I'm glad to see this. Internet service is a necessary utility like electricity, water, sewer, roads, and police and fire protection. Particularly at the level of last-mile infrastructure, it's inevitable that there's going to be a monopoly on high-speed service. So it makes sense for it to be built out by the municipalities themselves. In fact, the federal government should be helping this along. Once we have fiber to everyone's house, ISPs who want to offer something beyond the raw connectivity the city provides can do so, and make use of that last-mile infrastructure on a resident-initiated opt-in basis.
> Particularly at the level of last-mile infrastructure, it's inevitable that there's going to be a monopoly on high-speed service. So it makes sense for it to be built out by the municipalities themselves.
Both sentences are debatable. Regarding the first sentence, it's possible that the optimal firm count in some communities and especially sparsely populated areas is one (i.e. an actual natural monopoly), but in most communities I would expect it top be at least two or three, since broadband can be delivered through phone lines and cable television lines (which most communities are wired for). There are obviously other feasible media, like power lines and wireless. Could you explain why you believe that last-mile infrastructure is inevitably a monopoly?
Regarding the second sentence, it's debatable that government control is a good solution even in situations where the optimal firm count is one. An ideal government solution may be better than the average private solution, but likewise the ideal private solution may be better than the average government solution. We ought to compare the average case for both solutions, which is to say, the actual outcome we can reasonably expect to get given our specific inputs (our system of government, existing infrastructure, market demand, etc.). I won't claim to have any convincing evidence either way, but I'm not so confident that a government solution is obviously going to be better than a private solution, even in a true natural monopoly.
I love the ideal, but the reality is that a lot of people are getting a half-assed effort from one company that has no economic incentive to improve. Even the threat of governments coming in can provide some of that incentive to make service better. Add to this that the cities that have created their own broadband networks have done it extremely well, and it's hard to make abstract private/public arguments.
In Chattanooga, TN:
Public: 1 gigabit, $70 a month;
Comcast: 25 mbps, $45 a month (I just looked it up for a zip code in the city)
25 mbps / 1 gbps = 0.025
Assuming linear scaling: 1gbps at Comcast would cost $1800/mo. Holy shit.
This is exactly what economic theory predicts will happen in the absence of competition. What's often ignored is the efficacy of the government getting stuff done is largely dependent on the competency of the officials. But if you have good officials, the government solution to the high speed problem is a fantastic one.
Chattanooga isn't a very good example. The Internet is cheap because the city already had a fiber network around for the power lines. There is no way that $70 is actually paying for capital costs.
Look at the various information floating around about Verizon's ROI on FiOS. There is a lot of speculation that they don't even break even on the average deployment unless the customer buys the bundled video services.
I don't know about Grande, but ATT is mostly building out FTTN rather than FTTP. They also bundle television service. Nobody knows the profit story behind Google fiber. Google gets very aggressive regulatory concessions in terms of only agreeing to serve neighborhoods with sufficient demonstrated interest. A huge part of the cost of fiber deployment is having to build out to neighborhoods where enough people won't subscribe. Also, they have the advertising tie in with Google services.
> Google gets very aggressive regulatory concessions in terms of only agreeing to serve neighborhoods with sufficient demonstrated interest.
So you're saying $70/month can cover capital costs, and its terribly inefficient regulation that's causing excessive costs; and that Google is able to sidestep that costly regulation, whereas Comcast and other incumbents can't.
No one begs Comcast or Time Warner to come service their community like what occurred with Google Fiber. I think that's pretty damn telling.
Nobody knows whether $70/month covers capital costs. Google has been totally tight-lipped about the financials of Google Fiber. All we know is that $70 + value of tie-in from more use of Google services + the political value of shaming incumbents + unprecedented regulatory concessions makes Google Fiber worth the company's while in a small number of cities.
We have more insight into Verizon's financials: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/19/a-bear-speaks-why-v.... This article estimates that Verizon will ultimately lose money on FiOS. Indeed, if anything the estimates in the article, written in 2010, are a bit more optimistic than what turned out to happen. Verizon really struggled with uptake, which have only touched the 40% assumed in the article this year. That means the interest and marketing costs in the calculation are probably too low.
The numbers also explain why the company is reluctant to expand the service:
> Through 2010 the company will pay an average of $817 to run the fiber past the 19 million homes, on poles or under the ground. It will also incur $172 per home passed in other costs related to the video infrastructure.
