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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."
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
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...
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.
Oh, you mean unlike Comcast or any of the other quasi-monopolies we currently enjoy?
And yet, when the people want to band together and do something, you want to remove that freedom?
This. I'm very much a free market supporter, but in the cable internet areana it's anything but a free market in the US right now. Competition is great. We don't have that now, though.
The real joke* in this is that many of these municipalities aren't being served at all by the big monopolies. They asked for service repeatedly only to be denied. But if they start a municipal broadband effort, they are suddenly criticized for "squashing competition." In other words, the big ISPs won't serve them but they don't want anyone else to serve them either so they won't have competition just in case they decide to serve them in the future.
* Unfortunately, the joke is on the public who just wants Internet access and is being told it's illegal for them to get it unless the big ISP monopolies deign to grant them access.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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
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.