I am originally from rural North Carolina and happen to be visiting my parents at the moment. I'll give a quick run-down of their internet options over the years:
From 1995-2000, their only option was dialup. 56k dialup was offered but the quality of the phone lines in the area only allowed for 26k - 28k at best.
Sometime around 2000 or 2001, "broadband" finally moved to the area. However, they can not get DSL or Cable. They have a wireless ISP (radio installed on the house, receives signal from a tower.)
They get about 1mpbs down and about 10% packet loss. Last night I was battling 35% packet loss while trying to do some work.
Parts of the county do have DSL and Cable. A guy who lives about 10 houses up from my dad has Time Warner broadband. He's had it for 10 years and loves it. My parent's can't get it, however, because they're just over the county line and apparently this county has some sort of exclusivity agreement with another small/local cable company.
That small cable company does have broadband, but only to small/select area of the county, and they don't seem to have any interest in heading out this way.
I really don't even know what to do to help them anymore as far as connectivity goes. I just know that it annoys them.
Anyway, the point of my little tirade is: It angers me to see possible additional imposed limitations to an area which already struggles to have anything to begin with.
All we had to do was have a few meetings about community WIFI and put up a few radios and suddenly the local cable company decided that what they said would take a decade could be done in a couple of months. I've never seen them move so fast. It was like leprechaun magic.
Have a few meetings, invite your local cable representative to talk about "options". (They always send a guy to tell you how committed they are, how many new places they hooked up last year, and how your neighborhood is just too rural to serve at this time.) Once you get a T1 somewhere with a big antenna, they'll freak.
I'm not entirely certain that they (the cable company) cares. There's the wireless ISP in the area (what the parents currently have) and they didn't seem to fret when that came into the area.
This is mostly an old, poor, mill town -- except all of the mills have long since gone away.
You pretty much described exactly the kinds of things they say. When I first called on my parent's behalf in 2008, I was told it would be 2010. In 2010 I was told "maybe 2011." Here we are in 2011 and they still have no answer for me.
Bell South apparently doesn't have a DSLAM near by... though my sister has DSL and lives about 6 miles from my parents.
They're pretty much at the county line, so I think this has caused them to end up in a "no man's land".
Time Warner can't come that last 1/4 mi and the other cable company doesn't care to come out this far.
If it were me in this situation, I would talk to the guy who has the cable and share his connection (even pay for his monthly fee to provide incentive). It's relatively easy to connect two houses by using directional wireless antenna.
Depending on how determined you are, 900mhz is unlicensed and can punch a wireless signal through trees. Equipment can be expensive, but there's surplus stuff out there, esp. among hams.
I think it would be doable. About a year ago I was getting shared internet from someone a couple miles away. There was line of sight between the two antennas, but the internet signal was pretty good.
A guy who lives about 10 houses up from my dad has Time Warner broadband.
Similar situation here - Comcast provides service to the entire area with a few exceptions, such as my neighbor and I. The cable service stops 150 feet up the road at the next closest neighbor, and for five years they have declined to extend the line. According to my neighbor, last time he called Comcast they offered to run the line if he covered the $9K or so cost.
I live in the triangle area. My broadband options are limited. An excerpt I wrote nominating my municipality for Google Fiber for Communities:
Though there are many technology workers here, the area has limited Internet access providers, primarily BellSouth DSL and Time Warner cable, both of which have higher prices, yet offer less bandwidth compated to providers in other regions.
For example, Comcast advertises (in Santa Clara, CA) 15 Mbps down, 3 Mbps up (w/PowerBoost) for $42.95 per month, after a six-month intro of $19.99.
By comparison, Time Warner Cable offers only 10 Mbps down, 512 Kbps up for $64.90 per month, after a six-month intro of $39.90/month. Two-thirds the bandwidth for 1.5x the cost, nevermind that I can't even get higher speed if I wanted to.
DSL is even worse. I can't get BellSouth's website to tell me what DSL options are available at my address, but att.com advertises 6 Mbps DSL for $42.95 per month after a 12-month intro of $24.95. AT&T U-verse is not yet available to me either.
Now look what Wilson, NC, 60 miles to the east, offers to its residents:
I can't be bothered to read this article, I'll get too angry.
I have no clue about this particular case, but I've been involved in other municipal fiber projects, and big telcos (plural, not just one) routinely tried to stop or sabotage these projects, often surreptitiously. As far as they're concerned, you're encroaching on their territory. It's complete crap. It happens all over the country.
