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Non-Cable Internet Providers Offer Faster Speeds To the Wealthy (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: When non-cable Internet providers -- outlets like ATT or Verizon -- choose which communities to offer the fastest connections, they don't juice up their networks so everyone in their service area has the option of buying quicker speeds. Instead, they tend to favor the wealthy over the poor, according to an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity. The Center's data analysis found that the largest non-cable Internet providers collectively offer faster speeds to about 40 percent of the population they serve nationwide in wealthy areas compared with just 22 percent of the population in poor areas. That leaves tens of millions of Americans with the choice of either purchasing an expensive connection from the only provider in their area -- typically a cable company -- or just doing the best they can with slower speeds. Middle-income areas don't fare much better, with a bit more than 27 percent of the population having access to a DSL provider's fastest speeds. The Center reached its conclusions by merging the latest Federal Communications Commission (FCC) data with income information from the U.S. Census Bureau. The non-cable Internet providers -- the four largest are ATT Inc, Verizon Communications Inc, CenturyLink Inc, and Frontier Communications Corp -- hook up customers over telephone wires that are Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL), or they use hybrid networks that include some fiber connections near (and sometimes directly to) homes. The Center included all types of connection in its analysis. These companies account for nearly 40 percent of the 92 million Internet connections nationwide. Cable companies, such as Comcast Corp and Charter Communications Inc, operate under a different set of conditions. These providers offer the same fast speeds to almost every community they serve, in part because of franchise agreements with local governments. But a previous Center investigation and other reports have shown that cable firms sometimes avoid lower-income or hard-to-reach areas based on how franchise agreements are written. Poor areas not served by the cable companies are not included in the Centerâ(TM)s analysis, which results in what seems like an equitable distribution of speeds across income levels. "Society said it did not matter if you could pay for electricity; we wanted everyone to have it. Society said we would not limit dial tone to those who could pay the most, we gave it to all," said telecommunications lawyer Gerard Lederer of Best Best and Krieger LCC in Washington, D.C., in an e-mail. "Broadband is quickly becoming that utility, and if applications only work at high speeds, then the universal availability of that speed must be the goal, otherwise you are providing everyone with water, just some of the water is not drinkable."
When seeking money, they tend to seek out people with more money. More news at 11:00.
It is just unfair, that the rich have a better life than the poor... The government must mandate equal quality of life for all!
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It's not surprising to me that providers would choose build the high speed infrastructure in areas with the greatest return on investment. Think about it, why poor tons of money into an area where the user density is low and which might never even pay back the cost of the infrastructure? You want to make your infrastructure investments in areas with the greatest numbers of potential users in order to realize the quickest and most sustainable payback on your investment. Then as technology improves and becomes cheaper you can roll the last generation state of the art into your less utilized areas. In this fashion you can sustain and grow your business as technology progresses.
Duh!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
So I don't really blame them for offering a premium service to reliable customers first.
the rich customers I've had over the years tend to have the worst internet. the neighborhoods have very low density and are badly served. Higher density low-middle and middle income have the best offerings, especially from cable.
Of course, the ability of the residents in wealthier neighborhoods to actually PAY for the faster internet service has nothing to do with it...
Next up on Slashdot, "This just in, Tesla has yet to build a new car showroom in a lower-income neighborhood!"
Ken
"...otherwise you are providing everyone with water, just some of the water is not drinkable."
Yeah, we do that too. Welcome to Amerika.
noshitsherlock
cherry picking exists *everywhere* ... and INCLUDING cable companies.
yes they tend to offer similar speeds throughout their coverage area, but not always. and, the wealthier neighborhoods will have a lower subscriber-to-node ratio and they will have better-maintained infrastructure, both of which increases speed and network reliability over the shithole slums.
plus, when cableco 'a' buys cableco 'b' and is forced to divest markets to appease regulators, it's more often than not the shitty, rural, low profit margin, low density markets that get sold-off, not the prime big profit suburbs and high-density cities.
