Guess Who Opposes Federal Funding for Broadband Internet Services Run by City Governments? (msn.com) 116
U.S. President Joe Biden has proposed federal funding for local internet services run by nonprofits and city governments, according to Bloomberg. "That's not sitting well with Comcast, AT&T, Verizon Communications, and other dominant carriers, which don't like the prospect of facing subsidized competitors."
Pleasant Grove, Utah shows why established carriers might be vulnerable. With 38,000 residents, it's nestled between the Wasatch Range and the Great Salt Lake Basin, just south of Salt Lake City. When it asked residents about their broadband, almost two-thirds of respondents said they wouldn't recommend their cable service. Almost 90% wanted the city to pursue broadband alternatives... [The city-owned ISP Utopia Fiber] will also reach areas not served by current providers... When the city council voted unanimously to approve Utopia's $18 million build-out in April, the mood was a mix of giddy and vengeful. "I'll be your first customer that signs up and says goodbye to Comcast," said one council member moments before the body voted. "I'm right behind ya," another added.
The events in Pleasant Grove jibe with the rhetoric coming out of the White House. Biden says he wants to reduce prices and ensure that every household in the U.S. gets broadband, including the 35% of rural dwellers the administration says don't have access to fast service. To connect them as well as others languishing with slow service in more built-up places, the president wants to give funding priority to networks from local governments, nonprofits, and cooperatives. Established carriers are pushing back against the proposal; they have long criticized municipal broadband as a potential waste of taxpayer funds, while backing state-level limits on it.
Almost 20 states have laws that restrict community broadband, according to a tally by the BroadbandNow research group.
The carriers say the administration and its Democratic allies are calling for blazing upload speeds that have little practical use for consumers, who already get fast downloads for videos and other common web uses... Republicans want to bar spending on municipal networks and have criticized Biden's broadband plan as too expensive. In response the administration scaled back its plan to $65 billion, from $100 billion.
The article notes that local governments in the U.S. are already offering about 600 networks that serve about 3 million people, according to Christopher Mitchell, director of the Community Broadband Networks program at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
Yet it also cites statistics showing that in 14 of America's 50 states, less than 85% of the population has access to broadband.
The events in Pleasant Grove jibe with the rhetoric coming out of the White House. Biden says he wants to reduce prices and ensure that every household in the U.S. gets broadband, including the 35% of rural dwellers the administration says don't have access to fast service. To connect them as well as others languishing with slow service in more built-up places, the president wants to give funding priority to networks from local governments, nonprofits, and cooperatives. Established carriers are pushing back against the proposal; they have long criticized municipal broadband as a potential waste of taxpayer funds, while backing state-level limits on it.
Almost 20 states have laws that restrict community broadband, according to a tally by the BroadbandNow research group.
The carriers say the administration and its Democratic allies are calling for blazing upload speeds that have little practical use for consumers, who already get fast downloads for videos and other common web uses... Republicans want to bar spending on municipal networks and have criticized Biden's broadband plan as too expensive. In response the administration scaled back its plan to $65 billion, from $100 billion.
The article notes that local governments in the U.S. are already offering about 600 networks that serve about 3 million people, according to Christopher Mitchell, director of the Community Broadband Networks program at the Institute for Local Self-Reliance.
Yet it also cites statistics showing that in 14 of America's 50 states, less than 85% of the population has access to broadband.
Strange headline (Score:5, Funny)
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Share the land, y'know?
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Yes
Guess Who
The Who
Who's on First? [youtube.com] by the Credibility Gap
Re:Strange headline (Score:5, Funny)
Municipal broadband, stay away from me
Municipal broadband, mama let me be
Don't come a-hangin' your fiber here
I'm good with 5G for porn and a beer
Modem lights can hypnotize
Your service is not what you advertise
I don't need your construction liens
It's anguish enough when I get blue screens
Now broadband, get away from me
Municipal broadband, don't take my money-hee-hee-yeah
[For the record, I'm not against municipal broadband. I just thought this mashup might be funny. Did it work?]
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You'd get a mod point from me, if I had any to give.
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ClickOnThis asked the musical question:
[For the record, I'm not against municipal broadband. I just thought this mashup might be funny. Did it work?]
I'm a little surprised it's not at +5 Funny already ...
