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Are America's Big Telecom Companies Suppressing Fiber? (salon.com)
Salon just published a new interview with Susan Crawford, the author of "Fiber: The Coming Tech Revolution -- And Why America Might Miss It."
Crawford has spent years studying the business of these underground fiber optic cables that make fast internet possible. As it turns out, the internet infrastructure situation in the United States is almost hopelessly compromised by the oligopolistic telecom industry, which, due to lack of competition and deregulation, is hesitant to invest in their aging infrastructure... This is going to pose a huge problem for the future, Crawford warns, noting that politicians as well as the telecom industry are largely inept when it comes to prepping us for a well-connected future...
"The decay started in 2004 when -- maybe out of gullibility, maybe out of naivety, maybe out of calculation -- then-chairman of the FCC, Michael Powell, now the head of cable association -- was persuaded that the telcos would battle it out with the cable companies, that their cable modem services would battle it out with wireless, and all of that competition would do a much better job than any regulatory structure could at ensuring that every American had a cheap and fantastic connection of the internet. That's just turned out that's just not true. Since then, he deregulated the entire sector -- and as a result, we got this very stagnant status quo where in most urban areas -- usually the local cable monopoly has a lock in the market and can charge whatever it wants for whatever type of quality services they're providing, leaving a lot of people out."
"Because Americans don't travel," she adds, "you don't get the sense of what a third-world country the U.S. is becoming when it comes to communications."
"The decay started in 2004 when -- maybe out of gullibility, maybe out of naivety, maybe out of calculation -- then-chairman of the FCC, Michael Powell, now the head of cable association -- was persuaded that the telcos would battle it out with the cable companies, that their cable modem services would battle it out with wireless, and all of that competition would do a much better job than any regulatory structure could at ensuring that every American had a cheap and fantastic connection of the internet. That's just turned out that's just not true. Since then, he deregulated the entire sector -- and as a result, we got this very stagnant status quo where in most urban areas -- usually the local cable monopoly has a lock in the market and can charge whatever it wants for whatever type of quality services they're providing, leaving a lot of people out."
"Because Americans don't travel," she adds, "you don't get the sense of what a third-world country the U.S. is becoming when it comes to communications."
Only when it comes to communications, really? What about health care? Taking care of your poor? Having a proper democracy?
The U.S.A. has been a third-world country for quite a while, just ask the other civilized countries.
^^^THIS^^^ The broadband situation in America is a story about government intervention completely breaking the marketplace not a failure of the market place. We really need to be passing state laws that prohibit the creation and renewal of such agreements by local municipalities. That is how you fix this situation.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Introduced it? This has been available in other countries all over the world for years.
And one of the reasons it did not happen earlier was because they did not want to spend the money.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Because it is poor resource utilization. Unless you have extremely low subscriber density, fixed infrastructure provides better performance a slower cost.
no you wont - coming from the broadband backwater of australia, you'll get over subscribed 4/5G cells as everyone jumps off whatever their current connection is.just because the wirless product it has 'fiber' in its name, doesnt make it as fast
Municipal monopoly agreements DO NOT EXIST in the United States. Period. They have been banned, at the Federal level, since the Telecommunications Act of 1996. True story.
What you have is an example of first mover effect and natural monopolies. But Libertarians hate to admit to those, as they are natural market failure mechanisms, and they don't like to admit that the market can have inherent failure modes.
There are huge limitation of using a broadcast medium (wireless) vs a point-to-point medium such as fiber. With all advances in wireless technology (such as MIMO or beam forming) - you will never get the same quality that you can achieve with fiber connection. Now imagine all homes using that same 5G technology in addition to mobiles - it will create additional overhead to an already congested spectrum. It is more efficient to dedicate 5G to devices that really need it - cars, public transport services, smartphones and so on, while connecting homes through fiber.
Its got nothing to do with exactly what technology is being used to provide internet service and everything to do with making sure any new players who want to come in and compete with the big boys don't get that chance. And it all comes down to content.
All of these big ISPs know that if these new players come in, they will not only take away the revenue from the internet side of things but they will take away the far more lucrative TV revenue. Even more so for those ISPs like Comcast or AT&T who actually own content producers and channels rather than just cable platforms.
