster fiber than what's available in the cities. The common pattern that I'm seeing is the metro areas are taken over by incumbents and the incumbents are staying or running away from rural like the plague. Even with little to no competition in rural areas, they're starting to see faster, cheaper, more reliable internet because these areas are being serviced by ISPs less greedy than incumbents.
The first amendment says nothing about paying for the privilege with capital for political elections though does it?
But my state won't let me and my neighbors do that. It is forbidden. We must let the incumbent provider chosen by the state government have full control. We can't even buy them out.
So I and my neighbors are unable to lawfully act, except to hope to persuade the lawmakers to change the laws. But they refuse, and so continue to wrong us.
Where else am I to go when I am wronged by my state government?
Should I take up arms against the state government instead? If so, please join us in our struggle for liberty against our oppressors.
Ideally, the FCC would assert all authority related to the regulation of broadband, supplanting any local rules. IIRC there are already rulings to that effect, but they've never been applied specifically to regulation of municipal broadband.
Do you also feel that the FDA should exert all authority related to the regulation of marijuana, supplanting any state rules?
Or are you one of the many who really just believe that any argument which promotes the ends you desire is the right argument only in the context of that one question?
Using mobile broadband. I am a full time RVer, the options aren't great but I still have way more options than hardline.....and much more realiable speeds than I ever got at any apartment.
What I do is use two pre-paid phones with data. One is t-mobile and one is att. T-mobile offers now "unlimited" data for $80 and att offers 2 gb for $60 (with up to two additional data purchases allowable per month). T-Mobile is hit and miss as far as coverage goes, but if you "get" lte or faster than 2g works great and I use it as my work line. Att is pretty good about coverage, I have yet to not get a LTE tower signal...but stingy data cap of 4 gb.
Between the two it works pretty good, and I always have a fully mobile data connection at my disposal wherever I park. $140 seems high, but I was paying that on a contract just for a phone when I lived in an apartment.
The only catch really is don't even think about streaming any movies on a regular basis, but for apps, work, surfing, music (free with certain services) it works great, even for multiplayer games. On the flip side, no contract, no penalties for just "quitting" the service for a month. And if I want to turn the data back on, it takes just a few minutes to re-fill.
My 2 copper coins.
It's about High Definition Video. It's about Video Conferencing. It's about VOIP. It's about Telecommuting for your employers. It's about being competitive on the global market. It's about consuming more information faster to better perform in the global workplace. Cat videos are tertiary to this as EVERYONE needs downtime as well to maintain maximum productivity over the longest course of time. As broadband speeds go, America as a whole is falling into quicksand and the Broadband monopolies have shown that they have no intention of letting America do anything but sink. The whole Land Mass excuse hasn't been viable for a long time and now it's just becoming a complete embarassment.
Both China and Russia have more landmass than the US and while we're JUST edging them out in overall average speed (32.1mbps US, 24.2 CN, 27 RU) our cost per Megabit per second is through the roof by comparison ($3.51 US, $1.76 CN, $0.69 RU (all values reflected in USD) [These values were aquired from netindex.com]. Seriously. Stop being a fucking apologist for these assholes!
Globally we're still on fair ground but we could be doing so much better, and we need to be. We used to be the bastion of technology not even very long ago. For the longest while we could truly say "We're Number 1!" but now it's beginning to ring out more like "We're Numb!" and we need to wake up as a country. The President's statement was a start, now we need to follow through.
Or maybe he runs a server, or maybe he is a developer pushing out udpated ISO's every night or every few hours.. Or maybe he lives in a house with 5 roommates who all constantly play games and stream movies...
Or maybe, he just works from home and transfers allot of data between his home office and his corporate office...
Don't be a dick..
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
As much as I hate Verizon (and I do really hate Verizon, but not as much as I hate Comcast), Verizon offers fixed LTE (http://www.verizonwireless.com/b2c/lte-internet-installed/) It's not cheap mind you, but it at least uses the same network and bands as their LTE phones, so if you get LTE phone service from VZ where you live, you should be able to get their home LTE service.
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
I think part of that is the rural areas have virtually nothing, so as they are just getting broadband they are getting a newer infrastructure as a starting point.
Then agin in rural areas where only cable and sattelite or just only satellite is feasable those guys get gouged pretty good.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Couldn't one argue that the State laws interfere with methods of interstate commerce, thereby violating Federal authority over such commerce?
>More robust competition at the local level will raise speeds and lower prices.
We used to have something like that in the US until the ISP deregulation of the late 90s removed requirements for allowing subleasing bandwidth and last mile connectivity. (Of the sort the UK uses to proliferate enviable cost competition.)
--- Little Atomo - The Amazing Thinking Robot from Atomocom! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIP9KisHi4k
If one had a scenario where different companies are laying out their own independent infrastructure, be it fiber or cable or towers, one could make a case that there was competition. In the current scenario, where you have multiple media monopolys - say TWC on cable vs AT&T on DSL vs the 4 wireless carriers on air, and the remaining providers just leasing their equipment, it's tough to make a case that there is real competition
It's 100% Constitutional.
You do realize that is what he is trying to do... Give you, and your neighbors the choice and opportunity to build your own (well vote to have someone build it for you) broadband network. The reason he is getting involved is that there are about 20 or so states that have laws on the book, written by the telecoms themselves, that outright ban cities, counties, municipalities, etc from building out there own network should the populace decide they want to, or puts restrictions in place that make is almost impossible to build out the network. These are protectionist laws for the incumbents, and removes YOUR choice, which you are bitching about.