ISP's Have Had Plenty Of Time (Score:5, Insightful)
To get broadband out to everyone. As usual it is more important to make shitloads of cash than it is to help folks get broadband. Sad that out of all entities to make this right it is the government that does it, or tries to anyway.
Greed and selfishness is the new American motto. Get used to it.
Re:ISP's Have Had Plenty Of Time (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ISP's Have Had Plenty Of Time (Score:5, Insightful)
They have repeatedly "persuaded" the FCC to fork over billions
The money was authorized by Congress, not by the FCC.
only to turn around and pay the money to their shareholders
Perhaps your outrage should be directed toward the federal government, which gave away billions of taxpayer dollars to ISPs with no legal requirement that the ISPs actually use the money to benefit rural customers.
Re:ISP's Have Had Plenty Of Time (Score:4, Insightful)
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In more civilized countries that would be known as fraud.
Re: ISP's Have Had Plenty Of Time (Score:2)
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It's worse than that. They have repeatedly "persuaded" the FCC to fork over billions for programs to push our rural fiber, only to turn around and pay the money to their shareholders in dividends.
The Trump admin was changing the rules with clear measurable requirements so they could actually hold providers accountable. Under Biden we'll go back to what we've had for so long, taxpayer money flowing to these companies with no accountability. But they'll make is sound good.
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It's worse than that. They have repeatedly "persuaded" the FCC to fork over billions for programs to push our rural fiber, only to turn around and pay the money to their shareholders in dividends.
This is what happens when you hold a gun to the heads of the populace and take their money. And somehow it is OK to steal the money from the guy barely scraping by in Ann Arbor and feed it to the City of Chattanooga for their Gig to Nowhere highly subsidized, opaque broken window project. Because a city can't take care of itself and do things that financially make sense, so let's have the federal government step in and set the precedent of bossing people around in local matters.
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Re: ISP's Have Had Plenty Of Time (Score:2)
I can't tell if you're being sarcastic... But that is exactly what Google has tried to do as long as a decade ago.
I was doing business in the area at the time. Google bought out an existing failed municipal fiber network in Provo, UT (Just a few miles south of Pleasant Grove, mentioned in the article.) They bought access to all active and dark fiber for like $1, in exchange for offering free 10mb?? internet to the population for 5 years. 100mb was an upsell I believe.
The logistics of building a great fiber
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: ISP's Have Had Plenty Of Time (Score:2)
Yep. We tried the "Free market". We even subsidized them. They didn't make good on their promises.
A state sanctioned monopoly (or duopoly) is not the free market. The biggest impediment to new companies stringing new fiber is local ordinances and regulations. If you actually got rid of those, THEN you'd have a free market. You'd also have chaos and lots of lawsuits over who is allowed to touch which pole and such ... but that would sort itself out over time and you'd end up with some actual competition.
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This subject keeps coming up, and the answer is the same.
The government should own the poles and wires and core network - the ISP's should be leasing access to that and providing whatever level of service whey want on top of that - same as how transport companies provide the trucks, people and billing services for pickup and delivery, but the government provides the roads.
It never makes sense to have competing networks. Better to have a single well maintained and well funded network instead of two or three
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"This is the problem with socialists, there is no end game, it is race to the bottom until everyone starves to death..."
Right, the race to the bottom is only supposed to happen to the working class, which is exactly what we've had under capitalism in England in 1831, and in the USA right now.
People need to:
1) learn some history instead of propaganda
2) learn the actual definitions of things. for example, a pure example of socialism is the credit union, wherein the members control things.
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Right, the race to the bottom is only supposed to happen to the working class, which is exactly what we've had under capitalism in England in 1831, and in the USA right now.
Yet the working class today live better than the upper classes did 100 years ago...
People need to:
1) learn some history instead of propaganda
Which part, how average life expectancy has doubled in the last 100 years? How the average working class person no longer has to work 12 hour days, 7 days a week, and can afford a TV and a car and Internet, can travel and get a college education if they choose to?
Or did you prefer the history when when Mao starved 20 million of his own people to death? Or when Stalin did it? Or Castro? Or Chavez? Which particular part of hi
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Sounds good (Score:5, Insightful)
Considering the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars these private companies have received over the decades to upgrade and expand broadband service in this country, and who, instead of using the money for its intended purpose bought back stock and gave out bonuses to their executives, they can shove it.
