
Why is European broadband faster and cheaper? Blame the government - d0ne
http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/28/why-is-european-broadband-faster-and-cheaper-blame-the-governme/
======
tzs
In the "Need to Know" version of this story they talked with a BT
representative about how things had worked out for BT after they were forced
into local loop unbundling.

It worked out _great_ for BT. They make more money leasing out the lines and
leasing out space in their switching centers for the third party ISP's
equipment than they were making providing monopoly ISP services directly.

It truly is a case of everyone wins. BT makes more money. Third party
companies can start ISPs and make money. Consumers get plans that fit their
needs better and cost less.

~~~
fourk
After looking at the options available that were linked in the article, I'm
unsure that I agree that _everyone_ wins. Specifically, consumers looking for
the higher end of the spectrum.

At least, the only higher-end provider linked in the article, Demon [1], seems
to offer abysmally low bandwidth caps on almost every plan, and generally low
max download speeds (20Mb or less). How well are their bandwidth caps
enforced? I ask because Comcast does not seem to enforce their bandwidth caps
in San Francisco, at least for customers on their >$99/mo Home plans.

I realize that this is an extremely small sample size, how well does this
trend describe other UK providers? Personally, given the option between any of
the plans Demon has to offer, I'd still prefer my 50Mbps down/10 up Comcast
line that has effectively no cap, for which I pay 100/mo. Is Demon the
exception and not the rule when it comes to pricier third party providers in
the UK?

[1]: <http://www.demon.net/broadband>

~~~
arethuza
BT Infinity (40Mbps down, 10 up) is £18 a month with a 40GB cap and £25.60 for
unlimited.

~~~
fourk
Thank you, as much I tried to resist believing it...the grass certainly is
greener on the other side.

~~~
Aloisius
I have symmetric 100 Mbps uncapped service in San Francisco for $33/month if I
pay by the year or $45/month if I don't through Webpass. It works beautifully.

~~~
cdr
Ouch. My parents pay $45/month for 2Mbps. But they live in a rural mountain
town where there's only one provider (plus satellite, which is even more
expensive with interminable latency).

------
tzs
The most interesting part in that is that in the UK, both Verizon and AT&T
were strong and public proponents of local loop unbundling. When asked about
it for the US, they say it is terrible and will hurt consumers.

~~~
chrisjsmith
That's because everyone justifiably hates BT, rather than it made sense.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
Well it produced the same result in Sweden. And I am sure that “everyone”
hates the incumbents in the US too, so the result would possibly be similar.

~~~
masklinn
Likewise in France (see FreeTelecom, pretty much the poster child for line
sharing and local loop unbundling)

------
bjelkeman-again
The report which is referenced by Endgaget says about fiber penetration in
Sweden:

    
    
      "Fiber and fiber-LAN networks have a slightly bigger share of the market 
      than cable, holding 14% and 13%, respectively. Sweden trails only 
      South Korea and Japan in household fiber penetration rates.”
    
      "Municipal networks alone control 20 to 25% of the coverage. 
      Among the more than 150 local fiber/LAN networks in 2008, a majority 
      are owned by municipal authorities or municipally run companies.”
    

And I think this is probably one of the key factors to high fiber penetration.

My local government owns the fiber, and I paid to connect to it from my house,
so I own the last 40 meters. :) And now I can chose from seven companies
offering IP services (four which offer services for homes, the others are
company offerings only) and four which offer digital-TV services.

92% of apartments in our local community are connected to the fiber network
and 37% of the individual houses are. The other houses are likely to use DSL.

~~~
mseebach
It's not a silver bullet, though. In Denmark, electrical utilities (semi-
private) spend obscene amounts of money digging down fiber, but when fiber
arrived at my in laws, it took all of a minute comparing their offer with what
they could get over DSL before ticking the "no thanks" box. (The price was at
best comparable, and then there was the several hundred dollar connection
fee).

------
r00fus
So this is basically more evidence that government regulation does work (when
it's not captured - oil and nuke reg agencies are horribly corrupt).

If there's anything that all folks of political bent should agree on, it
should be greater transparency where government and business (ie, moneyed
interests) interact - otherwise you get the mess that is the US government
"regulation" efforts.