Americans want freedom at the expense of all else.
Are you saying America is the freedom capital of the world? LOL!
Look up "Jim Jefferies - Freedumb" sometime. He says it well.
No sig today...
This reminds me of a ruling by ANACOM (Portugal's FCC) where the subsidised Fiber, granted installation and exploitation rights to a single one of our ISPs, which should be providing infrastructure to people that paid for it in secluded areas, is only ever made residentially, commercially available by that ISP when there is no alternative whatsoever. And guess what ANACOM accepts as an alternative: 2-8Mbps WIRELESS 3/4G or COPPER DSL!
There are thousands of villages in Portugal that have multi-Gbps Fiber installed but also have a faint, miserable 3 or 4G connection and/or copper, where Wireless and Copper fail to reach even the tens of Mbps and are always unstable. Yet since both Wireless and Copper have the POTENTIAL of reaching those numbers (even though they never ever do), the ISP is allowed to NEGATE access to the state-sponsored network, and only sell residential copper and wireless, because those services simply bring in more revenue (Copper: requires a phone fee that adds up to 50% cost; Wireless: is much more expensive and has data caps)!!!
This mostly happens because that infrastructure is also exclusive to the ISP in such a way that they don't even have to re-sell the Fiber to competitors, because in rural areas ANACOM exempts competition rules that would force the ISP to re-sell the Fiber!
This is Big Telecom at its worst. They fed from state funding to expand their networks, then lobbied the state authority to allow them to make use of the state-sponsored infrastructure as they please, even by keeping the villages initially targeted to benefit from the infrastructure in the shadow!
A small percentage of Americans actually leave the country. And while our broadband option may have decent speed it likely costs twice as much as most other countries.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
How do you think the data gets from/to those cell sites?
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
That's a lie. Most Americansdo not want that.
75% were opposed the repeal of net neutrality.
56% support and only 16% oppose the creation of a publicly-owned internet companies to fill coverage gaps in rural, urban, or remote areas.
And hell, let's throw in some health care statistics too
70% want healthcare for everyone, even the poor who can't afford it.
51% are for and only 21% are against the government manufacturing and selling generic drugs (and that included revoking patents granted to pharma companies that make them too expensive for the average person to afford).
I could go on with similar poll results across every industry... energy, housing, food, utilities... everything.
Americans do not want freedom at the expense of all else. That is a lie that is continually pushed by the same interests that lobby the government to keep their monopolies in place and put former corporate executives into positions of power where they can undermine all regulation of the companies they worked for.
The only reason that lie continues is that the wealthy who benefit the most from this bullshit can use their wealthy to force it to be the only story. They hire PR firms to astroturf the story, buy media outlets and control what stories get published, pay off legislators to ensure that regulations always favor the wealthy and take every step they can to ensure that no other story gets heard.
Fiber is available in places where it's already run, but not generally expanding at the rate which it should. Verizon stopped their roll out about a decade ago and has only expanded in places where municipalities are suing or as a replacement for failing copper lines. Comcast is pushing gigabyte service over it's coax, but has limited fiber roll out if the community insists on it. AT&T is plodding along only in metropolitan areas. Google has went as far as to dig up some test deployments and hasn't moved quickly. Other players aren't entering.
Conspiracy?
Maybe not. 5G is supposed to give multiple gigabyte service to both traditional cellular and home customers, which would solve the 'last mile' hookup costs for home internet service. I suspect that most companies now are spending more money putting 'larger tubes' to the cellular structure, or at least I think they should. However, it could be much more than a decade before cellular tech can really replace fiber-to-the-premise. On some levels we are in a troth between current reality and the future.
The force that blew the Big Bang continues to accelerate.
I travel a fair amount - about 80 days a year out of the country. I've lived (recently) in Belgium and China, and whilst I had more options for high speed Internet, it wasn't really appreciably cheaper than the 100 Mbps cable I get from Spectrum. About $40 in China, Brussels, or Ventura.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Jim Jefferies is a comedian. He moved to the United States, where he lives and works; in 2018, he became a citizen of the U.S.
I'm guessing that his experience living in other places is where he gets his unbiased insights into the USA.