...and their non-drinkable internet access!
KHAAAAAANNNNN!
...to school and back. Both ways!
if we weren't paying them billions and billions of dollars in both tax and direct subsidies to bring high speed internet to the everyone; especially the poor. Fuck them. They built none of the infrastructure they profit from. They're rent seeking parasites. Take it away from them and nationalize it. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Anything more important than a twinkie shouldn't be left in the hands of private industry.
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I've lived in working class neighborhood's my whole life and high speed internet was always only cable and that was usually twice the price of the DSL my better off friends had. Maybe I wouldn't be so pissed off if I wasn't paying higher taxes and getting fees added to my bill that are suppose to go to building out infrastructure but never do. Not that I'm saying my taxes should be cut or fees go away. I know damn well that won't happen but the smokescreen it'll create will let them cut taxes on the 1%ers again. Instead just step in and regulate their asses with price controls and if they don't build the infrastructure we tell 'em too we take it all away and give it to someone who will. Problem solved.
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Non-cable areas have the following options..
- Bidirectional Satellite ($$$$, GGGG)
- Unidirectional Satellite, Uplink via Phone-line ($$$, GGG)
- Bidirectional RF Point-to-point ($$$, GG)
- Bidirectional "lilypad" RF ($$, GG)
- DSL over Phoneline ($$, GG)
- Telephone Dial-up 56.6K ($, G)
- Packet Radio (HAM, $, M)
- TCP/IP over Avian Carrier (birdseed)
So, stupid question. If you can't afford big dollar outlays, what do you think is gonna happen?
Businesses deciding to favor those who can give them the best return for their dollars, how incredibly shocking. Capitalism lesson here? Of course if you think the internet is a necessity and fsvor free all you can eat access, this will be shocking to you.
Where do you want to be, What are you doing to get there.
Richer areas often newer areas. Not always, of course, there's plenty of "old money" areas but you also see plenty of cases of new development particularly for middle and upper middle class. They want nice new homes, those homes are built in new developments.
Now why's that matter? Well when you are building a new development, you usually use the most current technology which often means FTTH, or at the very least higher quality category cable and fiber out to the box. That lets them offer higher speed. The big cost is running the lines, not the material used so you do it with better materials. You have to spend the money to lay the lines, or you can't offer service.
However in old development, well that has old shit. It can be replaced, of course, but that is a lot of money. It can cost more than a new run because tearing shit up in a developed area can be pretty costly. So they are reluctant to do it.
This of course goes double if you are talking areas that are poorer. The improved infrastructure would allow them to offer faster speeds, but the reason they want to do that is because they can get more money. People who live in poorer areas are not as likely to want to spend more money and will just elect to keep slower speeds. A good number of them might not even be on the fastest speed available to them already because they wish for something cheap.
Thus it makes sense why it happens like that. The reason cable companies offer faster speeds is it is generally much easier for them particularly with DOCSIS 3. All they really have to do is put more channels on their CMTS. It isn't free, but doesn't cost a ton and doesn't require redoing lots of buried cable. The coax out there is already good to a gigahertz, maybe more.
You even see it in middle class neighborhoods. I live in a decent condo complex, and right next to me is some pretty upscale housing. However, both here and in the houses, 6ish mbit DSL is all you can get. Reason is it is old construction, 1970s. So the telephones are all copper, straight to the CO, and not very high grade cable. The cable company will sell you 300mbit though, no problem. That said the same cable company offers fiber in new developments, many of which cost less than the houses near me.
It is just what we are going to see with for profit companies. If we want an "equal speeds for all, don't worry about the costs" setup then it is going to have to be publicly funded and run.