It costs $1,000 to run the fiber past each home. The uptake rate is crucial--if only 10% of people in a neighborhood actually subscribe, then the cost just to run wires past the house is $10,000 for each subscriber. If 50% subscribe, that cost drops to $2,000 per subscriber. Verizon has thus resisted expanding to cities like Baltimore, where only a small sliver of the city really has customers who can afford $70/month for fiber. Google gets around this by only building out to neighborhoods where enough people sign-up to subscribe. Indeed, before they had to change their procedure in Kansas City due to marketing backlash, their sign-up process left most of the poor neighborhoods in the city without fiber.
You can call these build-out requirements inefficient regulation, and they are, but they're unavoidable in U.S. cities, whose political structures are dominated by those representing lower-income people.
I don't know the financials of Chattanooga's system, but if they're losing money (when you don't count tax revenue) the price comparison isn't very useful from an economic standpoint, at least without introducing another argument like that wealthier people ought to subsidize Internet access for poorer people.
> This is exactly what economic theory predicts will happen in the absence of competition.
Well, I would expect competition to emerge in the absence of competition, if the existing firm is charging so much that competition can be profitable (and if competition isn't prohibited by force). It's true that in an actual natural monopoly (which, remember, I think is rare for Internet access) the monopoly firm has notable market power (the ability to set prices higher than marginal cost). But that market power is not unlimited, and the government solution to a natural monopoly requires the government to be both able and willing to produce at a favorable marginal cost and set prices accordingly.
> What's often ignored is the efficacy of the government getting stuff done is largely dependent on the competency of the officials. But if you have good officials, the government solution to the high speed problem is a fantastic one.
Certainly true. That would be one of the "inputs" I mentioned in my previous comment. Of course, "good officials" probably doesn't mean much more than "true Scotsman."
Good points—the only thing I'd say is that we're talking about a really capital intensive industry where the incumbent may be able to drop prices to compete with a newcomer. Example: If company B comes to a town where company A is already operating, company A can just offer new subscribers the same terms as B, making it hard for B to compete. If B can anticipate A's action (not that hard in this case, because I can do it after a couple of beers) then B may choose not to invest because B's road to a profit requires producing at a lower marginal cost than A and undercutting A's prices. They actually have to pull subscribers away from A. If A is already producing at a low marginal cost but overcharging, then A has the flexibility to fight a price war (and potentially win).
Ha maybe I'm banking too much on those competent government officials. The variance in quality is certainly high.
> Regarding the first sentence, it's possible that the optimal firm count in some communities and especially sparsely populated areas is one (i.e. an actual natural monopoly), but in most communities I would expect it top be at least two or three, since broadband can be delivered through phone lines and cable television lines (which most communities are wired for). There are obviously other feasible media, like power lines and wireless.
You literally described what we already have today. We already know how that turns out, too: horribly.
> Could you explain why you believe that last-mile infrastructure is inevitably a monopoly?
Could you explain why you think we don't already have one? DSL lost against DOCSIS.
If you want last-mile internet of a decent speed, your choice almost everywhere is cable, period.
If there is a fibre to the building type network in place it will be pretty hard to justify paying the money to maintain ugly old hacks like DSL and cable internet. You might as well add 56k modems to the list of competitive services. Such things are simply not competitive to fibre.
In terms of simple economic efficiency having multiple redundant last mile networks doesn't really make any sense. That's why no city has multiple competitive sewer and water systems.
You don't need multiple last mile systems to have a competitive ISP/TV/phone market. You just need good policies to allow entities that want to sell data services to get access to the last mile infrastructure. You can even bill for the LM infrastructure separately if you want to prevent bundling.
Particularly at the level of last-mile infrastructure, it's inevitable that there's going to be a monopoly on high-speed service.
What about federal legislation to regulate municipalities, such that competition is enabled between municipalities and broadband companies? Could there be something akin to the telephony monopoly breakup? Could we address cable lobby objections to government monopolies while also enabling local governments to address constituents needs?
Sure, there could be another solution. It's called structural separation. The cablecos SHOULD have lobbied for that. Instead they choose a brittle approach that could destroy their business. Greed kills.
You have enumerated a list of the worst services available to today's consumer. In none of those areas has there been any significant improvement in service level, cost, efficiency, or technology for many years (, though you could argue 'smart meters' will be a small step forward for electricity). Governments regularly use all of these utilities as revenue-raising 'businesses', which they consistently strip of any capital that could be used for infrastructure improvements.