A commenter below mentions that they thought the headline was editorialized heavily or plain wrong. Again, I have no clue about this particular case, but these corporations work in underhanded ways.
It's a shame you can't be bothered to read it. It's an even greater shame that the comment at the top of the page was written by a person who didn't read the article.
Be sure to read to the end and see the update at the bottom where he mentions that he has received grants from Time Warner Cable (the ISP here in NC).
I agree with some of the statements, we shouldn't have municipal fiber networks where it doesn't make sense. On the other hand, I've had stellar experience with locally owned and operated broadband networks in other states, and I don't think we need a bill to make that illegal. A few bad examples doesn't mean we need a law to prohibit it in the future.
"I don't think we need a bill to make that illegal."
It doesn't sound like this makes it illegal. It sounds like it makes it illegal for municipalities to engage in anticompetitive practices, or what we'd call anticompetitive practices if they weren't a government. That's not the same thing.
I have no opinion on the bill itself. I found the article thought-provoking, but being libertarian I'm still inclined to say that a municipality shouldn't be running a business like that. Not even because it'll give bad service to the customers necessarily, but also because a municipality just shouldn't have to deal with a case where it builds out millions of dollars of infrastructure and then can't recoup the costs because its business analysis was crappy. Society has solid, tested mechanisms for dealing with that when companies go wrong and have to go under, it's a lot harder for a municipality. They shouldn't be engaging in that sort of risky behavior, even as I'm not sure I want to ban it.
Given that this sort of infrastructure tends to be a natural monopoly or close to one, it seems like a perfect case for either the government to build it, or some sort of quasi-governmental regulated utility, the same way power lines are operated. If you consider it an actual utility, the government is implicitly going to be guaranteeing it one way or another, because people aren't going to be willing to put up with a company going bankrupt resulting in service just being discontinued.
Even in states where energy production is free-market/deregulated, with consumers choosing which power generators to buy from at market rates, the actual lines over which the power flows are either government-owned or quasi-governmental, because competition for provision of power lines doesn't work particularly well.
Regardless of the pros/cons though, municipal experimentation in this area seems the least problematic to me. If the federal government or even a state is doing something, it's hard to escape and covers a large area. If a town is doing something, and people don't like it, it's much easier to just avoid that town. If some strategies clearly end up working much better than others, we'll be able to see which towns succeed in their strategies and which fail. Municipalities are also somewhat more constrained in their ability to waste unlimited taxpayer money, due to a mixture of fewer taxes they're allowed to levy, and the fact that people can just move to another town if things get too onerous.
Building power lines isn't the same level of risk. What's the probability a given house wants power? Basically 100%. Municipalities have lost their metaphorical shirts on fibre rollouts before. If it was similar in all relevant ways you wouldn't have such different outcomes. That's a sign your argument isn't capturing something about reality.
The reason why I'm not in a hurry to ban it is that I'm actually not upset to see people experience the consequences of their actions. It inevitably happens anyhow and trying to legislate it away has the usual problems that arise when you try to legislate an impossibility.
I suppose I shouldn't have used the dreaded l-word; we say nearly the same thing but you wouldn't know it from the karma outcome.
Municipalities, by definition, engage in anticompetitive practices. Electricity, garbage, sewer, water. For utilities, the municipality is the arbiter of who gets to provide them. Often it does them itself. There's no reason Internet should be any different. Furthermore, there are a lot of reasons Internet should be exactly the same.
There's one thing to be offering these services but another thing to ban competition in the same areas. Even worse, the monopoly is justified in the name of 'natural monopoly', yet there is still the need to legislate this monopoly (as if nature needed any encouragement).
Furthermore, as soon as you get a local monopoly on internet access, you are only one city council decision away from local censorship. After all, he who pays gets to call the shots ("Porn on the tax-paid internet? No way! Think of the children.")
I agree that we probably shouldn't have communities running anticompetitive businesses, but as you say, I don't want to ban it. Also, if some community does decide run their own network, does this bill mean they can't use government grants to set it up and get it started before becoming profitable? That may effectually make getting these sort of community broadband plans impossible to start in the future.
Why can't a group of people decide what they want for themselves democratically? Why not let municipalities be free to provide internet as a utility (like roads, electricity, etc.)? After all, this doesn't mean they all have to do so.
The article focuses on two cities that bought out their failing local providers. Considering that they were failing, it's probably no surprise that city managers with no experience in that business can't run them any better.
The article completely ignores Greenlight (http://www.greenlightnc.com/) -- the successful municipal broadband network in Wilson, NC that has been battling TW in the courts. To me, it appears the bill is aimed directly at Greenlight.
