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Marco Rubio and Other Senators Move To Block Municipal Broadband (theintercept.com)
New submitter h33t l4x0r writes: Presidential candidate Marco Rubio recently "fired off a letter (PDF) to the Federal Communications Commission asking the agency to allow states to block municipal broadband services." The municipal services offer cheaper, faster broadband alternatives to the large telecoms. Rubio's campaign has taken large donations from AT&T, and the article notes that other providers, "fearing competition, have used their influence in state government to make an end-run around local municipalities. Through surrogates like the American Legislative Exchange Council, the industry gets states to pass laws that ban municipal broadband networks, despite the obvious benefits to both the municipalities and their residents."
If we allow the government to socialize internet access, we'll wind up with a system that is constantly in need of repair, upgrades, and endless red tape to get even the slightest thing done, along with constant pressure to charge rich people more and give access away for free to poor people in the name of 'fairness...' We need to be stopping the relentless growth of big government, not find more things for them to get their paws into.
Why is it an issue for the federal government to fix your corrupt state?
For someone who represents the people, how can they possibly justify being against municipal broadband? What is it going to take to get a by the people, for the people government? Torches & pitchforks?
SLOWER TRAFFIC KEEP RIGHT
Block municipal broadband somehow?
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
subscription radio is becoming obsolete,, again?
How dare they try to provide a service that people want!
Next they'll have some kind of crazy thing called a "postal service" where people can send letters and packages to other people fairly inexpensively, and the government will operate it! After that they'll force everyone to use something called "public libraries" and "fire departments". Where will it end??
The end game will be complete when they institute the final piece of Satan's plan called "public schools", where every child will be able to be get an education. O The Horror!
Soon the Evil State will force people at gunpoint to use these municipal broadband services, and if you don't, it's off to the FEMA re-education camps with you, citizen! I swear it's true, Glenn Beck told me so!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
Nothing new here. Typical....
*My town and the one I moved from both have a robust fiber network that spans the entire town, shame that only municipal traffic will ever see it....
I live in a town with a gym that was paid for with tax dollars and a gym that was paid for privately. They compete. There are no problems. If you don't like one, go to the other. Same goes for education.
I don't see the problem, but then again, I don't have a problem competing with the government. Only a protectionist claiming to be a capitalist would.
Place something witty here
"“The FCC is promoting government-owned networks at the possible expense of private sector broadband providers..."
Boy, it's just been a week of "almosts" and "maybes", hasn't it. Started with the drone registration that was justified because of potentially unsafe incidents and now this bullshit.
What's next, mobilizing our military because of a rumor?
Oh and Rubio, this makes you look like a corporate shill whore that will gain you nothing. Enjoy your reputation. You've earned it.
I'd think that a voter referendum in the upcoming election for each state should allow the voter to select whether local communities could setup public internet services or not. The referendum would then invalidate/over ride any state government law that the bought out elected officials made. The supreme court would then have to uphold the voters vote on the issue and couldn't override the vote since the constitution is based on the public citizen vote.
...then why don't they pony up and offer the same level of investment? For them, it's about making a dollar or two off the business and residential customers. For municipalities, though, it's about attracting businesses that thrive on big data networks, and residents who work for those businesses. It's an investment in the possible future, just like clean water and sewage can make or break a community. In this situation, smaller communities are routinely underserved by the big telecoms in favor of the more population dense cities (where the telecoms make more money for the same amount of investment), and data-centric businesses are looking at the available infrastructure and deeming it to be inadequate in these communities. Decisions like these can make or break cities in the 30-60K population range, since manufacturing jobs are all going overseas and the only sectors really growing are service and retail.
Well I would say it is up to you to fix your corrupt state.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
Evacuating the school population of los angeles because of an email
What's next, mobilizing our military because of a rumor?
This happened to me when I was in Viet Nam. Somehow the fact that we were on ready reserve turned into we had to go. The helocopters dropped us in an open field, there was nothing there.
Oh and Rubio, this makes you look like a corporate shill whore that will gain you nothing. Enjoy your reputation. You've earned it.