In addition, some of the services have consistently proven unreliable, as they are run for the benefit of certain special interest groups at the expense of everyone else. Water is subsidized for farmers and golf courses, and this often causes everyone else to suffer droughts. Roads are often subsidized for truckers, which causes everyone else to pay higher gas taxes than they should, and suffer damaged road surfaces. Police departments are poorly regulated, and the policemen protect each other, resulting in the consistent and horrific violation of the rights of many people on a regular basis. Fire departments are run for the firemen, as can be seen from the fact that the number of paid firemen has been consistently increasing over the last 50 years, despite the increase of fire resistance of buildings, and the decrease of blazes.
All of these utilities also have some of the worst customer service available. On could argue that it is possible to get roads fixed through the city council, but this is the only one of the utilities mentioned which gives the consumer a modicum of recourse.
In short, if you are going to argue that ISPs should be a utility, please describe how it will be different from the existing ones, not how it will be the same.
It's like you live in a parallel universe from me.
My water, electricity, etc utilities are far more reliable (probably by an order of magnitude) than any private service I've experienced. They don't cut corners in design or safety, and when there is a problem, it's far easier to get in touch with them (they're usually already aware of it and don't pretend to act surprised like say your Telco or ISP) and scheduling is more flexible.
Case in point: I was wondering if my home water pressure could be increased at the meter. I'd gotten conflicting advice from plumbers. I called up one afternoon. They said they'd send someone out to check. I got a knock on my door at 8PM that same evening. I told him I measured 42psi at the hose bib, which was over the zone's minimum of 36. Which was disappointing to me. But still. The level of service just floored me. I've never experienced anything close to that from Time Warner, DiSH, AT&T, T-Mobile, you-name-it. I replaced my 150amp electric meter with a 200amp meter (city provided), it was inspected for less than most people would bother getting out of bed for and I had a fire hazard from our "new to us" house replaced with almost no cost from the utility.
I also feel like I get a lot more for my dollar. Obviously the power grid is far more complex than Time Warner's cabling. Not to mention it can kill you. From TWC I get internet access. From the electric company I get 100% Wind Power generated electricity (for an additional $0.5 I believe), and hundreds of kilowatts of power each and every month.
I never give a thought to wether my sewer service is going to work. It doesn't have "off" days where it backs up a bit. My water doesn't decide to stop flowing every once in awhile so I have to try turning the faucet off and on until it works. When we moved in a couple years ago, I thought I smelled gas outside near the meter. Someone came out within 30 minutes. They found a minor leak (someone in the alley actually ran into the meter!), had it fixed up in no time flat. No charge.
If an ISP could come close to my Utilities experience I'd be overjoyed personally. And it'd be the last time I ever saw an Early Termination Fee, obscene equipment charges for commodity hardware, it'd actually work 99.999% of the time, and (maybe the biggest issue of all with ISPs) I'd actually get the service level I'm paying for.
If you want to swap meaningless anecdotes I can tell you that my cable service is more reliable than my electrical service. Neither are perfect but I have not yet had an internet outage this year that I've noticed; my power has been out for significant amounts of time (> 1 hour) at least a couple of times, and if you count momentary off/on outages it's been closer to a dozen.
Where I grew up we had persistently poor water pressure. It took over a decade for the city-owned water utility to admit there was a problem and install a booster pump for that neighborhood.
All my area utilities have fees for establishing service, deposit requirements if you have low credit or are a new customer, and if you call them out for service and the problem turns out to be with your plumbing or your wiring, you can bet there will be a charge.
Just this morning, comcast had a massive outage across philadelphia and southern new jersey. Comcast is BASED in philadelphia. There was no explanation or warning, just as the work day started. If that were electric, it'd be national news; instead, it's just another day in the shitty world of comcast: accountability is way down on the list compared to fees, bugging me to upgrade my service.
So still anecdotal, but hundreds of thousands of people were affected.
I think what we are really seeing here is that different municipalities have different degrees of success... In mine, no one even thinks about power/water/sewage/roads (except during road repair), but the poor quality of internet service is a weekly subject.
You are addressing the 'seen' issues, but not the 'unseen', and to paraphrase Bastiat, "[the] bad [analyst] confines himself to the visible effect; the good [analyst] takes into account both the effect that can be seen and those effects that must be foreseen".
