
Americans Taxed $400B for Fiber Optic Internet That Doesn’t Exist - punnerud
https://nationaleconomicseditorial.com/2017/11/27/americans-fiber-optic-internet/
======
jesperlang
What website is this? It seems to focus a lot on how Trump is doing great, how
bad muslims/islam is and on how we should focus on other things than global
warming ("carbon dioxide is not a harmful chemical in the traditional sense of
the word. It’s actually essential for all life on earth—plants need it to
live")

~~~
teraflop
Even leaving aside the other content on the linked site, I do find it
suspicious that the only source it cites for the headline is one guy promoting
his own self-published book.

------
visarga
That's capitalism, exploitation of the poor by the rich. It concentrates power
to the detriment of society. In EU Apple and FB are avoiding taxes, in US
telecoms steal $400B from the public and gauge prices. Is there any way to
keep money and power from concentrating like that?

~~~
elmar
This is not the result of Capitalism is the result of Governmentalism.

~~~
leggomylibro
What are you saying? Regulation is _how_ you prevent raw capitalism from
blindly spewing negative externalities.

Even Lenin came around to that idea eventually.

~~~
conanbatt
You cant steal from tax payers if you dont have access to tax payer's money..

Companies misusing public funds, and government allowing them to do it is an
exemplary case of why people want smaller government. Because it does these
kind of things.

~~~
soulbadguy
The opposite of a bad government is not a smaller government but a better
government. Your same arguments could be used to argue that a bigger
gourvenement with more authority on companies could be a solution. Ultimately
size is just a poor proxy for performance of a government and we need to start
thinking in term of transparency and capabilities

~~~
conanbatt
> The opposite of a bad government is not a smaller government but a better
> government

Except if you think all government is bad government. There is no reason to
believe that chicago should raise taxes to prevent chicago from selling its
taxpayers.

------
barsonme
Is there a source that's not run by a self-proclaimed nationalist?
[https://nationaleconomicseditorial.com/contact/](https://nationaleconomicseditorial.com/contact/)
and isn't on a spammy feeling website?

------
throwaway613834
How does the US have 27.64 Mbps average upload? Even Comcast only provides <=
20 Mbps upload...

~~~
rgbrenner
because it comes from people running speedtest/ookla:
[http://www.speedtest.net/global-index](http://www.speedtest.net/global-index)

They say 70mbit download.. Akamai says 18:
[https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-
of-t...](https://www.akamai.com/us/en/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-
internet/q1-2017-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-executive-summary.pdf)

------
soneil
> In fact, in 1992, the speed of broadband, as detailed in state laws, was 45
> Mbps in both directions — by 2014, all of us should have been enjoying
> gigabit speeds (1000 Mbps).

This doesn’t sound quite right to me? That’s not how I remember 1992 at all.

------
whataretensors
I remember hearing about this a decade ago. The fact that we apparently kept
paying them is a condemnation of our entire infrastructure.

Likely where there's smoke there's fire. What else in our system is this
broken?

------
tzs
rayiner has convincingly demolished the book series upon which the article is
based:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7709556)

~~~
cannonedhamster
To be fair, he only showed where the $200 Billion number came from and claimed
that it's not an accurate way to evaluate whether or not the number.

I'd be curious if he still feels that US infrastructure is really swell seeing
as US speed placement appears to have dropped.

I can say from my personal and work experience that U.S. connections are far
and away better than large portions of the world. Peering agreements between
companies are significantly saner than in some parts of the world, and the
differences between wireline and wireless connectivity is pretty dramatic in
terms of stability and speed. For US ISPs to be using wireless as a comparable
service to broadband deployment is flat out fallacious.

ISPs have done fantastic work on backbone and datacenter speed and
availability, but last mile consumer connectivity just isn't worth it to them
financially. No amount of regulation or deregulation will make that
worthwhile. This is why municipal ownership of the last mile is most likely
going to be the long term solution if the US wants to increase speed and
availability for anywhere but the most densely packed areas.

------
cepth
A couple critiques of the linked piece.

First off, the title is somewhat misleading. See this Reddit discussion on the
same piece:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/7gob2w/american...](https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/7gob2w/americans_taxed_400_billion_for_fiber_optic/dqkhyms/).

It seems like the "taxes" were really fees that went straight to the telecom
companies. It's not as if the government collected these taxes, and then
failed to push ISPs to roll out fiber or build public fiber of its own.

Secondly, this piece tries to make a number of comparisons to countries that
have faster wired internet service, namely South Korea and Singapore. South
Korea and Singapore have much smaller populations that are concentrated in
urban areas, and are generally smaller geographically. The sheer size of the
United States, combined with our propensity for sprawling suburban
development, in addition to the higher throughput requirements of a much
larger population, would seem to suggest that delivering widespread fiber
capability will cost a lot more in the U.S. than in South Korea or Singapore.
This is not even to mention the eminent domain issues and federal vs. local
government conflicts that South Korea and Singapore do not face to comparable
degree.

Third, the "recommendation" made at the end of the piece seems to be based on
a bit of wishful thinking.

> "The Trump administration would be wise to make improving America’s digital
> infrastructure a priority. The South Korean model, market liberalizations
> combined with hard investments, could be a viable model."

What "liberalizations" would lead to growth in fiber connectivity? For the
large numbers of Americans with only one ISP choice
([https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/us-
br...](https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/us-broadband-
still-no-isp-choice-for-many-especially-at-higher-speeds/)), it's not clear
what incentive there would be for a competing ISP to come in, make the large
investments necessary to physically lay fiber, and then begin competing with
the original ISP on price and service. There is tremendous upfront financial
risk, and if the thesis of market liberalization is correct, namely that
competition drives prices lower and speeds higher, the ISPs laying fiber may
well never see a return on their investment.

Fourth, I think we should generally question whether massive national
investment in fiber even makes sense at this point. Improvements like DOCSIS
3.1 allow for fiber-like speeds over traditional cable lines. At a certain
point, we should ask whether gigabit speeds are really all that useful for
most people.