------
ojbyrne
For those who think this is going to be an anti-government regulation,
libertarian orthodoxy type article, here's the tl;dr:

"government regulators who have forced more competition"

~~~
bobo888
Well this is how it happend in Romania:

\----------------- __2000 - 2002 __

There was NO regulation. We just threw UTP cables from building to building,
and bought external connectivity from bulk sellers. We didn't pay any taxes.
We didn't have any signed agreements with "customers". We didn't have any
permits from the city council either. There were no employees... heck, we
weren't even registered as a business.

We just threw UTP cables through the city like it was in our own backyard. The
only problem was after thunderstorms, when there was a shortage of switches to
replace the burned ones :) Oh, and from time to time I had to call some
customer's mom to ask her to reset the stuck switch hosted by her kid, because
half the network couldn't connect to the internet.

Users paid about $10 for 100 mbps connectivity with other users (multiplayer
games and movie/mp3 sharing) and 64 kbps internet access.

Basically we were just some highscool/college kids building a LAN, and every
user paid a share of the costs. My network had about 200 subscribers and
covered a 2x2 km area. Several networks like this one were scattered
throughout the city. Every month a couple of new networks appeared, while
others bit the dust (including my own).

\----------------- __2003 - 2004 __

(By this time me and my friends lost interest in being a "pseudo-ISP", so I
can only speak from the POV of a customer)

Networks with 100-300 users began joining together forming networks of 1000+
subscribers. Companies were formed, real sys-admins were hired. Some backbones
were now built with fiber optics.

Big companies noticed this and started to complain in the mass-media, calling
such networks "illegal". Well, they were partly right (nobody gave a f#ck
about building permits and taxes).

Now users paid $10 for 100 mbps connectivity with hundreds and even thousands
of other people, and 256 kbps internet access. Big telcos were barely able to
offer 128 kbps with a monthly traffic limit.

\----------------- __2005 - 2008 __

Big telcos stopped complaining and began building their networks. Then
increased their networks speeds, removed the FUP, offered subscriber packages
(phoneline + cable + internet access). For $10 you could get a landline and 5
mbps internet.

A lot of city "LANs" couldn't keep up with the big guys and crumbled. Others
joined forces and became real ISPs (with tech support, tax payments, ...) and
some even managed to obtain money from investment funds. They could still
compete with the main ISPs because they offered much better tech support, and
the 100 mbps LAN speed was still of huge interest, even if the internet access
was limited to 1-10 mbps.

\----------------- __2009 - 2010 __

Small ISPs begin implementing Fiber to the Building. Hello Gigabit (well, 1000
mbps with others subscribers only... the internet connection is limited to
20-30 mbps).

Big telcos buy more and more small ISPs, but also continue to improve their
infrastructure. Some drop the old cable (with its DOCSIS modems) and begin
implementing Fiber to the Building too.

\----------------- __Today __

For $10 per month you can get 100 mbps internet access + 5GB of mobile 3G
connection. My ISP started installing Fiber Optics to the home (GPON
technology) for houses and continues installing Fiber to the Builing (and UTP
from there to your apartment) for high buildings. They also began installing
WiFi access points through the cities (free access for all subscribers).

\-----------------

IN THE END, I WOULD LIKE TO THANK THE ROMANIAN GOVERMENT FOR NOT INTERFERING.
And if the large companies will try to form monopolies, I'm sure new ISPs will
appear. I don't care about regulations. Thank you.

~~~
chopsueyar
Awesome story. I like the idea of a city or neighborhood LAN with an internet
gateway.