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5G won't provide fibre speeds to all. It can't, there just isn't enough bandwidth. Say you live in a city in an apartment block and everyone is using 5G for their broadband. Well for a start 5G uses higher frequencies so you will need an external antenna to get anywhere near the theoretical 10Gbps it offers.
10Gbps between how many users? If it's more than 5 then it's already slower than symmetrical 1/1Gbps cable, and of course the latency is much worse. That 10Gbps is the on-air rate too, not the speed you get after all the protocol overhead and switching time to allow other uses to communicate.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
The way it gets to 4G cells right now - fiber. Maybe it makes sense to use fiber for the hub, and other technologies (including wireless) for the spokes? How many consumers want (or would utilize) gigabit fiber to the home? Stream a few 4K videos, watch some Facebook cat posts, post on Instagram - 100 Mbps down/10 Mbps up is plenty for that.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Much of what Jim Jefferies says would get him imprisoned or killed, in most of the rest of the world. Maybe having a bit of freedom is a good thing.
And that is a nice instance of how clueless you are of what is going on in the rest of the world. Because it is simply not true. Sure, there are some states where that would happen, but "most" is a vast overstatement. But I can see the class in power keeps you under control by a combination of keeping you clueless and in fear. That is a time-honored method.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
The cellular companies will probably decide they don't want to compete with fixed-line Internet services even if their 5G service is capable of doing it. They probably figure that most of the future of 5G is mobile devices and there's just more money to be made from keeping data caps high and charging extremely high rates for blurry and incoherent versions of "unlimited".
They could compete against fixed-line Internet if they wanted to, but then they would have to come with a scheme for lower prices/GB for fixed-line service to practically enforce higher prices for mobile users and some kind of PR scheme which caused it to make sense.
Oh? And then why do people vote the way they do? Because, assuming your statements are true (well possible, I am too lazy to verify though), these preferences seem to be pretty incompatible with who gets voted into power. Are people just very stupid and very easy to manipulate in the US?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
I can tell you much of the problem is about how to retrofit existing areas. New builds get fiber, but anything that existed before 2014 or so is a legacy build. I live in an area that was built in the late 90s and there's no hope of getting anything fast out here so I'm doing it myself. The costs are reasonable (about 30-50k/mile) but the majority of the issue is in permitting to go underground. (If you go on poles, it's actually just as expensive as underground in many cases due to annual fees on the poles, engineering studies, tree clearing fees, make-ready, etc.. Plus then you need to own a bucket truck and other expenses).
The wholesale cost of the bandwidth is nothing, it's all about the cost to put the stuff in the ground and the permit process. Expect 30% of your costs (and 90% of build-time) to be constrained by engineering and permitting costs. The rest of that 30-50k USD/mile cost is the labor and materials needed. You need to put in a place every 2-3 homes you pass to deliver service. There are a lot of people doing this in rural areas to close the gap but most people have only heard of the incumbents so there's a market awareness problem. Many people that are WISPs (see WISPA.org) are now moving into the fiber world, but the capital costs are around 50-250k to get all the equipment you need for underground construction.
Rough costs if you care: 35c/ft for conduit, 7-10c/ft for fiber (once you get large counts like 96 count, it's closer to 1c/strand/foot) and $100-300 for a pedestal or hand-hole, plus splice trays, etc. $1/foot (linear) * $1/foot (depth) for your route if it's not complicated. Costs go up in urban environments very quickly if you have a lot of requirements or other utilities to dodge.
Im a bit concerned over the most recent whistle blown about them hiding studies that linked it to lukemia and a few other cancers. The odds of getting some form of cancer are now 1 in 3. I believe it was rarer than 1 in 25 back in the 80s. I would much prefer fiber than saturate the airwaves with even higher powered EM radiation. Do you know how much more space junk we are going to have floating around to support 5g? Eventually we are going to have to cruise to the arctic circle just to get a good view of the night sky. There will be no mechanixal navigation backup to sattelite for ships. Dead reckoning will be impossible.
In the UK, you get investigated and harassed by the police for using the wrong gender pronoun for transgender people. Seriously, that's so much better?