Supermarkets offer a wider range of expensive wines in wealthy neighborhoods.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
This is more an old vs new than rich vs poor. Verizon Fios is my example here. In the "old neighborhood" in NYC I grew up in, they never got Fios. But in the "new" neighborhoods, seems like every house got it. The thing is, this particular old neighborhood was quite wealthy, with mostly row houses anchored by non-section 8 high rises. The demographic was Russian Jews who escaped the Soviet Union, and 2nd generation Carribean island Hispanics who moved up from lesser neighborhoods. Either way the apartments all go for 2k+ now, and the 80 year old row houses easily go for a cool million (even with the restriction that they cannot be knocked down or have their facade significantly altered). Yet no Fios.
Meanwhile, you can get Fios with a $150,000 house (1500 sqft) on a 1 acre lot up here in buttfuck nowhere. But the old neighborhood which includes the governor's mansion does not get Fios.
Everyone should be able to drive the fastest car.
These comments are mine; I do not speak for my employer.
>"Society said it did not matter if you could pay for electricity; we wanted everyone to have it. Society said we would not limit dial tone to those who could pay the most, we gave it to all,"
Poor comparison.
Most of us agree that "reasonable" internet speeds should be available to everyone. But that doesn't mean everyone must have access to the fastest and best services. Everyone has access to electricity, but not everyone is entitled to have backup generators, 200 amp service, underground lines, and a 30 circuit panel. Everyone has access to dial tone, but not everyone is entitled to have dual lines, caller ID, call waiting, voicemail, and three-way calling.
The biggest problem with internet (and TV) service is that there is little or no competition in most areas. I suffer from that too... in my area, Verizon chose not to offer FIOS and at the same time has allowed their copper structure to literally fall apart. So my choice is either overpriced but excellent Cox internet or unbelievably slow, unreliable, and overpriced ($ per Mb/s) DSL from Verizon- so slow, it is certainly under nobody's definition of "reasonable". Yet just a few neighborhoods over, customers can choose FIOS and more reliable Cox services... often at lower prices. For CATV, my neighborhood has zero choice.... overpriced Cox or nothing.
> They built none of the infrastructure they profit from.
> They're rent seeking parasites.
Some of the cable companies are ASSHOLES. No doubt about that. Personally I've had pretty good experiences with them, but I'm Texas, where there's competition. I know that people on the coasts particularly often continue to live with the cable monopolies their government created years ago, and those monopoly providers sometimes suck, particularly, their customer service sucks and Comcast has questionable billing practices.
To be honest, however, those assholes DO each spend over a billion dollars every year upgrading their networks. Here's $300 million / year just in Chicago alone, for example:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/...
Verizon has spent $15 billion on FIOS. Goldman calculated that for Google to become a national ISP, it would cost them $140 billion.
It is honest and right to criticize their customer service, and to point out Comcast's illegal billing. It is false, and makes one appear rather uninformed, to claim that they don't invest HUGE amounts of money in building and constantly upgrading the infrastructure. When you make a claim like that which is so easily shown to be absolutely false, you appear to be either clueless or disingenuous, at which point people stop listening to you and don't hear your legitimate complaints about customer service or other real issues.
For profit companies do what's in their best financial interest. News at 11! In other news, water is wet and Trump grabs women by the pussy!
If you pay more, you get faster speed, SHOCKER! Just an article to get people to hate people with money.
Yeah, duh. You pay more you get more.
I'm tired of hearing the whining about Internet speeds. If you get less than 5Mb/sec you can complain. Otherwise stuff a fucking sock in it you entitled whiner. You don't really need any more than that to get 99% of the benefit of the Internet and acting like it's your God given fucking right to snarf down 100Mbit/sec is ridiculous.
Verizon has spent $15 billion on FIOS.
Damn, that's enough to pay the administrative costs alone for social security for two years.
... is when you realise that the infrastructure serving the homes in these areas are all capable of the same performance. It is the companies themselves who layer different "speeds" on top, which they do with throttling technology, purely to make more profit.
For example... I live in an apartment building and have been at the same address for 24 years.When my telco first offered internet connectivity, it was via V90 modems at 56kbps. This cost me £8.99 monthly. [UK based].
