Georgia Bill Would Prohibit Subsidies For Municpal Broadband 321
McGruber writes "The Associated Press has the news that Georgia State Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers is sponsoring a bill that 'would prevent public broadband providers from paying for communication networks with tax or government revenue.' Senator Rogers claims that 'The private sector is handling this exceptionally well.' Local government officials disagree. Georgia Municipal Association spokeswoman Amy Henderson says 'When cities were getting involved in broadband, it was because private industry would not come there. Without that technology, they were economically disadvantaged. We feel like it is an option cities should have.'"
Doublethink (Score:5, Insightful)
Most politics these days is something bad trying to be passed off as something good. It's important that we keep PUBLIC money invested in our infrastructure, so that nobody can make the claim of "the corporations made this possible, therefore we should let them run roughshod over us". They didn't make it possible. DARPA and our tax dollars made the internet happen when it did.
you have got to be kidding. (Score:4, Insightful)
a locality has advantages over a corporation in placing broadband. they have no licensing fee or charter to seek. they have existing rights of way. they can line the sewers and pull fiber between the casing and the liner for free. they have bonding cost advantages. they can require franchised power and phone companies to give them free pole space because, well, they're the city. they can slip a little from general fund revenues and call it a public benefit... or create a telecom district like a water or sewer district and basically charge whatever it takes to run the place without hearings or competition.
a telco that wants to go to Poison Creek has to file for all these things, dance with lawyers all the way through, and is darn sure not going to do it if they can't make a profit over the cost of buildout, at a million to two million a mile.
this is frankly a "screw you" bill by somebody who's got a feud going with the telcos down there.
The "private market" already took government money (Score:5, Insightful)
The "private market" has already used millions of dollars of federal tax money to build out their networks. So basically what this law is saying is that it was okay for the incumbent operators to take tax money, but bar any new competition from doing the same.
That sounds more like a protection racket than a free market policy.
Re:Please beat this man until he's senseless. (Score:2, Insightful)
Whoever thinks that a service is a 'fundamental human right' is a fucking idiot.
A fundamental human right cannot be something that somebody must PROVIDE one with.
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As to this bill - whatever, it's a locality business, really, it's a business of that municipality.
Re:you have got to be kidding. (Score:5, Insightful)
As well it should. Internet access should be a utility. Every place I'm aware of that has municipal internet access has a superior connection than neighboring areas without municipal internet. This is what municipal governments are for.
Re:you have got to be kidding. (Score:5, Insightful)
The way starting your own service when the private sector doesn't do it usually works like this:
-build stuff with tax money
-spin it out as a publicly held company
-sell it off with a profit
And this is the right thing to do. If telcos don't want to build up because actually doing buusiness instead of just selling stock is a bit of a hassle then you build it yourself. Towns don't want their folks wander off into the City. If nobody can be arsed to sell electricity, take care of the sewage, take away the trash, keep the taps from running dry and in the 21st century provide telco services then you do it yourself.
A mayor gets voted into office for taking care of the place. As is everybody else.
Companies only have to answer their stockholders who do not give a damn if people in Stinking Dead Rat Creek get teh internets delivered in a series of tubes.
Disallowing providing service to your citizens is that is just absurd. What's next? Not allowing the town to take care of the trash since nobody thinks there's not enough money in it?
It ends up being a boon doggle (Score:3, Insightful)
I used to live in two of the cities mentioned.
It sounds nice, it sounds like "DUH, they should be able to get into municipal broad band" ...
but everyone forgets that one detail.
Government.
So what did we end up with, lots of money spent, crap service WHERE you could get it, and you end up with the same politicized process that governs road construction and maintenance in many small towns. Meaning, commissioner X gets the potholes filled on his street, to hell with you.
So, it might make sense; for cities who cannot get a broad band provider; but far too many times you end up with a plan that looks good on paper getting rewritten so many times post approval and having so many exceptions that no one gets the service expected, let alone when, and definitely not for the agreed upon price.
I can fire AT&T and Comcast, I cannot fire my city government, and no elections don't fix it.
Re:It ends up being a boon doggle (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It ends up being a boon doggle (Score:2, Insightful)
>>>What Georgia needs is home rule legislation. Keep the state government out of things the local government can and should do.
We ought to try this concept at the national level, instead of having Congress regulate every little thing, including what kind of lightbulb I can use (incandescents outlawed and replaced with Crap FLs). Yeah I'm a little annoyed by that last one. It made no logical sense. So I save a few pennies on electric but have to waste dollars driving to the landfill to dispose the mercury-laden bulbs. Grrrr.
ANYWAY
I agree it should be left to the cities to decide if they want to install government-run internet. A little competition against Comcast and Verizon would be a good thing
.
Re:It ends up being a boon doggle (Score:3, Insightful)
Everyone also forgets the Tragedy of the Commons [wikipedia.org].
Public broadband (and worse yet public WIRELESS broadband) would quickly become unusable, for anything except fetching the weather report, due to massive over use by 2% of the user base. The over-grazers would just deplete the resource quickly.
Of course, municipalities could employ the same measures as private industry does to regulate usage, but just as with welfare programs once government is involved, multiple levels of consumer protection automatically attach (and rightly so, since its government), and you find out that you really can't get rid of the abusers.
And the mere existence of a government provider would prevent the situation ever improving because competition would be stonewalled. Private providers would have to fight the government for tower locations, right of way restrictions, licenses, etc. And the government, far from trying to facilitate (and thereby tax) these providers would have every incentive to block them at every turn.