This makes a lot of sense, especially when local online businesses want to
serve their local community (like a local Groupon or live streaming of the
neighborhood's Little League game from multiple cameras).

~~~
bobo888
Well, back then we didn't see it as a business. Of course there were also
people who knew what they were doing, but if I remember well, my network
started with three teenagers wanting to play Quake and Need for Speed. Then
more and more people joined... hundreds of them.

Internet access wasn't a priority (most users wanted it for IRC, and there
were very few local websites/services anyway). As long as we could share
movies and play games, everything was fine.

Today things changed. I think that most users want 100 mbps internet access
instead of 10 mbps internet + 1000 mbps LAN. But I'm confident that, if the
ISPs fail, people could build their own networks as long as the State doesn't
interfere.

The problem with US seems to be that the Government is bullying (through all
kinds of regulation) small ISPs in order to protect the big guys.

\---------- EDIT: I have to admit that (in 2003 or so) it felt good when a big
telco, with a budget of millions, could barely provide 128 kbps, while the
small ISP which I joined was providing 512 kbps internet access + 100 mbps
LAN. Today I'm a subscriber of that big telco, because they managed to pull
their stuff together and now provide a really good service (at least in my
area). But Gov regulation had noting to do with it. It was the competition:
improve your service or die. Plain and simple.

------
americandesi333
This is a very interesting article, especially 'dummifying' the complexities
of US telecom markets. I used to always wonder why US was so behind in terms
of broadband deployment and the answers that we given to me were always around
'density'. However, there are densely populated areas in US that can create
better broadband experience.

The challenge here is that the larger telecom companies (AT&T, Verizon) are
required by law to sell their loops to other carriers, but there is a lot of
CAPEX needed even with the fiber/copper look. It costs around $1000 per
subscriber to bring a broadband TV service home even from the neighborhood
(connecting from neighborhood to home and all the equipment in the home). This
high CAPEX is a barrier for new entrants in this market.

Another reason why US is behind is that the US Federal Communications
Commission (FCC) is not allowing the telecom companies in US to charge users
based on their tiered internet usage. Therefore, price per mbps is flat no
matter how much bandwidth you use. On the other hand, European telecom
companies are allowed to charge extra for higher bandwidth usage.

Once these two barriers fall (cloud based home TV management and tiered
pricing) there will be more competition in US.

~~~
masklinn
> On the other hand, European telecom companies are allowed to charge extra
> for higher bandwidth usage.

These are getting rarer and rarer these days. And the countries which raced
ahead dropped quotas early, or never had quotas in the first place (France for
instance, second ADSL market in Europe, standard ADSL contracts are all
unmetered and metered never represented any significant portion of the
market).

Even Belgium, historically one of the worst countries in europe quotas-wise
(supposedly due to the very low level of computer-based production, meaning
ISPs can get no peering), is moving away from quotas.

> Once these two barriers fall (cloud based home TV management and tiered
> pricing) there will be more competition in US.

No.

~~~
americandesi333
Masklinn, If my first point was not correct, then why is there so much
lobbying effort and dollars being spent on the 'net neutrality' issue?

Also, just out of curiosity, want to know why the 'No' for the two barriers
and if you identified something different that would change the landscape.

~~~
masklinn
> Masklinn, If my first point was not correct, then why is there so much
> lobbying effort and dollars being spent on the 'net neutrality' issue?

Net neutrality has _nothing whatsoever_ to do with quotas.

> Also, just out of curiosity, want to know why the 'No' for the two barriers

The first one simply does not make sense, the second one is at best irrelevant
and at worst counter-productive (countries using quotas are historically the
worst ones in terms of penetration and improvements over time, they're solely
a way for carriers to fuck with above-average customers)

> and if you identified something different that would change the landscape.

Bundled line sharing (mandated at acceptable prices by regulations), they let
new isps start out as purely virtual and ramp up their operation by building
their physical network over time (DSLAMs and local loop unbundling) instead of
having to front these, and affordable local loop unbundling.

Those are what triggered internet access improvements in european countries
with a former telco monopoly (just about all of them). As well as policy and
explicit political drive for increased competition in the sector.

------
afterburner
Free markets need government regulation in order to create competitive
environments where the customer is served best. (The "blame the government" in
the title refers to blaming the US government for not creating those
conditions, and crediting the European governments for doing so.)

~~~
Apocryphon
I think it's a clever, ironic use of blaming the government- in the U.S., big
government is always seen as an impediment and to be dreaded, but the problem
is not for meddling bureaucrats, but hands-off ones who allow corporations
free rein.

~~~
arecibodrake
You mean the governments that constrain through force the market so that only
a few monopolistic entities are present?

~~~
Apocryphon
The problem is caused by bad government, but the solution is good government,
as exemplified by the BT story. A completely free market would lead to a
monopoly in broadband anyways. The irony here is that the government is not
doing anything to solve the problem.

~~~
arecibodrake
Government getting the hell out of the way of people voluntarily interacting
the marketplace is the best situation.