Then, over the years, I've migrated from ADSL1 (512kbps) to ADSL1.5 (2Mbps) to ADSL2 (8Mbps) and I am now running VDSL1 (80Mbps). I am now paying £50/month for a combined VDSL ("Infinity") service that comes bundled with a call package.
All my telco has had to do in that time has been the odd upgrade, in their local exchange, of the back end circuit boards to convert my "last mile" signal to their backbone. This is done on a modular basis with slot-in cards in a chassis, which they can swap, one at a time, as demand swings from the slower service to the faster one. In May of this year the telco announced profits of £3 billion on revenues of £18 billion. That might not sound like much in comparison with US companies, but remember that the UK is a tiny island [less cabling to run] with a much smaller population.
It is a rip-off, start to finish.
Oh, and relatively recently I happened to notice that my telco has started to sell geolocation data to advertisers based on the dynamic IP address they serve me with my VDSL line. That's good for my personal security - not!
Well, there's a problem right there. "IF".
Maybe we shouldn't be building applications -- or web-pages -- that only work [well] with high-speed broadband.
Of course, what gets me is that so many people accept really crappy performance in their wonderful web-based ecosystem. I mean, performance for many "applications" is worse than MSWindows on a 4MB 386 in 1994. And nobody rebels, because the Web Is Better.
Want to compare this to the standard utilities? We've standardized on 110V, 220V, and 440V at 60Hz, and now we have appliance manufacturers making washing machines that require 317V at 52.5Hz, or 509V at 71Hz, and complaining that those devices don't work well unless you make a special deal with the power company.
How about we establish a minimum bandwidth/latency standard, and then require all web-pages & applications to provide acceptable UX at those speeds if there's money changing hands (including advertising)?
Name one ISP that doesn't do this. You can be sure that it's about to go out of business. This is how you make money. This is why we have to have laws which force the major ISPs to deliver access. I can throw a rock and hit a house which can get DSL or Cable, but I can't get either and I have to give a WISP $100/mo to get a crappy connection that goes down several times a day.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Proofread. Do you do it?
At the bottom of the
that's enough to pay the administrative costs alone for social security for two years.
Probably not enough now that Obama has done everything he could to expand it. Today about three quarters of social security payments go to people under the age of 65.
When seeking money, they tend to seek out people with more money. More news at 11:00.
Sure, but is that, as a society what we want?
When the telephone first appeared, only urban areas had service, because that's where (a) it was cheaper to build, and (b) the people with money was. But as a society, through government, we decided that everyone should be connected, and so service was spread to rural areas.
More importantly, the same thing happened with electricity: first only in cities. But can anyone deny the revolution that occurred in productivity when farms became electrified?
What new things could happen if every man, woman, and child, could have access to the breadth of knowledge that is available online, not to mention the reach of communication (both 1:1 and broadcast) of the Internet?
It's all very fine to go after the money, but as a society I would hope that we can go beyond that.
That's quite obvious.
You do not deliver your offer to people who will not buy it. If you make an investment in technology in a poor area, only a few people will use it, and you will have to PAY for it more than you earn.
That's how communism worked... or better say: was constantly collapsing until the final collapse.
LEFTISTS, YOU ARE MORONS. YOU ARE DESTROYING THE WORLD. I. HOPE. YOU. DIE.
Car Dealerships selling Porsche and Ferrari build in higher income neighborhoods. News at 11.
All joking aside. Of course businesses with expensive products target higher income areas. Next we'll be demanding Apple build Apple Stores in the ghettos.
Mike @ The Geek Pub. Let's Make Stuff!
The problem being that internet is infrastructure but it's not owned by the people the same way the roads, bridges, water pipes, sewers and parks are. Of course, a tel-co is going to upgrade its city service, that's where the most customers are; plus their competition. The issue isn't failing to "invest HUGE amounts of money".