Perhaps if they had done what they were paid to do and/or didn't collude to keep prices high, speeds low and not compete against one another, this wouldn't be an issue. ISPs have only themselves to blame.
Re:Sounds good (Score:5, Interesting)
Naturally. Would we even have a Starlink if the incumbents had did what they were suppose to? The fact that it required the creating of a launch platform AND a constellation should tell you something. And of note the incumbents could have done the same thing if they'd wanted to. It took a billionaire with a can do attitude to make it happen.
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Naturally. Would we even have a Starlink if the incumbents had did what they were suppose to?
Yes, because the Starlink signal is lower latency between continents, and it will pay for itself in about a year by front-running stock market trades.
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How much money did SpaceX get from the government in various ways during the development and testing of the rockets its now using to launch all those Starlink satellites and would it be where it is with Starlink if it hadn't received that government money?
Re: Sounds good (Score:4, Informative)
My rural nh town in March voted to build out fiber to all residents. Cost $3 million. Town backs $1.6 million and fed does the rest. Part of the agreement is that it is managed by the local phone company. With options to change out the management.
What gets me is that same phone company hasn't been investing in the local copper lines. In 40 -50 years we have to repeat this whole thing again because they won't upgrade the lines
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What gets me is that same phone company hasn't been investing in the local copper lines. In 40 -50 years we have to repeat this whole thing again because they won't upgrade the lines
I don't really want copper anymore. Fiber covers all my needs.
Re:Sounds good (Score:5, Informative)
Considering the hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars these private companies have received over the decades to upgrade and expand broadband service in this country...
Came here to say exactly this. According to TFS the dominant carriers "don't like the prospect of facing subsidized competitors". Fucking hypocrites; they've had subsidies in the form of tax breaks, free access to public rights of way, and on and on, for decades - and now they're crying the blues because the gov is finally going to subsidize someone else to do a necessary job that the incumbents not only failed to do, but refused to do. Boo fucking hoo - somebody call a waaaambulance for these poor entitled snowflakes.
Re:Sounds good (Score:5, Insightful)
Also came here to say exactly this. Lack of competition spawns laziness and entitlement, and the most challenging thing carriers have had to do lately is drag the bags of money they've fleeced from subscribers all the way to the bank. For years we tried using the carrot to coax better behavior, now it's time to use the stick.
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Came here to say exactly this. According to TFS the dominant carriers "don't like the prospect of facing subsidized competitors". Fucking hypocrites; ...
What? They don't like the prospect of having to provide a competitive product at a competitive price, instead of jacking their prices up year after year while delivering the same or poorer service just because they want to boost the dividends to their shareholders, secure in the knowledge that they've carved out their own little monopolies and don't have to risk someone moving in who's willing to provide the same service for less money? Internet service is not inherently a monopoly, and companies should not
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Corporations, just like governments don't work well if they're not in risk of getting replaced somehow.
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Maybe we should just stop subsidizing the incumbent ISPs with bogus rural broadband rollout money instead? Our local "municipal" ISP (it's actually run by the power company as a semi-private entity) funded their rollout with a bond issue, not Federal dollars.
Moving to the state of common-sense. (Score:4, Interesting)
Almost 20 states have laws that restrict community broadband, according to a tally by the BroadbandNow research group.
Hope they're keeping that list current. The thing to keep in mind is there's still thirty states that don't so that makes them more competitive than the ones that do. A self-correcting problem like Freenode.
Why throw federal money at community broadband? (Score:2)
Almost 20 states have laws that restrict community broadband, according to a tally by the BroadbandNow research group.
IMHO that, plus the absorption of ISPs into giant conglomerates with vertical integration that make big money off services run on the Internet, are the problems.
So why throw an additional federal subsidy at it? Just:
* override the cities. counties, and states can't play laws which are why community broadband stopped growing,
* break up the vertical integration with content pr
I hate cable companies as much as the next guy (Score:1)
Re:I hate cable companies as much as the next guy (Score:5, Insightful)
Then compete with your competitors instead of colluding and breaking the law.
