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ACLU Urges Cities To Build Public Broadband To Protect Net Neutrality (thehill.com)
The ACLU is calling on cities across the country to build their own public municipal broadband networks to help preserve net neutrality after the Federal Communications Commission repealed the open internet rules. From a report: In a report released Thursday morning, the civil liberties group argued that in the absence of the FCC's rules cities could give residents an alternative to private service providers who will soon no longer be required to treat all web traffic equally. "Internet service has become as essential as utilities like water and electricity, and local governments should treat it that way," Jay Stanley, an ACLU policy analyst who authored the report, said in a statement. "If local leaders want to protect their constituents' rights and expand quality internet access, then community broadband is an excellent way to do that," Stanley added. The ACLU sent the report to more than 100 mayors across the country who had spoken out against the FCC's decision to scrap the rules.
The people who use it perhaps? Or would you rather have Big Company ISP nickel and dimeing you to death for each 'tier' of service you want? Basic - email and basic web sites, ISP search engine only. Basic plus get's you a few more web sites and maybe some with embedded video. Then your social teir, twitter, instagram, facebook, snapchat, etc etc. Then streaming per each service. Oh and they get to double dip by injecting their own advertisements into your service. VPN to circumvent? Block that traffic.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
It's hard to find the time between growing my own food, home schooling my kids, and making my own clothes.
Because private business has refused to supply a necessary public service.
You are free to use a private internet service (or buy bottled water from the store to flush your toilet) if you so desire. Those of us that feel the State is better suited to provide those services will utilize them.
There are a limited number of available frequencies and places to put utility poles. This is the very definition of a Natural Monopoly which the State can choose to either heavily regulate or own to serve the public good.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
State lawmakers in 21 states, after generous brib....ahem "campaign contributions" from cablecos and telcos, have decided that cities in their states don't get to make this choice for themselves. The most embarrassing example of this is Tennessee, which restricts other cities in the state from following Chattanooga's groundbreaking example.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
This is false hood that needs die
I run the IT department for a municipality that already provides municipal broadband services. The fact is Public/ municipal does almost NOTHING to assist in net neutrality. IPS’s provide a conduit from the end user to the internet backbone. If the content is punished upstream, as it goes across say, Verizon’s backbone, the local pipe is already receiving degraded, delayed, punished data.
The one thing it does however, is stop your local ISP from tracking you and monetizing your online behavior which can be done more quickly and cheaply by use of a VPN.
The ACLU has (perhaps not surprisingly) chosen to promote the former, which leaves the public on the hook for paying for it all. With the latter, the private sector pays for it while the public reaps the benefit. It's important to understand that the major cable internet companies aren't natural monopolies like Microsoft. They were given a monopoly by local governments who got into the regulation game to keep telephone poles from becoming too cluttered with wires, but somehow it morphed into a scheme where in exchange for a monopoly the local government got kickbacks or other guarantees from the sole ISP. This is why net neutrality isn't as big an issue in other parts of the world - most non-Americans have a choice of multiple ISPs, and can simply switch to a different ISP if theirs does anything stupid like try to throttle Netflix. The problems net neutrality tries to solve are only possible because of these government-granted monopolies.
Yeah, all these broadband companies are loosing money left and right. Comcast is practically begging on the street to keep its broadband service solvent.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
I'm registered as a Democrat (previously: Independent), don't believe in banning guns (but we can do a better job of keeping nutjobs from getting their hands on them), think we need to be more fiscally responsible sometimes, as a Nation (but not to the point of corporations and capitalism running wild) -- and I think the ACLU is completely correct, the Internet has come to the point where it's de-facto a Public Utility, and ISPs have gotten to the point where they're just price-gouging, sticking their noses into people's business, violating their privacy, and otherwise being so shitty that they need to GO AWAY, or at least be put on a LEASH so they're forced to behave.
Posting as AC because I don't need anyone knowing what my political affiliations are, even if I use a fake name on here.
Its not being filtered at the "Tube" level though.... Comcast isn't saying you can't have gun videos on the internet. Its the site owners who have made that decisions. A decision they would still be free to make... but by all means don't let that get in the way of some good astro turfing.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
The main obstacle to municipal broadband is the high cost; not to mention lobbying and political advertising budgets of Cable companies and Telcos ---- if word gets out you will setup a municipal broadband network; the big bad cable companys' reps flock to the area to try to convince the officials No, then if the officials aren't persuaded, they'll fund the campaigns of their opponents and try to convince the local that it's a mismanagement of public funds, next the Lawyers and bureaucrats fly in and start working out every possible way they can think of to delay the project ---- from filing lawsuits, to incumbent Telecoms deliberately sabotaging development efforts by failing or being unduly slow when required to modify their wiring to accommodate the additional pole attachments.