The question becomes, how much should they be spending in rural communities? There are many stories of communities on dial-up speeds. The reason is because low-density housing means no economy of scale, making the cost per customer is too high. Which is why tel-cos are subsidized, so they can upgrade services in high-cost communities. This hasn't happened, so those communities haven't received the services which all taxpayers have bought for them. That is the issue.
Do you think that a business would spend billions on an area that would never recoup the costs of the infrastructure rebuild? High turnover rates, fraud rates, and retention rates dropping?
While it is known that the upgraded infrastructure will cass less of all of the above typically, it doesn't mean it'd get rid of it at all.
To br brutally honest, "rich" families tend to pay their bills every month.
Meanwhile, government committees are just about done finalizing the request for proposals to bring 2400 baud dial up to rural communities.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
that's nice, by 2006 they (telcos) were paid $200 billion to roll fiber out to everyone
"It's a big club, and you ain't in it. You and I are not in the big club." - George Carlin
/. Dissent will not be tolerated. Think like us or perish.
Is this satire? Laying infrastructure for fast speeds cost money, and it doesn't scale up and down based on how many at the target location will buy the high speeds. Should companies be shamed into running T1 lines to 5,000 acre farmhouses, too? Rural customers are "discriminated against" far more than urban poor customers!!
What a joke.
Oh I see, you want the govt to take everyones money and spend on the things that matter to you, rather than the fairly low taxes we enjoy here.
If you like that system go and live in places like the UK, Australia, NZ, just about anywhere in Europe, then you can spend all your time booing the govt for not getting it exactly right to your specifications.
My provider, Midcontinent, is on track to have gigabit internet for their entire service area by the end of 2017. However I have not seen projected price yet. For now I have to rough it with 75Mbit down and 7 Mbit up.
$200 billion by 2006? Lol I see you ran into a Bruce Kushnick article. I know you got that from Bruce because he's the only one who has ever come up with a number anywhere near that.
He's off by about two orders of magnitude. His reasoning is slightly less logical than the people who say income tax is illegal because they live in THE UNITED STATES, while the 16th amendment applies to the United States.
"otherwise you are providing everyone with water, just some of the water is not drinkable.""
Yes, the telcos continue to invest in their infrastructure, but in many places not nearly as fast as necessary. The FCC (or whomever) should dictate that broadband is a protected right, with escalating speed definitions. Today the bottom threshold should be something like 50/5, and it should be gigabit in 3-5 years and 10G in 10-15 years. If an incumbent provider fails to maintain a broadband system, franchise agreements become invalid or non-exclusive, and open the areas up to competing ISPs.
Microtik and Ubiquiti are both coming out with GPON equipment that makes a small gigabit ISP commercially viable.
> If an incumbent provider fails to maintain a broadband system, franchise agreements become invalid or non-exclusive, and open the areas up to competing ISPs.
Why should the politicians be enforcing a monopoly for their favored company in the first place? I would say that with phones it's been good to have Sprint competing with AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon, and and US Cellular. Yes, that means their infrastructure is duplicative, but I'd say it's worked better than monopolies. In most parts of Texas we have competition, and we have much better service than in monopoly areas.
Further, if the politicians set up certain requirements and choose specific companies, then are supposed to hold the contributors^H^H^H^H^H^H franchisees to those standards, there is a lot of room for error. What should the standards be? What if they barely miss the target? Are the politicians enacting standards really working for us when they're receiving millions of dollars from Comcast? The alternative is for the politicians to do absolutely nothing and simply allow overbuilders like Frontier, Grande, and Google Fiber to come in and offer better service. There's little room for the politicos to mess things up when all they have to do is get out of the way.
They get the spending right back in the form of tax breaks and subsidies. They're not really spending it. It's like saying my kid spends $150/mo on food and ignoring that the CC account she uses is mine.
You don't get rich by investing. The real money is in ownership. There was just an MIT study that compared Bill Gates the Microsoft entrepreneur to Bill Gates the rich retired guy. Gates #2 made way more money for not working. They also compared him to one of the wealthy heiresses who'd never worked a day in her life. She was neck and neck with Bill Gates the idle rich guy and trounced Bill Gates the entrepreneur. This is the reality they don't teach you in high school economics class.