Claim that Islam is evil in most of the EU and you get charged and then sent to jail for 6+ months. It's not just Germany, but wonderful Sweden as well. And of course the UK.
Say anything against the Government in much of the world and you end up in prison (or just - gone). Yes, most of the rest of the world has a lot less freedom of speech. Provably so. In fact, your post to me would qualify as hate speech in much of Europe and could land you in jail because you denigrate me. Seriously.
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Monopolies are not a libertarian topic. Monopolies rarely occur without assistance from congress and any government intervention inherently means its not a libertarian concept. Granting patents on vague language such as verizons alleged patent against vonage is a perfect example. They were allowed to get a patent in 1998 that literally, and I do mean literally, described how DNS works. They then used that patent to win a lawsuit against vonage. It’s a little known secret that the biggest pushers for “red tape”, aka regulation, are companies already established within the industry. By the way, if you read the ninth amendment you will see that the federal government does not have the power to pass laws that supersede a states right. The only thing they can supersede a states right is a constitutional amendment. If a state wants to have these laws they can challenge the federal government on their ninth amendment right.
You are aware that our current President got fewer votes than his opponent, right?
Telecoms have been given SEVERAL HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS to build out their infrastructure going back to the early 90s. Where'd all the money go?
That was my take on the US as well when I lived there 10+ years ago - it was like travelling back a few decades in time compared to Europe. However, for the case of fibre, I think the problem is not that companies are suppressing it for some shadowy reason, but that it costs too much to make it financially viable.
Last summer our local Canadian phone provider, Telus, laid fibre to most of my city and since then they have been increasingly desperate for us to sign up to use it. However, the prices they are charging for fibre-grade internet are insanely expensive compared to the 300Mbit connection we already have with a different cable company and which is already fast enough I rarely if ever want anything faster. While a gigabit might be nice it would come with a (large) bandwidth cap unlike our current connection.
If these are the prices which companies have to charge to recoup the installation costs then the simple truth may be that it is just not yet financially viable.
Too many inner city people with a new 5G product trying to use a few new "towers" that offer the 5G service.
The way to make them all get "part" of the service equally is to lower the speed.
Rent more spectrum?
Place new towers everywhere.
Use price and data caps to manage all the users AC?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
And so TMO, in the midst of a merger plan with the Sad Sack of the industry, is also working on Band 71 deployment as a rural broadband (oh, and yes, mobile service) solution. This is an excellent time to refocus on fiber, engage in another round of subsidized buildout, and let this new fiber, 'everywhere', sit dark.
How much fiber was laid by Ma Bell pre-breakup, and how much was resold to us for long-distance rate reductions that never actually happened?
How much of that fiber was laid as expense, not investment, and paid for by ratepayers?
And how much was resold for data, when it was laid for LD voice? At voice ratepayer cost?
How much money in the Universal Service Fund goes to rural equity?
It's not that the free markets have failed, it's that the market has never been very free. And where it has, somewhat, it's thrived. Look at dedicated data circuits - T1/E1 is not very useful today, but we're arguing over business service at 100MB for $100-300/month as gouging, when T1 service not so long ago was $1200/month, and would give you trouble. Even DDS2 was outrageous then. Even GPRS was faster than that.
Getting the Federal government out of this as much as can be tolerated, encouraging the states to permit local deals, that's the way to move forward. Of course, in the State House, you're going to see bribery and corruption routinely practiced, in a manner not so erudite as the federal level. But more pervasive. And in the big cities this is another of the many fights against corruption top to bottom.
My previous home had two cable services to it. The joy of one coming in and literally cutting off the other (with snips, as in snip-snip) was too much, Finally the big bought out the little. I lived with a DSL pedestal literally in my back yard, and could have gottten 20MB+ out of it, but never did. Now where I live DSL is just long enough to make 60MB the max, and the carrier is well past lazy and on to incompetent, conducting system upgrades without notice and leavign me down for TC and Internet for 36+ hours on a Super Bowl Sunday, yes the one that drops 911 service as often as french fries are dropped at a McDonalds.
Telecom regulation is as bad as the physical layer craft is. Pus.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Americans travel. 42% of the population owns a passport.