I woundn't vote for him any way.
During W's administration the EPA (a government regulatory body like the FCC) said that states could not enact their own pollution rules that were more stringent than the EPAs guidelines. California (and slashdot naturally) had a cow - "how dare the federal government tell states what they can or cannot do!"
And here we are again...
Rubio - and the other senate signers of the letter (it's not just Rubios letter) don't want the government regulatory body to override what is ultimately state's rights to decide what's best - like California and environmental laws...
Then came the railroads. The canal companies lobbied heavily to keep railroads out of the canal towns. Even today you can see quaint little towns along the Erie canal that successfully kept the railroads out. They, and their canals, went bust and economic growth by passed them. But municipalities courted the railroads like gangbusters. All levels of the government local, state and federal shoveled money to private companies to build railroads, large land grants. So much of land was given to railroads they actually acted as a catalyst to immigration and populating the Great Plains. They gave away 40 acres of land to immigrants from Europe if they would buy train tickets from New York to Nebraska! Well, history repeated. Railway towns like Altoona, PA actively fought to keep the Interstate high ways away from them!
So in the great American tradition, the municipalities should tax their local population, collect all the money and lay it at the feet of Internet barons in New York and beg them to build a fiber optic network for their poor little towns. These companies would spend a dime per dollar to build the network for the towns and skim off the rest. That is the American tradition.
Municipality building its own network! bah! What would happen next? Municipalities to have their own fleet of trucks to remove snow? Or do their own garbage collection fleets? Or run school districts? We need to put an end to all these un American activities. The only real role for municipalities, or any government, is to tax the population and give the money to private companies, with no bid contracts, and to beg them to provide basic services, after taking their cut of 40 to 60% for profits.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Oh and Rubio, this makes you look like a corporate shill whore that will gain you nothing. Enjoy your reputation. You've earned it.
It makes no difference. No one will complain other than a grumble in online space very few will see. You won't write to anyone, you won't call anyone, at best you'll twat some #dweebrage before going back to your humdrum life looking for other things to get upset about. This is why the laws get through, not just the obvious oligarchy corruption within the government.
It's incredible to me how very plain it is in that communication that he's saying "This municipal broadband the FCC is asking us to deploy looks like it could be funded and be way better than what's currently out there. It's not in our interests to provide something better" I believe the official quote was akin to "The FCC shouldn't be in the business of choosing the winners and losers of competitive broadband"
Essentially, saying A.) It's a "business", so there's money to be made in having a hand in the "winner" of this race. And B.) The proposed municipal rollout looks in even this early stage to be so competitive that the it would be the "winner" in the competitive broadband space.
And Rubino has his signature on the thing. Good luck to him turning that around.
So what does it make Hillary who takes donations from Donald Trump?
And from the banks and other corporations?
https://www.opensecrets.org/po...
http://www.truth-out.org/speak...
Taking money from corps doesn't distinguish good or bad from Rubio.
With the low, low, low rates of participation in government it is no wonder we "get what we deserve".
When my brother first moved to Australia he got a ticket because he forgot to vote.
Makes sense to me. The only way a "government of the people" can work is if the people participate.
Can be, I would PREFER to have a PRIVATE company, in charge of providing internet, than the federal, state, or local government. Name one government agency that ever comes in on time, under budget and with superior service? Not that the private companies are saints, but, when you let the government give it to you "for free" (yeah right), it will come with a TON of restrictions. Sites that are negative to the government will be blocked/throttled. Now, that would be ok for some, but, you must remember, the political winds shift from time to time, and the "other party" might come to power and put the hex on sites you might not want shut down. With freedom of speech, comes a great responsibility. Once encroached, you can never put the stopper back in the bottle.
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government,
Isn't that the whole point?
Isn't that the whole point?
No.
If you expect the Federal government to fix your State government when you arent satisfied, who do you expect to fix your Federal government when you arent satisfied?
You think that you have more influence on the Federal government than you do on your State government?