They didn't want to compete in the first place, the "invisible hand of capitalism" prefers collusion, and so they should get the slightly more visible hand of jail time for failure to build out infrastructure and perjuring themselves before Congress.
Municipal broadband is great (Score:5, Informative)
15 Utah cities are already part of Utopia. I signed up almost two years ago, the very week it was available in my neighborhood. It's a brilliant service.
Before I had the absolute fastest non-cable option available to me: CenturyLink DSL at a nominal max 12Mbps, with a modem-reported connection speed of 10Mbps, and actual performance a fraction of that. And that cost me almost $200 a month.
Now I'm paying $75 a month for a nominal 250Mbps connection that frequently measures faster than that. That includes $10 for a phone line I'll be cancelling soon. With three kids in school plus me teleworking, that really came in handy when the virus sent everyone home.
Re:Municipal broadband is great (Score:5, Insightful)
Do they block running services on their network? The whole reason we're having trouble with centralized social media is because the Internet is a peer-to-peer architecture, but ISP's block running services.
There are some nascent peer-to-peer social media architectures available today, but their development languishes because most people can't run them on their home connections.
"Just upgrade to business class for free speech" would be an inappropriate thing for a government-run entity to say.
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Do they block running services on their network? The whole reason we're having trouble with centralized social media is because the Internet is a peer-to-peer architecture, but ISP's block running services.
Social media's problem isn't technological. The notion of the party line is as old as the telephone. The problem is that freedom for most means saying what ever one wants with no responsibilities attached. What that means for readers is the noise to signal ratio goes up, and the quality goes down. The ONLY solution that bypasses any cries of "you're taking my freedom away from me" and places it firmly in "your freedom ends at the tip of my nose" is reader filtering with some community ranking. That places a
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This isn't a hard problem. After you rate enough comments ML can match your preferences with others' and you can cut way back on filtering by relying on your similar cohort.
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UTOPIA isn't an ISP, it is an open access network with about a dozen ISPs. It is VLAN tagged layer 2 switched Ethernet over fiber.
DSL networks used to support multiple providers as well, until the big telecom providers decided to put the competition out of business.
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"Upload speeds have little use for consumers"? Tell that to everyone who has ever tried to use any kind of video chat on a link with a slow upload (and guess what millions of people are now doing a LOT more of thanks to the current mess the world finds itself in...)
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Re: Municipal broadband is great (Score:2)
I have a business partner from a rural city in Utah that declined to "buy-in" to the Utopia partnership. (A lot of citizens don't like paying higher taxes for something they won't use. The article summary hints at that.) Utopia isn't managed great.
Many years ago his city actually made it law that they couldn't build a public road without fiber running under it. I would imagine the property developers end up bearing the cost. Then 2 years ago they lit it up and started rolling it out. $0 install fee. $45 for
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With three kids in school plus me teleworking [...]
That's the interesting part. FTFS:
The carriers say the administration and its Democratic allies are calling for blazing upload speeds that have little practical use for consumers, who already get fast downloads for videos and other common web uses
See, here's the thing. If I'm working from home, I need good download and upload speeds so I can check in code while I'm in a meeting.
Let's be honest--at the moment, most people are Internet consumers. I want to stream 4K movies from Netflix, Amazon, Apple, Disney, HBO, etc. It's one-way to me. And the Cable companies have optimized their networks to let me do that by taking their max capacity and giving most of it to downloads. But you add in things like school, work
Most profitable industries (Score:2)
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No, "highest profit margin" is a term people toss out without actually looking to see if it's correct.
Having said that, I believe
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Note that telecoms have a high profit margin BECAUSE they get government subsidies and tax breaks.
Now, as to this particular issue, consider the Rural Electrification Act (during the Depression). Which pretty much accomplished its design objectives.
Yes, there are things the government SHOULD do. Getting broadband to everywhere is one of them. But don't ma
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Not this kid (Score:3)
The carriers say the administration and its Democratic allies are calling for blazing upload speeds that have little practical use for consumers, who already get fast downloads for videos and other common web uses
Try doing a cloud-based backup with Comcast's abysmally shitty 1.25 mb/s upload rate. Unfortunately, the only "competition" I have where I live is ADSL...which is no competition at all. I'd welcome municipal broadband; competition is always a good thing.