Fiber != fast. There are consumer ISPs that are offering multi gigabit service over copper. Stop parading the myth that fiber is needed to provide extremely fast Internet speeds. Sure there are some competition issues at the local level (a lot of it created by the local government allowing a monopoly so they can receive extra revenue) but that can easily be resolved.
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
Your only telco in town can't offer 1000/1000 services?
Ask them for a 1000/100 service.
When they say no ask them again for 1000/1000 service for the town.
Plan for community broadband.
Ask for 1000/1000 around the town again.
Wait for the NN telco to say no. That wireline is going to stay. That is the NN approved network is the network they have to offer as a monopoly telco.
Tell the city your granted telco monopoly no longer deserves any monopoly protection as they are doing nothing of value with the monopoly.
Get community broadband working.
Connect the community at 1000/1000 when they request that type of connection.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
* The notion that "corporations are people" came to prominence when Mitt Romney said it; besides the fact that corporate law is written in terms of abstract personhood, what Romney was trying to says is that corporations are, literally, just groups of people. They are not inherently some alien, otherworldly, invasive parasite. If you think that "Governments are people", then you should understand that "Corporations are people" (and, hell, corporations don't get to control the Men-with-Guns like a government does).
* Marxism is international in nature, but it was noticed during WWI that people clung to nationalism more than their economic class; Mussolini and various academics incorporated this fact into Marxism (whose predictions of a revolution failed), and thereby created Fascism (from the old Roman idea that a bundle of stick is stronger than the individual sticks alone). Of course, Hitler added racism to the mix, and thereby created Nazism (which stands for "National Socialism"). Applying the term "fascist" to the United States is totally absurd.
The US is missing out on a prime opportunity.
You are way ahead of your competitors when it comes to corruption, anti-freedom and anti-competitiveness techniques.
You should leverage this expertise - offer it as a service to third parties the world over. The world needs what you've got!
Requiem for the American Dream
None of that is actually true or at least not true in the simplistic form you present it. It just demonstrates nicely how misinformed you are and how very much kept in fear and ignorance. Bit thanks for demonstrating that I am right.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
That is not my point. The opposing candidate would not have been that much better on the issues. The US basically has a right-wing party and an ultra right-wing party. None of those actually care about citizens.
Well, I guess the US population is basically doing it to itself. Not the only place where that is happening. People, on average, are astonishingly stupid.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
How are you organizing it? Who is funding it? What does it mean to do this in your spare time?
That is not the point. The point is that a large number of voters voted against their own, stated by them, best interests here and that includes not only those that voted for the, aehm, "stable genius", but also those that voted for Hilary.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
While government interference in the market has been detrimental, a totally unregulated market would not work either except in very densely populated and affluent areas.
A different approach is required...
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Any wireless service will only work where there aren't many users...
Even with 5G there is a fixed amount of spectrum, which must be shared among the users. Once it's gone, its gone, whereas with cable you can run a separate fibre to each user.
Whenever i've used a wireless technology, the latency and throughput varies massively and randomly whereas a wired connection is usually consistent.
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You can have a dedicated 1gbps pipe per user, or a 10gbps (5g) pipe shared between 1000 users...
If you're sharing broadcast spectrum as with any wireless technology, then you are absolutely at the mercy of other users and environmental conditions. Where i am, i can get a strong 4g connection so at times i can download at close to 100mbit/sec with reasonable latency, but at other times the latency will spike massively and the throughput can be extremely poor. It's useful as a backup and for casual browsing, but its not useful for gaming or various other latency sensitive activities.
Contrast that with the wired connection i have which pulls 200mbit/sec and 6ms of latency all day long.
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Firstly, you don't know that it could have never worked.
Secondly, it's a straw man; nobody has argued that every 100 feet should be negotiated.
All it takes is 1 NIMBY right next to the brand new treatment plant to say "no" and those miles of sewage lines you dug are useless. What are you going to do, force the guy to sell/take his land? The government can't force him to do anything. Odds are, in your libertarian paradise, the guy probably bought up all that land just for the purpose of screwing it up for the lulz, because people tend to be dicks when they are do whatever they want.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Hey, don't forget Charter Spectrum! Around here they advertise their "fiber-rich" internet all the time. It's hilariously depressing.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
Did they actually sell you fiber (Do you have an ONT device in your house?) or did they lie about the DSL that has a DSLAM much closer to you than traditional DSL?
