
America Needs a Nationalized 5G Network - jonbaer
https://www.wired.com/story/america-needs-more-fiber
======
zw123456
For wireless carriers, the three highest opex costs are 1. Real estate (lease
costs, no one owns their cell sites) 2. backhaul, which today means fiber 3.
employees

Nationalizing the 5G roll out will not help with any of these costs, the real
estate costs are more and more coming from local municipalities or other local
entities to place in the right of way which is probably the only realistic
option with the densities needed for 5G. The Federal government does not have
the power to take those rights of way. This constraint applied really to two
of the big items, real estate costs for the cell sites and right of way for
the fiber.

The reason countries like China or others like it can more easily deploy a
nationalized network is because the central government has total dominion. We
don't have that system here so a federal approach will not reduce costs, if
anything it will cause them to spiral as local entities will see that as a
cash register from the federal side.

And we all understand that a federal work force is not going to be a low cost
option for the third component of the equation.

For these reasons I disagree with a federal approach. To my way of thinking,
if local entities, cities and counties, want 5G wireless broadband, the best
way is to make rights of way available to carriers in a fair and accessible
way without trying to over play their hand and jack the costs up which
inevitably will just price it out of reach of more and more people.

The capital outlay to deploy these networks is fairly significant and by
making a reasonable accommodation for the carriers will help offset that.

The federal government is not a good answer here as much as it may seem like
the quick and easy answer. All it takes is a quick review of recent
performance of congress to realize how unrealistic that notion is.

~~~
Spooky23
The federal government certainly has the ability to use eminent domain to
acquire property, particularly with a (specious) national security angle.
Nike-Hercules missile sites are an example of what can happen when the Feds
are motivated. The interstate highways are another.

This is a fairly obvious play at rebuilding the AT&T monopoly of yore. The
Feds would just pay a carrier to run the thing, perhaps by using an existing
contract vehicle (maybe first net?).

~~~
zw123456
It might be theoretically possible, or legal, but it would be hugely
controversial and would be in the courts for sure. I do not think the FCC
could do it with a rule it would take an act of congress which seems pretty
unlikely in the current political atmosphere. It is not clear that the federal
gov could use eminent domain to force cities and counties to relinquish rights
of way, perhaps, but it would be pretty unprecedented in peace time as you
point out.

Interestingly, the former bell system was nationalized for a brief period in
1918 and run by the post office (an arrangement that some European countries
have today)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_AT%26T](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_AT%26T)
But it did not last and was a complete disaster. I am sure a redux of that
would end in tears.

In the early 1980's the Bell System had something called ISDN which purported
to be something like what we call the internet today. They had a plan to roll
it out (64Kbps !) nationally over a 20 year time frame. Had not AT&T been
broken up in 1984 I posit that the internet we know today would have never
emerged, it was free enterprise and entrepreneurship that made it happen.

~~~
saas_co_de
> hugely controversial and would be in the courts for sure

Controversial like illegally wiretapping every single citizen in the nation
for years? Controversial like the current President? The bar is so low on
controversy and legality that it practically doesn't exist.

> It is not clear that the federal gov could use eminent domain

That sounds like an opinion but even if it were true it doesn't mean that the
threat of using eminent domain couldn't be used as leverage in negotiations.

------
kiwidrew
New Zealand is currently in the process of rolling out fibre connections in
almost every urban area of the country (target is 87% of households) and the
amazing thing is that a basic fibre connection is now the _same price_ as an
ADSL/VDSL connection.

The government put together a technical specification (e.g. minimum speeds,
networking standards, API for service providers) and set a series of coverage
targets; then they solicited bids from the private sector to build and operate
the network in each region. Funding was in the form of an interest-free loan,
and the network operators are required to offer wholesale access to any retail
provider. The operators are also prohibited from offering their own retail
services.

So in the end, once the loans are paid back, the net cost to the taxpayer is
likely going to be less than NZ$1.5bn -- that's gigabit fibre to the home for
every non-rural household at a cost of less than NZ$1,000 each!

~~~
evanlivingston
I would be very, very upset if I were forced to pay 750 USD for a fiber
connection that didn't even benefit rural households.

~~~
gizmo686
That's how government works. Most government programs don't directly benefit
every individual citizen; even though they all get funded from the big pot of
'government spending', which is filled by taxes.

If you think there is a systematic problem, where a disproportionate amount of
money goes to urban centers, and a disproportionate amount of money comes from
rural areas, then you have something to complain about; but you shouldn't
complain about a single project just because it does not benefit 100% of the
population.