Please address this part of my post: "none of those areas has [seen] any significant improvement in service level, cost, efficiency, or technology for many years". ISPs and cell service providers have many faults, but they have been constantly improving the service level (bandwidth); I would like to know what comparable improvements have been made with respect to electricity, sewage, potable water supplies, police protection, fire services, or other utilities. These utilities have been constantly increasing in price (at least nominally, and in most cases after correcting for inflation), while providing no improvement in the basic service.
Most utilities providers have not even been improving their back-end technologies, which would serve to reduce costs, or improve the service's availability. As I mentioned in the previous post, this is likely because of how governments use utilities' capital improvement funds as 'piggy banks', preventing infrastructure and technology upgrades.
In addition, you are not addressing any of the drought/road quality & cost/police abuse/fire department cost which I raised, and which are real problems.
> Please address this part of my post: "none of those areas has [seen] any significant improvement in service level, cost, efficiency, or technology for many years".
What improvements are you expecting? Some things don't need to change. It serves its purpose the same way it did a hundred years ago and there is nothing wrong with that.
> ISPs and cell service providers have many faults, but they have been constantly improving the service level (bandwidth)
That's the terminating equipment. The expensive part, which is the wire or fiber in the ground, hasn't changed materially in decades or more. You could easily have a municipal last mile and competing providers who supply their own terminating equipment at the endpoints.
> In addition, you are not addressing any of the drought/road quality & cost/police abuse/fire department cost which I raised, and which are real problems.
Would you like to explain how a monopoly for-profit entity can be expected to do any better? Why would they care about droughts or abuse if it isn't costing them money?
>"What improvements are you expecting? Some things don't need to change. It serves its purpose the same way it did a hundred years ago and there is nothing wrong with that."
You could have said the same of steel if its quality had not improved, or airline travel if it had not gotten much cheaper, and become available to the masses. You are falling into the trap of only analyzing the 'seen', and failing to think of the 'unseen'.
>"The expensive part, which is the wire or fiber in the ground, hasn't changed materially in decades or more."
It will soon have to change if we are to have fibre on the last mile, and may change again when the technology evolves further; one of my concerns is that utilitization causes ossification, and prevents further progress, as is the case with the sewer, power, and water last miles.
>"Would you like to explain how a monopoly for-profit entity can be expected to do any better? Why would they care about droughts or abuse if it isn't costing them money?"
Thanks for setting up a false choice, I love those! I have no idea why there should be a monopoly on the purification and distribution of water.
Having private entities selling water would reduce the number of droughts, as they are likely to price according to volumetric use, and to price based on scarcity. Droughts are a problem of pricing, not of the scarcity of water; if you want a good example of how this is the case, motor vehicles never fall from the sky, and there is no shortage of them.
P.S. people are coming by and down-voting all my comments at once (I have gotten at least 25 down-votes here so far), could someone please let me know if I am being offensive, discriminatory, or going off-topic?
There's only so much you can do with last-mile lines. There is no known way to get data to your house faster and with more bandwidth than using light. There is nothing that travels faster than light in a vacuum.
The only enhancement I can think of is propagation for ever-higher frequencies (UV, X-Ray, etc), allowing more bandwidth. But realistically node hardware improvements regularly boost the performance of the same fiber cable, much like how cable modems are still improving using the same RG-6 from the 60's. (RG-6 is old, but it is still very good- physics still works just the same)
Last-mile power/sewage/data/etc hasn't changed much because it is fundamental. Water travels in pipes. Sewage also travels in pipes. The only reason data changed (POTS to cable/fiber) is because data was originally piggybacked on a network never designed for it.
One day we might do fiber optics with gamma rays, or invent wormhole communication, but I'm prepared to invest in plain-old visible-light fiber optics for now.
------------
As for water distribution in general (not last-mile), that's a problem with water rights, not water companies. It's a legal nightmare that has nothing to do with public vs. private utilities.
Just because you aren't aware of them don't mean they don't exist.
PEX is very common for new residential/commercial buildings for example. I'd be surprised if municipalities in need of water treatment plant upgrades aren't looking at technologies that weren't widely available 20 or 30 years ago when the original system was put into place.
Also, complaining about increasing price (which is modest IME) is an unusual tactic. The price would have to increase at a greater rate than inflation in order to account for the increasing concentration of wealth the past couple decades right? It's a little fuzzy for me, but I feel like that's just math. If 95% of your subscribers make less than they did two decades ago, but your per-subscriber bill is the same, then average cost is going to increase.
Also tightened environmental standards that didn't exist in 80's when the systems were put into place undoubtedly play a role in increasing costs.