You should get off your ass, stop being an arm-chair power-giver, and fix things at the most local level possible.
"His name was James Damore."
CThe last thing I'd want is to get Internet access through the government. If you think service via private companies is bad, just wait until you try getting service via the government!
Power: Check.
Water: Check.
Gas: Check.
I fail to see how broadband would be any different. (And how it could possibly be worse than Comcast.. Three rate hikes this year alone, plus that "data threshold" bullshit which is really another $30/mo rate hike by another name)
By far the shittiest broadband ISPs I've encounteredwere the private ones set up by a HO or apartment complex. Talk about no incentive to improve.
Look, the problem here isn't that the local governments want to set up broadband. It's that ihey are prevented by law from doing so, even when no private organizations are willing.
-- I ain't broke, but I'm badly bent.
I would not. What evidence do you have that they would put restrictions on "free speech"? Internet access should be part of taxpayer paid services just like roads. If the politicians try to regulate free speech, throw them out.
Basic utilities (power, water, sewage, gas) are all muni here.
They seem to work pretty well.
Better that other areas where they are private.
If there were real ISP competition I might agree with you.
There isn't.
When we outlaw government, only outlaws will govern.
I think you are over looking the potential for municipal broadband to choke change and growth.
It is also able to drive change and growth. The notion that all government's do is stifle progress is demonstrably nonsense.
Say what you will about Comcast and friends but we have things like 100Mbps down 75Mpbs up links at affordable prices.
In some places you do. In others not so much. And you might consider picking an example of a company that is somewhat more beloved than Comcast. They are among the least liked companies in America for well deserved reasons. Monopolies don't do shit to improve service unless there is some form of competition. I guarantee that if AT&T or Verizon isn't there to compete that Comcast wouldn't improve their service very fast.
Consider the article about Flit Michigan's water system the other day. The issue was really not the water source but the infrastructure. How many places have over crowed schools, etc?
Do you have any concept of how hard it is to get taxpayers to fund upgrades to a water system even in a city without financial problems? Taxpayers routinely vote down school levies. This isn't government failing, it is the citizens saying they don't want to pay for any of this.
I am sure public broadband systems could deliver today's technology to consumers more cheaply and better serve under served areas, but the cost would likely be that the level of service rarely improves.
As long as the municipal system doesn't prohibit via laws private enterprise from competing, what is the problem? If the municipal system doesn't improve then private enterprise can fill in the gap. But if the citizens of a town collectively want to run their own broadband that should be their right to do so. If they end up paying more in the long run then that is their problem isn't it? Towns that consider municipal broadband probably aren't being well served now by the private companies so why should they expect that to change in the future?
If you allow municipal broad band it will choke out terrestrial ISPs. The broad band market is broken because there is to little competition, plan to effectively make it so the government is the only game in town isn't a solution to that.
Your argument makes no sense. Trading a public monopoly for a private one doesn't improve anything and it means the citizens have even less say in what they want. There is no reason to prohibit municipal broadband provided private companies are still legally allowed to build their own networks too.
Talk to the citizens of New Jersey that recent got screwed by Verizon who took Billions of tax payer dollars to wire the state and reneged on the deal. So again FUCK YOU RUBIO.
What I want to know is where is companies like Walmart, Amazon and others alike when it comes to things like this? If AT&T is funding Rubio's campaign, you would think that sites that provide online sales would provide "anti-funding" to candidates who would then voice their "paid for" opinions on having the bans overturned and stopped? The more people you can get online, the more likely you are to make sales. Just a thought...
That's right. A corrupt state usually means a corrupt majority. Corruption can't win without their votes.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
IMHO, the ideal model of this is the government bonding the municipal network construction (fiber, data center, etc) but giving contracting out management of the L1/2 infrastructure to someone who knows how to run a network like this.
Actual services delivered over this infrastructure would be provided by other third parties who buy access to the network, such as ISPs, video providers, telecom, and then resell their services to subscribers. I'd probably mandate that a service provider on the network would be barred from being eligible for managing the network, too, to avoid any conflict of interest.