For example: cable easements. Get rid of them. Get rid of all easements.
Without them, you would have a variety of options and methods of gaining
access to a number of utilities (internet, power, etc) as well as new services
that have not yet been created.

~~~
prodigal_erik
Easements and the monopoly they sanction are the reasons that everyone in an
area can get service at all. If they had to write a private contract that
would cover the absurdly high cost of laying cable, it would make a cell phone
contract look like a love note. It would have to be a covenant imposed on
every tenant of the building for many years. It would be just like regulation,
only written by people with an immediate incentive to do it as abusively as
possible.

Real-world markets lack infinite competition and perfect transparency, so they
pretty routinely fail to deliver optimal solutions. Many famously wealthy
people got there by exploiting strategies to make markets fail.

------
biturd
Where can I find out more about the "last mile" wireless links near the end of
the video?

I will be moving to an retirement area that has a summer population of a few
hundred and a winter population of many thousands. There is no internet
currently aside from cellular. I wanted to look into long link wifi, but only
have found expensive point to point solutions that are multiple thousands of
dollars.

I don't even know if it is possible. The closest town is only a few miles, but
I doubt Comcast is going to let me share a few business class accounts to all
those users.

I was going to try to keep it free to near free, a few bucks a month and cover
the equipment costs on my end up to a few thousand dollars. If I can't hook
into cable without violation of TOS, then I have to go right to the telco and
lease a line, which I have no idea the costs of these days. I would need at
least several hundred Mb/s I believe. Hopefully there is a datacenter or ISP
nearby that would allow me to work with them to put something on the roof or
on a neighbors property.

Suggestions on resources?

~~~
wmf
Start here: <http://www.dslreports.com/faq/wisp/2_How_to_start>

------
smutticus
There is a direct correlation between competition and lower prices in this
market. The US has little to no decent competition in many markets. Therefore
ISPs rip people off.

If you think Western Europe has cheap broadband try going to small countries
in Eastern Europe like Croatia, Slovenia, Latvia or Estonia. I've never seen
cheaper BW in Europe than in Latvia.

~~~
arethuza
Wow - 200Mbps fiber for about £25 a month - that's pretty good!

[http://www.lattelecom.lv/majai/internets/optiskais_internets...](http://www.lattelecom.lv/majai/internets/optiskais_internets/)

~~~
DCoder
Lithuania here - 25 pounds/month gives me unrestricted 100 Mbps, next month
they're tripling all speeds for no additional costs. The one-step-cheaper
option is 90% of the cost for only 10% of the speed, so I opted for this one
instead.

------
jarin
On one hand, more government regulation brings things like Sarbanes-Oxley. On
the other hand, you get faster, cheaper Internet access, and arguably more
jobs from that.

This is why I cannot bring myself to identify with a political party.

~~~
jerf
This is why I really don't like it when people treat "government regulation"
like it's something that you have "more of" or "less of". Government
regulation created the slow, expensive Internet access in the US, government
regulation helped create faster, cheaper internet access in the UK and Europe.
Government regulation isn't an atomic entity that either exists or doesn't, or
there's "more" or "less". There's good regulation and bad regulation, and
sometimes the best regulation is none at all but that's not always the case.

As a little-l libertarian, I observe that when markets have real competition,
consumers and society benefit and even the providers globally benefit. When
the free market is allowed to be monopolized, consumers and society loses. I
believe that it is a valid use of regulation to force markets to remain non-
monopolized, even if it is a "natural monopoly". Regulations to encourage this
are good; regulations that enhance the monopoly rather than busting it are
bad, and there's no way in which I am being a hypocrite about the goodness of
regulation.

(The general metric of good regulation is "benefits exceed costs", and the
general metric of bad regulation is of course the opposite. However, there is
legitimate room to argue about some of the details, in particular costs and
benefits to exactly whom. But even within those constraints, it's hard to
crash your economy with regulations whose benefits routinely exist costs, and
easy to crash with the other way around, so you really have to have a pretty
freakin' sweet system before these arguments are really the biggest problems
you are facing. We do not have a such a system.)

~~~
lutorm
_There's good regulation and bad regulation, and sometimes the best regulation
is none at all but that's not always the case._

That's the key point there. Unless of course you're against regulation or
government on principle.