No local government has any experience in running a large city wide network, and in the end the municipality would be forced to contract this out to the low-bidder. Budget constraints would prevent timely upgrades, (how can we spend one penny on broadband when children are going hungry?), and large sections of the service would fall into disrepair. Federal funds would be sought, state grants would be lobbied for, and in the end, everyone but the local citizens would be paying for that community's experiment in socialism.
The analogy to roadways bound to be raised but its not the same, and broadband is not essential any more than is TV service.
Lets face it, the allure of municipal broadband lies with the vision of free internet. Just like free public pasture land it never works out that way.
Re:Doublethink (Score:4, Insightful)
Yeah right. The States regulate everything else: Power, water, natural gas, roads, car inspections, emission inspections, land use, ........ but for some strange reason they will not regulate internet companies. That is not a logical belief.
Re:Doublethink (Score:5, Insightful)
It's important that we keep PUBLIC money invested in our infrastructure, so that nobody can make the claim of "the corporations made this possible, therefore we should let them run roughshod over us"
But this argument concedes far, far too much truth to the side of corporate lies.
Corporations may make something possible, but corporations are made possible only by government interference with free markets. Corporations exist solely because of the Companies Acts of the 1800's and their modern descendents. They are a pure product of that State for the purposes of generating particular types of public benefit, and as such may be regulated in any way required to best realize the benefits for which they were created.
But anyone who pretends that any good done by corporations is not also a public good, and fully claimable as such, is (inadvertently or otherwise) drinking the corporate kool-aid.
Re:It ends up being a boon doggle (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in Georgia, and this is stupid. (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in an area, which is officially a part of the metro Atlanta Area, but we are severely undeserved by AT&T, Comcast, and any other companies that might(actually don't) offer services out here. AT&T refuses to extend DSL outside of the small towns in this county. Comcast refuses to offer broadband, at all; they only offer "digital cable". So, the great majority of this county is stuck with dial-up, satellite [dis]service, Verizon Wireless(AT&T had most of this county still covered in EDGE), or go without.
With AT&T, greater than 75% of this county's residences are not eligible to receive DSL, as the central offices are too far away. AT&T is willing to put us on some mythical "waiting list", but what the fuck does that do for us? Nothing. I know quite a lot of the county residences that I have talked to(many hundreds, if not a couple of thousands), are on this list.
Hell, my girlfriend, who works for AT&T and is required, by that shit-hole company, to have internet access, tried to talk to someone. Guess what? "[Fuck you!], waiting list." So, we have to pay AT&T competitor, Verizon Wireless, to provide us with slow, and severely capped mobile "broadband", so she can do her job for AT&T. We also do not get any sort of discount, or reimbursement. As much as it costs us, each month, it would almost be cheaper to pay for a DS1(T1, or whatever you want to call it) line to our home, at $357, or so, a month.
I am proud to live in Georgia. The problem is that there are too many idiots in our various governments. The local commissioners dodge citizens, unless you are one of the top contributors, and the state reps and senators usually don't give care about their constituents, once is office, actually, never, unless, again, you are one of their top contributors.
Chip Rogers, you can go fuck yourself. While you are at it, why don't you come out here and live with me for three months. I have a nice, rather new, and very clean home. I have a lot of property, so you will retain your privacy. The only catch is that you will have to work from here, and experience what we do, why trying to use just a few of the basic services found on the internet.
I will stand over your shoulder, watching the data meter. When you come close to the included allotment, I will proceed to beat the shit out of you. This will best help you understand how our wallets feel, each month, when we receive our bill from Verizon Wireless, on top of everything else we have to pay for.
I live in Georgia (Score:4, Insightful)
The infrastructure here is complete shit and ruled by comcast / charter. Take away the government money, bills go up to compensate. Let them continue with the government money, they will increase prices and not upgrade shit anyhow.
This state blows nuts. I'll be glad when I'm the hell out of here. This state is notorious for not siding or even giving a damn about it's people.
Remember, this is the same state that decided to test it's own version of math that didn't make any sense and caused thousands of students to fail exit exams.
Re:It ends up being a boon doggle (Score:5, Insightful)
"the mere existence of a government provider would prevent the situation ever improving"
Sure, because FedEx and Perrier don't exist, because it's impossible to compete with the Post Office and municipal water. If private industries are unable to provide competitive broadband services with municipal broadband, it's not clear to me that the right response is to outlaw their competition.
"broadband is not essential"
Sure, and roads aren't essential either, nor a standing army, firemen or police. Luckily, the people of the United States formed a government to provide for the common good, which is not limited to things that you think are "essential".
"the allure of municipal broadband lies with the vision of free internet. Just like free public pasture land it never works out that way"
If broadband were an absolutely limited resource, like a pasture, you might have the problem of it running out. Luckily you can expand capacity with no limit, so if people use more bandwidth you can grow capacity to suit.
You're right that some cities might contract broadband out to service providers, just as they do (for many cities) for water, power generation, telephony, etc., granting regulated monopolies.
Unlike pure competition, regulated companies are forced to provide quality service and invest in infrastructure, in return for a guaranteed return - if their service level is below requirements, they don't get paid. Of course, if you deregulate the companies, they are short sighted and strip their infrastructure to make short term profits. For example, look at how deregulated power companies stripped the safety margins from the US power grid, leading to failures and brownouts. The proper response, of course, is to restore proper regulations so that the US infrastructure is properly maintained.
Re:It ends up being a boon doggle (Score:4, Insightful)
Just about everywhere it's been done, people have gotten excellent service and better speeds than the incumbent telco for about the same price.
Why do you think the incumbent telcos are worried about this shit? If they were better, they wouldn't care.
Re:Doublethink (Score:4, Insightful)