BTW I live in Raleigh, I pay TWC $105 per month for business class service: 10/2 with 5 static IPs. (I get roughly 7/1. They won't prorate for the missing bits.)
Don't have the link handy, but just today I read that Greenlight is not yet profitable, but is on its way to be so. Consider that the fiber that's now in the ground is a really long term investment: it can last for at least the next 20 years and maybe even longer.
The headline is not just editorializing heavily, it's plain wrong.
[The bill] seeks to ensure that cities, who function in the dual role of regulator and competitor in such markets, don’t abuse their regulatory power to privilege themselves with respect to their competitors. [...] The bills require municipal broadband operators play by the same rules and regulations that apply to commercial operators, to refrain from cross-subsidizing their networks by raiding other kitties, to price at cost or above, and to allow fair access to rights of way.
Say what you want about Time Warner being out there, pushing any bill, but let's at least judge the bill by it's actual content.
So, you're relying on the editorialized summary of the legislation instead of the actual text to call the article "wrong"?
Municipal broadband operators shouldn't have to "play fair". Broadband access is a natural monopoly, and a municipality offering quality service should not be bound by the same obligations as a profit-making enterprise.
If the city and its residents believe that broadband is worth funding, via any method they choose to do so, that should absolutely be their right regardless of what TWC and their lobbyists think.
Broadband access is a natural monopoly, and a municipality offering quality service should not be bound by the same obligations as a profit-making enterprise.
Neither of these statements make sense.
First, regarding the "natural monopoly", I just can't understand why you'd say that. You've offered no supporting argument. So I'll just point out that, 30 years ago, ATT said exactly the same thing. But we've come a long way from there, virtually all of it good. Why would you want to run your broadband access under the same ideas that gave us the evil old phone monopoly?
I don't understand why you'd think that a government-run service should have special privileges over a corporation. I would say the other way around, because the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and all that. Plus there's the dismal track record of other governmental efforts. Take sports stadiums, for example. Giving public education huge benefits in that business certainly hasn't delivered better outcomes.
AT&T was right that telephone service is a natural monopoly. There's still only one set of phone lines running into your house. This trend on HN of expecting every argument to be entirely self-supported and encyclopedic-length, defining everything from first principles, is really quite annoying. You don't win an argument by going "HA HA YOU DIDN'T DEFINE A TERM." If you don't know what a natural monopoly is, go look it the fuck up. Utilities such as telephone service and internet access are the textbook definition of a natural monopoly.
Government run services already have tons of special privileges corporations don't. Try not paying your taxes and see what happens. Regardless, it is my opinion (and I'd believe the article writers would agree with me) that infrastructure is something that is inherently in the public interest and therefore best managed by the public (through government.) You don't drive on four separate interstate systems, you don't have eighteen sets of phone lines running into your house, and you don't have 4 sets of power cables either.
>infrastructure is something that is inherently in the public interest and therefore best managed by the public (through government.)
By this idiot "argument", government should go back to the 1950s through 1970s and start nationalizing railroads, power companies, and oil companies again. How did that work out again?
No it should move forward and privitize the roads.
Particularly it should sell them to different car companies and arrange for them to have a monopoly. So the interstate is usable by anyone who pays but the local roads are GM only and the off ramp where you work is owned by Toyota.
I don't know, let's ask California how their energy prices are doing now that they've been radically deregulated. Let's take a train on our efficient, safe, and inexpensive national rail system there to ask them.
The brownouts a couple years back were because the State deregulated only one side of the market, leaving the sellers of electricity in an untenable position. Essentially, they had to compete to sell on the one hand, but were forbidden from competition on the purchasing side. The problem was entirely (and it's not often one can point a finger at one single cause, but here it is) the fault of ham-fisted State regulation.
The federal rail system is not inexpensive, it's heavily subsidized. Don't start with the per-passenger-mile comparison to highways, because it's wrong: the study failed to account for capital cost in the railway, while counting for it against roads. On the topic of rail, the network of rail in the US was subsidized and built using eminent domain -- yet all of those railroads failed or were merged into others. The one exception, the one railroad that stood on its own without federal strongarming others into supporting it, is the only one that managed to survive until the present day.
On the one hand, you are talking about a program to privatize a previously-public program. That has nothing to do with the question of whether public entities should enter markets that are already serviced by corporate entities.
Indeed, if anything, it seems to me that your example argues against government getting into business, because of the danger of it being corrupted or subverted, as in your example.