That's what AT&T was doing in my town lately. Selling everyone "fiber" but no fiber optic cable comes anywhere near the house. It's just DSL.
The telcoms know that between 5G Home Service and services like Star Link, running fiber to the house is a looser..
Even with 5G there is a fixed amount of spectrum, which must be shared among the users. Once it's gone, its gone, whereas with cable you can run a separate fibre to each user.
The whole premise of 5G is more and smaller cells. With cable, that's more nodes for a given number of subscriber comparing apples to apples. If you run a fibre to each user, then that's not cable Internet - that's fibre.
How many consumers want (or would utilize) gigabit fiber to the home?
How many people thought they would ever need more than 56K? And that was less than 20 years ago for some. Instead of maximizing short-term profits, they need to actually reinvest in infrastructure. We never would have had the copper lines to rot out in the first place if there was never a big buildout before.
The odds of getting some form of cancer are now 1 in 3. I believe it was rarer than 1 in 25 back in the 80s.
Isn't this just down to more medical intervention on heart disease, cholesterol, and high blood pressure? You have to live long enough to get cancer.
20 years later, and no new, large scale businesses, which rely upon residential super high speed internet have emerged.
Comparing on-demand streaming video to cable does not make it less of a new, large scale business.
Municipal fiber is happening - but slowly. I live in a small town (_maybe_ a city) in Idaho and we just started the municipal fiber rollout. I'm typing this now over a 1Gbps bidirectional link for $70/month total.
The next town over from us did it first... and a bunch of towns in northern Utah have gone that way as well.
In my town the electric company (which is a city utility here) actually owns the fiber... it runs right up to your house and out of your electrical meter! You pay for the fiber line as part of your city utility bill: $30.
At that point you can then select any of 6 different ISPs to use. They all have varying speeds and plans. I went with a $40 bidirectional gigabit... because... why not?
Previous to this I was paying out local cable company $110/month for 250Mbps down and 10Mbps up (which I actually considered to be quite good after just moving from the northeast!).
The cable company's days are numbered. It will take a while - they are deeply entrenched in some municipalities - but they will slowly be taken down by fiber...
The universality of all of your postal system, electric system and phone system are the direct result of government policy, including both subsidies and mandates. There is no business model that results in a universal fiber network emerging from market forces. That is simply fantasy.
Don't worry, however. The government will never actually do what is necessary, regardless of our multiple historical precedents. Beyond the urban poor the establishment is totally uninterested in subsidizing a solution because they've concluded that rural whites would be the main beneficiaries.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
That wasn't because the U.S. is backwards third-world country (well, the sign instead of PIN part was, but not the slow rollout of chipped cards). The rest of the world got to do it better because the U.S. did credit cards first. So the rest of the world got to see all the problems with magnetic swipe credit cards before implementing their credit card systems. The U.S. by virtue of being the first adopter, has to deal with the additional overhead of replacing a much larger legacy system, instead of just implementing a clean system mostly from scratch. Virtually every merchant in the U.S. already had credit card readers which weren't capable of reading chipped cards, so the transition to chipped cards took a lot longer here than in other countries where merchants hadn't widely adopted credit card readers.
Same thing happened with digital cell phone service. The U.S. already had an extensive analog cellular network, so was slowest to transition to digital cellular. The cost to implement digital cellular was the same here as in other countries, but the marginal gain was less because the gain in the U.S. was analog to digital cellular, while the gain in other countries was from no cellular to digital cellular. Consequently there was less market pressure to roll out digital cellular, and it progressed more slowly than in other countries. Likewise, the standard electrical socket and plug in the U.S. is the worst-designed, because other countries to got see the problems with the U.S. design and got to implement designs which fixed those problems as their standard, before they rolled out electricity in their countries. (e.g. Ground wire connects first; and live wires are covered before they're connected so you can't accidentally touch wires carrying current.) The U.S. was saddled with the inertia of that initial socket design being standard, and has never managed to overcome it and replace it with a newer, better socket design.