Do a little research before making stupid statements, otherwise you look just like the me to people who vote straight down party lines regardless of how stupid their party is (that goes for both sides).
I came, I conquered, I coredumped
Of course, those laws need to be rescinded and can be rescinded under the Interstate Commerce Clause.
,
But of course too, you know that is not what The Zero is going to do. What he will do is move the lucre further up the chain to the Federal level.
Of course the market is failing. The market-driven model always fails on big markets (oil, telcos, banks, etc). Free-market economists quickly realized that there is a tendency for monopolies and oligopolies. They will eventually create trusts or use tactics like selling below cost to drive new companies out of their field. Enter the state-regulator: A small government with a singular goal; to regulate the market and ensure competition. The problem is that on big markets, the dominating companies are so powerful that they end up controlling a big chunk of the government. Or at least enough of it, so they can use it to ensure continuation of the mono/oligopoly.
It is a pretty nasty situation and hard to get out of it, since the only one with the power to break the cycle is the government which is already corrupted. That leaves us with "the people". Well, that is why most of the ppl that own banks and oil companies, also own a lot of media.
In general I would be happier with a split model. The municipal governments will pay for the network infrastructure, those fiber lines, wide area wireless, in general the big stuff that needs to go to the last mile. just like they pay to keep our roads operational, and will go to our homes, where they will plow, and maintain it to a particular quality level.
However with that municipal government infrastructure. We should be able to choose ISP who will offer the internet services, who can offer us different pricing for faster and slower speeds for less money. I really liked the model of the Old Dialup ISP Days. Where you can find a small local ISP for personal service, or choose the big company with some extra features. Or if you are more enterprising you can create your own ISP without needing millions of dollars to startup.
The problem that happened when we moved off of Dial Up to broadband, was we needed to go with an ISP who also can manage the infrastructure.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Lobbying is just another word for bribery. This used to be illegal and I'm not sure how or why it became legal in the first place.
Your right to bring your concerns to your elected representatives and executives is preserved, very carefully and deliberately, in the constitution. Likewise is your right to assemble in a group to get things done.
... net neutrality? gun control? immigration? whatever) should be illegal? Why do you think that? "Lobbying" is the act (historically) of waiting in the lobby of a building to for a moment to bend the ear of a passing legislator on his or her way between other engagements. Hence the term. You're thinking that should be illegal?
So, you think that a visit to your congressional representative's office to explain your position on (pick a topic
Or are you just not happy when you and ten of your friends who share a common interest designate one of you to make the trip to that same office to speak on behalf of the other nine of you, as a group? Is that the part you think should be illegal? How about when you and your ten friends realize that there's actually a million of you that have a common interest, and you decide to pool some resources and hire someone who lives and works in the state or federal capital, and who knows who and where everything is and how it all works, to explain your collective position and priorities to that same congressman? Is that the part that should be illegal? Why? Which part is the illegal part - where a million of you act in concert, or where you finally realize that having a professional pull your agenda together into a coherent, easily conveyed whole means that you hire someone for that role? Please be specific about which thing you'd make illegal:
1) Gathering in groups?
2) Pooling resources?
3) Hiring someone?
4) Talking to congressional representatives or regulators?
At which point is someone bribing somebody else? Do you mean that the congress person is actually taking cash under the table? Do you have evidence of that happening, and it not resulting in prosecution? If you do, why are you keeping it from the FEC and the other agencies that investigate such crimes?
Or is it that you just don't like the fact that people who run businesses decide to take some of their money and hire professionals to reduce the overall noise level and represent their interests in a more focused way? Do you not like that because you can't be bothered to identify a suitably large group of people who share your own interests, and who do exactly the same thing? Millions of other people do - do you think that the NAACP, or the AARP, or the Sierra Club, or the NRA, or labor unions or other groups should be barred from taking their concerns to their elected representatives in a unified way, instead of expecting all of their thousands or millions of members to descend on the same congressional office individually, all day every day, to say the same things?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The market-driven model always fails on big markets (oil, telcos, banks, etc). Free-market economists quickly realized that there is a tendency for monopolies and oligopolies.
Please describe how utilities and cable fit in a "market-driven model." As I said; there is not and never was a market. The government picked a winner and banned the rest from operation.
If I didn't have a cap, I'd seed linux distros like crazy.
Yeah, they don't want hte government to do that.. it should happen naturally, like child birth.
or is Al Gore helping?
This initiative may well make faster Internet speeds available at seemingly moderate increases in monthly payments. But you are likely going to see low end Internet plans cut, forcing people to upgrade to high speed plans they don't want or need, and you are going to see massive direct and indirect subsidies to telecom companies.
I'm on a 50 Mbps plan, and to my provider's credit, that's what they deliver. What they aren't giving me is a 5 Mbps plan at a fraction of the price, which is really all I want.
Reagan: "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it."
>> increase the amount of money they grant and loan to ISP-related projects
I'd say we're in Reagan's third phase with ISPs, wouldn't you?
Well, according to them, they raised the cap from 250Gb to 300, but that was a complete and utter lie. I made damn sure there was no cap when I signed up, so you can imagine my distress when I got an email with that "good news". So far I've been able to keep them from enforcing it by threatening to take them to court over breach of contract.
Did you know that Netflix uses less bandwidth than NBC?
For a lot of people saying "we're number one" refers to our military power.
