Tennessee Could Give Taxpayers America's Fastest Internet For Free, But It Gave Comcast and AT&T $45 Million Instead (vice.com) 341
Chattanooga, Tennessee is home to some of the fastest internet speeds in the United States, offering city dwellers Gbps and 10 Gpbs connections. Instead of voting to expand those connections to the rural areas surrounding the city, which have dial up, satellite, or no internet whatsoever, Tennessee's legislature voted to give Comcast and AT&T a $45 million taxpayer handout. Motherboard reports: The situation is slightly convoluted and thoroughly infuriating. EPB -- a power and communications company owned by the Chattanooga government -- offers 100 Mbps, 1 Gbps, and 10 Gpbs internet connections. A Tennessee law that was lobbied for by the telecom industry makes it illegal for EPB to expand out into surrounding areas, which are unserved or underserved by current broadband providers. For the last several years, EPB has been fighting to repeal that state law, and even petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to try to get the law overturned. This year, the Tennessee state legislature was finally considering a bill that would have let EPB expand its coverage (without providing it any special tax breaks or grants; EPB is profitable and doesn't rely on taxpayer money). Rather than pass that bill, Tennessee has just passed the "Broadband Accessibility Act of 2017," which gives private telecom companies -- in this case, probably AT&T and Comcast -- $45 million of taxpayer money over the next three years to build internet infrastructure to rural areas.
America! (Score:5, Insightful)
Making legislated monopolies great again!
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Maybe after you twats realize Democrats also voted for the bill, you could stop letting them get away with goddamn murder while you scream "REEEEEEEEE" at only half of the problem.
https://legiscan.com/TN/bill/H... [legiscan.com]
Facts? Get those goddamn facts out of here.
Re:America! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just about Monopolies (Score:3)
Re:Monopolies suck. $4,400/house aint free (Score:5, Informative)
It's not free. It's government providing needed infrastructure. High speed Internet access is a requirement for being a first-class citizen in the modern age.
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Infrastructure isn't cheap, but it's a lot cheaper to maintain than it is to build. This is also how most AT&T-owned copper was built. This is better than handing the money over to a single private company.
Re:Monopolies suck. $4,400/house aint free (Score:5, Informative)
Chattanooga EFB took over $300 million from taxpayers. There are 75,000 households in Chatanooga, so the cost is $4,400 per family even if you don't get the service, with an additional monthly charge if you want the service. When you have to pay $4,400 plus $60-$150 per month, that's not free. That's not anywhere near free.
This is quite inaccurate. EPB only took $111 million from taxpayers. $300 million was the total cost including the amount paid for by Internet, cable, and electricity customers of EPB. That comes to $1628 per household, not $4400. Fiber optic cables are tax depreciated over 15 years, with a presumed service life of 25 years, so that is $15 per month per household in taxes.
And considering these taxes then mean you don't have to deal with companies like Comcast, it seems like quite the bargain.
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I like how you get to decide what people are forced to spend money on, then make a complaint about Comcast.
Comcast never threatened to jail someone for not buying their service. You propose totalitarianism.
He didn't decide what the people of Chatanooga are forced to spend money on. The people of Chatanooga decided what they all, collectively, would spend money on. It's called representative democracy, you blithering idiot.
Meanwhile AT&T and Comcast have proven that at the state level, where money talks far louder than votes, they have much more "representation" than the citizens. There's your totalitarianism.
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The only people who it benefits are those who use it. I shouldn't have to pay for you to have public internet access.
I'm not sure that's entirely true. Society, by and large, has moved online. For example, most job postings (if posted at all) are online. There is a societal value (including to you) in having people able to access those job postings. Also, many government activities (information dissemination, license renewal, etc.) can be provided more efficiently online, saving the government (and by extension, you) money. I'm sure there are many other examples of how other people having internet benefits you. It might n
Re:America! (Score:5, Insightful)
Not at all. You create a municipal internet, and you still allow everyone else to compete with it. You just use the government option as a method of making sure competition actually works in the public's interest.
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Not at all. You create a municipal internet, and you still allow everyone else to compete with it.
Fair competition is only possible so long as the municipal ISP doesn't receive any special treatment, such as favorable regulation, access to municipal easements, tax subsidies, municipal bonds, etc. At that point, why make it part of the municipal government at all? An internet co-op could do exactly the same thing without all the conflict of interest.
Re:America! (Score:5, Insightful)
Fair competition is only possible so long as the commercial ISP doesn't receive any special treatment, such as favorable regulation, exclusive access to region, ability to get tax money when they feel threatened by a competitor... .