This to me seems like biggest win/win for everyone. The actual management is handled by someone who has the skills/people to do it, as an "open network" consumers would have a choice of providers and services (ie, geek ISPs with barebones support for people who know what they're doing, grandma ISPs with extras like webmail and support for those who don't).
The school district could be its own ISP, using the municipal network like a private WAN. Businesses with enough points of presence could also use it the same way if the costs made sense to buy in at the central office. I even knew a company that set themselves up as an ISP option with Qwest DSL -- employees who wanted remote access could get DSL and choose their company as the ISP -- instant VPN.
The government wouldn't be in the IP dialtone business at all. If it *wanted* to, it could be just another ISP choice and it wouldn't surprise me if some places decided they wanted to provide a subsidized ISP offering for public housing or something, but at least it has the narrowest and most transparent cost, since the cost of that service wouldn't be buried with the rest of the system.
This is pretty much how the model for municipal roadways works -- the government pays for them, often hiring contractors to maintain or expand them, but service delivery on the roads is handled by various companies depending on the services delivered -- taxis, Uber, pizza delivery, UPS packages, etc.
Really what you'd end up doing is tasking the government for its biggest benefits -- low cost financing through bonding and access to rights of way. The rest would be essentially private, albeit operated at a profit level sufficient to keep up the network but not rent-seek.
So, you'd rather have the real monopoly of the townhall running Internet-services, than the quasi monopolies? Considering, it is the local governments, who are impeding Internet-service provision competition to begin with, your stance is not just foolish, it even seems malign.
Such people form a private company. Whatever government does, is done poorly. Internet-service included — 15 years ago we were arguing on these very pages about the wonderful "municipal Wi-Fi"...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Evacuating the school population of los angeles because of an email
Ah, yes. Forgot about that. Sad there's been so many examples within mere days we can't even keep track of them all.
So you've never been to Chattanooga then.
You would do well to read http://www.governmentisgood.co...
It would correct a significant portion of your ignorance.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
A corrupt state usually means a corrupt majority.
You aren't very old, are you?
Or at least have very large blinders on.
The argument that municipal broadband stifles competition in the private sector would be more convincing if it came with examples where municipal broadband was competing against the sector, instead of examples where the private sector refused to engage the market at all.
In my experience local, state and federal governments have a hard time providing essential services that they *should* provide. It's rare when that is done effectively and efficiently. Why do we want to grow our governments to start providing nonessential services?
Here's the other problem: it really, truly is unfair competition when the taxpayers will be on the hook for the capital investment of a municipally operated ISP. Private companies do not have that luxury of having someone else pay for the construction of a new network and then only collecting monthly fees for ongoing operation.
No, I do not work for any ISP nor do I have any financial interest in them.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
This attitude is why I hate Republicans. Even Democrats are better and that's from pretty much anywhere you stand on the left/right spectrum. You have to be pretty anti-American and politically apathetic to be worse than Democrats, but Republicans manage to do it. Any conservative caught being in that party instead of a real party, should be forced at gunpoint to wear a pink armba-- oh wait, I almost went Republican there for a moment. Ok, I get it: people get stupid when they get angry.
The FCC is not promoting government-owned networks. The FCC wants to allow government networks. The difference between these two things is like night and day and anyone who confuses advocacy with tolerance is a fucking moron. You're why we can't have freedom, why America continues to slide into authoritarianism.
If someone had a political idealogy where state agendas should be able to override both federal and municipal agendas (and this isn't too hard to understand at all; it's arguably the most constitutional, even if not-so-democratic since it tyrannizes municipalities), there's an easy way to argue against municipal broadband. So, so easy.
Just say the laws banning municipal broadband are evil. Say they're evil and you are horrified by them, but also say that you support and defend them on the principle that state authority is more important than good/evil decisions. Say it's preferable to deny people who live in cities the power to govern themselves. Say they need to, must, yield to state governments.