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I wish to point out that there are people in this country (USA) who are neither wealthy nor poor. Does anyone report on their being victimized?
That sounds shocking if not for the fact that everyone eligible for Social Security can start collecting at age 62 and has been able to do so for decades.
Nearly 50% of people eligible for Social Security make the choice to collect benefits at age 62, they receive a smaller check for the earlier payout.
Social Security disability payments virtually ALL go to persons under age 65 because a disability payment converts to a regular Social Security check at retirement age. So that skews the numbers lower.
Let's look at actual numbers (https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/chartbooks/fast_facts/2015/fast_facts15.pdf)
About four-fifths of all OASDI beneficiaries in current-payment status were aged 62 or older,
including 22 percent aged 75–84 and 9 percent aged 85 or older. About 15 percent were
persons aged 18–61 receiving benefits as disabled workers, survivors, or dependents. Another
5 percent were children under age 18.
Anything shock you there?
Not even sure why the age 65 thing bothers you, age 62 is when you become eligible for a reduced Social Security retirement benefit and almost half the people who become eligible elect to take smaller checks at age 62 instead of waiting till full retirement age.
You don't even provide a basis for claiming that Obama has anything to do, much less "has done everything he could to expand", with Social Security spending. As the baby boomer population ages there are more people eligible to start collecting their Social Security retirement check. Look at the chart on p 14 of the link I provided above, the number of NEW retired workers has jumped dramatically since about 2003 Obama didn't make people older and the retirement age hasn't decreased.
Most people just live with the lowest tier anyway, which is plenty fast enough to mitigate any internet related sociological barriers. They can't or don't want to pay for the premium ones, so the isps focus those plans on those who can.
> They get the spending right back in the form of tax breaks and subsidies.
That's a fun thing to say, but simply false on the facts. Take a look at the numbers, they've been analyzed quite thoroughly by many people. Only Bruce Kushnick has ever tried to make that claim while citing a single number. Brice also thinks that THE UNITED STATES is a different country from the United States, so ....
How do you think Bill Gates BECAME a retired rich guy? Hint - not by waiting around for Obama to give him a cell phone.
> You don't get rich by investing. The real money is in ownership.
How do you think you get ownership of productive assets? That's pretty much the definition of "investing" - exchanging current value (spending time or money) to acquire productive assets.
What you may be trying to get to, but perhaps aren't quite clear on, is that Gates made his money by *owning* Microsoft shares, not by working for them as an *employee*. Right now, about 2 million people are making money owning Microsoft shares. That *IS* the way to make real money long term. It'll cost you $69 to get your first share of Microsoft if you want to be a retired rich guy too. The vast majority of people who will retire somewhat comfortably own shares in companies, most often a variety of companies through a mutual fund.
Making things and installing them, takes a lot of money. Film at 11.
According to CenturyLink's customer service in Yakima, WA, it's more cost-effective to scam the "wealthy", than the middle-class or the poor.
I just said a bunch of guys at MIT ran the numbers and Bill Gates made more money as a member of the ennui than as a hardworking contributor to society. Wealth builds on wealth. When us libtards warn you about the impact of wealth inequality this is what we mean.
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Tax payer the ones fucked under footing most the bill.
Big difference between wireless and wired networks. Many cities don't want utility poles running down both sides of small streets to provide enough space for all the wires. Most parties can't/won't support common infrastructure and independent service.
Much of the equipment is coming down in cost to the point where you could have a 100-user ISP with reasonable service prices; maybe that will help evolve gigabit service to the home.
Let's see, one set of wires for electric, one for pstn, and three choices of internet is five wires on the pole outside my house. Where you live, are utitlity poles too small to have five wires on them?