FTFY :-)
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The way you structure things like this is that the municipality (or PUD, depending on the region) builds out the physical infrastructure, and then you allow multiple content providers (television and internet) access to that infrastructure.
I'm pretty familiar with the situation in Chelan County and Douglas County in Washington State. There, their respective PUDs have built out nearly complete FTTH networks, running over the PUD right of ways and what not. The PUD handles the physical infrastructure up to, a
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The way you structure things like this is that the municipality ... builds out the physical infrastructure, and then you allow multiple content providers ... access to that infrastructure.... The network is very reliable, the service is extremely affordable, and there is real competition.
I can believe that there is real competition between Internet gateways, but in this scenario the city itself holds a privileged position as the provider of the infrastructure—by far the largest part of a local ISP's capital investment. The separation is beneficial, to be sure, but there is no need for the city to supply the network. Unless there is special treatment (i.e. corruption) involved, a co-op could handle that part just as well as the city can, and competition among local network providers is
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The whole point is to make the competition somewhat unfair. You should what someone who doesn't have a profit motive, but instead a public service motive would do. That forces all the guys with profit motives to show them how to run the thing efficiently, and *still* make a profit while providing all those good services.
Here is an example of a functioning co-op (Score:4, Informative)
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As states outlaw municipal broadband it seems to me that this kind of institution is one that they can't sensibly outlaw. They could try, of course, an no doubt will.
You damn betcha they will. And they'll succeed, too. I'm a member-owner of an electricity co-op. My average monthly bill is 1/3rd that of people who are in the service area of the for-profit company in the region, for the same size house. The for-profit company successfully lobbied the state government to forbid the co-op from servicing any city in the state (decades ago). So for higher reliability and a vastly lower rate, my rural co-op provides me power at a dramatically lower meter-per-mile density
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That's a predictable but nonsensical response. If you are concerned that a private market "leads to (natural) monopolies", then adding a publicly financed corporation into the mix is unlikely going to help because usually one of two things is going to happen: either the public option is so bad that it can't compete, or it is so well subsidized by taxes that private companies are relegated to minor status. It's
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Which is kinda my point. If you're going to end up with a legalised monopoly, I'd rather have a non-profit one run for the benefit of the people, than a for-profit one run for the benefit of the shareholders.
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Re:America! (Score:5, Informative)
In this situation, "their way" (the current way) is to have regulations that prevents competition from entering an area the cable companies aren't expanding into amyway, "my way" (the alternative that got shot down) is to get rid of the regulation and allow a profitable company to expand where nobody has yet at no additional cost to taxpayers...
Cities providing internet does not create a "legislated monopoly," it creates a public service. However, having legislation that protects monopolies by not allowing competition does create a "legislated monopoly." Really basic stuff here, guys, shouldn't be this difficult for this crowd.
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yes, a public service, where the voting public can have some say in how it is managed.
Tell me, what power do you have over a corporate monopoly to change its ways?
Money well spent. (Score:2, Insightful)
Government working for it's constituents at the finest.
Re:Money well spent. (Score:5, Informative)
A politician's constituents are the people who donated the most to their campaign.
Re:Money well spent. (Score:4, Interesting)
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The best government money can buy.
Re:Money well spent. (Score:5, Insightful)
Anarchy essentially means that whoever has the most power will rule, make the laws and enforce them to his own benefit.
Hmm. I fail to see the difference to the current situation.
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I think you just described a totalitarian regime, not anarchy.
On the other hand, you also described the U.S.A.
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I think you just described a totalitarian regime, not anarchy.
One leads inevitably to the other, because power begets power.
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A power vacuum is quickly filled by someone wanting to wield that power.
Yes, in theory Anarchy is the absence of rule. In practice, it ends up as whoever can oppress the rest rules. Take, well, any place ever where organized rule (i.e. government) breaks down. Take, say, Somalia.
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Anarchy by definition means nobody is ruling over anybody.
The problem is that anarchy is unstable and tends to collapse into states; and new states are usually the worst kind, where whoever has the most power rules.
So if you've got a stable state that's better than that, that's better than switching to an unstable utopia that will immediately collapse into something much worse.
But if you can keep making your stable state better and better, the limit toward which you are perfecting it is anarchy.
Improving st
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Yes, but people are assholes and would rather make others work than work themselves. "True" Anarchy is the absence of rule. But, as stated a few words back, people are assholes and if I can make you work instead of working myself, that's what I will do.