That's all you have to do; your integrity would be unassailable. It would be distasteful and make people question their position: the left would say it should be a federal decision and the right would say it should be a municipal decision, but you would have the ground in between, with the constitution values (if not the ever-murky and ever-reinterpreted law) possibly on your side.
But Rubio isn't doing that. He isn't framing this as states' rights being more important than democracy (municipal control) or unity/consistency (federal control). No, he's just saying he doesn't want cities to have that power, because they'll compete with the highway compan-- I mean the fire depa-- shit, I mean the cops. No wait, were we talking about the networks that control the traffic signals and the subways. The airports? Garbage disposal? Sewage? Oh, it was the water supply!! No. Hmm. Shit, now I remember! We were talking about the cable and phone monopolies.
Right, so anyway: he's saying he doesn't like the city government's doing that. He could say, "oh well, that's democracy, and those people are going to regret it some day and then other city's citizens will learn from their mistake," but instead, he wants to point guns at city-folk's faces. And if a small state (instead of a municipality) were to establish government broadband, he would be against that too. So this isn't really about whose-power-is-this-should-be at all.
Ergo: fuck you, Rubio.
The internet used to be a non-essential service. That time has long gone. Now the network is the new interstate, and we are behind the rest of the world because we insist that the free market will do a better job of providing universal internet infrastructure. This is demonstrably not true, the free market will provide excessive capacity where there is profit to be made, but no capacity where there is no profit to be made. This uneven coverage actually hurts the country. Just as uneven electrification, interstate system, or health coverage hurt the country.
We should create a government run high performance back bone that runs to every city in the US and town. Corporations could still compete on top of this system paying a rent for the maintenance and upgrades to the system similar to the rents they pay for air spectrum. Corporations would then not have to double build infrastructure so the overall cost would be lower. The reason that companies don't want this is that one of the ways that they keep their monopoly is that it is expensive to build network capability, so they can exclude competition from smaller companies that cannot afford to build infrastructure.
At&t has about a 10 percent operating income of revenue. Considering how big my AT&T bill is, I was expecting it to be higher. I guess it is genuinely expensive to provide residential internet.
The majority are not usually corrupt, in most cases they are either uninformed, apathetic, or sufficiently informed to realise that the only realistic alternative is even worse.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
uninformed, apathetic, or sufficiently informed to realise that the only realistic alternative is even worse.
All by personal choice...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Article says
> Presidential candidate Marco Rubio recently "fired off a letter (PDF) to the Federal Communications Commission asking the agency to *allow states* to block municipal broadband services.
This is nothing about Rubio being anti-broadband. He's only supporting state governments having a say in what economy they want. To people not living in the U.S., this is what makes America different.
Yes, he's being funded by a large corporation, but what candidate isn't?
Wouldn't that make more sense? Basically one company is responsible for building and maintaining the infrastructure as well as pitching upgrades to the municipality. Anyone that wants to offer service is welcome to come in and do so. There's an access fee that's a part of your bill (or just in the service) and that's it. Are there any technical problems that prevent it or it is just all political bs?
Disclaimer: I work for a telco/ISP
There are limited options for building out the infrastructure required for broadband access. It boils down to wired access or wireless access.
Wired access requires burying copper or fiber lines, or planting poles and running aerials of the same. This requires either that providers own or lease the land across which those lines traverse, or that they own or lease some easement on all that land. In the United States, such an easement is often owned by the public and regulated by the government. Then it gets shared among all utilities under the regulation of the government.
Wireless access requires use of wireless spectrum, which is a fairly limited resource. In the United States, wireless spectrum is deemed to be public property and is regulated by the government.
Many Americans believe that capitalism and the private sector are the best way to provide goods to the public. The general thinking is that competition leads to the best quality/dollar, and also encourages development of products to meet all of the varying demands.
If you would like to have, say, four different wired providers and four different wireless providers compete in the same neighborhood, each wired provider would have to build out copper/fiber infrastructure to every premise in the neighborhood. If they somehow managed to split the customer base evenly, that would mean that each provider would have to install four times as much infrastucture as they actually use. Any new contender would have to come dig up the neighborhood to install more redundant infrastructure, creating even more inefficiency.