So these problems aren't because the U.S. is some backwards third-world nation. it's because the U.S. is the world's spearhead - the trailblazer and first adopter. And the first attempt at implementing something is almost never the best way to do it. Other countries get for free the lessons learned from the suffering and pain of trial and error that the U.S. had to go through. Mocking the U.S. for it just means you're an ungrateful prick.
The goal of the municipalities is to make the cost lower vs higher with permitting costs, etc.. Right now they're 15-50% of the costs between permits, engineering, etc.. much of it depends on where you are building.
I think for years they have been funneling the government cheese into building up their Wireless offerings because it is largely unregulated and costs less to maintain.
I don't see them expanding local broadband coverage in my area at all.
Rick B.
Of course they are. It's the telecoms' best interest to keep us on 100 year old infrastructure as long as possible. I mean, who wants to build out modern technology when you can still force people to buy 1.5 Mbps DSL?
Apparently you have to live in the suburbs to get first world internet access. The people who want us to live in ultra dense brutalist structures downtown would have a stronger argument with decent network speeds.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
What does the FCC have to do with us staying regular with a high fiber diet?
I got AT&T fiber too. The ONT is in the garage so you can clearly see the fiber cable. I had AT&T Uverse copper at 25mbs and upgraded to 1Gbs fiber. In fact they had to pull the copper out because the underground access was too tight for both fiber and copper so I gave up the landline. No matter as I'm using VoIP anyway.
The local competition is Comcast cable at much lower bandwidth and higher costs.
Monopolies rarely occur without assistance from congress
Please explain Standard Oil and AT&T.
By the way, if you read the ninth amendment you will see that the federal government does not have the power to pass laws that supersede a states right
By the way, if you read the actual Constitution instead of your imagined version, you'll find the supremacy clause (Article VI, Clause 2).
Also, here's the actual 9th amendment:
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.
You'll note it doesn't say anything about states. It's also a relatively clear way of saying "These amendments aren't an exhaustive list of rights."
Btw, you've confused your misunderstanding of the 10th amendment as a misunderstanding of the 9th amendment. Which should probably make most readers doubt most of what you say.
Most US resident grew up under constant indoctrination that it is the best country in the world, with a whitewashed version of history. Someone saying something like "Sweden seems like a nice place" would get told told all the reasons why it isn't The group think is that it's the best ever and that you're not allowed to think otherwise. Of course that makes things like "Make America Great Again" a confusing thing since it implies it is not great. Oh ya, and the constitution was divinely inspired, cant' forget that part of the dogma.
So the snag here is that there are so many people utterly unable to imagine that someone else is better. If you get good internet in some cities then that's great, and if they have bad internet in other cities or in rural areas well then at least it's better than all those other countries that have the government do important things instead of corporations. Some people honestly think that way, but they have no other points of reference and can't tell that we just have a few good points, a few bad points, and a lot of average in other areas.
We're only descending into civil war because there are people who think that its citiens are a mix of Americans and Unamericans. The descent will stop once most people stop thinking that way and realize that they're all Americans even if they may hold different viewpoints.
Switzerland? Not sure, help me out here.
Say you live in a city
This is actually the thing that makes me chuckle with 5G. Nearly 60% of Americans either live in Suburbs or in a Rural part of the US. I look around the suburbs I live in and something is missing here: Telephone poles, or just poles in general. Most of the articles I see talking about 5G roll out always mention placing the mini-cell towers up on telephone poles or power lines. Most suburbs I've been in don't have this kind of above ground infrastructure. So I've just come to assume that 5G isn't rolling out past the large cities.
I haven't looked into it but I wouldn't be surprised to learn the telecoms got grants and tax-credits to roll out 5G; and this is just playing out to be the bandwidth scandal all over again.
Oh? And then why do people vote the way they do?
Because there's an R or D next to the name.
What do I win?
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
Eat shit, Terlingua. I do not care. Want to live far away from people? You have to pay for it.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Caroline Farrow investigated for misgendering someone in a tweet. It happened. Seriously. That's the UK - apparently calling someone by the wrong gender can get you investigated by the police. And it is not just Mr. Sturzenberger - a sign condemning Islam will get you a 1000 euro fine, in Germany.