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Except slashdot is cloud-hostile so a better example that serves others is saying, well I can't do good P2P with Comcast's shitty upload speed. Readers will eat that up.
I Oppose it Too (Score:1)
This is not the job of the federal government. This is for the states to handle.
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This is for the states to handle.
The states took contributions from cable and telecom companies to keep municipal broadband out. This is just federal level politicians wanting a piece of that corporate cash.
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Republicans like to say they are for less government. But they are the first to pass laws that give specific telecom monopolies and limit what towns or even cooperatives / citizens themselves can do to get around this.
And Democrats have to spend your money on their plans (with strings tied for more control and rakeoffs for cronies) and add more government structure (gaining more control and hiring more cronies) when just undoing the legal blockages would do the job even better.
Community broadband seems to w
Uh, broadband is coming to every rural area (Score:3)
by the end of the year.
It's called Starlink.
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by the end of the year.
It's called Starlink.
If we cut down all the trees and level the planet.
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If we cut down all the trees and level the planet.
Nah. Just put the antenna on a pole or tower as tall as the surrounding trees.
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If we cut down all the trees and level the planet.
Nah. Just put the antenna on a pole or tower as tall as the surrounding trees.
Our township frowns on 100 foot + towers in residential areas. My trees are that tall. People who live in the midwest might find it odd, but In PA, especially in the Ridge and valley region, we are very green, lotsa trees, and very steep valleys, and it rains a lot that makes for issues with the bands Starlink uses. A friend is getting it, he'll be reporting success or not. I'll just go for fiber, and I kinda doubt that Spacex Starlink will compete with fiber.
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Our township frowns on 100 foot + towers in residential areas.
If it's an antenna for a licensed service your township can frown all it wants but you can put the antenna up anyhow. FCC regulations trump township ordinances through the supremacy clause of the constitution.
This comes up a LOT. If it ever gets to court the local jurisdictions lose.
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When Did PG Ask Residents? (Score:2)
I'm dubious about this claim because I live in Pleasant Grove myself, and have for 8 years. Nobody ever asked my opinion, and I'm not aware of any such poll ever happening.
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sounds like a bunch of sponges want handouts.
i think Biden is just blathering lip service (Score:1)
I do for one (Score:1)
Even if that were not true city run internet is abuse central. We need to kick the NSA out of our communications, not hand them all over to city and state government without proper due process as well. Look at the intrusive abuse built right into the PLAN for the NYC metro internet. If the police have the keys and make up their own legal theory about having met due process who acts as arbitur before they can use
You reelect these people for 40 years (Score:1)
What the hell do you expect? Dinner and a movie? Hope you're not expecting flowers in the morning
If you want muni broadband, universal health care, world peace.. you have vote for people that will do it. And when they fail, you are supposed to vote them out. This is all theory, of course, but it seems plausible
Be careful what you wish for (Score:1)
Does any government service run better than a private equivalent? (No, the military doesn't count).
government versus private service (Score:2)
Does any government service run better than a private equivalent? (No, the military doesn't count).
The fire department is the historical example of a public service taking over when private industry failed. When your house is on fire the local private fire company wants payment up front to fight the fire, and they will charge you 90% of the replacement cost of your home. The government-run fire department is paid for by property taxes, and fights fires at no additional cost to the homeowner.
Where I live, fuel to heat my home is provided by a private company. If they raise their prices too high, or scr
Why? (Score:1)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
The feds are involved because the "free market" is failing to provide competition and better services. Telecom companies lobbied to make it illegal for local governments to provide broadband. In places where it is legal the telecoms have sued to prevent competition. They know their service is inferior and lawsuits are cheaper than building capacity.
https://broadbandnow.com/repor... [broadbandnow.com]
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Because the 'free market' isn't always interested in getting service to everybody, only to the profitable areas, but sometimes it's desirable to have services delivered, even if inefficiently.
See, for example, rural electrification, rural telephone, and now, rural internet.
Broadband is a vital utility (Score:2)
Swap “broadband” for “water” or “electricity” and it’s clear just how ridiculous the ISP arguments are.
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Broadband today is what POTS telephone service was in the last century: a basic communications service. It needs to be available to all, and it needs to be maintained at the state of the art.