Hence whoever has a chance to oppress someone else will do so, if only for the sake of having to work less for more gain.
That's why Communism failed. People don't like working.
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Anarchy in its purest form, the total absence of any kind of rule, works exactly as long as there is exactly one person.
As soon as you have two, one of them will try to make the other one work for him.
People are assholes. And they really, really hate to work if they can get away without it.
Re: Money well spent. (Score:5, Insightful)
Spot on. The only real party in the USA is the Corporate Party. It's biggest enemy is Social Media and it does everything it can to twist it.
One party government (Score:5, Insightful)
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The Democrats won the popular vote. In a two horse race they seem pretty competitive.
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Nova Express indicated that Democrats are not competing with Republicans due to their various political stances. What AmiMoJo rightly pointed out was that given we have a two party system, if the popular vote is +/- a few percentage points either way, then support for the political stances of both sides is evidently competitive. I don't believe anyone was making a statement as to which party should currently occupy the Oval Office.
That should have been obvious. As a helpful hint, it's the misinterpretation
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There's one big difference between the South and the North, and it is closely related to why it's Chattanooga that has muni fiber and not, say, Memphis. That difference is called "black people". Blacks cannot be allowed to control things, because they make an utter hash of it - if you don't think so, name one majority-black city you would want to live in and believe to be well-governed. He's heard of Detroit, Gary, Compton, Memphis...
Washington. DC
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That is one of the big advantages of "top two" primaries - if your state is securely "locked in" to one party, then the primary will reflect that, and you'll end up with a choice between two members of that party for office. Then it won't be party loyalty that decides which candidate wins, and corrupt established politicians will face genuine competition for their seat.
Plus it gives an advantage to moderates who are able to reach across the aisle and appeal to opposing party voters as well, so "losing par
INSTANT RUN OFF VOTING (Score:2)
Primitive Voting promotes 2 party rule. The single biggest fix one can make is to put in a modern voting system which allows more than 2 parties to get access to power (and by modern I do not mean electronic!) Divide up the duopoly control over the system.
That is just 1 big thing; there are so many other problems wrong in the system (and the citizens) no single thing will fix it. The American Empire is falling after such a short run; I never read about one that turned it around.
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This is what happens when you let one party have a complete stranglehold on state government. The number of Republicans in the state senate are almost 6 to 1 in favor of Republicans. It's almost 3-1 in favor of Republicans in the state house. The governor in Republican and there's no accountability. Voters have shown consistently that the vast majority of them only care about whether a D or R is next to a candidate's name and everything else is negotiable. I'm sure we'll get a few "Throw the bums out" posts, but that's not going to happen. Most of the state governments in the southeastern USA have sizable Republican majorities. I've seen corrupt practices out of the Democrats too when they had strangleholds on states with huge majorities in the state legislature. It's what happens when one party gets entrenched and there's no hope of getting them out.
Unfortunately, that doesn't apply here. When we were fighting the SuperDMCA bill so many years ago, the cable lobby had Curtis Person (R) as the senator (his son headed the cable lobby here in TN, by the way) and Rob Briley (D) as their house boy. Basically, they own both parties and it's really difficult to get decent legislation passed that affects them.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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And burn all the churches instead of the witches, let's not forget about that!
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Unfortunately, they do try that shit every time they get even a slight majority.
If the Dems would drop the "OMG gunz!!1!" issue, they would get a lot more support. Drop the identity politics, too, and they'd become a pretty reasonable party (if still heavily authoritarian, like almost all US parties).
Re:One party government (Score:5, Insightful)
"Democrats will take ma guns..."
Go ahead & mock people while you keep losing elections by alienating millions of voters who lean Democrat but will vote Republican based on this one issue. Your last presidential candidate even went so far as to say that Australia-style gun confiscation is "worth considering".
If you're a Democrat, you'd be smart to tell your party to drop gun control from the platform. It's no coincidence that Democrats lost their decades-long majorities in both Congress and the Senate right after they passed the first major federal gun control law since 1968; A defeat from which they have never recovered.
This issue is a boat anchor on your party. After 22 years, isn't it time to cut your losses & move on to more important things?
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doubts (Score:4, Insightful)
I know the intent of the article is to make people enraged, and it certainly seems like something's going wrong here.
However, I have serious, fundamental reservations about government competing with the free market.
While certainly there are some circumstances, and this may well be one, where government can beneficially 'manage the commons' better than private or for-profit interests, there's something troubling about government agencies, on taxpayer funds, driving private firms out of business.
