
An initiative to extend broadband to every household in New York State by 2018 - jseliger
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/20/nyregion/new-york-broadband-cuomo-internet.html
======
TulliusCicero
At the risk of sounding like a jerk, this seems like another example of urban
areas subsidizing rural areas' infrastructure because those areas aren't
really economically viable.

It's a really bizarre situation: you have rural residents who hate 'government
handouts' being extremely dependent on just that, and those handouts come from
the very 'urban elites' that they despise!

> Two Stones Farm, a small goat farm here, has created an online store to
> offer more products, including artisanal cheese. “I look at it this way:
> It’s very much like electricity was at one time,” said Alan White, 54, who
> owns Two Stones Farm with his wife. “Electricity would have never come to
> our valley if it was based strictly on population. It’s not a luxury. It’s a
> necessity that we need to operate.”

Well yeah, that's the free market at work.

Like, I don't have a major problem with the subsidy itself, I just hate the
massive ignorance and cognitive dissonance involved from people who worship
the market except when it doesn't work out so hot for them, and then are
suddenly cool with, even eager for subsidies from their political enemies.

~~~
Spivak
This is a very uncharitable interpretation.

Is it really so weird that people are more idealistic at a distance? Or that a
person's views in the real world are more nuanced than can be boiled down to a
few absolute principles. Even the staunchest free market advocates support the
idea of government intervening when markets fail, and there is an almost
universally held belief that such a failure exists in the telecom industry.

And do you not think a person could view a market intervention to expand
access to what is becoming a utility and social programs that write checks to
'unproductive members of society' to be different? I'm not saying they're
right, but calling them hypocrites based on your world view and your
generalization of theirs seems to be picking a fight rather than any kind of
respectful discussion.

~~~
TulliusCicero
Here's a good example of what I'm talking about:

> And while widening the broadband infrastructure is an essential step toward
> bridging the digital divide, simply ensuring access does not address the
> issue of affordability, especially since the F.C.C. is considering slashing
> parts of a federal program, known as Lifeline, that is meant to help provide
> affordable broadband to low-income residents.

So here we have a program that benefits poor rural people, being ended by an
administration strongly supported by the poor rural people who benefit from
that program. How do you resolve something like that? How do you help
communities that keep voting in people that want to hurt them?

It seems to me like the first step is knowledge. If the people in rural areas
who benefit from urban subsidies become more aware of that, maybe their voting
patterns will change.

~~~
dragonwriter
> How do you resolve something like that? How do you help communities that
> keep voting in people that want to hurt them?

The thing is, Trump didn't campaign on hurting them, he campaigned on
(ambiguous, unrealistic, and often contradicted in other contexts) plans to
help them.

To beat that, you need someone campaigning with a strong message directed at
the same audience offering a compelling alternative vision of how to address
their concerns, including clear criticism of why the first candidates program
won't work. A common critique of the Clinton campaign is that it failed to do
that with the constituency at issue.

~~~
TulliusCicero
I think you're right, the only problem is that 'the government is bad and
unhelpful' is pretty deeply ingrained at this point, and it feels like a
message of 'the government will do X to help' isn't going to be effective as
long as the former message remains ingrained.

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libertymcateer
Why this is not just a municipal plan is totally beyond me.

Within months your privately held broadband provider is going to be selling
your private info to the highest bidder.

Why we have privately owned public communications lines is utterly beyond me.
I do not see why a substantial portion of every dollar I spend on internet has
to go to marketing and executive compensation. Completely infuriating.

~~~
acalderaro
New York State has the second highest debt of any state - something like $300
Bn. Muni-bonds may be tax free, but they aren't risk free, so that could be an
influencing factor. It's also possible that New York is heavily bureaucratic
and subject to extensive lobbying, especially by NBC and, by extension,
Comcast, which would much rather extend gradually into the rural areas than
compete with local government.

The economic reason that internet hasn't spread to every rural household is
because there isn't enough demand (in terms of money, not general interest) to
pull suppliers out there. If we're going to assume that privacy has value,
then allowing providers to have access to consumers' privacy would increase
the demand and could help reduce the burden on municipalities or companies to
extend broadband. But if we're going to begin every discussion with privacy
being protected by default, then costs are going to be higher since the
customer will be forced to absorb the costs.