Unfortunately, what we have now, is ISPs cherry-picking the areas they want to serve (the profitable ones) and neglecting the others, while trying to get by with obsolete plant for as long as possible. Analog CATV is not competitive with fiber, and should be replaced. But that costs money, and why upgrade your plant whe
Run by City Governments! Great (Score:2)
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Why is the free market not stepping in to offer competition?
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Your taxes already paid these companies to build but they pocketed the money instead.
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Re: Run by City Governments! Great (Score:2)
I'm ambivalent about his. (Score:1)
Censorship (Score:2)
Well, if govt isp tries to censor you, at least you can sue based on 1st amendment, unlike a private corp. Based on recent occurrences, it seems that you have more rights if govt runs everything.
How about paying ISPs after? (Score:4)
I don't want my ISP ran by the government. I see a lot of people complaining about government overreach in general, and I wonder if they're the same ones who want to give the government more power here?
It seems more reasonable for the government to add legislation that holds subsidies until AFTER contractual services are rendered by the ISPs. ISPs have the money to float themselves for these upgrades until they're paid by the government... so let them.
Do we really want socialized internet? (Score:2)
At first glance, it looks like it would be cheaper and have fewer cheating bastards throttling your connection, but what about 5 years later? What would happen to innovation in a market with no competition? It's a slippery slope... I would prefer to focus on increasing competition and keeping the playing field level by reducing ways ISPs can cheat. The last thing I want is to hand over my internet connection to our shockingly incompetent and corrupt government.
Re:Do we really want socialized internet? (Score:5, Informative)
So, fine. Municipal fiber is open to any ISP you choose to have. Want Comcast as your ISP? They have the same access to municipal fiber that AT&T or Charter has. Pick the one that offers you the deal you want. The municipality could also offer you ISP service, in addition to the fiber pipe. That's how competition works.
Gotta say, I don't see a downside to municipal fiber. The municipal ISPs we have around here are all very competitive with Comcast et al, and rated gigher.
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Innovation is driven by companies because it is profitable to roll out new and more competitive technology. If we socialize any kind of technology, it will no longer be a profitable business and all innovation will stop. In a few years, we will be stuck with out-dated technology and nobody will be interested in investing money to upgrade it because it is a loss-making business. Soviet Chinese America will not be the wonderland you think it will be.
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I don't need an innovative replacement for optical fiber.
So back to the real world Australian example, it started out as all fiber, to the premise, gold plated, best of breed, then that got changed to fiber to the node with copper as a last mile in some cases, and it slowly got paired back to the minimum shittiest standard they could get away with. Think Buran or Trabant. Socialism never produces quality, it promises quality but produces shit, and once the initial funding has be burned through there is way to produce more without brute force so it stagnates and e
Deserved Replacement (Score:1)
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... Someone just needs to teach rural Americans how to configure DNS etc to avoid their locals from providing the communities only what "locals need to see" on search hits or content.
The customary way of doing this is to separate the pipe from the content. The municipality lays the fibre to each home and business and keeps it working. Various ISPs compete with each other to provide you with service over that fibre. You pick the one with terms and conditions that suit you, plus good customer service and good price. The ISPs can negociate with the production companies and copyright holders for access to their content, plus provide content of their own such as weather, government and
Comparison (Score:2)
As an outsider, I have to ask. Now that you have had time to compare, policy-wise, which one is better? Trump or Biden?
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Nobody can hold their feet to the fire anymore. This has been well established. Look at how Citizens United legalized bribery and regulatory capture.
So, we need to go around them.
Re: Giddy and Vengeful (Score:2)
Legalizing municipal broadband *IS* âoeholding their feet to the fireâ. Sink or swim.
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Re: Guess who else opposes it? (Score:2)
Wow, the trolls are out today. Who said the Feds are running it?
They are subsidizing local munis instead of granted monopolies. It's not ideal but are you really arguing it's better for the Feds to sub monopolies? Cause that's been the alternative thus far.
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Which constitution? The same constitution that literally instructs the federal government to run a postal service and build roads? Where does it prohibit states (or even the federal government) from offering services that compete with businesses? Mind you, I think it's bad policy, but I don't see any prohibition in the constitution. It probably ought to be there, but I don't think it is. Looks like Mado forgot. Care to prove otherwise?