Yes there was a market for utilities and in some places there there still are some. See the history of phone companies for what happens when utilities are left to a market. Dozens of providers with incompatible systems followed by a monopoly.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
No, it's not. The wires crossing state lines are "prima facie" a medium for interstate commerce. The wires within a state have nothing to do with interstate commerce because no products or services move across state lines over them. The fact that things that have moved across state lines eventually move over local lines as well doesn't make them "interstate".
Of course, logic has been thrown out the window since Wickard v. Filburn. After that, picking your nose in your basement might be considered "interstate commerce".
That doesn't make quite sense.. rural areas are likely not going to have much choice. They can charge whatever they want since there is no competition. The only reason it could be cheaper is that the average income of the rural person is quite a bit lower and so in order to get teh maximum number of subscriber, you price it so that it is worth subscribing too without breaking budgets. But most rural people have TV and cable, won't they be able to get internet through that?
Honest question: Is your local city government efficient, responsible, technically savvy, and trustworthy enough to expect them to do a great job as your ISP? If so, where do you live?
Why is municipal broadband appealing? Is it only better versus Comcast, or is it actually good in some way? Are you expecting to get it for "free" -- a.k.a. paid for by your neighbors?
Where in the US do they have municipal broadband with a long track record of working well, with competitive pricing not subsidized by tax revenue?
For years companies have been getting billions in incentives to provide high speed access to rural areas, they often just pocked the money and then go ask for more.
We live in one of those areas, no cable service (tv or internet), no dsl, only dial up(yes they still exist), satellite or 4G wireless. We have had both satellite and 4G, both are very expensive for the bandwidth you get and both have small limits or expensive overages. Satellite worse point is the lag, no vonage or skyping (its gets very confusing with a 2 second delay) and its its raining somewhat hard you loose service until it clears up. Also peak time slowdowns were horrible, in early evenings speed would droop down to 10-20k per second, hardly better than dial-up. 4G wireless is fast enough but you can burn though your monthly limit in just days, forcing you to keep raising your plan each week to avoid overages.
They never should have spent the money on the State/Provincial Park system in your area. All it's good for is people frivolously passing the time sitting or walking around.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
I think part of that is the rural areas have virtually nothing, so as they are just getting broadband they are getting a newer infrastructure as a starting point.
Exactly right. I live in an older part of town near enough to the central office that I should be able to get much higher speeds that I actually get over DSL. The problem is archaic wiring and infrastructure in my area. The phone company has no incentive to upgrade it because we have no other option than Comcast, and nobody wants that.
First Cash for Clunkers, now this. Stop helping! Just get out of the way. The market will work.
Oh and as Eric once said, "Fuck the FCC!"
The market only works when it isn't crippled by crony regulations preventing competition. Just this month T-mobile announced mobile data carryover and guess what appeared on my AT&T bill? That would never have happened.
Although my local cable provider has some competition and has "doubled their speeds" you can bet they wouldn't have done that without encroachment from Google Fiber or AT&T's fiber to the press release announced last year.
But there are still numerous areas such as Chanute, KS that are fighting to build their own infrastructure b/c the local telcos have a monopoly and won't build there but are being taken to court over it.
How do we seriously expect to keep that up at #1 for much longer if the rest of the GDP starts plummeting from the mindshare and infrastructure that maintains it collapsing under the weight of the rest of the world...like what happened to the USSR getting ousted from slot #2 and completely collapsing?
3 - FORCE HONEST PRICING make Service Contracts ILLEGAL.. you can not find anywhere on comcasts website the real prices of internet, only their special sale prices that go up from 100 to 600% at a later date. No more of this bullshit, honest prices prominently displayed. no Contracts allowed in any way for any reason.
Agree, the free market cannot work under circumstances such as these.
Service contracts makes sense, if the company is putting something in the ground and, hence, wants to make sure you remain a customer for a while before they undertake the investment of connecting you. But once connected and no physical work is involved it makes no sense.
Either way, special sale prices never makes any sense, and wouldn't be allowed in many other countries, because it's dishonest and doesn't facilitate competition.
When federal law eclipses state law, your right to democratic self-determination is reduced. About the only exceptions I can think of a when blacks and women were granted voting rights, but that's not what's happening here.
The market is not failing us; there is no market. This is a step towards creating one.
If you like your fiber you can keep your fiber.
1. TWC will sell your info to companies and you will start seeing ads for Depends when you reach 65. What will the government do with it?
2. TWC pretty much doesn't care what you look at. Other publicly provided internet access usually does and blocks aggressively (schools, etc.) What will the government do?
3. TWC will always respond to outages because they want your money and don't want to get sued (yes, they do it in an incompetent manner). The government pretty much doesn't care. Resources will go to Electric, Water, Gas, and Storm drains first. So when will THEY fix internet outages?
On the other hand, providing dirt cheap access to higher speed connections will definitely kick TWC into gear...just look at their response when Google comes into a neighborhood.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
The deregulation of the phone lines that led to multiple phone providers was an absolute success. You have and still have multiple options, each one vying for your services by pricing and value-add. And each one of them alone is miles away better than the old status quo of Big Bell charging you whatever the hell it felt like and ramming you up the ass on long distance charges.
Obama adds regulation: "Stupid Obama the Market will fix the problems!"
Obama removes regulation: "Stupid Obama the Market will fix the problems!"
Obama hands all regulatory decisions over to "the Market": "Stupid Obama what he is doing is unconstitutional!"
Obama does nothing: "Stupid Obama Why can't he just lead!"
I'm glad you enjoy being enraged so much, and also that you can always find a reason to be enraged, I hope that your high blood pressure removes you from the voting pool very soon.