Yes, I see from the article that EPB runs a profit, and doesn't take tax money for operation. But do they bear the long-term capital costs that a private firm would for infrastructure? They certainly get use of city right-of-ways, no? In disputes over land use or zoning, I have to imagine they get a far more sympathetic hearing from city agencies?
In any case, it should be in the interest of any citizen to doubt the wisdom of establishing and protecting anti-competitive markets in the long run, not to mention the idea of a business having (essentially) the power of law enforcement on their side.
http://reason.com/archives/201... [reason.com]
It's not a free market (Score:5, Informative)
However, I have serious, fundamental reservations about government competing with the free market.
That might be a valid concern if provision of wireline data was actually a free market. It is not and never has been and there is no reasonable prospect of it becoming one in the near future either. Companies like AT&T and Comcast have a government granted monopoly because of the substantial capital costs involved in setting up and maintaining such a network. As such they need to be regulated to assure against abuses. Given that fact it is perfectly reasonable for the government to get into the market with alternative offerings if the private corporations are not providing sufficient value to the citizens.
Re:It's not a free market (Score:5, Informative)
It is not and never has been and there is no reasonable prospect of it becoming one in the near future either.
That's not exactly true. Just look for pictures of NYC at the turn of the century and you can see neighborhoods with hundreds of power and telephone lines from competing companies going through neighborhoods. It's an eyesore and incredibly dangerous. This is why it will never be that way again and why there should be no corporate interests invested in owning utility lines.
Pedantic (Score:3)
Just look for pictures of NYC at the turn of the century and you can see neighborhoods with hundreds of power and telephone lines from competing companies going through neighborhoods.
You kind of missed the point but I'll revise. There hasn't been any meaningful version of a free market in power line or wire line telecom or cable TV networks within the lifetime of anyone who will read this.
This is why it will never be that way again and why there should be no corporate interests invested in owning utility lines.
I don't see a problem with a (regulated) private company owning utility lines as long as they don't also own what is being transmitted over those same lines.
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... some local entrepreneur will decide that bringing good internet in a town of 20.000 in bumfuck rural america is profitable in two years and will bite the bullet. he will then be bought by another entrepreneur who's servicing the slightly bigger town next door, and soon you'll have competition.
Yes, you'll have competition - until there are only a few big players left forming an oligopoly that is the antithesis of a 'free market'. That's the thing that free marketards don't get - it doesn't STAY free. And no, don't trot out that old 'if the big players abuse the market someone else will come along to compete' BS. Anyone who comes along to challenge the oligopoly, either gets squashed by the greater resources and deeper pockets of the incumbents, or becomes big and abusive in the process, thereby j
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there's something troubling about government agencies, on taxpayer funds, driving private firms out of business.
What private firms have been driven out of business here? The ones that have been given $45M of taxpayer money? I don't see anything in the article about companies going out of business. Sorry if i missed it.
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What private firms have been driven out of business here? The ones that have been given $45M of taxpayer money?
Its all the ones that didn't get taxpayer money.
But you wont discuss this subject in any way that resembles an honest consideration of the situation.... because you have an agenda to push.
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I think the difference here is that this is a government owned company, rather than the government itself. For infrastructure needs, I think this makes more sense than a government granted monopoly since the company officers are accountable to the owners, which is the government and people they serve, instead of some distant faceless shareholders.
Personally I think most utilities should be Co-ops where the owners are the people being provided service. The only place where I see free markets working for util
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I thought the summary was a little bit hyped, but in my opinion municipal data networks aren't inherently anti-competitive and actually encourage competition.
Let some free-standing but government-owned corporation run the municipal network at layer 2 and lower. Mandate they run at only enough profit level to cover their operating costs and future investment/expansion. They provide nothing more than link layer connectivity and operate a CO data center open to all comers -- schools, businesses, for-profit c
Free fiber! (Score:2)
In other news, Chattanooga has discovered a way to expand infrastructure without paying for any labor or buying any materials.
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yeah I was wondering: if Verizon and Comcast can build it, can the government then lease it after getting right to expand? Hell, since they paid for it, can they lease it for free?
Will someone from Tennessee (Score:2)
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Are you really going to ignore this the next time your representatives run for re-election?
And the answer will be: ignore what?
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nothing corrupt about it, that is vote to use money to help city infrastructure, where most the taxpayers/citizens live.
$45M for all the rural areas in the state is far too little to do anything useful anyway, cities already have foundation in place for networking
Separate the infrastructure from the service? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Because bribes.