This is why America is broken and will continue to fall behind. China doesn't care if you're rich or poor, eventually that fibre run will get to your door and you'll be lifted up like everyone else. Most countries are working on a Fibre to the Home network to lift all properties out of broadband poverty. Some time in the last 30 years people in the West decided fuck society you're on your own and the decline began. It was around this point that jobs started being off shored, people stopped caring about the togetherness of being a nationality. You stopped being Americans who sank or swam together and started being leaners and lifters who make an economy. While the West began disintegrating into rich and poor often sold as (those who work hard, and those who are stupid or who don't work hard enough), the Chinese locked onto a national purpose. Unification, one people one plan, the rise of national industry, a national pride that all Chinese (the vast majority at all socio-economic levels) bought into. Working together as a nation for the future progress of China. 30 years later we can see where America is: still unable to pass decent healthcare, rampant corporate corruption, the nation is 20 trillion in debt, disastrous trade/economic policies, crumbling bridges and infrastructure. Companies running amok with monopolies on even local governments being unable to roll out networks, and the average person is worse off than they were. Meanwhile China is building bullet trains, infrastructure, green cities, the world's fastest CPUs, five different CPU architectures one of which is indigenous to China, the largest manufacturing capabilities in the world, and they don't bitch about the poor holding back the rich or the fact that taxpayers are paying 50% into their companies (with 50% state ownership of most enterprises), instead they view it as an opportunity to build more wealth for China for the good of all Chinese.
I can't believe a corporation would make a capital investment primarily in areas where people are more likely to be able to afford more profitable levels of service!
Next you'll be telling me that there are more Mercedes dealerships, pool service companies and expensive boutique stores in wealthy towns than poor ones, and that their customers tend to be wealthy people! Like I'd fall for that one...
Sounds good but actually it not real
> You need 18-24" between providers, plus 3' to low
> voltage (240V+), and another 5' to medium voltage.
That's interesting, where do you work? National Electric Safety Code says half as much between providers. NESC 238A and 239G say 40" working space between electric and communications, or 30" for bonded neutrals. Code is 12" between communications providers.
14' to the lowest communication cable, plus two 12" clearances to two others is 16 feet. Plus 40 inches to electric is 19 feet 4 inches, by code. You've come up with 50% more space than national code requires.
The costs truly are huge and the political climate murky.
As a result, honest, capitalist businessmen will not find building such infrastructure attractive. They may find in 10 years that their investment gets stolen (nationalised) because that's the way the wind's blowing. He can't easily move his investment overseas as laws change for the worse. He can surely find a more profitable use for his savings.
The unscrupulous businessman has no problem with the unethical conduct of bribing politicians (lobbying) for privileges and protections. He will do much better in this space.
There's a town near me that has refused to allow construction of a cell tower. Not all impediments to the spread of technology are the fault of business.
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A "right" is a moral principle defining and sanctioning a man's freedom of action in a social context. (Rand).
Please explain how "dictating" relates to "freedom of action."
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Believe what you wish. Do note as soon as you said hundreds of billions I knew you got that from Bruce. So many people have analyzed the numbers, only Bruce claims anything like that. Perhaps he's right and every economist and other analyst is completely wrong. Or maybe he's a kook.
"...if you could pay for electricity; we wanted everyone to have it. "
Bullshit.
They may find in 10 years that their investment gets stolen (nationalised) because that's the way the wind's blowing.
Nationalised, in the US? LOL.
Thanks.
But no. In the US it stays in private hands, preferably as a monopoly or small cartel where price-fixing can be arranged.
I do not want your cheap brainburning drugs. They are useless for work. And I am a working man today.
"Society said it did not matter if you could pay for electricity; we wanted everyone to have it. Society said we would not limit dial tone to those who could pay the most, we gave it to all," said telecommunications lawyer Gerard Lederer of Best Best and Krieger LCC in Washington, D.C., in an e-mail.
I didn't realize that I could have electricity and phone service even if I don't pay for them. Like an idiot, I've been paying those bills each month. Tell me more.