I get 200amp service to my house today. It originally (in the 70's) had 100amp service. I'd call doubling the power requirements for the electrical grid quite an upgrade. Houses are most certainly increasing in size. Not to mention 20 years ago you didn't have the option to pay an extra half-cent per kWh to ensure the electric company purchased enough renewable power wholesale to cover your usage.
I pay all my utilities online with auto-pay. There's another upgrade.
The police of today are most certainly better equipped, better prepared, better trained, respond quicker and there are more of them. I don't agree with all of that but it's what the voters want. All that costs money, and it's most definitely different today than a couple decades ago.
Are roads worse today? I feel like they're not. At least not where I live (which is in Dallas proper where the average home is around 2,000sqft and $150K, so not some rich enclave). I feel like we spend too much money on roads in fact. The new 635 toll-road seems a terrible waste of money when we could have just had a DART (commuter train) run West/East along it (there are almost no West/East running lines in Dallas, which makes the public rail system not all that useful for many).
I can't remember the last time I drove on a gravel road. Even the state parks are fully paved. That definitely wasn't the case 30 years ago.
So sure, we pay more today than we did decades ago. Changing subscriber-base, voter priorities and deploying the exact tech you're complaining doesn't exist is a big part of it.
This feels like an argument of "Government Bad! Business Good!" at this point to be honest.
Like saying: "Most utilities providers have not even been improving their back-end technologies, which would serve to reduce costs, or improve the service's availability."
Where do you get that from? Anecdotally that seems far from the truth considering the payment options and Customer Service available to people these days.
So they're not tearing up the roads every few years to upgrade the pipe. That's a good thing. They are OTOH purchasing more efficient fleet vehicles. Even in gas loving TX it's common for Municipal vehicles to run on LNG. My Dad as a TxDOT employee working on the Galveston ferry has been through a lot of training. I can personally guarantee you TxDOT is not the same agency or using the same tech they were 30 years ago. Except where it's not broken.
One would think that true based on the thermodynamic first principles of the Otto and Diesel cycles, but you are actually incorrect due to a number of innovations such as fuel injection, EFI, direct injection, intake design, CFD analysis, materials advances which allow higher temperature and more efficient combustion, and turbocharging.[1] In addition, I happen to work on automotive and small engines, and can assure you that engine reliability has dramatically increased over the whole span of their existence, and every interval thereof.
to be fair, pge did just blow up a city and completely fuck up record keeping for their gas pipelines
But... fuck comcast, their high prices, their annual price increases, their data caps, their shitty service, their missed appointments, their slow speeds. We need government owned broadband.
seemingly good point but I think you're comparing apples to oranges. Providing electrical power, sewage lines, etc.. is not very difficult compared to handling Internet traffic. To make more clear what I mean, I wonder how your electric company would deal with a set of problems like when a torrent shows up on one of your customer's computers? Not to mention that IT support is probably more expensive than having your gas line checked for a leak.
To check for that leak they had to have customer service reps, city vehicles, fleet insurance, technicians qualified to work on a live, potentially leaking gas line, gasoline for the vehicle, and they arrived at my home in less time than a phone-call to TWC generally takes. I really doubt some IT staff costs more.
As for the Torrent: Give the customer what they pay for, and no more. If my internet issues are because of Torrents, I have to ask: Why does the lack of competency ISPs have never seem to work in my favor?
edit: Also "not very difficult compared to":
I have an amateur's idea of the utility side (mostly from DIY and having relatives in the trades) and I think you're sorely underestimating the skill and care involved in making sure this stuff actually works. Large scale projects for anyone can be challenging, but it'd be amazing if anything ever worked at all if utilities put the same (lack of) planning care into their projects that most tech companies do.
Most people probably don't even know what a P-trap is for. Or ever noticed that their gutters are actually sloped for drainage. What material their plumbing is made from. How many receptacles can be placed on a circuit. That the brick on your house isn't actually load-bearing. What weeping holes are for.
>> "Providing electrical power, sewage lines, etc.. is not very difficult compared to handling Internet traffic."
There is no question that each of these things is difficult at scale. Furthermore I have never done either of them.
However, power systems EE is perhaps the most widely-known example of Big Boy Engineering except building rockets. In the power business, they have an distribution/cabling problem which is at best isomorphic to that found in the ISP business (though probably greater, because ISP's don't have millions of volts to worry about) wedded to far greater stationing/substationing/production problems, and they still have (as noted by someone else in this thread) far more 9's of uptime than Time Warner. As compensation for this, ISP's have a greater Signals and Systems flavored problem, but it doesn't seem like it balances out.