~~~
PaulHoule
New York is the 4th largest state in terms of population, so obviously it is
going to have a big debt compared to, say, Rhode Island. New York has a
particularly pathological state government because if you deleted New York
City and it's environs, it would be a red state. Thus you have the
representatives from Queens who think the government has to subsidize off-
track betting to save jobs as well as your share of tea party types. The
quality of public services is excellent (they hired a friend of mine to write
printer drivers for IBM mainframes fast enough that they can turn around
paperwork in 2 days even at peak times) but the level of corruption for
elected officials is legendary.

The money argument has nuances. I pay $90 a month for 2 Mbps DSL. From the
viewpoint of the phone company, there already is competition for fiber -- they
can get $90 a month from me and pay their shareholders a dividend larger than
earnings (in fact, pay a dividend even when earnings are negative!) Maybe they
could charge $120 a month for fiber, but they could not charge a lot more than
that, but from the viewpoint of their investment, they are only getting an
extra $30 a month.

Now, a newcomer could get $120 a month, but they would split the market, and
some people are going to look for the low cost solution, particularly when the
profits the phone company is making are already insane and they could be
offering the same service for more like $50.

Probably the most practical situation (what is supposed to happen in my
valley) is to work with an incumbent (Charter) to extend service to less
profitable areas, because frankly, Charter makes money hand-over-first in all
the rest of the areas.

~~~
bradleyjg
_New York has a particularly pathological state government because if you
deleted New York City and it 's environs, it would be a red state._

That alone isn't enough to explain the dysfunction. If NYC and its environs
were more or less homogeneous it would dominate the state and the red parts
wouldn't matter. The problem is that there's a three way split -- NYC is 42%
(but parts of each of the outer boros are more suburban than urban),
Nassau/Suffolk/Westchester is 20%, and the rest of the state is the other 38%.
The suburbs of NYC hold the swing votes and are some of the most corrupt parts
of an already corrupt state.

------
jseliger
Given the FiOS debacle: [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/nyc-sues-
verizon...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/nyc-sues-verizon-
alleges-failure-to-complete-citywide-fiber-rollout/) and the way Google has
hit speedblocks in its gigabit program:
[https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/25/googles-fiber-rollout-
is...](https://www.engadget.com/2016/08/25/googles-fiber-rollout-isnt-going-
as-planned) , I'm not optimistic that this will happen in anything like the
scope or timeframe planned. Don't get me wrong—I'd like it to—but I don't
believe it will.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
New York City never tried. The lady our mayor hired as the city's CTO [1] is a
telecom lobbyist. She worked at a bank for a short stint and was fired after
signing up a couple departments for $200-plus a month voice-only phone lines.
Her first accomplishment, in the administration, was giving our public schools
the same treatment.

[1] [http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-
hall/story/2016...](http://www.politico.com/states/new-york/city-
hall/story/2016/07/minerva-tantoco-to-leave-de-blasio-administration-104365)

------
distantsounds
My in-laws live in a fairly remote area in Upstate NY. They have no access to
land-based broadband. Satellite is still inherently expensive, and the phone
lines are so noisy that dialup is abysmal. This is a very optimistic plan but
unfortunately I don't foresee it coming to fruition any time soon. There are
just some areas that are so remote that it isn't feasible.

~~~
TulliusCicero
Very remote areas with normal people should kind of not exist.

Like on one hand I appreciate that freedom to choose where you live is great.
But what happens is that when regular people (especially on the poorer end of
things) live in the middle of nowhere in super low density areas, is that it
becomes extremely difficult and expensive to provide infrastructure and
services out there.