Accommodating 10 or 20 competing providers becomes impractical as the easements are not large enough to contain all that infrastructure. This is true for both wired and wireless infrastructure. In the case of wired access, the government could force private property owners to surrender larger easements. Then I suppose they could layer infrastructure lower and lower in the ground or higher and higher into the air. In the case of wireless access, the amount of available spectrum is much more constrained.
So government regulators must choose which providers are allowed to benefit from public easements. Such constrained competition dramatically alters the benefits of capitalism. In general, the United States has opted to suspend capitalism in many similar scenarios. For instance, public transportation is rerely ever a private enterprise in the United States. What quiet residential neighborhood wants every thoroughfare to have 6 competing toll roads servicing every house? Do you have five different water providers piping water to your house? Four sewer providers?
If the public--that is the people themselves--own the easements and right-of-ways anyway, why not just have them own the pipe as they do for sewer or water or roads? Why not avoid building out five or ten times the necessary capacity?
the corporation" :-)
As corporations acquire more rights of people like unrestricted speech, this makes sense
The internet used to be a non-essential service. That time has long gone. Now the network is the new interstate, and we are behind the rest of the world because we insist that the free market will do a better job of providing universal internet infrastructure. This is demonstrably not true, the free market will provide excessive capacity where there is profit to be made, but no capacity where there is no profit to be made. This uneven coverage actually hurts the country. Just as uneven electrification, interstate system, or health coverage hurt the country.
I disagree. It's not essential. There are still communities in the US without telephone service. Why didn't the government intervene there? Because telephone service isn't essential either. I think you're not understanding the definition of the word essential. It means absolutely necessary.
We should create a government run high performance back bone that runs to every city in the US and town. Corporations could still compete on top of this system paying a rent for the maintenance and upgrades to the system similar to the rents they pay for air spectrum. Corporations would then not have to double build infrastructure so the overall cost would be lower. The reason that companies don't want this is that one of the ways that they keep their monopoly is that it is expensive to build network capability, so they can exclude competition from smaller companies that cannot afford to build infrastructure.
The government does not need to provide more nonessential services. Like I said in the OP, our governments can't even provide essential services properly. We don't need them overextending their incompetence to nonessential services too.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Well, let's see, I'm not voting for Hillary either.
Everybody has one. Fortunately sending a letter is different from voting for a law. There is no need to abstain for the conflict of interest reasons, and the voters benefit as they get to see what kind of people the candidates really are.
all Republicans—Sens. Deb Fischer of Nebraska, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Marco Rubio of Florida, John Cornyn of Texas, Pat Roberts of Kansas, John Barrasso of Tennessee, Mike Enzi of Wyoming, and Tim Scott of South Carolina
Source: http://www.dailydot.com/politics/fcc-municipal-broadband-senators-complaint-letter/?tw=pl
They happily take 'election' money from Businesses, Businesses that are 100% owned by the Chinese gov, groups that represent illegals, rich ppl, or nations like Turkey, and then discard their 'morals'.
Sadly, I doubt that they discard their morals. They just never had any to begin with.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
People don't want to pay because they see the expensive, shit-quality job done by the govt' agencies and generally don't want that.
You mean like being able to send a letter anywhere in the US and have it arrive within a few days for $0.49? [/sarcasm] What a stupid generalization. Governments routinely provide all kinds of services with excellent efficiency and quality. Not everything but they are hardly these palaces of incompetence you claim. While the private sector is definitely better for some things the notion that government cannot do anything well is simply ridiculous nonsense.
You ever see 10 Cal-Trans (or local equivalent) workers all standing around one guy with a shovel? The populace doesn't hade infrastructure upgrades, but they do get frustrated after seeing that and then the projects go massively over budget. "Good enough for govt' work" is a saying for a reason.