~~~
jcims
Eh, if it cost $1250 per household to light up every home in the country, you
can bet metro folks would be carping about how much they are paying to cover
the much higher per-household costs of rural users.

~~~
zappo2938
The most Republican Libertarian TV station on cable is Rural Free Delivery TV
named after the United States connecting farmers with free rural delivery.
They now hide the history of where the name came from.

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saas_co_de
So basically the wireless companies don't want to pay for all of the real
estate they need for the new base stations they have to deploy and so they
want to use eminent domain. The free market is great till you have to buy
something I guess.

------
wyager
I would propose doing essentially the exact opposite; commodify the entire
spectrum using a high-frequency rolling regional auction system, so anyone and
their dog can become a wireless carrier. This would be vastly more cost-
effective for rural areas, and would offload the effort of organizing fiber
leases onto random small (regional) businesses providing bandwidth.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Aren't equiptment costs still prohibitive?

~~~
wyager
Nope; check out open-source LTE tower projects. Surprisingly cheap these days!
Totally within range of individuals, especially for the kind of hardware that
only needs to serve rural areas.

------
donatj
With the impending mass cheapening expense of launching satellites via SpaceX
and the like, wouldn’t a large array of telecommunication satellites be a more
reasonable option for nation wide coverage in a country the size and density
of the United States?

~~~
strictnein
Possibly, which is why SpaceX wants to do exactly that[0]. They're launching
their first test satellites shortly[1].

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_satellite_constellation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_satellite_constellation)

[1] [https://www.geekwire.com/2018/spacex-gets-set-launch-
first-p...](https://www.geekwire.com/2018/spacex-gets-set-launch-first-
prototype-starlink-satellites-global-internet-access/)

------
jankotek
America needs good and enforced regulations. My country had nationalized
network and it was a disaster.

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SheinhardtWigCo
If we’re saying that the free market isn’t capable of delivering the
infrastructure that underpins much of our modern economy, then where does that
leave the idea of capitalism?

~~~
addicted
Capitalism is great because it’s been the best tool we’ve had to massively
improve quality of life in many different areas of life. That doesn’t mean
it’s the only tool we have and/or it should be an end in itself.

The situation where capitalism is not the best tool for the job we should
abandon it for that job. That will not only mean we have a better standard of
living, but will also mean the idea of capitalism gets stronger because it
doesn’t suffer from negative backlash when it fails because it is used in
situations where it isn’t the right tool because of ideology.

There is possibly an analogy here to programmers who insist a certain
technology be used everywhere, even where it isn’t a good fit, instead of
opting for the best tool for the specific application.

~~~
knieveltech
"The situation where capitalism is not the best tool for the job we should
abandon it for that job." Soooo healthcare, food distribution, housing,
transportation, resource extraction, education...

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atonse
We tried this. It was a national broadband initiative in the late 90s. Telecom
companies were given BILLIONS of dollars to build fiber across the country.
They took it and did exactly zero.

If we are dumb enough to do it this way again (paying the wolves to secure the
hen house), we better have good checks and balances on it.

~~~
lern_too_spel
The proposal is to build public infrastructure and lease it to private firms,
not to pay private firms with public money to build and own infrastructure.

~~~
wmf
When people talk about this "nationalized" 5G network, it's very likely that
it would be outsourced to a single prime contractor (probably either AT&T or
Verizon). The government has actually done this before with FirstNet.

------
kregasaurusrex
A nationalized 5G network will be essential for high-bandwidth applications
like V2V across level 5 autonomous vehicles. As has been done in the past for
large scale projects like GPS, LEDs, photovoltaics, and nuclear (just to name
a few!) which private companies wouldn't be able to eat the long-term capex
against. These technologies are also licensed either for free or very cheaply
to companies in order to benefit the public at large since we've already paid
for the R&D with tax dollars.

In order to prepare for the future of the digital economy at large, bandwidth
shouldn't be an artificial limitation of it. Once all the associated RFCs for
5G are standardized, a rollout of this scale would most definitely pay for
itself and more over the network's useful lifetime.

~~~
cobookman
I expect that l5 autonomous vehicles will be able to function without any
internet connection.

I'd be afraid if my car required cell service to function.

~~~
kregasaurusrex
While there isn't an official RFC yet since the protocol is still in the RFP
stages[0], the amount of new cars on the road will require roughly about the
spectrum allocation as what's needed for cellphones right now. If we tried to
cram all of this into existing 5GHz range of lower frequency spectrum, it's
simply not enough. 5G has both a larger spectrum allocation and throughput of
data available to it.

Edit: The cost of putting in a lidar system for your car won't be too
expensive (probably <$1000 when done across a manufacturer's whole fleet); but
think about having to pay for another cellular line on your phone bill at
current telecom prices. It would be prohibitively expensive to the end users
for mass deployment.

[0] [https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/readiness-
of...](https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.dot.gov/files/readiness-
of-v2v-technology-for-application-812014.pdf)