You do realize that different segments of society complain about different things, right? The segment that complains when Obama adds regulation is not the same segment that is complaining about him doing nothing.
or realize that you can't work out in the middle of nowhere
I can get faster, cheaper, more reliable connections in the middle of no where than in most cities because incumbents have a stranglehold. You can get 200/200 internet to your cabin in the woods for under $100, but you can't get a stable 30mb connection down town.
The government didn't "ban" anyone, they just didn't let competition get "free access" to right of ways, in most cases. ISPs are allowed to go door-to-door and ask each property owner permission to dig up their lawn. If anything, private land owners are the issue for not giving free access to competition.
As you can tell, there is a minor sarcastic tone. Essentially I am saying the issue is you need the government to be an ISP because being an ISP requires access to private property, which no private person will give up without being "compensated".
Yeah, it's terrible when a bunch of politicians that don't represent you and meet in a far-away city try to control what you and are neighbors are allowed to do.
So present day "lobbying" is ok because of what "lobbying" used to consist of as a strict textbook definition?
Stuff that.
Present day lobbying isn't lobbying, it is bribery.
There is a vast gulf of difference between "bringing forth your concerns" and "bringing forth your concerns, and oh btw here's a bunch o'money for your re-election."
Your post is irrelevant drivel.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
Fox news disproves your point.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
How is it an absolute success? The U.S. citizens have the fewer and some of the most expensive options when it comes to fast internet through the phone lines. Same goes for mobile phones. If you're referring to the good old ground phones, then sure, there are options. But that's because the barrier to entry was very low and the cost pretty much the same, since everybody used Big Bell's infrastructure. The phone and internet market in the US has been exactly where the market has failed. Don't compare what you have now, with what you had 30 years ago. See what the US citizens have now in terms of broadband and phone value and what the rest of the developed world has.
And its not just the telcos. Health? Banking? Transportation? Prisons? All examples of failure. Unfortunately, Europe has been moving the free market way the past decade so we're going to see the same overseas.
You want to work on something that could HUGELY advance connection speeds in the US?
Work on a law neutralizing all the contact clauses that keep municipally owned fiber networks dark.
Require a "must lease" clause for the municipality and specify a 5 year interval with exclusions of previous lesees if they didn't actively develop the network (to prevent the likes of Comcast from just leasing the networks from the municipalities and then sitting on them.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I admit that I'm not completely up to date on land-line phone service (I haven't had one since college), but I was under the impression that most areas are like cable television, with only a single provider (typically the same company that provides DSL).
As for mobile phone service, if the companies had their way instead of the FTC stopping them, there would currently be only two providers, AT&T and Verizon.
To have a market, you have to have competition. What we have now are monopolies, so it's rather difficult to say that it's "working."
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
What should be illegal is politicians taking large sums of money from these "lobbyists" and then creating/passing legislation that supports these "lobbyist's" goals. If the "lobbyists" are just "bending the ear" of their representative then why the monetary incentive? Shouldn't a logical and well thought out presentation of the idea that the "lobbyist" is putting forth be enough?
I know I'm being naive, but, politicians are supposed to do whats best for the people they represent, not what's best for whoever can pay them the most money!
You're right, of course meeting with legislators shouldn't be made illegal. What's happened is that the term "lobbying" has been misused to include all of the related activity that goes along with lobbying these days. Typically, very large campaign donations accompany corporate lobbyists.
There are also occasional favors that avoid the whole bag-of-cash problem.
Perfectly okay: A lawyer hired by a large corporation going to Washington and saying, "Hey, Mr. Senator, we should talk about this legislation that could affect the company that hired me."
Not okay: A lawyer hired by a large corporation going to Washington and saying, "Hey, Mr. Senator, we should talk about this legislation that could affect the company that hired me. How about we meet at a golf course in the Caribbean?"
Don't be naive, you know damn well that it doesn't stop at "talking to congressional representatives." The founding fathers never meant for the right to petition to translate into "The right for multibillion dollar international conglomerates to take congressmen on luxurious junkets where they can be educated on the need to propose and pass legislation that has been helpfully written by ALEC." Lobbying firms don't just petition. They bribe. They cajole. They threaten. If it was as simple as petitioning government, why would they need 8 or 9 figure annual budgets? And don't even get me started on SuperPACs.
I don't see why a government should be in business of helping media companies sell their wares.
The U.S. government has a pretty good history of implementing massive infrastructure that's the envy of the modern world and creates a very fertile ground for innovation by U.S. industry.
The railways, back in the day.
Then the U.S. interstate freeway system. (with all its negative characteristics, but it's undeniably great for business).
The U.S. energy infrastructure (getting a bit outdated, but for the most part is cheap and reliable).
The original Al Gore Internet. Google et al, could rapidly deploy innovative stuff to most of the U.S. (and world) population without worrying much about infrastructure (until recently, as demand for throughput has started to outstrip supply in many ways).
Not all of those are pure Government products, obviously, but the the Government was deeply involved in the rollout and regulation of all of them. And it's certainly not clear that any of them could have been produced as quickly of efficiently without Government involvement.
I get the libertarian arguments, which are all-too-often valid. But dogmatically applying libertarian theory to every act of Government, is, in my opinion myopic and irrational.
Monopolies do not exist without a gun.
Neither does rule of law, a necessary pre-condition for any civilized society, libertarian or not. Only anarchists think that we can do away with the state and not end up with Mad Max / Somalia instead of happy peaceful cooperation land. Yes, government involvement does tend to favor larger players, no that effect cannot be completely eliminated, yes where possible we should try to create rules and systems that limit the damage. Less regulation is better until it's not, there is a certain minimum level of rules required to ensure a level playing field and orderly operation.
The problem is ISP don't add any value anymore. They essentially only provide network. It used to be that your ISP hosted your home page if you had one, provided you an e-mail domain, provided a POP server so your could fetch that mail when you were good and read, provided your DNS, provided news, and possibly more.
Now they DNS they give you is only so they can stuff ads when your type a domain wrong. If they even offer e-mail nobody uses it. They don't provide hosting space anymore. They really are all about routing packets, and providing shitty tech support.
If the municipal entity is going to manage all the L1 infrastructure, they might as well deliver the L2 and L3 infrastructure as well because those are the easy parts.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
I'd love to see more competition at the 4 MBps level, but I'm not sure why I need 25 MBps of bandwidth. At 4 MBps, I can stream a couple of 1080p videos simultaneously or download almost any triple-A game in an hour or two.
If I were trying to serve a popular website off my home computer, back up my terabyte hard disk nightly, I might need more, but that would be stupid. If I wanted to stream 5k video, I'd need more, but 5k video is also stupid. For consumer use, there's no way the human eyeball can actually consume data at more than 4 MBps; what am I missing out on by not having what TFA calls "baseline for the full benefits of internet access"?
I will try to break it down. Currently, there are small communities that want to build their own internet infrastructure, like you are talking about. In many cases they cannot, because state laws prevent them, essentially giving monopolies to big ISPs. Obama wants to have the FCC fight those state laws, so the communities can build their own infrastructure. See how this is different than what you are saying? Obama wants them to build out their infrastructure.
Maybe it would help if you imagine that he is a socialist, what would a socialist do in this situation?
APK, why don't you join Obama and distribute you /etc/hosts files to everybody, so that they get faster internet?
While it would be nice to think about FedGov controlling all the fiber pipes, ensuring equal and universal access, real competition, and reasonable pricing, there would be a downside.
It would only be minutes after this dream was realized when moralizing politicians would insist on fine-grained monitoring of all user activities, along with the banning of all websites showing anything more naughty than a fully-clothed nipple. The bible-thumpers and 'think about the children' hand-wringing helicopter freaks would insist on a draconian system that would make even the Suadi Arabian Morality Police jealous.
I'm all for Net Neutrality, but we should be careful what we wish for, as the devil will always own the details.
Well, dunno.. but eventually that illusion will drop when we can't even feed or house our own population. Hell if education is neglected, you'll probably have to import the smart people to run your military projects.
What should be illegal is politicians taking large sums of money from these "lobbyists"
So I'll ask you the same question as I did the GP. Do you have evidence of politicians taking large sums of money and not being prosecuted for that? As an example, the former governor of Virginia is about to go jail for doing that. Prosecutors are standing by to pursue other politicians who do the same. Which politicians do you know of who are taking large sums of money and not being prosecuted? Please list them.
Or are you referring to donations to campaigns, which have to be reported, publicly, down to the penny - as the money comes into the campaign fund, as as each penny is spent. Are you aware of politicians who are personally raiding those campaign funds and not being prosecuted? It does happen sometimes, that idiot politicians get greedy and hit those funds. And the audit trail makes that plainly obvious, and they are prosecuted. If you know of cases where they've taken such cash out of their campaign funds, but prosecutors are not aware, why aren't you saying something about it?
politicians are supposed to do whats best for the people they represent, not what's best for whoever can pay them the most money!
That sounds pretty serious! Which politicians are taking the money? If you have new information, it will be front page news tomorrow. Because that means that you've identified people who are someone handling money that career auditors with local, state, and federal election commissions are unable to see, even though they have complete access to the bank records, tax filings, and other information for every one of them. You must have some serious inside scoop! Please, share.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
How about the part where organizations and individuals can contribute unlimited funds in "campaign contributions" to candidates
This is factually incorrect. But even ignoring that, why do you have it in quotes? Are you saying that candidates, whose personal and business financial records are highly scrutinized and completely available to auditors with local, state, and federal election officials and prosecutors (if need be) are taking money paid into campaign funds (which are completely open to inspection as public records) and personally running off with it? That's big news if you know of actual examples, since politicians who do that sort of thing are held criminally liable, and go to jail.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
Typically, very large campaign donations accompany corporate lobbyists.
Every dollar of which is a matter of public record, and open to scrutiny. Are you saying that if you and a million like-minded friends who really, really think that (for example) Ron Paul or somebody else would be a perfect person to hold office and represent their views, shouldn't be able to pool their resources and make a large donation to such a campaign? What if in a race between two candidates, one of them says that he'll make it his personal crusade in office to shut down those evil online computer games that are ruining our children's minds, and the other candidate thinks that new media entertainment is great, creates jobs, and thinks that game companies are worth our support? Should the companies being attacked by the first candidate not be allowed to put their money and other efforts where it will help to promote the views of the second candidate, or at least shine a bright light on the idiocy of the first candidate? Why not? Should the people who started and work for those companies lose their right to speak, assemble, and support politicians who represent their views?
Not okay: A lawyer hired by a large corporation going to Washington and saying, "Hey, Mr. Senator, we should talk about this legislation that could affect the company that hired me. How about we meet at a golf course in the Caribbean?"
What's wrong with that? Mr. Senator has to declare those donated travel expenses and pay taxes on them as if they were income. When politicians fail to do so, you get results like we had in Virginia last week, where a formerly high-profile, well-liked governor who took advantage of some modest such offerings without handling it correctly just got sentenced to prison. That happens with some frequency. So, what's the problem? If you know of politicians like him who are dealing under the table and personally profiting, what haven't you sent that evidence to the FEC?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
If it was as simple as petitioning government, why would they need 8 or 9 figure annual budgets?
Because the same PR firms aren't ONLY putting together lobbying efforts that go directly to legislators, regulators and executives - they also put together expensive, long-running PR campaigns aimed the voters themselves. Is this where you say that they shouldn't be allowed to run ads in newspapers, or use direct mail or the web to deliver their messages? Why?
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
...can we just cut the bullshit, for once? "...25 Mbps downstreamâ"the speed increasingly recognized as a baseline to get the full benefits of Internet access..." according to whom?
Absolute nonsense. I can stream an HD movie easily at 10mpbs if the neighborhood lets me actually HAVE 10. WTF do you *need* 25mpbs for, much less to assert it's some sort of "bottom adequate floor"?
-Styopa
Don't worry, I'm seeding for you. I have a monthly average of 7Mb/s up. I'm getting 100Mb upload soon, not that it'll make a difference since most ISO torrent downloaders only peak around 10Mb/s. About once a week, someone can actually make use of my connection, and will actually run my link at max. The main issue seems to be Linux ISOs are seeder heavy, except when they first are released.
Obama is talking about allowing cities and towns to run their own municipal broadband.
Let the public have free slow broadband 1-3 mpbs as a public service and let people pay for higher end products.
If At&t were really smart they would preempt this by offering free 1.5 mbps dsl to all their existing landline phone customers
(on the lifeline customers at&t could claim a tax writeoff).
No, it's not. The wires crossing state lines are "prima facie" a medium for interstate commerce. The wires within a state have nothing to do with interstate commerce because no products or services move across state lines over them.
Wow! Which state is it that has no 'products or services' from other states moving over its wires? That's as bad an Internet connectivity as North Korea, maybe worse!
Or perhaps it is because they reach an asymptotic limit at the state line, and become undefined? And are created ex nihilo upon entering the state? There are no wires that only exist between states but not within any of them.
Of course, logic has been thrown out the window since Wickard v. Filburn. After that, picking your nose in your basement might be considered "interstate commerce".
Based on the above, I would say 'logic' is not your strong suit here. And the bone you have to pick is with the 19th century, during the heyday of laissez faire, not 1942 and the New Deal (Wickard v. Filburn). Regulation of 'local lines' owned by companies that use them for interstate commerce has uncontroversial when the Interstate Commerce Commission was created in 1882 - it did exactly what you claim is illogical.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
This is lip service to people complaining about the real problem.
And the real problem can be solved by the existing anticompetition and racketeering rules we have.
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
Since Obamacare already regulates intrahousehold commerce (you *must* buy private insurance - ethically worse than single payer), intrastate is actually a larger scope.
Technically, we already have a fast 40 and 100 Gbps - yes, I said Gigabit per second.
It's at most major research universities.
My building and one a couple blocks away have 100 Gbps ports and we have 40 Gbps in most buildings on campus.
We just don't let you use them.
Glad to hear we'll join the First World Nations that have decent speeds on the civilian side.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You seriously sound like a lobbyist.
No, just someone who doesn't like whiny people who think that constitutionally protected freedoms of speech and assembly should only apply to them, and not to people with whom they have an ideological difference. Are you really at a loss to come up with a single association, group, union, club, or other entity that you support that has - as a group - said its piece to a legislator about something that group finds important? If you can't think of a single one, then you're much too poorly informed to have an opinion on this matter. Or to vote, as far as that goes.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I have family in areas that can't get cable or DSL because of distance issues, but fiber works just fine. They'll run a fiber through several miles of empty farm land, and sell your 30/30 for $80. My brother can't see his neighbor, but he gets a very stable 30/30. He has a bit more jitter than me, but it's still very stable. He drives about 1 hour to his University because he doesn't want to get an apartment in the city, because his connection is better out in the sticks.
That's a pretty cool anecdote. Seems like fiber roll out will help if companies are willing to put in the investment.
Your anecdotal evidence is meaningless. I've lived in two rural areas, one upstate NY and another in the center of TX. Upstate NY I could not even get decent dial up service (like we had in 1990...). I can get cellular data with a special antenna rig I made, and pay like $10/per Gb used... Here in TX I have spotty DSL that is never better than 1Mb down/ 256Kb up (and goes offline enough I need to use my cell data plan to make important teleconference meetings.)
AFAIK the idea that rural is getting better choice or speed that the high profit markets seems doubtful. I suppose there are always outliers. The question we have to decide is if this is something we are going to say is driven exclusively by semi free market forces, or if we decide its in our global best interest to set meaningful baselines.
Peace, or Not?
I can see how they might could try with INTER-state laws, but these are municipal and intRA-state laws they're talking about nullifying. If they can do this, what state laws can the feds NOT just nullify at will?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
correction: should be "single competitor".
Table-ized A.I.
You can find an even more intrusive example, endorsed by none other than 'Mr. Originalist' Anton Scalia himself in Gonzales v. Raich (2005) in which the Supreme Court held that medical cannabis grown at home by a patient for her own exclusive private use (also at home) was properly regulated by the Federal Government (i.e. prohibition enforced), despite state law to the contrary, due to the interstate commerce provision.
This case was rather similar to the Wickard case, which Scalia also explicitly endorsed in his concurrence.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
But most rural people have TV and cable, won't they be able to get internet through that?
Most rural people do not have cable. Rural subscribers are the majority of satellite TV subscribers, because they have no access to cable television. My parents recently built a brand new house, in a subdivision large enough that it has a homeowner's association, in a cluster of three subdivisions—surrounded by farmland in rural Illinois. They don't have access to cable, nor do any of their neighbors. And it's not a matter of money, either. It can not be had for any price. The cable company flatly refuses to run wire, no matter what percentage of the neighborhood would sign up. It's rural. It's ignored.
Funny thing. A lot of my family live in rural areas around the country, and many of these areas are gaining faster fiber than what's available in the cities. The common pattern that I'm seeing is the metro areas are taken over by incumbents and the incumbents are staying or running away from rural like the plague. Even with little to no competition in rural areas, they're starting to see faster, cheaper, more reliable internet because these areas are being serviced by ISPs less greedy than incumbents.
In Missouri, rural areas are getting fiber because the state government appropriated funds to help establish rural fiber co-ops. Charter and AT&T want no part of it. By the time the decade is out, rural Missouri will have better, cheaper bandwidth than any metro area in the state.
There is no cable service, and AT&T only provides phone service because the law demands it. DSL can not be had. The central offices are too widely scattered and AT&T has zero interest in installing DSLAMs for 6 subscriptions at a time.
Don't get me wrong. I think Obama is a worthless pig fucker, but what he is proposing seems reasonable here. My bigger fear is the hidden addon items and agenda that isn't being spoken about .. You know the CISPA 2.0 sort of sneak in the back door verbiage. I imagine this is a 750 plus page document. with all sort of power being grabbed.
So I'll ask you the same question as I did the GP. Do you have evidence of politicians taking large sums of money and not being prosecuted for that?
Yes. When the large sums are called "campaign contributions".
Learn to love Alaska
the town I live in bought the small local cable company and it's awesome. first thing they did was upgrade the infrastructure. I get 6ms pings on wireless and with 60/10 mbps. The office I work at has a dedicated business line with time warner and i can't get a ping below 30ms. Speeds are never really as fast either. Not to mention the town owned isp has poured a ton of money into local communities. Twc some how got a legal injunction preventing them from running new lines outside the city tho, assholes.
It is only an anecdote, but it proves that it's profitable for rural 1gb fiber, even if not offering 1gb speed, to people in some of the least optimal locations of the USA.
I've case studies of places in the USA where under 200 people lived in forest spread over hundreds of square miles. Their school house was about the size of my garage and had only a single class room. They couldn't get an ISP to come out there at all, so they all pitched in what little money they had and installed fiber themselves. These were very poor people primarily driving 20 year old vehicles, their short school bus looked like something form the 70s with the round edges. They were able to get something like a 10gb trunk and their schoolhouse had 1gb Internet.
The case study topped it off with a picture of the "town". Because it was in a forest, they had to get above the trees with an aerial shot. You could not even see any buildings, just forest all the way to horizon. Looked like a national park.
If these people can afford fiber on their own dime, why can't everyone else have it?! I can't come up with any reason other than complete incompetence or greed.
You lost it on your second sentence : "absent collusion"
There will always be collusion in limited markets. Perhaps not immediately, but over the course of a few years, it will creep in and become status quo. At that point, getting rid of the collusion takes an act of congress, or in this case, a presidential decree.
Only by opening up the market, can you eliminate collusion, by making it cost prohibitive.
This signature is false.
Huh.. I guess that's their loss. It's irritating that they don't want people to do their own stuff though. That's the kind of law that should be removed. Not sure if Illinois has such a thing or not.
Yeah, agreed. We should be able to do it.
If that were the relevant criterion, there would effectively be no limits no the power of the federal government at all and we didn't need a Constitution or any enumerated powers. Obviously, that is not what the commerce clause means.
You'd be amazed at how many illogical, unconstitutional, and morally reprehensible things the federal government has done since the late 19th century. You'd be amazed if your ideological blinders didn't prevent you from even looking.
I would say someone with as addled a mind as yours is not in a position to judge the validity of other people's arguments.
So you're saying that because you can find a law that violates the commerce clause even more, we should now acquiesce to all violations of the commerce clause? I think a more logical and preferable course of actions is to repeal any law that violates the Constitution, including Obamacare.
This is the reason I was against Obamacare in the first place. Just saying - you can't lean on case law anymore to prove Interstate Commerce is this or that. Your example was actually even more intrusive, since there was no commerce taking place.
All I know is that it's best if nationally connected telecommunications companies weren't allowed to do whatever they want. Government regulation is the only practical option I can think of to accomplish this.
I agree with your original statement about wires crossing lines, though. The electric grid does this, but states regulate electricity and I think that works just fine. Not great, but better than national control.
Maybe I should have started with the fact that I live in Illinois, and national government is less corrupt as a general rule.
I agree that there are plenty of local and state governments that don't work. But lots do work better than what you have, and the costs and regulations you impose on the nation to try to fix your problems end up making this worse for other people. And it has a second insidious effect: by driving all the states towards some uniform, federally mandated mediocrity, it removes the ability and incentive for individual states to figure out how to run their affairs better.
Nationally connected telecoms can "do whatever they want" precisely because they are highly regulated: regulation and lobbying is the vehicle by which they get what they want.
There really are no easy fixes for this. Complete deregulation of the telecoms industry is simply not logically possible at this point, because large parts of what they do overlaps other highly regulated areas of life (e.g., roads). But adding more bad regulation on top of lots of already bad regulation is going to make things worse.
TL;DR: some businesses will just be monopolies, and that's why there are either city services or regulated monopolies.
Some things are considered "natural monopolies": "an industry in which it is most efficient (involving the lowest long-run average cost) for production to be permanently concentrated in a single firm rather than contested competitively." (wikipedia) You will find traditional "utility" companies in this category. Since the market would trend toward a monopoly, local governments either chose to take on that role (city sanitation, city water, etc), or chose to create a "regulated monopoly" (like Arizona Public Service, Cox Cable, etc).
Where the real problem occurs is when an industry changes and it should no longer be considered a natural monopoly but the out-of-date regulations block competition. For example, if Google wants to lay fiber there are some places where it would legally be unable to do so because it would be competing with the regulated monopoly, which is only regulated and de facto protected (at a supposedly lower profit than it would make if unregulated) because there is no competition.
Oldsters will remember when there literally was The Phone Company, which was American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T), a subsidiary of Bell Telephone Company. This company was literally The Phone System. At one time they owned EVERYTHING, including the phone wires in your house, and NOTHING could be attached to those wires except equipment owned by Bell Telephone and rented by the consumer. They also were THE Long Distance provider.
Eventually the telephone industry advanced to the point that it was no longer a natural monopoly and the regulations got in the way. AT&T was broken up and only the hard wires to the house are considered a monopoly item. And now, with VOIP, even those aren't always necessary.
Electricity has started down this route where you have to pay the APS portion of your bill relating to the physical transport medium for the electricity, but you can select a third-party from which to buy the actual electricity. (Throw in solar and you've raised a little issue as to how that transport medium is billed, which is a topic for another time.)
With ISPs we're in that painful period where out-dated regulations are holding things back instead of protecting consumers by capping prices. ISPs should be divorced from from the physical medium and you should be able to chose which ISP that you want to connect to over your Cox Cable (for example). There are, obviously, many technical details that would need to be worked through, but the coax or fiber optic cable running into my house should not lock me into that company's ISP service.
Note that this does NOT solve the problem of how to get a high-speed connection to everyone. In some cases there is just no business case that can be made to run a high-speed line to service three houses in a five-mile radius twenty miles down a dirt road in the Arizona desert. And yes, those places do exist. These are why "essential services" have must-serve provisions in their government-monopoly agreements and why these consumers pay the same rate as everyone else. (Also note that when people chose to build in places like this they are charged SUBSTANTIAL fees for laying power cables, for instance, if they are more than a certain distance from an existing line. This is why the really isolated places like generate all of their own power.)
...from the very same gov't that treats its citizens' privacy as a threat. Pass.
True, but I'd still like to contribute. And to tell the truth, I'd also be serving my incredibly popular homemade pornography. Mostly just me taking naps, but it's HOT!
I share your opinion of Wickard (I almost choked in con-law when I read the opinion), but the lines in your town make global commerce possible. Even something as banal or annoying as an out-of-State telemarketer calling you at dinner time is interstate commerce. That puts the means under federal authority.
If that were the relevant criterion, there would effectively be no limits no the power of the federal government at all and we didn't need a Constitution or any enumerated powers. Obviously, that is not what the commerce clause means.
How exactly are you making that leap? That the federal government has the sole authority to regulate interstate commerce doesn't mean it can ignore the rest of the Constitution.
The call from the telemarketer may or may not be "interstate commerce", but that shouldn't make every piece of infrastructure, hardware, and software involved in that call subject to interstate commerce regulation. Yet, that's what the expansive interpretation of the commerce clause many people have adopted amounts to. It's not what the Constitution was intended for, and it is harmful.
My point is that the way people are interpreting the commerce clause to expand federal power into areas where it has no business being. How California, Massachusetts, or Wyoming choose to provide local phone or Internet service is state business, even if those local services may also be used to engage in interstate commerce.
Furthermore, the commerce clause wasn't intended to say that the federal government may use rules regulating interstate commerce to advance arbitrary aims unrelated to trade, it was intended to express that states should not have the right to restricting their citizens from trading between states; it was really intended to keep trade between states open, equitable, and unrestricted. Furthermore, regardless of whether you agree that that was its original intent, it is the only actually useful and beneficial role of the commerce clause; any other use of it is harmful to the economy and to our liberties.
I do want to make a slightly pedantic point and say that it wasn't intended to make interstate commerce open and unrestricted, rather to ensure only one body could regulate such trade. Including the creation of restrictions.
However, a State saying who can or cannot form an ISP sounds to me like an attempt to regulate interstate commerce. Still, it's a very complex issue when a municipality does it, as you could argue that creating an ISP is akin to a municipality creating it's own post office. I'd have to leave it to the Court to figure it all out.
I don't think we're either.
Well, I used to think that it was good for the federal government to intervene in such cases. Heck, what could be better than Obama forcing municipalities to allow competition. But I don't believe that anymore, for two reasons.
First, sure, there are many cities that through stupidity or corruption restrict competition. But why should the federal government be any better at deciding when such restrictions make sense and when they don't?
Second, letting the federal government make the rules just ups the stakes. I have a reasonable chance to convince my city council to allow competition, and lobbying in tens of thousands of towns and cities to corrupt the process is hard for companies; setting the rules at the federal level means the lobbyists and big money pretty much win automatically.
(As for the post office, when was the last time you actually needed that? Between E-mail and UPS, it seems redundant.)