------
willwagner
I'm mentioning this from a point of complete ignorance but why can't this sort
of proposal be used for cable operators as well (both for broadband and
television)? Getting to choose from several competitors on who gets my tv and
broadband service would I expect create better plans than the current "pay for
100 channels but only use 3" that most if not all US consumers currently get.

~~~
mseebach
DSL uses the phone lines to the central, of which there is (at least) one per
household, so you just need to hook into a different router at the central.
This is easy. For cable you have one cable running down the street, and access
is binary, either you have everything or you don't. It's not practical to
force the cable owner to "open up", like you can force the phone line owner.

Digital is changing this, very quickly.

------
Apocryphon
_When Black was named Telecommunications Adjudicator in 2004, he fought on two
fronts to break the BT logjam. First, he used his own experience as a former
employee of the telecom giant to push for change from the inside. When that
wasn't enough, he used the bully pulpit provided by his government post to
embarrass BT in public. He publicized the company's failure to meet goals.
Reporters loved the story of the government regulator holding the giant firm's
feet to the fire._

I wonder if there are similar tales in the U.S. of the brave little bureaucrat
against the hulking titan of industry. Seems rather countercultural.

------
richcollins
Government regulation is the cause of slow US broadband. The laws are set up
to _prevent_ competition. If these laws were removed speeds would increase
dramatically for those that desired them.

------
iVy
It is somewhat weird reading about DSL in 21 sentury. Atleast i hope ISDN is
dead. Down here, in Lithuania, 50% of population (or maybe even more) has the
ability to use 300 mbps fiber for only 30 eur/month. No data caps, no shaping.

------
absconditus
This does not seem like much of an explanation. CLECs have existed in the US
for over a decade now. In Chicago many of us have about a dozen options. None
of them are very competitive with EU providers when it comes to price. A few
are probably comparable when it comes to speed.

I have noticed that even when there is competition most people will stick with
Comcast or AT&T and bitch about it.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_local_exchange_carr...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_local_exchange_carrier)

------
skrebbel
This article surprises me. I'm Dutch and I always thought that in the US,
everybody had super awesome broadband for nearly no money.

Not sure why, though.

------
themal
It's worth highlighting that although broadband over-the-phone is competitive
in the UK, the cable internet service (which was built with US money) is a
virtual monopoly and there's no sign of its network being unbundled.

~~~
chopsueyar
It is also the least expensive way to build out infrastructure (US cable).

------
trystero
France is one of the most regulated countries and the price for internet
access is still the cheapest in Western Europe. So, no, I wouldn't blame the
government for your prices.

------
tobylane
1\. Foreign call centers. My parents are now too scared to move because they
(foolishly) assume everyone uses them. Talktalk and BT do, low quality lines
to South Africa and India. 2\. I practically live on the dividing line between
two exchanges. The one I'm not on is really advanced, lots of choice, but not
the one I am on.

There are various ideas floating around, which I've never heard of since, such
as iPlayer and Steam caches at every exchange. I wish they'd stop caring so
much about speed (I get 5.5mb/s in speedtests, over 1.2 (directly, the line
isn't) miles of copper) and move onto ping and caches.

------
MaysonL
Or more specifically, blame the government we get because of the way we
finance and run political campaigns.

------
leppie
Global report (excludes Africa). US is dirt cheap compared to internet pricing
here...

------
arecibodrake
The only reason we don't have most metropolitan areas with gigabit fiber to
the door is almost entirely teleco/cable easements.

The day you stop government from mandating one company per area or delimiting
it to a small few monopolistic entities and allow a free market is the day we
stop dealing with the hell that is becoming us.

The answer is quite simply LESS government, dammit.

~~~
seabee
That clearly isn't the answer, as the article spends many paragraphs
explaining.

The answer is "do things that encourage competition and investment". The US
government fails at this, but it is neither a limitation of government _per
se_ or easily achieved by private enterprise alone.

~~~
arecibodrake
The article argues that good situations resulted from government action. The
reality is that while these situations are viewed as good, they are not
neccessarily the best. Only when individuals are able to voluntarily interact
in the market do the best services and products meet the best prices and
innovation is at its highest. One of the main factors that does not permit
government from being able to exist in a market in a positive way in
comparison is due to a complete lack of price model interaction. Government
(by its very nature) does not depend on consumer response (price model). It
thus has no way of allocating resources as efficiently as it would were it to
exist without tax dollars (confiscated property, not gained through
competition or voluntary interaction). As such, it cannot gauge weather or not
the things it is doing are the best or the most effective to meet the demand.

