
Don’t Blame Big Cable. It’s Local Governments That Choke Broadband Competition - taylorbuley
http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-just-cable-companies-and-blame-local-government-for-dismal-broadband-competition/
======
jacobquick
This article is ridiculous shilling. Who do you think lobbies state and local
governments to keep the cost of entry high for access to the streets they've
been digging around in? The "big cable" trade association who "shouldn't be
blamed."

The cost argument is based on numbers that factor out long-term costs of
letting contractors dig wherever they want. They rip the streets to shreds and
since it's the lowest bidder the asphalt has to be completely redone after one
or two winters. In Boston we watched this happen to most of the region during
the big dig and that work was being done by the best people available.

The open access argument is absurd. What they mean is they want to run fiber
down streets with high incomes and let the cable monopolies continue to gouge
everyone else.

It's a real shame but if you want residential internet to get better in the US
there's probably going to be a lot of federal spending involved. Which we
could have managed back when all the cable lines were first being run. Back
when we had a functioning government. In the 1970s.

~~~
rayiner
> What they mean is they want to run fiber down streets with high incomes

You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want cheap prices and high
quality service, then you have to deregulate the industry, and a deregulated
telecom industry will focus on the high-end consumers, just like every company
does. Apple doesn't focus on making computers for poor people, and all those
companies peddling their wares on Facebook aren't selling basic essentials
affordable by poor people and people in rural areas. Someone in the tech
industry should understand better than most that in nearly any industry,
companies will chase premium, up-market consumers because that's where the
money happens to be.

If you want poor people and people in rural areas to have high-quality
internet service (or really, any internet service), you have to be willing to
pay for that. The way municipalities have chosen to pay for that is granting
utility monopolies. That decision isn't something that comes for free. It
comes at the cost of worse service for the wealthier urban people who would
get better and cheaper service in a free market.

Also, as a practical matter, municipal and state governments destroy
everything they touch. I'm not a small government drum-beater, and I'm a
proponent of regulation in many contexts, but the lack of transparency and
scrutiny makes municipal government regulation the worst kind of regulation.

~~~
jacobquick
Apple isn't a utility so isn't a relevant comparison. Cake isn't a utility
either, that's a foolish aphorism and is not a relevant comparison because we
aren't talking about a limited resource.

I can have both reasonable prices and universal service because now that
Verizon is cutting people off from land-based phone lines, broadband is the
country's communications utility, and it is entirely reasonable for a society
to use its elected government to construct infrastructure and guarantee
utility service to all of its citizens. It means both regulation and spending
at the federal level: Verizon or Google or whoever picks up the cost of
digging where it's profitable, taxes are spent make them whole where it isn't,
but the regulation is they have to do whole counties at once. Yes, once you've
gotten everyone to 1gbps or 10gbps or whatever "as good as it can reasonably
get" is you can go ahead and deregulate for a while.

Municipal governments have, for good reason, the right to manage their local
right-of-way, because no one outside of town cares about that one blind turn
on Middleofnowhere Street where someone's going to get killed one of these
days. That's the only scale of government that can or will manage traffic
safety or road conditions for local streets, and they have to have a say on
how construction is done.

The federal government will end up writing a huge novelty check to solve this
or it won't happen. It'll be 10 times bigger than it needs to be because the
corruption there is somehow just as bad as at the municipal level.

~~~
rayiner
Writing a big novelty check to make it happen is another option, and a
perfectly fine one (see, e.g., the interstate system). But there is no
situation in which everyone gets service, the prices are reasonable, the
quality is high, and nobody writes a big check.

------
sc68cal
I'd strongly suggest looking into the backgrounds of the authors. One is a
lobbyist and another is a former politico for Republican candidates.

Berin Szoka:

[http://techfreedom.org/people/berin-
szoka](http://techfreedom.org/people/berin-szoka)

>Berin Szoka is the President of TechFreedom. Previously, he was a Senior
Fellow and the Director of the Center for Internet Freedom at The Progress &
Freedom Foundation. Before joining PFF, he was an Associate in the
Communications Practice Group at Latham & Watkins LLP, where he advised
clients on regulations affecting the Internet and telecommunications
industries. Before joining Latham's Communications Practice Group, Szoka
practiced at Lawler Metzger Milkman & Keeney, LLC, a boutique
telecommunications law firm in Washington, and clerked for the Hon. H. Dale
Cook, Senior U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Oklahoma.

>TechFreedom is supported by foundations as well as web companies and
broadband providers (including Google).

Jonathan Henke:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Henke](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Henke)

>Shortly afterward, Henke served as the New Media Director for the Republican
Communications Office, an office of the Senate Republican caucus under the
leadership of United States Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).[6]
Congressional Quarterly wrote that Henke "launched one of the first and most
successful blogger outreach operations on the Capitol Hill, one that has
served as a template for other offices."[7] During his time as New Media
Director, Henke contributed entries at QandO less frequently than before, and
in January 2007, two other bloggers, Bryan Pick and Billy Hollis, joined
QandO.

>Henke announced in June 2007 that he would serve Fred Thompson's presidential
campaign as an Online Brand Manager.[8] Though Thompson withdrew his candidacy
in January 2008, Henke continued to work as a consultant, and started his own
firm later that year.[9]

~~~
rayiner
Tech Freedom and the Progress and Freedom Foundation are think tanks, not
lobbying outfits. Latham & Watkins's communications group does regulatory
filings and advises companies on regulatory aspects of mergers and things like
that, not lobbying work. I can't think of a background that qualifies someone
more to talk about the hurdles created by municipal regulation than someone
who actually has to deal with those regulations on behalf of his clients.

