
Wisconsin public Internet fights telecom attempts to kill it off - shawndumas
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/06/wisconsin-public-internet-fights-telecoms-attempts-to-kill-it-off.ars
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jasongullickson
I would love to hear a rational explanation of this from someone who supports
the bill.

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alexqgb
The argument in favor tends to be pro-free-market (ridiculous, I know, but try
not to laugh).

The theory is that an otherwise healthy and competitive market with low prices
and great service will be ruined if a government gets involved as a player.
The twin threats of not needing to make profits and being able to write rules
in their favor make municipal ISPs 'impossible' to compete with fairly or
effectively.

In reality, this makes as much sense as GM lobbying to outlaw subways. Or
(ridiculously expensive and wildly over-subscribed private schools) wanting to
ban public education. More importantly, it ignores the fact that nothing
remotely commensurate with actual free-market discipline applies to the
monopolies and duopolies that actually define the telecom landscape. (In this
regard, there may be more truth to the "we can't compete" claim than these
operators would care to admit).

There's another argument against municipal internet, but it's one that
opponents REALLY don't want to state. Specifically, they're horrified by the
very IDEA that data could be treated like a basic utility on par with gas,
water, electricity, and trash service. That frames their business in the
dreaded 'dumb pipe' terms that they are hell-bent on resisting at all costs.
After all, you buy water and electricity by the unit. What you do with those
units is your business, and has no influence on the price. That's pretty much
the opposite of what "content focused" ISP's regard as their ideal operating
environment.

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jordanb
> The twin threats of not needing to make profits and being able to write
> rules in their favor make municipal ISPs 'impossible' to compete with fairly
> or effectively.

Ironically, the very fact that this bill is succeeding is proof that the
municipal providers do _not_ have the ability to write the rules in their
favor, but the "private" telco monopolies very much do.

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pasbesoin
AT&T (really, SBC with a new name) headquarters are in neighboring
Chicagoland. They have a long and storied record of opposing any and all
potentially competing public infrastructure, to the point of e.g. suing to
prevent municipal broadband initiatives in communities that they have refused
(at least, until the time of the initiative, and sometimes even thereafter) to
service themselves.

Whatever your political position, it's clear that the current Republican
administration in Wisconsin favors private infrastructure and infrastructure
maintenance over public. This is playing out in numerous, diverse sectors.

What's unfortunate, from a technological perspective, is that this fairly
apparently provides less service at significantly higher costs, and it delays
upgrades by years.

In Illinois, getting DSL service from SBC/AT&T was a painful, frustrating
experience -- when you could get it at all -- until the cable companies,
particularly Comcast (I'm not expressing love of them, here, either) began
large scale deployments that significantly ate into SBC/AT&T's customer base.

Based on my experience and layman's perspective, my interpretation is that
this is about patronage and not technical nor financial innovation.

Reading between the lines, it might also be an attempt on AT&T's part to block
a potential Google high speed deployment in Wisconsin. Madison in particular
has been suggested by some as possibly a prime location for such a deployment.

And the same Republican administration has been pushing initiatives that would
aid in severing relationships in the current, statewide network of public
higher education institutions. (Generally regarded as functioning quite well
and offering the population coordinated diversity of opportunities.) The
described changes would also dovetail with these efforts.

P.S. The book that's mentioned, _Where the Wizards Stay Up Late_ , is a good
read particularly if you are unfamiliar with BBN, the development of
(D)ARPANET, etc.

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3am
"AT&T (really, SBC with a new name)"

Hah. And SBC and BellSouth were just AT&T with new names. Le plus ce change.

~~~
locci
You reminded me of Stephen Colbert's on AT&T
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsCp-1hgfxI>

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scythe
I've usually viewed it like this: a service is best handled by the free market
unless the benefits of having everyone use the same infrastructure exceed the
inefficiency of government-run services.

Surveillance worries regarding things like this depress me. It should be
possible to expect privacy from the government; that's how it works with the
postal service and I don't see why Internet should be any different.

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earl
-1 for the assumption that government services are less efficient than private. Were you even modestly observant you would know that isn't true, and there are examples floating everywhere (eg Medicare's provisioning of medical services, community broadband in many localities)

-1 for surveillance worries -- is this a glibertarian talking point or something? This network is explicitly for providing internet access to the various University of Wisconsin campuses and WI libraries. The latter, btw, are completely anonymous: you can come in, sit down at a computer, and start typing. There apparently was discussion of extending the network to communities which, you may or may not know, have shit internet service now.

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billybob
-1 for the rude and condescending tone.