There are mountains of writing on the basics of free markets and Austrian
Economics, if you would like me to link you to some resources.

~~~
arecibodrake
Ah yes! -2! Let's outpace reddit down the website memory hole!

I mean really people, this is basic economics.

------
naner
An issue that appears to be overlooked is that the US is much less densely
populated and has a much higher overall population and land area to cover. I
favor the way many European countries are able to handle things like this (and
healthcare, and transportation, etc) but the US is hardly similar to any of
those countries. We're operating at a completely different scale here. Not to
mention political and cultural differences and issues of states' rights versus
the federal government's rights.

~~~
masklinn
> An issue that appears to be overlooked

It wasn't overlooked in the article, you overlooked it in your reading:

> Meanwhile, the size of the U.S. may be a red herring. Most of the region
> between Boston and Washington is as densely populated as most of Europe and
> the UK. So is the California coast between San Francisco and San Diego. And
> so is the region of the Midwest centered on Chicago. Those areas are home to
> about a quarter of all Americans. In other words, we live in a big country,
> but a lot of it is relatively empty space.

> The argument that the U.S. is too spread out is nonsense, according to
> Herman Wagter, one of the Netherlands' most prominent evangelists for next-
> generation broadband. He thinks there's something else going on in Verizon's
> and AT&T's opposition to competition at home: They're afraid of it.

------
maxharris
Here's why: population density is much higher in Europe. The price per mile to
put cables into the ground has a lower bound that cannot be breached. The same
length of cable will connect far more customers in high-population areas than
it will in rural Wyoming. It is not valid to compare Europe with the USA in
this regard because they truly are apples and oranges geographically.

I assert that broadband would be faster and cheaper anywhere given true
capitalism (that is, a system where people trade honestly, at a profit, with
the only government involvement being the courts [no regulation to give
corrupt businesses and activists the upper hand].)

~~~
Apocryphon
The article actually mentions that point:

 _Meanwhile, the size of the U.S. may be a red herring. Most of the region
between Boston and Washington is as densely populated as most of Europe and
the UK. So is the California coast between San Francisco and San Diego. And so
is the region of the Midwest centered on Chicago. Those areas are home to
about a quarter of all Americans. In other words, we live in a big country,
but a lot of it is relatively empty space._

~~~
maxharris
I don't buy that. One reason is that the article fails to account for the
taxes that are put on phone bills that subsidize rural telecommunications.
Another is that the regulations that force American telcos to support low-
density projects have direct effects (someone subsidizes folks in Wyoming, and
that invariably ends up being people living elsewhere) as well as indirect
ones (regulating a business changes its culture for the worse. Risk takers get
pushed out.)

~~~
dalke
The Federal USF Surcharge is what, US$1 per residential line per month? That's
the only nationwide subsidy program I know of. Even if it's more - $5/month?
$20/month? - that's nowhere near enough to account for the disparity in
network performance in the Northeast seaboard states compared to, say Sweden.

I'm an American living in Sweden. I'm in a city and can get 200Mbit/s for
US$80/month. Checking Comcast for Boston and I don't see any option above
105Mbit and that costs US$105/month. That's not a simple difference in
subsidies.

In any case, Sweden is _not_ a densely packed country. It's about 54
people/sq. mile and the US is 83 people/sq. mile. Massachusetts is 830
people/sq. mile.

Why doesn't Boston have better internet service than here? It can't be
subsidies for universal access for a far-flung population since the surcharge
isn't that high. It can't be population density since otherwise Boston or any
other large US city would have better connectivity than here.

The point of the survey is to analyze those reason, and you drew your
conclusion after only reading a summary of it.

The objections you raise come up every time there's a cross-national
comparison of internet access. They are accounted for, and the US is still
behind, and falling further behind.

------
hammock
It blows my mind that anyone in a startup community, which is all about
creating value and making good investments, would suggest that the government
tax him (!) and invest in broadband infrastructure instead of that person
investing in it himself.

~~~
barrkel
I've read your sentence perhaps 10 times and I can't figure out what it means
in relation to the article. Are you saying telecom incumbents are startups?
Does the "him" refer to telecom incumbents? Are you suggesting that the
government is taxing startups that are trying to invest in telecoms? Or that
the government is investing in telecoms (which is very much not what the
article is about)?

~~~
hammock
I actually did read the article. I wrote that comment before there were any
comments, in anticipation of comments in support of subsidized broadband. It
was a risky venture, for sure. Heh