As for Henke, just because he's a Republican doesn't mean he's wrong...

~~~
sc68cal
>Tech Freedom and the Progress and Freedom Foundation are think tanks, not
lobbying outfits

Think tanks develop policy proposals and other types of information, that is
then used by political parties. The Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation
are think tanks, that heavily influence policy proposals by Republicans.

>As for Henke, just because he's a Republican doesn't mean he's wrong...

I absolutely agree. I don't think he's wrong. I just think it's useful to know
someone's background. It provides context.

~~~
rayiner
> Think tanks develop policy proposals and other types of information, that is
> then used by political parties.

Sure. Nobody would ever formulate policy proposals if they never felt anybody
would adopt them! That doesn't make them lobbyists.

~~~
bgilroy26
What makes someone a lobbyist? Do they have to bribe somebody?

~~~
rayiner
Lobbyists make more money, because they lobby on behalf of clients for the
money, while think tanks do it for the ideology.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Lobbyists make more money, because they lobby on behalf of clients for the
> money, while think tanks do it for the ideology.

Think tanks often do it for the money, too; the difference is that lobbyists
directly and overtly represent clients to policy makers in seeking change,
while think tanks tend both to minimize their direct link to funders and
direct their output to the public (in theory), though it often ends up as
material that allied lobbyists present to policy makers.

If the interests backing them were sovereign states, then (in terms of their
role in promoting policy) lobbyists would be ambassadors, and think tanks
would be "public diplomacy" operations.

------
jbooth
Hi everyone, I actually signed one of these contracts as a local elected
official.

We had no money, laying off teachers and cops 3 years in a row. Cable company
shows up and offers to fund our public access TV and hook up a bunch of
electronics, to the tune of $100-200k or so as part of the contract.

What the fuck do you think we did?

Yeah, we signed the contract, but it was their demands (we did have both
comcast and verizon in the market, at least). We came cheap, because the fans
of the free market have starved local governments of resources.

The cable companies have way more resources than any given local government
except for a few cities. They're the ones playing the tune, we marched to it.
Blaming it on local governments is willfully stupid.

~~~
adventured
So you're saying that local governments have less funds to spend today than
they did 15 years ago? I don't think so. I wasn't aware America still had a
free market, much less one that sprung up in the last 10 / 15 / 30 years to
deprive local governments of their massive spending binge over that time.

The data I've seen indicates total government expenditures have doubled over
15 years, and it's even faster at the local level. The local + state spending
haul is close to $2.6 trillion annually now. It's practically another federal
government system in size.

What has actually happened is local and state governments ballooned in size
massively since the late 1970s. Having over expanded without any means to
actually pay for it, all based on insanely optimistic (fraudulent?) economic
projections, now those governments are having to shrink due to their own poor
management.

California is perhaps the greatest - and most well documented - example of
this, both at the state and local level.

~~~
cube13
>California is perhaps the greatest - and most well documented - example of
this, both at the state and local level.

California's problem is mostly because of their ballot propositions,
especially the effects of prop 13, which limits property taxes to 1% of the
original sale price.

There are many additional propositions which have passed that increase
spending(especially for schools and other services), which make it pretty much
impossible for the budget to be balanced, because the state and municipalities
have almost no way of increasing taxes, nor can they realistically cut
spending.

~~~
dragonwriter
> California's problem is mostly because of their ballot propositions,
> especially the effects of prop 13, which limits property taxes to 1% of the
> original sale price.

The limit is to 1% of the current assessed "full cash value", not the original
sale price. However, there is also a limit that the assessed "full cash
value", despite the name, can increase no more than 2% per year excluding new
construction (and quite a lot of classes of improvements are expressly
excluded from counting as "new construction") and changes of ownership (and
certain changes of ownership don't count, as well.)

The net effect of which is that the property tax base can fall rapidly with
real estate market collapses, but expands only slowly with real estate market
booms (and, particularly, that property that doesn't change hands frequently
tends to be taxed at a low nominal rate applied to a value that is vastly
below its actual market value.)

------
nostromo
A friend and I, on a whim, spent a fair amount of time looking into how to
create an ISP using our own hardware. The hardware is cheap, right? How hard
can it really be?

But we ended up exactly as you'd expect from reading the article: trying to
figure out how companies get pole attachment rights. If I wanted to pay a
contractor to string a line between our houses, that should be doable right?
Well, no. For our local government, there was no clear way to get approved to
use the public utility lines. Once you find the office that manages pole
attachments, if you ask them about the approval process, I guarantee you'll
get blank stares.

I think it's possible that it's been so long since any new companies have been
granted attachment rights, the people in city government don't even know what
to do with you if you ask to apply. This leads you only one route: lobbying
the city council, which is where our little experiment ground to a halt.

(Btw, if you want to see the positive aspect of having regulatory hurdles to
run communications lines, check out this old picture of New York:
[http://www.baltimoresun.com/media/photo/2012-07/71033655.jpg](http://www.baltimoresun.com/media/photo/2012-07/71033655.jpg)
and
[http://www.nwhistorycourse.org/ttcourse/Year2/unit2/week9/im...](http://www.nwhistorycourse.org/ttcourse/Year2/unit2/week9/images/Wires-
Undgd1890-1910-800.jpg))

------
ceejayoz
Local governments heavily lobbied by Big Cable, in many cases... and outright
sued by them when they attempt to do things like municipal broadband/wifi.