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Probably no fancy means involved - after all it doesn't matter to you or the providers if you're using gas or electricity that actually came from them, so it can all be done in the utility company's bookkeeping. For every unit of energy that you buy "from Provider A", the utility delivers one unit of energy to you, while buying a unit of energy from Provider A. Ditto for the other providers. Where the specific unit of power delivered came from is irrelevant.
I think it's a wonderful way of doing things, and
Common carrier? (Score:3)
I've been arguing for years that if telecommunications companies take public money for expanding infrastructure, they need to be designated as common carriers.
in the 1990s, back when it was Bell Atlantic (before Bell Atlantic-NYNEX, before Verizon) got public money to build out infrastructure in the general I-95 corridor. They then didn't do it for YEARS.
We need to go back to the old ISP days -- line (physical connection) was separate from port (data to the internet), and the ILECs (incumbent local exchang
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First you force them at gunpoint to get in bed with the government, then you say "now that you're in bed with me...".
You mean 9600 baud dial-up, with semi-illegal third party modems or leased lines that cost more than the apartment they go to? I absolutely don't need that, thank you very much.
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If all you want is equal access to the wires, there is no need to "nationalize the fiber", you can just separate the hardware provider from the service provider.
However, an even better solution is for cities to just put in conduits instead of digging up the road for every cable.
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What advantage do you get from the extra layer of administration over your gas and electricity providers? There's only one set of wires/pipes. so "deregulation" is a farce. They've convinced you to pay twice for the same service, once to the company actually providing it (the one who actually reads your meter, fixes the pipes or wires, etc) and another one who does nothing but add a layer of extra administration for no benefit.
You can't solve a natural monopoly by adding a competitive layer on top of it, th
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So you now pay "x" for internet, your proposal is to continue to pay "x" but have "x" regulated by the government at that price, and then add a surcharge "y" from a different company that provides no service other than administration.
I'm not sure how this is supposed to improve anything. If anything, it causes the company actually providing the service to stop caring about it's quality, after all, you're stuck with them, no matter who you move to for your billing (arguably no different than now, but at leas
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How? Out here in oklahoma at home I have one choice for electric and water. In town you have one choice for electric, water and gas. That is if you live in an area of the city that the city allowed to have natural gas lines run.
I've heard the city is pretty picky about the permitting anymore something about the natural gas competing with their electric for heating in the winter.
But how would that work I don't really have anything here I could compare it to?
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What is with these headlines? (Score:2, Informative)
Yes, the city/state government could have spent a bunch of money to "give the fastest internet for free" to the people inside the urban bounds of Chattanooga. OR, they could use that money to make it worth the providers' time to extend that lovely fast service out in to the surrounding areas that have no access at all. Which is
Same deal here in Portugal (Score:4, Informative)
In the 2000's, Portugal's ANACOM (kind of our very own FCC, but much more "lobby-able") allowed the subsidization of copper, cable and fiber installation to unserviced areas exclusively to Portugal Telecom (PT, now commercially known as MEO), then a mostly public company with a big monopoly on phone and internet services but none in cable or satellite TV, with the state itself covering up to the 90 %'s of the cost but ownership being kept by PT. All PT had to do was compromise on maintenance and also service the rural areas where they already had a presence, thus providing close to 100% home owners with basic cable DSL. It was very good - for the 2000's, many villages ended up with 256kb internet services with copper, although they were more expensive than in cities.
Problem: rural lines were never maintained or upgraded. By 2010, internet users in rural areas had ascended to more than 80% due to population renewal - most schools, services and even income tax forms or civil services are now internet-based and people need a solid bandwidth for accessing these services, and these services are not made for 2000'ish bandwidth. Our income tax website for instance is a 50MB Java Applet that constantly fails and requires refresh, does bad caching. Moodle and other educational web platforms, even email, demand decent down and upload speeds for word, pdf or other assignments. In technological terms, we have the xDSL protocol but not even close to the throughput to support it effectively. I've seen multiple cases of people subscribing to 24mbit services, effectively getting 2mbits tops, and the instability at that speed prompts most people to even request a reduction to 1.2mbits to PT so they get a stable service.
Bigger problem: PT/MEO was sold by our previous right-wing government under pretext that it was a demand for targeted Troika goals for having received a bail-out, and a known company dismantler Altice, spearheaded by Luso-French CEO, took the majority share (and abolished the state-owned golden share) of PT, while managing to include a monopolizing contract clause specifically for rural areas, where the installed lines were mostly payed for by the state, but are still fully owned by the company. And they pretty much payed below asking price. Better offers were denied from more decent parties for reasons that were never actually disclosed. PT is now a super-aggressive marketing company, with the likes of Cristiano Ronaldo and our best comedians stepping in their commercials. The service, obviously, hasn't improved sh*t the last 5 years.
