
The internet should be a public utility - laurex
https://qz.com/1826043/the-coronavirus-crisis-proves-internet-should-be-a-public-utility/
======
zbrozek
I talked with the mayor of Los Altos Hills, CA yesterday where I advocated for
a municipal fiber ISP. It seems crazy to me that in Silicon Valley, and
specifically in one of its richest towns, that broadband is not available to
every residence.

She makes a good point: the residents don't care. Her argument is that ~20
mbps DSL is good enough for the elderly population. And further - that for
those who find that inadequate - Comcast is often (but by no means
universally) available.

I write this tethered to the cell network because I can't get a decent wired
internet solution here, with direct line-of-sight to Google's headquarters and
the mega-offices of many of tech's largest players. As I am stuck at home,
constantly turning off others' video streams while I try to engage with my
coworkers remotely, I deeply wish that we had either a more competitive
marketplace or a more belligerently pro-consumer regulator.

And, by the way, the FCC thinks I have a dozen options for broadband. That is
false.

~~~
cbhl
I daresay, it's even worse than that. Your neighbors are actively fighting
against the installation of infrastructure that would enable faster internet
speeds.

AT&T tried to bring FTTN to San Francisco years ago, but neighbors decried the
"ugly" green boxes that would run down the street. Boxes that are standard in
literally any suburb with fast internet.

There are limited parts of the bay area with gigabit fiber, including some
large apartment buildings. The rent is higher in those places, of course.

~~~
jessriedel
It's so crazy because if you have ever seen the same neighborhood with and
without power lines, the difference is dramatic. Power lines are horrendously
ugly. But after people got use to them, they can barely be bothered to pay 10%
extra on their power bill for the lines to be buried.

Likewise, people would instantly forget about the green boxes after a few
year.

~~~
dingaling
> Likewise, people would instantly forget about the green boxes after a few
> year.

I disagree, as a pedestrian I have to walk around FTTC and terminal boxes
every day.

Imagine if they were installed off the kerb, on the road instead of the
pavement. There would be uproar.

~~~
greyhair
Fiber boxes (and cable boxes) here are all at least twelve feet above ground
level up on a pole. You never 'walk around them' unless you are levitating.

------
legitster
Walk me through this argument - my local utilities are a nightmare! Their
pricing is atrocious and regressive (huge flat fixed fees to connect, tiny
marginal costs), they constantly have to borrow money from the city to make
ends meet. Combined, we pay $350 a month for gas, water & drainage,
electricity (over 50% of the bills are fixed costs, unaffected by our
consumption). Customer service is awful.

In comparison, our internet is relatively painfree and only $30 a month. I get
that there are certain high level concepts of why it is good to treat internet
as a utility, but as a consumer the idea frustrates me.

(Our city offers a municipal internet, btw. But it's worse service for more
money, and has generally been a money drain for taxpayers.)

~~~
cactus2093
I don’t even understand what the distinction is. For instance PG&E in
California is a private company but regulated by the government. I pay for
service and if I stop paying they cut me off. Isn’t Comcast internet service
the same thing? A private company but regulated by the FCC.

The only difference I can think of is there are still multiple providers for
internet service available in most places. Would making internet a public
utility just mean giving a government granted monopoly to one provider per
region and forbidding anyone else from selling internet service?

~~~
jcrawfordor
The details vary substantially by type of utility and jurisdiction, but
generally a public utility is subject to far stricter regulation than internet
service providers which are regarded as a competitive industry.

A key example would be requirements for tariff approvals: public utilities are
generally not permitted to make their own pricing decisions, instead they need
to publish a tariff and they are not permitted to modify the tariff without
petitioning the regulator for permission. The regulatory authority generally
has broad authority to order utilities to do whatever it believes should be
done, and has to approve almost all changes to the service, which the utility
must justify as beneficial to customers.

Take a look at your electric bill, for example. Generally there's an
interconnection fee and base rate, both of which come directly from the
published tariff approved by the regulator. Due to real changes in the energy
market there will also be a "fuel cost surcharge," this fee is calculated
based on generation costs according to a formula included in the published
tariff. If you have any dispute about the pricing or quality of the service
you can take that complaint to the regulator, many regulators require that the
utilities provide you that phone number as part of your bill.

Then look at your internet bill. The rate on it is whatever the ISP wants, and
they have no requirement to explain it to you, except for a few mandated
taxes. They can raise and lower it more or less at will, subject to your
contractual protections, which are usually minimal. With most incumbent ISPs
it is standard for the rate to increase significantly after 12 or 24 months.
If you have complaints, there is a small chance you can take them to the FCC
under certain regulatory authorities the FCC has exercised, but for the most
part your only option is to find another provider.

------
bgorman
The danger with government nationalizing telecommunications networks is that
once it is done, innovation and quality go way down. We had nationalized
telecommunications for over 70 years and customers could only have one brand
of phone, and we're limited in the number of phones available in their houses.
In addition, long distance calling was cost-prohibitive. The monopoly only
started cracking when MCI introduced microwave based long distance calling.

Fortunately non-governmental is on the way for you. 4G/5G are decent options,
many areas (rural and in major cities) have microwave based broadband, and it
looks like Starlink will become a reality soon. Putting fiber lines in the
ground is extremely expensive (especially in California) and frankly is not
really needed by most of the population.

Are you just using a cell phone? In your situation or may make sense to buy a
repeater or other dedicated hardware solutions.

~~~
jcrawfordor
AT&T also provided an extremely high quality of service, not really seen since
that time, and operated a corporate R&D arm that I think could fairly be
called the global center of innovation for decades, designing as an almost
side-effect of telephone switches a large portion of the computer technology
we use today from silicon to operating system. One wonders where the state of
the industry would be today had Bell Labs and Western Electric been able to
continue with the lavish funding and long-term vision that their monopolistic
parents afforded them. And the reverse, would T-Mobile invent the transistor?

It's hard to argue that innovation and quality of the telephone system went
down under AT&T's monopoly when, during that time period, AT&T played a
fundamental role in the invention of the computer and famously took measures
as extreme as moving buildings while telephone operators work inside in order
to avoid service disruption. It seems that other factors must have been in
play as well in the eventual decline of "ma bell".

The story of AT&T's monopoly on telephone service and its subsequent breakup
at the hands of both court and MCI/Sprint is a complex one that cannot be so
simply used as an argument for or against the arrangement. It was a very
particular situation in a very particular time, perhaps most significantly
because AT&T created an entire market sector which the government had no
coherent strategy to manage. So-called competition has also been quite
insufficient to revolutionize the landline telephone market, it remains
perhaps as consumer-hostile as it has ever been, something forgotten largely
only because the cellular industry has replaced it (which, facing stiff
competition but the regulatory wild west of the internet, is consumer-hostile
in a whole new way).

~~~
TheColorYellow
This is awesome content. Any chance you have a book you could recommend on
this subject?

~~~
jcrawfordor
Both siblings name the books that I would most likely to recommend. Also,
Steve Call's "The Deal of the Century" and "Telephone: The First Hundred
Years," John Brooks. The latter is a 1976 book which was commissioned by AT&T
as a corporate history. As a result it is both outdated and paints a rather
rosy picture[1], but I think that's part of what makes that book rather
interesting - it's sort of AT&T's best version of itself at the peak of its
dominance.

[1] for what it's worth, John Brooks engages right in the introduction with
the conflict of a history funded by its subjects, and the book was researched
and written independently

------
PureParadigm
I used to think municipal fiber was the answer to improve internet service,
but while it may work, I've seen that it is certainly not the only way.

I moved to Berkeley for university and there are several competing options for
gigabit internet (including Sonic, LMI, etc.). When the gigabit service
arrived to disrupt the AT&T/Comcast duopoly, suddenly the customer was
important, and we were able to get great speeds, prices, and customer service.

What I'm saying is that you don't necessarily need to make internet a public
utility to improve service, just to get some real competition. If that
competition needs to come in the form of municipal fiber, then that might also
work, but it could also be a private company.

~~~
joecool1029
>What I'm saying is that you don't necessarily need to make internet a public
utility to improve service, just to get some real competition.

You won't get competition in sparsely populated areas. There's not a ton of
business sense to expand and try to compete in these markets.

The alternative way to get build-out in the underserved areas is to have gov
subsidize a few interests. Canada seems have done a good job getting cell
coverage in the middle of nowhere paying Rogers and Bell/Telus to build in
remote lands. The US usually gives build-out requirements for stuff like
spectrum and then doesn't enforce them when a company like DISH runs a scam:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/fredcampbell/2018/07/20/dish-
ne...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/fredcampbell/2018/07/20/dish-network-
terrestrial-spectrum-licenses-at-risk/#5d593902af3e)

DISH btw is in full PR mode lending all their AWS-4 spectrum to AT&T and all
their 600mhz to T-Mobile, since they previously didn't do shit with it.

In the case of the landline internet providers, there's around a half-trillion
USD tax scam that's been perpetuated since the 1990's:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/e...](https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/eli5_how_were_isps_able_to_pocket_the_200_billion/dhsxq6k/)

------
sneak
I'm not sure that I want the government in a position to be a single point of
control for which websites I can or cannot access.

~~~
coldpie
This is a blatant violation of the 1st amendment. You are at more risk of this
from private entities, who are not bound by the 1st amendment.

~~~
sneak
Perhaps. Competition is a _realtime_ mechanism for stopping this sort of
fuckery on a provider level presently. I can switch ISPs immediately (provided
that there is more than one around).

Remediations for 1A violations are _anything but_ realtime.

You could suffer rights abuses for a very long time with no immediate or cost-
effective recourse. Also, such a circumstance in which your 1A rights are
violated by your government ISP, which may be eventually protected by courts,
remains inherently dangerous for example during declared periods of emergency
where the usual rights and remedies are "temporarily" (weeks or months)
suspended. Imagine the situation were this the case right now, and your
government ISP disconnects you _today_ (let's say on some bogus "local"
authority). How long do you think it would be before the thing winds its way
through the courts and your port finally gets ordered to be turned back on? A
month? Three months? Six?

How much money has it cost you in legal fees? How many dollars did you lose
from not being able to work in that time due to being entirely offline?

I don't trust any one player being the "only game in town" no matter who they
are or what remedies I have against them. Making it state-run means that not
only are they the only game in town (like Comcast is now in a lot of places),
but that it's _impossible to change that situation_. It makes it permanent. We
need _more_ competition, not less. _More_ opportunity for _more_ people to
create businesses and jobs, not less.

I think the people of Flint should be able to chime in on this thread.

~~~
enraged_camel
>> I can switch ISPs immediately (provided that there is more than one
around).

You may want to look at what percentage of America has this kind of choice
(and whether it is a choice between viable and high quality alternatives, as
opposed to ones that are equally shitty).

~~~
dantheman
Most places without options are where those localities gave a monopoly to a
single company -- so that they would subsidize rural people. In the US we need
to stop subsidizing the costs of living in the middle of nowhere. Mail,
electricity, phone, etc should all cost substantially more - it should reflect
the cost of living there.

------
keeganjw
I think this makes perfect sense. Competition fundamentally doesn't work when
it comes to infrastructure like this. I don't hear anyone saying that we need
more privatized competition in our sewer systems. Why? Because it's incredibly
costly to build and having private companies build two, three, or more sewer
systems in one city/town would be insane. The costs per user of each one of
those systems would rise dramatically because you would have far fewer people
paying into each system. Same goes for our internet connections. Creating
multiple competing networks in this case raises prices for everyone and we
needlessly duplicate the amount of infrastructure required to serve everyone.
That is why we make services like sewer, water, and electricity regulated
monopolies. I don't see how internet, in this day in age, is any different.
Just like everyone needs electricity, everyone needs internet. That being
said, we do need competent government officials that can balance costs with
public good. If we elect incompetent people, we get incompetent results.

------
gameswithgo
There are a lot of places where I agree that it should. There are some cities
where competition is alive and working well. I think at least we can agree
that state governments should not be making it illegal for local communities
to create public utility internet, as has been happening in some places.

------
blackrock
The internet needs to have a free service tier, that can be given to under
privileged people.

The entire government runs on web services, and you must have a decent
computer to access it, as well as high speed internet.

Well, some basic cable internet services cost $70/month. That’s over
$840/year.

Good grief! How does someone making $40,000/year afford such an expensive
luxury?

On top of paying for rent, for food, for transportation, for a phone line, and
now, for internet too. This is just too heavy of a burden to bear for under
privileged people. Those who are younger, those who are minorities, those who
are women that earn less.

The greed of corporate America is quite disgusting, and of our elected
politicians that work in collusion with them, to prevent such free public
services from being made available.

------
pinacarlos90
My question is, what would be the impact on the following areas if the
internet was public utility?

1) security/encryption

2) bandwidth distribution

3) content freedom

4) Governance rules (federal gov?)

~~~
dylan604
Why would 1) be an issue at all of the service was a public utility or not?
It's not like a website will not use HTTPS just because it's on publicUtil.

2) is problem regardless. Something to be addressed, but it's not anything new
just because it's becomes a utility.

I could see where 3) & 4) might be questionable. If it's gov't funded, then
they like to tack on a lot of rules about what can/can't be used on the
service. Obvious things like porn/p2p/etc would be blocked, but would access
to things like Planned Parenthood be blocked too?

~~~
Reelin
In the US, 3 (content freedom) is a clear first amendment guarantee. It also
seems to be working out just fine elsewhere in the western world.

------
DavidVoid
At the very least, municipal "dark fiber" [1] broadband should be more of a
thing.

I live in a city in Northern Europe and we have it in pretty much all
apartment buildings here.

I can choose between 17 different ISPs and the prices per month are:

    
    
        Price  Speed (up/down) 
         $20      10 Mb/s
         $30     100 Mb/s
         $75       1 Gb/s
        $142      10 Gb/s
    

If you live in the country-side though, you sadly tend to have much more
limited options for a decent Internet connection.

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

~~~
briandear
$142 for 10Gb/s? Mine costs $95 per month in Mountain View, CA.

------
perlpimp
... or it should be cheap and regulated on pricing. it is crime what western
nations charge for it. suppose areas of differing income levels should have
different pricing schemes. coming from russia to canada, it is insane that you
have to pay 1500% more for same packages for wireless and wired internet.

~~~
BubRoss
Competition accomplishes the same thing. Look at any area where Comcast or
AT&T have competition, they shape up very quickly. DOCSIS 3.0 and 3.1 are
actually very fast. Cable companies know however that if the better the
internet they sell, the more they canabalize their ability to sell cable TV.
They want to sell you data twice and one of their giant sources of revenue is
something people would rather leave behind.

~~~
dahart
Competition does help _when_ it happens. The problem is Comcast and AT&T
charge higher prices wherever there is no competition and they actively do
whatever they can to prevent competition, they absolutely do not just wait
around for other ISPs to compete. A few years ago Comcast’s active anti-
competitive bullying of local ISPs in my city pushed me off the ISP I
preferred. And there are too many areas in the U.S. where competing is
prohibitive, like rural areas where build-out is more expensive, so once a
single ISP is there nobody else bothers.

~~~
topkai22
I think this is how utilities evolved in many places- local monopolies arose,
so local governments either built their own system, took over service delivery
or created laws on top of the service delivery.

~~~
_carl_jung
I don't understand this part. As far as I can tell, utility monopolies can
only form with government assistance (i.e. lobbying).

~~~
dahart
What is making you think that monopolies can only occur with government
action? The first utility to service a region is a de-facto monopoly. I also
gave two examples already of ways monopolies have occurred without government
intervention: anti-competitive behavior and barriers to entry. Monopolies
without government intervention are common enough that there’s a term for it:
Natural Monopoly
[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/natural_monopoly.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/n/natural_monopoly.asp)

That article gives more examples of ways monopolies occur without government
intervention, such as mergers and takeovers, and collusion and price fixing.
All of these things have happened multiple times in the past, so history
provides all the proof we need that lobbying or other government assistance is
not required for monopolies to form.

~~~
_carl_jung
Thanks for this

------
marcusverus
Has the author never heard of the Lifeline Program for Low-Income Consumers
(aka Obamaphones)? This program already provides a benefit designed to provide
free access to mobile internet. The $10 per month subsidy may not seem like
much, but it'll buy you ~1Gb per month via Tracfone, for example. It's
important to note that this program includes a requirement that "Obamaphones"
be hot-spot enabled so that they can be used with laptops (i.e. by kids who
have homework on school-provided laptops).

[https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/lifeline-support-
afford...](https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/lifeline-support-affordable-
communications)

~~~
lostmsu
1G is not enough. Dial-up would let you get more.

~~~
marcusverus
The author isn't arguing that people need access to the internet so that they
can binge Netflix or venture down the YouTube rabbithole. The tug-at-the-
heart-strings examples that the author used to justify her pet project are all
easily fulfilled with 1GB per month.

~~~
lostmsu
I'd measure using Wikipedia as one of the most used resources worldwide.
Currently, loading
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronavirus_disease_2019)
once with warm cache transfers 1.3MB. Single Google search takes just short of
1MB. At this rate 1GB will run out pretty quickly.

------
badrabbit
I am mildly concerned about the internet being a requrement for participating
in society. The utility argument makes sense but people should also keep in
mind, not having internet access should not exclude anyone from things like
food,safe shelter,clothing,property ownership,trade and employment.
Inconvenienced? Sure. Pay reasonable extra costs for having to do things
offline? Why not. But let's not go full on dystopian like China here. The cure
should not be worse than the disease!

------
Iwork4Google
In order for anything useful to happen in our society, we have to vote. It is
now abundantly clear which party values what, and for whom. If we would rather
vote based on 'abortion preventing our souls from partying with Jesus in
heaven' instead of 'municipal broadband for all residents as a public
utility', then we're going to continue to complain about this for another 50
years and beyond.

The problem is that saying this out loud means you're politicizing this
problem. Well, it's largely a political problem, otherwise we could get the
Federal Government to step in and properly fix this. Legislation in the past
with the best intensions was purposely weakened at the last moment to allow
billions to be taken from Federal programs that left zero actual improvement
or infrastructure development. Guess which party is fighting hardest for such
loopholes and promising that corporations can do this better than "big
government"?

If we don't get our acts together in November, not having quality Internet
access is going to be the least of our problems. Anyway, everyone enjoy going
back to business as normal by Easter during the peak of this pandemic. I'm
sure that will help as well.

~~~
_delirium
> It is now abundantly clear which party values what, and for whom. If we
> would rather vote based on 'abortion preventing our souls from partying with
> Jesus in heaven' instead of 'municipal broadband for all residents as a
> public utility', then we're going to continue to complain about this for
> another 50 years and beyond.

If that were true, it'd be great. But which is the party that supports
municipal broadband for all residents as a public utility? California has a
Democratic governor, Democratic legislature, and in the most populous areas
Democratic local government, and yet no municipal broadband.

There's a map here of which state legislatures have passed restrictions on
municipal broadband, and it seems pretty idiosyncratic relative to blue/red
politics: [https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-
roadbloc...](https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks/)
E.g. WV, OH, IN, IL, KY, GA, NM, VT are friendly to it, while WA, OR, TX, CO,
AL, PA, FL, MA are unfriendly.

~~~
daveFNbuck
Single-issue voters don't vote straight party tickets. You have to learn about
the individual candidates and only vote for the ones that support your pet
issue.

The mayor in this story probably didn't care much either way about municipal
broadband. They just don't see it as an issue worth the effort.

If there were a real chance that not supporting municipal broadband would hurt
their re-election chances, they'd be more likely to support it. If not,
perhaps their successor would see things differently.

------
malingo
This weekend here in Los Angeles is the Native Plant Garden Tour [1] which is
in its 17th year but being presented this year as a virtual tour.

The quality from the gardeners streaming video over their home Wifi
connections is sometimes okay, mostly mediocre, sometimes unwatchable. Of
course this is somewhat affected by how far they venture away from their
router into their yard, but still it's surprising how universally awful
internet service is even in major US cities. And it's so much worse in rural
areas.

[1]
[https://www.nativeplantgardentour.org/](https://www.nativeplantgardentour.org/)

------
BadMrFrosty
Imagine wanting the government to be your ISP. You think private companies
mishandle your privacy? Wait until the government has total access to what you
do online without warrants. Try putting that genie back in the bottle.
Remember, these are the same people whose competence is manifested in
pretending the water in Flint wasn’t toxic, intentionally infecting blacks
with Syphilis and not treating them, and giving LSD to school children.

------
_carl_jung
Here's a question I have about these types of frustrating monopolies, and I'd
love a point towards a book or something that can explain.

Let's say I have a bunch of money (or funding) for a big new internet provider
that could easily outperform the existing provider. What makes it so hard to
do it?

I hear complaints (and complain myself) about seemingly unfair pricing and
slow speeds. The tech is there to make > 100mb internet, why isn't it more
widespread? Surely consumers are willing to pay for a competitor that can
provide it.

~~~
jcrawfordor
1) laying fiber (either trenched or on utility poles) will likely be your
biggest expense, it requires a huge, huge investment to be able to put
infrastructure through a significant area. Think about feet of conduit a
several-person crew can drive per day whether by trenching/trenchless methods
- it's not that many. Microtrenching promised to significantly reduce this
cost but Google Fiber's experiment with it went famously poorly.

2) ROWs to run cable will need to be negotiated either with the municipality
(if laying underground) which can come with a lot of difficult restrictions on
work quality, traffic disruption, etc, or with the electrical utility in the
case of utility poles in an area with a typical franchise agreement, in which
case the utilities are often uninterested in the project and will just
generally make your life difficult through slow consideration of engineering
proposals, requiring extensive up-front engineering work, etc. In a small town
I had some involvement in the electric utility demanded over $1mm up front for
engineering surveys on pole attachment - this for a market of ~8k people, and
before any actual attachment fees. Completely blew the budget of the potential
broadband provider which had planned a total of $3-4mm in up-front.

3) After running infrastructure, providing drops to each house is a fairly
costly and disruptive up-front operation per customer (may even be trenching
their front yard), which discourages customers signing up with your service
when the incumbent providers already have house drops in place. You will also
either have to eat this cost or pass it to the customer as an install fee or a
term agreement, all of those options are bad in different ways.

4) IPv4 exhaustion has hit new ISPs hard and you are going to have to do CG-
NAT. ISPs like to think customers don't care but in practice this is indeed a
headache.

~~~
erik_seaberg
I looked up microtrenching and it looks like they're basically stopping
traffic and pointing an angle grinder straight down. Directional boring
machines are out there, why aren't we running a bunch of those 24/7? Do they
need a lot of supervision?

~~~
jcrawfordor
While the range of directional trenching is limited, requiring regular access
points, the bigger issue is setup. Surveys and tests need to be done to
determine if the area is suitable for directional trenching, and it only works
well in certain circumstances. It's definitely heavily used in telecom
installation but not a panacea.

Microtrenching is extremely simple and fast, but so far I don't know that
anyone has nailed durability. Google's Louisville install used microtrenching
and was an absolute debacle with the sealant constantly failing and the cables
ending up laying on the surface of the pavement. Google ended up shutting down
service in Louisville and the cost of repairing the failed microtrenching may
have been a big reason why. Certainly get them a lot of bad press and ill will
from their customer base.

------
rubicks
Agreed, but this article didn't convince me. Watching the Comcast/Verizon
duopoly play out over two decades has overwhelmingly negated the argument for
private-sector infrastructure.

------
miguelmota
If it's public infrastructure, the government has no incentive to innovate and
it'll be a good way to ruin it. Electric, gas, and water utilities are natural
monopolies and priced per usage. You'd end up paying more for slower internet.

~~~
raverbashing
Please show me where private run electric or gas utilities have unlimited
usage for a flat fee.

~~~
miguelmota
There’s none for obvious reasons. Give me an example of a government making
the internet a public utility and making it better and less censored than a
privately run company.

~~~
zbrozek
[https://muninetworks.org/content/owensboro-kentucky-
headed-s...](https://muninetworks.org/content/owensboro-kentucky-headed-
spring-ftth-expansion)

[https://tech.co/news/chattanooga-fastest-internet-
usa-2018-0...](https://tech.co/news/chattanooga-fastest-internet-usa-2018-08)

Those places are offering connections way better than I can get from AT&T.

~~~
miguelmota
Chattanooga’s municipally-owned telecoms provider (EPB) is charging $57.99 for
300mbs [0], while I get 500mbs for $39.99 in my area from a non-city owned
company [1]

[0] [https://epb.com/home-store/internet](https://epb.com/home-store/internet)
[1]
[https://frontier.com/offer/experiencefios-c](https://frontier.com/offer/experiencefios-c)

~~~
zbrozek
You really can't compare across areas. I can get 20 mbps DSL for $50 here. At
my old place, eight miles away, I could get 1000 mbps for $90. At my parents'
lake cabin in Tennessee they can get 3 mbps for $50. And?

------
mensetmanusman
If it was, there would be no starlink

------
amelius
For much of the same reasons, the postal service and Amazon should be public
utilities too.

~~~
pdonis
The postal service in the US _is_ a public utility: the US Post Office is
required by law to deliver to any US address. The fact that there are private
companies delivering something called "mail" does not change that: none of
them are permitted to deliver first class mail, that is a USPS monopoly, and
none of them are required to deliver to all US addresses, but the USPS is.

I don't know why you would want Amazon to be a public utility.

~~~
amelius
Yes, in the US that's the case but nobody said it will never change.

Regarding Amazon, see for example
[https://stallman.org/amazon.html#size](https://stallman.org/amazon.html#size)

------
chrisbennet
The local government should own the "pipes" and rent them out.

Some people are down on "socialism" without realizing they love it. We have
socialized police, fire, sewage, (usually) water and road repair plus some
others I'm forgetting.

Socialism is people getting together to help each other. Businesses have no
special right to view citizens as their exclusive feeding ground.

~~~
uk_programmer
> The local government should own the "pipes" and rent them out.

This is essentially what happens in the UK. BT have to rent out lines to
everyone else.

Guess what? Almost all the ISPs are capped at the speed at whatever BT can
provide. The only company I believe in the UK that goes above those speeds is
Virgin which almost twice the speed at almost the same price as the
competition.

I used to live in the countryside and until there was fibre installed the
speeds were terrible (less than 2mb/s). State own broadband isn't magically
better.

> Some people are down on "socialism" without realizing they love it. We have
> socialized police, fire, sewage, (usually) water and road repair plus some
> others I'm forgetting.

In the UK our council tax pay are supposed to pay for road repair. The roads
in the UK are awful. There are pot holes everywhere and I've had 3 punctures
last year.

The toll roads (the few of them that exist in the UK) don't have anyone on
them. Take 30 minutes a day off my journey time in the car and the road
surface is perfect.

~~~
pirocks
> The roads in the UK are awful.

Not in my experience, though admittedly I live in London.

>In the UK our council tax pay are supposed to pay for road repair.

I'm sure you realize that council tax is supposed to pay for a lot of things,
and that council incomes are way down over the past 10 years.

~~~
uk_programmer
> Not in my experience, though admittedly I live in London.

Well outside of London it is generally awful. TBH London might as well be
another planet when compared to the rest of the England (same goes for
Manchester and Birmingham, I stay far away).

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46444109](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-46444109)

[https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/news/britains-pothole-
probl...](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/cars/news/britains-pothole-problem-
costs-drivers-684m-in-a-year/)

I currently live near Manchester and before that Hampshire. So that is two
opposite ends of the country pretty much and it is the problem there. So my
experience seems to reflect that of what is reported.

>I'm sure you realize that council tax is supposed to pay for a lot of things,
and that council incomes are way down over the past 10 years.

So? It has been like this since the late 90s. I remember my father complaining
about it since then. In anycase the roads are awful.

------
MR4D
So, we should have PG&E run it? Or maybe the city of Flint, Michigan?

God no.

That’s what happens when you make the decision to be a utility. You give up
_all_ choice.

The solution is _more_ choice in the internet market, not less.

------
alexfromapex
Need to start naming and shaming any public figures, companies, and
politicians who say otherwise. That’s the only way to fight against the
corporate takeover attempt.

~~~
lioeters
> corporate takeover attempt

Sadly, I think the takeover has happened already, and there's not enough
incentive for public figures, companies, and politicians to push for
deprivatization.

I agree with the article that the Internet should be a public utility, like
water or electricity.

~~~
alexfromapex
I know what you’re saying and I hear you but I think the “it’s already over we
should just give up” attitude that comes up whenever these types of
discussions arise is what causes them to win. The first step to reversing
their influence is not viewing it as acceptable.

~~~
coldpie
Paying more attention to local politics helps combat this. There are people
trying to do good out there, they're just not getting all the attention like
those at the federal level.

------
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
I’m generally a libertarian, anti-bureaucracy type, but this is an issue I
align with. Having the government provide the bulk of last mile dumb fiber
seems to be the best way to move forward internet speeds.

Opponents always point towards the remarkable improvements in wireless
internet speed, but those of us who understand the technology know it’s not a
replacement for fiber. Why compare simple, vacuum packed download tests? Of
course people don’t utilize their upload speed: it’s miserably slow! Of course
they don’t use more bandwidth: they get charged an arm and a leg for it!

~~~
sneak
Another, simpler solution would be to have the government stop
promulgating/supporting the lies regarding fictional competition spread by
companies like Comcast. There are lots of places where you have only one or
two options, but the large national incumbents who have the ear of regulators
will lie and claim that there are three times as many. The government grants
them their moat.

There are lots of people who would like to be ISPs (including municipalities)
who simply aren't allowed to be, because the regulators and the large national
ISPs have conspired to pass lots of regulation that outlaws any real
competition. It's absolutely shameful.

[https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-
comcas...](https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-comcast-fcc-
high-speed-internet-gigabit)

[https://boingboing.net/2019/04/19/comcast-vs-
america.html](https://boingboing.net/2019/04/19/comcast-vs-america.html)