~~~
r00fus
And in states like PA, the state government takes bribes from Comcast and
slaps down municipalities that try to shake the boat. The Feds (if the
corporatists continue to entrench power)

It will take big players like Google - and the increasing importance of access
to data - to pry open this decades-old corruption scheme.

------
schrodingersCat
This article is partially correct. The mayor of my town was censured in an
ethics committee hearing in part due to his shady dealings with a broadband
provider. As a result, Comcast is _STILL_ the only game in town. Did lobbyist
have something to do with this? Undoubtedly. But clearly "big cable" is not
the only part of the problem.

------
js2
Riiiight.... like in NC where TWC lobbied successfully to restrict competition
from local governments:

[http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/22/nc-governor-will-let-
cabl...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/22/nc-governor-will-let-cable-backed-
bill-restricting-municipal-bro/)

[http://www.muninetworks.org/content/after-4-years-twc-
buys-i...](http://www.muninetworks.org/content/after-4-years-twc-buys-its-
north-carolina-legislation)

This was after Wilson, NC was unable to get neither TWC nor Embark to build
out a fiber network for its residents, so the city built it out themselves:

[http://www.wilsonnc.org/living/fiberopticnetwork/greenlighth...](http://www.wilsonnc.org/living/fiberopticnetwork/greenlighthistory/)

------
wnevets
Local governments lobbied by big cable. Comcast lobbied Harrisburg hard to
gimp Philadelphia's free WiFi initiative

------
laurentoget
This would be believable if the situation in Europe wasn't a direct counter-
example.

They do have local governments there too. Yet with regulations forcing the
owners of the local loop to share their facilities, they broke the monopoly of
the ex state-owned phone operators.

------
BerinSzoka
Folks, we at TechFreedom cover a wide range of issues. Just today, we joined
18 other civil society groups in EFF's lawsuit against the NSA's surveillance
of telephone call records; announced an event in San Francisco on reforming
the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act to rein in this overly broad law with reforms
such as proposed in "Aaron's Law"; and endorsed reforms that would cut the red
tape that prevents many of the schools and libraries that most need E-Rate
funding from getting it. So.. please take a moment to look through the range
of our work before leaping to conclusions. You might start by perusing our
Facebook & Twitter feeds:
[http://twitter.com/techfreedom](http://twitter.com/techfreedom)
[http://facebook.com/techfreedom](http://facebook.com/techfreedom)

------
yk
It should be mentioned that fibers are a natural monopoly [1], that is a
market were it is essentially impossible to win against the first guy in the
market. This is, because the first company who lays fibers in a location has
costs X for an expected revenue Y. The second company has also costs X, but
only a expected revenue Y/2\. And additionally the first company can roll over
their dept, and can then operate at a smaller revenue. So as long as the
competition is not willing to pay the additional costs for strategic reasons,
it is very hard to compete against an already entrenched (pun intended) cable
company.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly)

------
aaronbrethorst
Not in Seattle: [http://gigabitseattle.com](http://gigabitseattle.com)

------
Vivtek
I think I'm safe in blaming both - to different extents in each location.

------
Yourfags
As an anecdote, I havn't even read the article, but I live in orleans parish
in New Orleans, LA. I have a choice of two high-speed internet providers, Cox
cable and AT&T, I have AT&T, and recently I was told I needed to switch to
AT&T U-verse, which sounded great, I mean upgrades are good right? Months
later I come to find out that my internet and phone which are now bundled
together no longer work periodically, and during stormy times they practically
never work: Long story short, my house is a) too far from the nearest point of
service for anything faster than a 1.5Mbps connection, b) it's not real
U-verse service c) I can't even keep the bundled phone and internet, though
thankfully they did reduce our bill somewhat. The real kicker is though that
for 6years there has been a lawsuit against Orleans parish because our former
mayor was an executive of cox cable and made it ILLEGAL, yes illegal, for
fiber optics to be installed in Orleans parish. It's ridiculous we're not
talking high explosive weaponry, slaves, or other contraband; but I could just
move out of my parish where the law isn't quite so foolish.