So now, in Portugal we have at least 4 fiber providers, 2 of them expanding their own line strongly to rural areas not serviced by PT, but they are constantly blocked from providing service because they can't use the tubing that is now owned by PT (part of the lines deal), and new licenses for cabling will not be issued because of the monopolizing clause. They can't even demand the lease of existing lines or tubing in some instances. That's how strong ANACOM is defending PT.
For this reason, Portugal is now becoming a home-3g/LTE playground with actual decent speeds. I am seeing more and more people switching to home-LTE plans because they are much cheaper and immensely more modern and reliable. They are provided by all ISPs unlike landlines because PT does not have a monopoly there, and so prices and plans are a lot more competitive. And yes, I said mobile services in Portugal rural areas are more reliable than landline. That's how bad it gets.
Now, why do I have to live in a country where rural areas get the same treatment as 3rd-world countries, who pretty much skipped landlines for cost, and are jumping to mobile data instead. It is appalling.
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TL:DR Portugal's government pretty much payed installation of high-speed internet infrastructure, in the 2000's, to then state-owned company PT. Now that company is no longer state-owned, and they got to keep the taxpayer-payed infrastructure, and a monopoly clause for rural, non-competitive areas. Service by PT hasn't improved much the last 10y in rural areas, and companies intending to service those areas (which stopped being non-competitive long ago), are being blocked from it by the monopoly that our FC
Here is a radical idea.. (Score:5, Interesting)
..that has actually been brought up before on Slashdot, but it bears bringing up again.
Why not let each county/city build out a fiber optic network that will serve its citizens, connect to each county that touches them in a peering agreement, then connect to the overall backbone that is the Internet? Once those fiber networks are built out, the county/city can then let any ISP that wants to connect to the fiber and sell services -- with the county/city collecting $XX.xx per connection for upgrades and maintenance. THAT would create competition. Even if the local county/city creates their own ISP, then that service provider/entity must be separate from the entity owning the fiber optics and still has to pay $XX.xx per connection for access to the physical fiber. Fair play and all that.
The county/city entity that owns the fiber should have a completely "hands off" policy (net neutrality) when it comes to data flowing over the fiber and their only concern is the physical upkeep and maintenance.
Transportation vs Municipal Internet (Score:2)
The cable TV and telecommunication corporations' ultimate goal isn't just eliminating competition, their ultimate goal is absolute ownership of the wires/fiber networks that deliver internet services. That is the key to shutting out or hampering competition.
$45 million (Score:2)
How do you expect the telcos to supply broadband to even one rural house with that? That won't even cover the interior decorating cost of a yacht these days.
They really have it? (Score:2)
Money uber alles (Score:2)
Re:This is what you voted for America. (Score:5, Insightful)
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And that makes it ok?
It actually makes them more dishonest. They pretend to be something they're not.
Re:This is what you voted for America. (Score:5, Insightful)
Golf clap for a master job the GOP did getting people to vote against their own best interests. Bravo, my friends.
Credit would be due if it were somehow 'hard' to fool people. As Mark Twain (allegedly) said, "It's easier to fool a man than to convince him he's been fooled."
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Re:This is what you voted for America. (Score:4, Funny)
"Then I'll get on my knees and pray
We don't get fooled again!
No, no!
YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!"
- Abe Lincoln
Re:This is what you voted for America. (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm no fan of the GOP, but face it: It would not have been any different if the Democrats ruled. What would change is who gets to steal from you.
And frankly, if you're a rabbit, do you care whether fox or wolf eats you? It sure matters to fox and wolf, but to you, the outcome isn't that different.
Re:This is what you voted for America. (Score:5, Insightful)
Your statement presumes the Democratic party would yield a different result. That isn't the case. The Democratic party shifted to neoliberalism in the late 80s/early 90s.
The parties differ on social issues. They are identical when it comes to corporate issues.
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Apologize for that, young man!
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or, more likely, ''campaign contributions'' or ''research grants''.
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a.k.a the double reverse Robin Hood - taking from the small and poor to the rich and established groups, that in turn sell value created from that to the small and poor again. Basically corporations get to sell the taxpayer, a product that the taxpayer paid itself. That is some convoluted definition of capitalism.