So I could see a value for a National Non-profit to help PROMOTE municipal broadband, by:
1. Raise money for lobbying efforts, legal funds, the promotion of municipal broadband projects, and writing grants for projects.
2. Hire full time lobbyists to fight the telecom lobbyists at the state and national level and work against the regulations and laws being passed to discourage municipal broadband --- fight in the opposite direction.
3. Provide funds to be used for legal assistance and promotion of projects such as Google fiber competing against Telco incumbents, to facilitate more competition in the broken markets.
4. Produce national advertising and reports on municipal broadband projects that have been successful; Designed to make citizens who
don't have municipal broadband feel jealous - Raise awareness and encourage more and more consumers to demand these services ---- spread the word, provide service testimonials and comparisons in the (A) Performance, (B) Speed, (C) Service, and (D) Support of these services.
5. Create a grant program that can issue funds to develop broadband, subject to condition:
(a). Grant proposals compete for funds, and the ones that provide wired high-bandwidth (10 Megabits or more upload and 20 Megabits or more download) uncapped access to the most population who don't currently have reliable wired high-bandwidth uncapped access have highest priority.
(b). The project is completed by the municipality, and the rights to 90% of the infrastructure are permanently and exclusively owned by the municipality.
(c). The project must be operational before a certain deadline no more than 2 years away and service available to a specified number of households within the planned buildout, or else repayment of the funds is due.
(d). After completion of the project; a monthly fee will be assessed for X years against all households where service would be available
(whether they chose to turn up service or not) to replenish grant funds and help fund more projects.
I'm fine with them around and doing what they want to with the internet IF there was real competition. I hate the fact that I have only 2 choices for an ISP and it boils down to speed and cost. The fact that they can and now will start doing packet shaping and forcing other shit into my internet connection is just the shit frosting on the poop cake to me. Since I work out of my house I have no real choices at the moment. If people want to use the big ISP that's fine be me. But to have the choice between fire and brimstone is BS. Supposedly a 3rd company is building out in my town but I've got my doubts it will come to much more than some basic TV, which I don't need.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
Now who will pay for it?
The cities? I mean, isn't that the point? Who do you think pays for the stuff where you live?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
If they were all solved then why are the big ISPs suing to keep states from enacting NN laws? AND trying to get a law passed that will stop future NN laws? https://www.politico.com/story... Sorry I confused the ISP with the FCC. Gee no idea why that would happen /s.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
I'm not "free" to use a private internet service when there is a competing "public" option; you're forcing me to pay for that "public" option TOO.
If the public option was paid on a monthly subscription basis (such as people pay now), how would that be forcing you to pay for both the public and private options? Don't be such a retard.
I'm not "free" to use a private internet service when there is a competing "public" option; you're forcing me to pay for that "public" option TOO.
B.S. My local muni broadband is funded by those who use it. http://swiftel.net/
Finally, 1 group that no longer has their head up their ass.
Calling for net neutrality is a waste of time, effort, and money.
OTOH, for a lot less effort, real competition can destroy the executives that continue to harm America.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The whole reference to paying for "tiers" regarding email, video, streaming was a fiction. It didn't happen before NN rules went into place, and nobody has announced such a pricing structure now that they are removed. We can make up all kinds of horror scenarios, but doing that is a really bad basis for laws.
Not entirely true.
In the bad old days of AOL, CompuServe, etc. there was the basic fee for X hours of service, plus additional fees to access Usenet, WWW, and internet mail.
Competition caused these access fees to go away, but without viable competition among providers, we can expect new and exciting predatory practices to become the norm.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Net profit margins for telecoms are around 11%; that's the maximum you could save if government operated as efficiently as a for profit corporation.
The dominant ISPs achieved their positions by leveraging natural monopolies. They’ve had no real competition in years. They’ve grown complacent and lazy because they’ve had no reason to innovate, compete, or even just try.
Why in the world would you consider their low standard to be the best that a local utility could hope to achieve in terms of efficiency? At a minimum you can cut the lobbyists to see an immediate improvement to the bottom line.
As for your other point about cross-subsidizing, I agree, but I don’t see the relevance. Where I’m from, the public electric and water utility bills us based on our usage. I’d assume they’d do the same with Internet, and I’m fine with that, given that it’s a perfectly equitable way of handling things, even if it does mean that I’m likely to be paying the highest bill in the neighborhood I live in.