I see plenty of private company construction workers standing around one guy with a shovel all the time. Has nothing to do with whether or not they are public employees. That's just the nature of construction work. Apparently you've never done road work. I have. Trust me, most of the time they are working plenty hard. Harder that people who post to slashdot anonymously during work hours.
As for projects that go massively over budget, you think that never happens in the private sector? If you actually think that you are incredibly naive.
The problems that we have today are the direct result of government interference in the 1980s and 1990s. Governments granted monopolies to cable companies and further funded private enterprises in the 1990s paying companies to deploy faster internet (but for which no strings were attached- and nothing in turn ended up being done). These sorts of actions have created a barrier to entry in most places. We should be able to setup non-profit municipal-like organizations to run lines and provide internet services, but they shouldn't be funded by tax dollars. It's not even really necessary. It's just the direction we have been pushed as a result of our screwed up overly governed system. The non-profit municipal-like broadband providers aught to be funded by the members of the communities which opt in and not by tax dollars obtained by violent means. There is even a name for these types of corporations. They are called consumer cooperatives and are enterprises owned by consumers and managed democratically which aim at fulfilling the needs and aspirations of their members. Unfortunately none of this is possible when the barrier to entry has been artificially heightened and these monopolies own the governments.
As a member of Republicans for Third-World Internet, I'm all for this. The Internet brings only filth and new ideas.
Citation please. I was under the impression that phone was available everywhere in case of emergencies. If you don't want it you don't pay for it, but all the lines were ran already.
Internet is fast becoming an essential service.
And it's only unfair competition if the municipal ISP had a monopoly.
I lived in a town with municipal broadband and cable...it was awesome. But it was constantly in the news for not being profitable or well run or whatever...then when the town brought in an advisor who told them the scrap the whole thing, guess who I was informed would be taking over my absolutely rock solid municipal broadband? Comcast.
So, why don't they look at it like that? Especially, for those places they haven't found it profitable enough to bother making their services available.
can you provide evidence that there's anywhere in the US that a municipally operated connection provider is doing that?
posting AC because mod points
Citation please. I was under the impression that phone was available everywhere in case of emergencies. If you don't want it you don't pay for it, but all the lines were ran already.
Believe it or not, not every structure, road or city has telephone service. Even now in 2015. Which makes this rush to provide Internet access to every square inch look totally retarded.
"Marco Rubio and Other Senators Move To Block Municipal Broadband"
C'mon, I know this is Slashdot, but that's quite a misleading title. "Move to allow states to block municipal broadband", or "Move to prevent FCC from blocking states from blocking municipal broadband" maybe, but they're not trying to outlaw it on a national level.
Internet is fast becoming an essential service.
Please explain how it is absolutely necessary to have Internet access.
And it's only unfair competition if the municipal ISP had a monopoly.
That's not the definition of unfair competition.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Here's an end run for such regulations:
- The municipalities install bundles of conduit, along with pull-boxes, manholed repeater vaults, and the like. Also install, or allow the user to install, per-house or per-apartment-complex conduit to the nearest valult. (Include this in the utility hookup zoning and permitting requirements on any new developments, too.)
- Then lease a conduit right-of-way and vault rack space to all comers on equal terms: AT&T and your local mom-and-POP can both string their cables, fibres, or what-not on equal terms, and NONE of them have to get their investors to pony up, up front, to dig up the whole city - separately. (With N conduits in each vault-to-vault hop the first N comers initially have a conduit to themselves, though they may have to share it eventually.)
- String fibre bundles through the first conduit, use some of the fibres for the municipal net, and (if the federal rules don't block it), lease a limited-number-per-customer to all comers, ditto (reserving a few for backups for failed fibres and for future expansion.)
As with "dark fibre", almost all the cost is digging up the countryside to install the conduits and fibre runs. Putting in more conduit, or using fibre cables with more fibres, vastly multiplies the capacity with a small percentage increment on the cost of the installation. This "future-proofs" it. With dense wavelength division a single pair of fibres can carry a major telecom's entire local traffic. Run a dozen four-inch pipes between each vault and you can expect it to serve all the city's communication requirements for far longer than the expected life of the other aspects of the city's infrastructure.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
We should create a government run high performance back bone that runs to every city in the US and town.