There is no freedom of speech in most of the world.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
People in the US have gone to prison over tweets. That you refuse to notice them is your problem, not the UK's.
Learn to love Alaska
Citation needed.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Ok. Here's Standard Oil. AT&T was granted a monopoly by the government, so no need to explain that to everyone, is there?
The party of stupid and the party of evil get together and do something both stupid and evil, then call it bipartisan.
Bull f..g s..t they don't. The municipalities, at least here in So Cal, control the utility pole use. In the city where I live (about 180k) I am told that one of the council members is "in" with Charter Spectrum. So they put very heavy requirements on Verizon (now Frontier here) for adding fiber service to the poles. Effectively fiber was priced out of the area. That left DSL on aging wire infrastructure that spends 10 minutes out of 15 down some times of day depending on wind and traffic along the streets adjoining the wire paths. The end result is I cannot get fiber. Nor can I get Charter Spectrum because the feed to my house, which is surrounded on all sides by cable subscribers, is 250' too long for them and they don't feel like providing me Internet service.
While monopolistic agreements are outlawed, onerous burdens for using telephone poles perform the exact same function.
{^_^}
Michael Powell wasn't inept. He was a greedy sycophant who knew that if he took care of his corporate overlords, he'd get a portion of the spoils as well as a cushy gig once he walked through the revolving lobbyist/regulator door.
Powell knew the outcome of his blanket deregulation, even if he feigned ignorance and claimed that it was all in the name of 'consumer choice'.
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
India is the 7th largest country in the world and offers 100Mbps (with unlimited data) for under $15/month but don't let that stop you posting nonsense in bold.
Let's just go with the "70% want healthcare for everyone." What they *want* and *have been sold* is the fictitious idea of "free healthcare." What they will get is a national ID card which, if they're lucky, will result in mediocre healthcare the government wishes to ration out. What they likely wouldn't want, if they were well informed rather than propagandized by Leftists, is a completely crashed economy, politicized health issues, and a nanny state to control the vices they currently enjoy.
51% are for and only 21% are against the government manufacturing and selling generic drugs
Don't forget that allowing Americans to buy drugs from Canada and other countries is also hugely popular - over 70% according to this
When people are asked, in context about these items, they chose the things that suit their interests. Once the political machines join they fray, things get twisted a little bit and it's not about healthcare but gov sponsored abortion, death panels, etc. Or, second amendment "I should be able to have a tank with a 120mm gun" because "right to bear arms:. How about welfare moms even though the same groups griping about them make up the larger percentage? How about corporate welfare? Shouldn't walmart pay their share? But that's not capitalism. It gets lost in the bs real quick when people have to put their vote where their mouth is and always fall back the their bigotry and "morals".
But Libertarians hate to admit to those, as they are natural market failure mechanisms, and they don't like to admit that the market can have inherent failure modes.
It's not so much as they won't admit to problems as they can't. Because if they admit to one, they admit to all, and the foundations of libertarianism are really fucking shaky, even for a theoretical system of government.
The descent will stop once most people stop thinking that way and realize that they're all Americans even if they may hold different viewpoints.
So never, in other words.
And yet chose to abandon those third world shitholes and live in the greatest country that ever existed or will ever exist.
I guess the USA is OK if you're as rich as him, yes.
PS: How come the slogan is "MAGA"? Is it in decline?
No sig today...
While it would be hard to argue that any nation is the most free the USA is placed at 20th-10th most free by every major list, (like the Cato institute's list), that has ever come out. In nations that score better than the USA the far-left leaning bias of the lists is immediately apparent. If you aren't politically a far leftist then those above the USA in that list are less free. In nearly every one of those marked as more free you have severely limited economic freedom if you make more than $100,000, laws that can imprison you for saying the wrong words and/or entire industries that are ran by the equivalent of a thought police. Since nearly everything else in those top twenty is mostly equal/equivalent if you value freedom to spend what you earn or freedom to speak your mind the USA is arguably among the top most free nations.
Municipal monopoly agreements DO NOT EXIST in the United States. Period.
I was going to agree with you until you said "Period". There are still agreements in place and their are still pressures to maintain municipal monopolies. But you are otherwise technically correct... the best kind of correct.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen