
Summary: $200B Broadband Scandal (2005) - dabber
http://newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm
======
atonse
I read things like this and other failed infrastructure stories (high speed
rail) and just get so depressed.

Growing up in India, we used to read and see stories about the West (Europe
and the US) and were just amazed at what can be done with infrastructure if
the people and government had the will to do so.

Now, I've lived in the US for 23 years, and I look longingly elsewhere at
Europe and Asia to see what can be done with infrastructure if the people and
government had the will to do so. From broadband, to high speed rail, to
public transportation, to food safety, to medical care.

The problem is, as a population, we still haven't come to terms that we're
slipping behind badly. We just say "but, but, silicon valley!" or "but we
innovate!" and move on.

~~~
exelius
I find it's generally a "grass is greener" thing - we envy other countries for
infrastructure but ignore the serious problems in those places like high
unemployment, etc.

But you're right; the US got overrun by nationalism post-9/11 which led to a
feeling that because we were already the best, greatest, freest nation given
to man by god -- and the rest of the world surpassed us in many ways.

~~~
atonse
To some extent, it might be a grass is greener. But the thing is, the grass
here WAS often legitimately greener compared to many places.

It's just that the large infrastructure projects that can only be undertaken
by government have gotten so paralyzed by special interests, that the stories
just sound like anything you'd hear from developing nations with woefully
corrupt governments. That billions of dollars were spent, there is literally
NOTHING to show for it, AND nobody was punished either.

I say this living in an area (DC Metro) that now has gigabit fiber from the
local telco. But I know our situation is rare.

~~~
abofh
DC is one of the only places that has competitive FTTH in the country - the
same place all the regulators are saying there isn't a problem. Surely no
coincidence?

I miss my FiOS - I don't miss the weather :-)

~~~
atonse
Yeah I don't think it's a fluke that the DC area has decent broadband
competition. That's where all the regulators live.

~~~
rayiner
It's not a fluke, it's the result of sound municipal policy. D.C. is
dysfunctional in many ways, but it's not anti-development like most U.S.
cities. Right now, entire neighborhoods are being razed and replaced with
gleaming 12-14 story mid-rise buildings. The city is also permissive with
telecom deployment. Comcast, RCN, and Verizon have all been permitted to
deploy in different parts of the city without being compelled to service the
whole city at once.

It's not just D.C. though. The whole surrounding area is pretty lax about
development. The Chesapeake Bay area in Maryland is pretty rural, but also has
fiber internet because ISPs are permitted to build where it's profitable to
build.

~~~
exelius
The D.C. Suburbs also have some of the highest-income households in the
country. Low-income households buy less home Internet by FAR (low income
people use cell phones and mobile data). That absolutely factors in.

~~~
rayiner
It's not just rich suburbs. Here is a completely random building in Anacostia:
[https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8595932,-76.9871194,3a,75y,1...](https://www.google.com/maps/@38.8595932,-76.9871194,3a,75y,199.64h,89.3t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sPpOG7xUqVQs_PNqYI-
FNjg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656). If you punch in the address to various providers,
apparently it can get fiber through Verizon or Comcast, or gigabit cable
through Comcast or RCN.

------
JohnJamesRambo
This pisses me off so much. I live in a rural area and have to use a damn
unlimited Sprint cell phone shared through Windows Internet Connection Sharing
as my home's only source of internet. AT&T has DSL across the street but
refuses to allow me to have DSL and calls to them pleading to extend service
go nowhere, I may as well be talking to a chatbot. I think of this fraud the
telco industry perpetrated a lot when I have to deal with the constant
problems a setup like mine causes.

~~~
rayiner
A lot of the industry's problems can actually be traced to the government's
attempts to ensure service in rural areas. The government wanted rural areas
to have telephone service, but didn't want to pay for it with tax dollars. So
it gave various companies monopolies as a carrot in return for the obligation
to serve rural areas (or rural parts of municipalities). Post-deregulation, it
imposed a huge extra tax on the industry which it then diverted to phone
service in rural areas. Of course there is no free lunch--the end result of
all that intervention was entrenched incumbents with little incentive to
upgrade their networks.

~~~
dv_dt
This would be believable except that lobbyists often step in at the state
level to knock out community buildouts of self-financed infrastructure at much
lower costs than what the big telcos claim.

~~~
rayiner
It's important to break down barriers to community fiber deployment, but it's
a footnote in the big picture. In most states, there is no restriction on such
deployment, yet you still see very little of it.

~~~
dv_dt
Because all it takes is a very few public examples to discourage the activity
at all. Just like businesses want stability to make capital investments, so do
community projects. What happens if you get 90% of the way through, and state
lobbyists make your project illegal? All the invested capital becomes stranded
or lost - do you risk that in your state if there are examples of that outcome
in other states?

------
rayiner
The book is an advocacy piece designed to stoke outrage more than inform.
Consider the Pennsylvania issue. Regarding the Pennsylvania issue:
[https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2095...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/2095227/verizon-
pennsylvania-commitment.pdf).

What the book's account leaves out is that (1) the law required only 1.5 Mbps
to qualify for alternative regulation, and (2) the State of Pennsylvania
didn't pay anything for this failed promise. And at the end of the day,
Pennsylvania has fiber to 40% of households (more than the Netherlands, less
than Sweden). The book isn't lying, it's just not the full picture.

~~~
dahauns
>Pennsylvania has higher fiber deployment than Sweden

Has it? The best numbers I could find was ~60% for Sweden, and ~40% for PA.

[http://broadbandnow.com/Pennsylvania](http://broadbandnow.com/Pennsylvania)
[https://www.pts.se/sv/Nyheter/Pressmeddelanden/2016/Snabb-
br...](https://www.pts.se/sv/Nyheter/Pressmeddelanden/2016/Snabb-
bredbandsutbyggnad-med-fiber--och-mobilnat/)

~~~
johansch
> The best numbers I could find was ~60% for Sweden

A year later (October 2016, rather than October 2015): 66.4%

[https://www.pts.se/sv/Nyheter/Pressmeddelanden/2017/Sju-
av-t...](https://www.pts.se/sv/Nyheter/Pressmeddelanden/2017/Sju-av-tio-har-
snabbt-bredband-till-foljd-av-fortsatt-fiberutbyggnad/)

~~~
rayiner
Looks like there was a big jump in Sweden in the last couple of years, it was
under 40% in 2014: [https://www.cnet.com/news/fast-fiber-optic-broadband-
spreads...](https://www.cnet.com/news/fast-fiber-optic-broadband-spreads-
across-developed-world). I've corrected my post.

~~~
Retric
Still wrong.

"the Netherlands is ranked with Switzerland in having the most broadband
subscriptions per 100 inhabitants,[1] has no bandwidth caps,[2] and has the
most homes passed in Europe in terms of connection speeds of 50 Mbit/s and
higher.[3]"
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_the_Netherlands](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_in_the_Netherlands)

Yes, they use a lot of DSL, but you can have 20+Mbit DSL connections. The cap
is actually ~120 megabit under the right conditions. Though you need a telecom
willing to make a few investments which seem rare in the US.

~~~
rayiner
I said Pennsylvania has more fiber deployment (40%) than the Netherlands
(33%). That's completely accurate
[http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2016/06/03/third-of-dutch-
hom...](http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2016/06/03/third-of-dutch-homes-
connected-to-fibre). But even speaking about the other things, Pennsylvania is
ahead on many metrics:
[https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-
of-t...](https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-the-
internet/q1-2017-state-of-the-internet-connectivity-report.pdf). In the
Netherlands, average connection speed in Akamai's testing is 17.4 mbps, versus
20.8 in Pennsylvania. And 46% of connections are above 15 mbps, versus 54% in
Pennsylvania.

The "homes passed with 50 mbps+" statistic you cite is to a pay-walled
article, but this source says
[https://www.telecompaper.com/research/netherlands-most-
homes...](https://www.telecompaper.com/research/netherlands-most-homes-passed-
with-50mbps--690051) that the Netherlands, Japan, and South Korea are above
80%, while Sweden, Hong Kong, Denmark, and Taiwan are between 50% and 80%. The
number in Pennsylvania is 88%:
[http://broadbandnow.com/Pennsylvania](http://broadbandnow.com/Pennsylvania).

~~~
Retric
_fiber deployment_ is a meaningless number what people care about is
connection speeds.

 _Average_ connection speed is also meaningless as it's minimum speeds that
matter. (From you link %Above 25 Mbps Pennsylvania 26%) 1 Gbit conneciton does
not make up for 40 1mbps connections. 2 county's have less than 30% access to
25MBPS connections, and no the few 1Gbps connections in no way make up for
this deficit.

PS: Though I agree PA has solid internet access. I just disagree with how you
are measuring it.

~~~
rayiner
I strongly disagree that it's minimum connection speeds that matter. In a
heavily-rural state like Pennsylvania, there will always be a lot of people
living in places where it makes no sense to deploy fast wired broadband.[1] If
you optimize the regulatory regime for bringing up that floor, you're going to
compromise on the average and top end.

[1] I think in a developed society, people have the right to lots of different
services, including maybe even internet connectivity. I strongly disagree they
have the right to get it wherever they want to live. The government shouldn't
be in the business of creating incentives to live in places that are expensive
to build infrastructure to, at the cost of everyone else.

~~~
bnbn66788
In a large metro area with a strong tech company presence, we only recently
got an available bump from our monopolistic overlords.

Prior we were maxed with "minimum speeds" of 25/5\. With 4 people doing
streaming and games, the service barely became useful. That's WITH an ISP that
plays nice with Netflix peering setup.

The government should be in the business of meeting the needs of the people
that put government officials in office. Full stop.

I mean are some towers that can be upgraded with 4G, 5G, etc going to break
that bank compared to all the boon-doggles out there? It would be fair, IMO,
to be concerned over the rollout becoming a boon-doggle.

Is spending on ubiquitous access everywhere really a line in the sand for you?

Focus on preventing charter schools from using taxes to peddle sky wizard
philosophy or just outright fraud. SOMETHING that truly prevents a bad
outcome. This just feels very arbitrary.

~~~
rayiner
> The government should be in the business of meeting the needs of the people
> that put government officials in office. Full stop.

If the government wants to have fiber in rural Pennsylvania, it should build
it. If voters won't countenance raising taxes enough to pay for that, well
that's your answer. What it shouldn't do is try to end-run around the market,
_e.g._ by forcing some customers to subsidize other customers, or imposing
industry-specific taxes, or trying to get companies to build infrastructure by
fiat. That just robs Peter to pay Paul.

Example: Verizon wanted to come into Baltimore to build fiber in competition
with Comcast. Unlike D.C., Baltimore would not permit it to go neighborhood-
by-neighborhood--the city demanded universal coverage. Baltimore doesn't have
the money to build a network itself, and nobody else, including Google, would
answer its pleas to build a fiber network on those terms. Baltimore is now
stuck with a _de facto_ Comcast monopoly. Meanwhile, almost everywhere else in
Maryland has fiber. Who is served by that result?

> Is spending on ubiquitous access everywhere really a line in the sand for
> you?

The focus on ubiquitous infrastructure, rather than good infrastructure, is an
anchor around the neck of America. _E.g._ it's why we have shitty train
service everywhere, instead of decent train service along important routes.

------
dustinls
Have Frontier DSL here, the techs told me about the fiber installed just a
hundred feet away, that Frontier had installed for this government program.

They still don't plan on doing anything with it for another 5+ years, and will
be servicing business customers first before residential.

20 Mbps is cool too I guess.

------
drawkbox
In 2012, Goldman Sachs estimated it would cost 140 billion to fiber up the
entire country[1].

Let's round up to 250 billion for corporate/politician bribery greed/pork and
double it for today at 500 billion. That is about $2500 per household for
fiber internet nationwide, built to be expanded later, quite affordable. With
our wars for the last 2 decades coming in at 6 trillion we could have bought
that 10+ times.

[1] [http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Nationwide-Google-
Fiber-B...](http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Nationwide-Google-Fiber-Build-
Estimate-140-Billion-122347)

------
banderman
The full report appears to be available here:
[https://www.ntia.doc.gov/legacy/broadbandgrants/comments/61B...](https://www.ntia.doc.gov/legacy/broadbandgrants/comments/61BF.pdf)

------
CLGrimes
The page mentioned that Verizon cut deployments in 13 states, and the
deployments that were made were not doing equitably. What recourse is there
for companies that made this commitment and still exist today? Could Verizon
still be on the hook for providing these services, and if so, how can it be
enforced?