Yeah, government is the answer. http://tech.slashdot.org/story/15/12/16/1618232/facebook-google-and-twitter-agree-to-delete-hate-speech-in-germany
Voters move to block Marco Rubio and Other Senators from being elected to public office.
^ That's what the title should read.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
I disagree. It's not essential. There are still communities in the US without telephone service. Why didn't the government intervene there? Because telephone service isn't essential either. I think you're not understanding the definition of the word essential. It means absolutely necessary.
Under the definition you're using, power, water, and sewer aren't "essential" either. Plenty of people in the U.S. live without them, after all. You can always dig a well or put in a septic system, right?
Like I said in the OP, our governments can't even provide essential services properly.
My experience doesn't bear that statement out. When I lived in Orlando, I got power/water from the Orlando Utilities Commission, a wholly-owned municipal utility. I had a frigging hurricane come directly over me and didn't lose power at all. The total number of power problems I experienced over 8 years could have been counted on one hand. Where I live now, my electric utility is Florida Power & Light, a subsidiary of a public corporation that trades on the NYSE. I had multiple power blips and voltage sags every week for three years, and a few months back when FP&L finally decided to come out and replace the corroded 35-year old underground cabling between the transformer and my house, they tacked it together, sealed my meter with clear plastic and tape, and left bare cabling (i.e. no conduit) running 60 feet across my back yard for *three weeks* until they could get a contractor to come out and dig the trench. They flagged the cable run, but if the lawn guy had run over it accidentally it would have been a bad scene.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
These senators are free-market hypocrites!
in people's minds when they go to vote. These corporate shills only want to get themselves into a position of authority so they can extort more money out of corporations to buy their support and influence. I've said this before.. if we don't find a way to detach elected officials from the bribe money they get (excuse me, I mean 'donations') there won't be any gov't left. I would love to hear the explanation this guy could spin should he be brought to task on this... I'm sure he would defend it as 'American' to try to get ahead in life or some such shit. We need a new Mission/Vision statement in gov't.. 'of the PEOPLE and for the PEOPLE, not the corporate interests!" What kills me is the number of led-by-the-nose run of the mill people that will side WITH this clown even against their own interests.
If I sound stupid, it's not me talking....
As one who remembers working in pre-internet days and who asked the question as to whether we could improve the overseas delivery of information better than over somewhat quirky fax machines. That thinking primed the pump of the video to computer and OCR iterations that were pumping out smaller than forklift size keyboards posed and primed the thought pumps that evolved into the GUI of things that birthed the Internet delivery system. Then the weight of data I/O slowed delivery to a crawl as we moved leaps and bounds in modem speed, when we reached the 14.4 baud rate I posed the thought of an on-line video store streaming rented video and trumping hassle free movie rentals without need of returning videos to stores and facing those dreaded late fees! It was not until Big Telco evolved and began extending broadband to our homes with DSL over phone line [copper wire] to our offices and homes that things took off. What happened next took us back to the dark ages with phone and cable providers throttling the speed of the Internet instead of what had moved the true growth forward, speed and accurate delivery of data and imagery. But we as well as the municipalities who owned the poles that deliver the Internet to our homes and offices were snubbed as greed evolved in selling market baskets of baud rate for big bucks that in fact continued the recession longer than necessary as we were squeezed by Telco's and cable companies who were doing just fine as the rest of us tried to tighten our belts and survive. I agree that competition and the free use of the infrastructure by all. large, small and municipal are what's needed to keep us strong and vital instead of hostage to those who took advantage of municipal property and paid their way to what shapes up to be another quasi monopoly. If the municipalities took over, we could easily look at an end to municipal and state taxes from revenue alone along with lower prices for full throttle access that other competing nations enjoy to their competitive advantage. Lets step back in front as we did in the early nineties and put a rope around the abusers and throttle their obscene profits. My two cents worth, as adjusted for inflation;-)