And unless they're rich or Paul Bunyan reincarnated, they still probably want
things from the government like electricity, water, roads, schools, internet,
etc. But the economic productivity is too low to actually pay for those things
via taxes, and that's how you end up with voluntary fire departments declining
to put out someone's house that's on fire.

We can't let people live just anywhere _and_ guarantee basic infrastructure
and services in a cost-effective way at the same time.

~~~
antisthenes
This comment nails the economic part of it. Surprising, for HN.

------
tzury
For your curiosity, the equipment in the rack is ADTRAN / TotalAccess 5000
Series -
[https://portal.adtran.com/web/page/portal/Adtran/group/330](https://portal.adtran.com/web/page/portal/Adtran/group/330)

~~~
ju-st
Grant money used for GPON is never a good idea :( And the reason why they are
using fiber is obviously the large average distance between potential
subscribers in rural New York. Note how they are talking about _broadband_ in
the article, the poor people don't have _any_ broadband yet. So they didn't
even had ADSL yet and therefore it's no surprise that they are directly
jumping to fiber.

It would be interesting to know if they are going for 100% coverage? Or are
they only building fiber to the lucrative communities?

And the 100Mbit/$60 plan is too expensive if there is no cheaper option.

~~~
karpodiem
"Grant money used for GPON is never a good idea"

Uh, false. It's the only worthwhile idea. Long term OpEx for copper is
meaningfully higher than FTTH.

I would argue that 100% coverage isn't nearly as important as 90% coverage.
People will coalesce around areas that have FTTH, and wiring that last 10%
would probably cost almost as much as the first 90%.

~~~
ju-st
FTTH is great but GPON is bad. The only way to go is "Active Ethernet"/AON.
Dedicated fibers instead of sharing them with GPON. That was the intention of
my post. With AON you have dumb pipes and multiple carriers can offer their
services to the connected customers. With GPON the carrier who owns the
headend owns all customers. This means there is no open market and the
publicly financed infrastructure will be exploited by the single incumbent
carrier.

~~~
freedrock87
France has GPON with the ability to pick your provider.

The problem is with AON is that each provider is installing their own more
expensive head-end equipment.

------
throw7
Article doesn't mention upload speeds (100mbps download).

Wouldn't surprise me if it's sub 1mbps. It's annoying that miniscule upload
speeds are considered "broadband".

------
PaulHoule
I just got a flyer in the mail that says Charter is coming to my valley. When
that happens, I won't be a Frontier customer anymore.

~~~
treehau5
I see comments like this all the time. What people have to realize is all
these shithole companies would act like this if they can. In the south, you
can hear the same story time and time again with Time Warner Cable -- "Man
when <insert anything else> comes, I won't be a TWC customer anymore." What
needs to happen is the monopolies need to die and we need fair competition in
the broadband space. This has been proven where Google made a footprint. All
of a sudden, in fiber towns, AT&T or Verizon, or TWC started to offer decent
speeds at the price. 50 dollar internet was actually worth it.

Anyways, these companies are all the same. They will milk it as long as they
can until they are forced to change.

~~~
JshWright
To be fair, Charter seems like the best of a bad lot. They generally get
pretty good customer satisfaction ratings (especially compared to Time Warner
and Comcast).

I live in a Time Warner area, and thus far I've been very happy with the
Charter acquisition.

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greenleafjacob
"Allegedly?" Is someone making an allegation?

------
elvirs
requires subscription

~~~
abvdasker
You can get around the paywall if you use incognito mode. Or, you know, buy a
subscription.

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perseusprime11
Broadband is fine and dandy and I am fully supportive but they should also do
something about the homeless people living on the streets.

~~~
truebosko
This comment not only has no place here, but is also pretty inane.

~~~
perseusprime11
Folks can downvote me as much as they want but the reality is Mayors and
Governors work with a limited budget with a lot of priorities. Money diverted
to such initiatives only means the homeless shelters are not getting the full
aid they need. So, to me it is about priorities and allocation of funds.

~~~
acalderaro
What if they put funds towards building out broadband and employed homeless
people?