If you don't understand economies of scale or network effects, why are you commenting on this post?
Ahem. Network effects refer to the network, not to the individual provider. As a customer of Verizon, for example, I can participate in the same network that ATT customers use. My ISP is PennTeleData, and I'm fairly confident that this is not the way you're moving your data. Yet we still manage to mutually benefit from network effects.
Economies of scale are a positive effect of larger entities. But this is weighed against by the dinosaur effect, shall we say, that prevents them from changing business methods or products in an agile fashion. Or perhaps you believe that Microsoft should be the only maker of software?
Carrying the "natural monopoly" point a little further, it's not all upside for the municipal operator: while the commercial operator could walk away from an unprofitable service area, the municipality will have to provide the service even at a loss. (At least as long as taxpayers think it's worthwhile.)
Right, and while it may be unprofitable to build roads to the trailer park, if a city thinks the trailer park deserves connectivity to the rest of the city, the roads will get built. Equal access is a fundamental principle of infrastructure projects -- or at least it should be.
No, I'm relying on the linked article to conclude that the headline linking to that article doesn't accurate reflect the content of the article, in fact it editorializes it. Both are contrary to HN guidelines.
The fact that you agree with the editorializing is irrelevant.
The actual bill is very clearly intended to throw up a prohibitive roadblock in front of any municipal buildout. Cities are forbidden from entering into any sort of public-private partnership to build a network, etc. etc.
Judging the bill by its actual content, a more honest version of the bill would simply be a full ban on municipal networks.
Most of those conditions seem reasonable to me except for the ban on cross-subsidies and sub-cost pricing. If a municipality chooses to pay for a subsidized city broadband network from tax dollars, I don't see why they shouldn't be able to. At least, I don't see a reason that that decision has to be made for every city by the state legislature, instead of leaving it to each local government to decide its own policy on the subject.
More important on the cross-subsidy issue, I doubt the commercial ISPs will be banned from subsidizing the connection service with their business as a content provider. If the existing ISPs were just ISPs, then the ban on cross-subsidies would actually level the playing field, but that's not the case.
Time Warner is probably the worst cable service provider I've ever used in my life. I was so happy to move to Florida and get Verizon at 30/30 for the same price I paid for Time Warner's poor quality and consistently dropped service.
As for the bill itself - I don't see why any regulatory body or bill should tell a business how much they can charge, government or otherwise.
I spoke at length with my Representative about this several weeks back and he was on the fence. He does not want to see Government compete directly with private corps, but in this case I would argue that the internet is a core utility like water/power, especially if you expect growth in high paying tech jobs in an area. This is an example of old world thinking/planning being played by the savvy private interests, and it is alarming.
It's a horrendous thing for consumers but let's remember municipalities lured in cable companies to build in rural areas by promising little or no competition via exclusive franchising agreements. The municipalities usually get a small cut of profits from the cable provider as well. Blame TWC but also blame the municipality itself for 20-30 years of anti-competitive behavior and the voters who allow this to happen. If this passes it will be entirely consistent with the history of cable franchises. In the end this may all be a show to get a higher kick-back out of TWC.
If the government wants our data usage records, today we have at least a hope that our (corporate) ISP will protect our privacy, at least until the government comes up with a subpeona.
If the government is our ISP, do we have any hope of avoiding the scrutiny of government?
You trust corporates more than you trust the government?
At least the government is in theory suppose to look after your best interests, corporations have no such requirement. Either way the best solution is maintaining strict privacy laws with monitoring and oversight by the free press and well funded and respected organisations such as a better funded EFF.
From 1995-2000, their only option was dialup. 56k dialup was offered but the quality of the phone lines in the area only allowed for 26k - 28k at best.
Sometime around 2000 or 2001, "broadband" finally moved to the area. However, they can not get DSL or Cable. They have a wireless ISP (radio installed on the house, receives signal from a tower.)
They get about 1mpbs down and about 10% packet loss. Last night I was battling 35% packet loss while trying to do some work.
Parts of the county do have DSL and Cable. A guy who lives about 10 houses up from my dad has Time Warner broadband. He's had it for 10 years and loves it. My parent's can't get it, however, because they're just over the county line and apparently this county has some sort of exclusivity agreement with another small/local cable company.
That small cable company does have broadband, but only to small/select area of the county, and they don't seem to have any interest in heading out this way.
I really don't even know what to do to help them anymore as far as connectivity goes. I just know that it annoys them.
Anyway, the point of my little tirade is: It angers me to see possible additional imposed limitations to an area which already struggles to have anything to begin with.