So basically I'm trying to say that "... not very difficult..." seems inaccurate.
It's about fixing a short in a power transmission line. Sounds simple, right? It involves liquid nitrogen and hundreds of people with possibility of explosions or huge oil spills. That's right, the line is suspended in pressurized oil! It goes on…
I tried to find a good pull quote, and it's basically all mind-blowing pull quotes. But here:
"Every vault also has a nipple which allows sampling of the pipe oil. They said you withdraw the oil through a thick membrane with a syringe (?). This happens monthly on all feeders in the LA area. The samples are analyzed downtown by a staff of chemists who can relate the presence of things like acetylene, butane, and benzene in the oil to arcing, coronas, and so forth. Apparently the oil chemistry is a very good indicator of the health of the segments."
Ok you don't have to worry about torrents but people expect pretty much 100% uptime on electrical service and you are dealing with transmitting an insane amount of energy which is technically non-trivial and can be extremely dangerous. You have to worry about power plant failure, maintenance, load balancing renewable and fossil fuels, meeting peak demands(rather than just slowing down everyone) and so on.
Why is some customer torrenting movies supposed to be the ISP's problem any more than some customer powering grow lamps to grow marijuana supposed to be the power company's problem?
> Governments regularly use all of these utilities as revenue-raising 'businesses', which they consistently strip of any capital that could be used for infrastructure improvements.
Is there any evidence of this? I was unable to find anything of value in a cursory web search. I found a couple of counter-examples, such as the Enron (NYSE:ENE)
scandal of intentionally causing blackouts and brownouts.
> worst services available
In many places, e.g. DC area, electricity (PEPCO) takes a long time to be restored and is objectively bad. However, regulated utilities are bound to serve rural and otherwise unprofitable customers.
> Roads are often subsidized for truckers
How do you get your food, iPhones, and button-up shirts?
> Water is subsidized for farmers and golf courses, and this often causes everyone else to suffer droughts.
Agreed that it is suboptimal for golf courses and manufacturers (including breweries) to use disproportionate amounts of water. Farmers? Maybe if they're raising livestock or other luxury food products. Causing droughts? How?
The comment about subsidized water for farmers applies to eg California. Yes, the water rights for farmers there are a serious mess and cause problems.
My sister lives in a town in Massachusetts with community-run Internet. She's always freaking out about broadband caps, violation of which apparently triggers massive fees.
Is the internet truly municipal or is only the fibre community owned? The distinction is important as a lot of private ISPs pay the local government a fee to use their existing infrastructure, while they provide the connectivity to the rest of the internet.
This arrangement also comes with the ISP's own flavor of EULA.
Can you elaborate on which town and who provides the service? The example above you cited Chattanooga and epbfi.com website that basic service costs $57.99/mo for 100 Mbs internet with no reference to a cap. Your comment seems disingenuous that you don't provide any details.
The linked article mentions that by Oct, 2013, the price for 1Gbit from EPB was reduced ~$70/month, and the folks who were paying ~$58 for 100mbit got bumped to 1Gbit at no additional charge.
Except for the useless "Lite" level, their bandwidth caps are up in the hundreds of gigabytes. That sounds pretty typical. Unless you are a photographer or videographer moving workflow or backups over that account, your not going to touch those caps.
> You have enumerated a list of the worst services available to today's consumer.
Are you being sarcastic or trolling, can't tell.
What are the worst services? Water? You need better water? You need competition for water and would like 5 companies to lay water pipes through the neighborhoods? You know strawberry flavored water, some with extra calcium ions, maybe one with beer flavor.
> Roads are often subsidized for truckers, which causes everyone else to pay higher gas taxes than they should, and suffer damaged road surfaces
Maybe we should tax truckers more. Wait, we do that. The easiest way to do it is to tax diesel fuel at the moment. Not ideal but we something is already in place.
> Police departments are poorly regulated,
Well go vote against it then.
I don't remember having even the ability to vote on how good or crappy I want my Verizon FIOS experience to be.
Am I the only one surprised by the fact that "the people" have to secure right to start a business for the common good in a democracy? I may be misinformed but in India I can not ever imagine having to need to do this.
p.s. I am not trying to show anyone in a bad light, just wondering if things like this are possible in a democracy.
What's funny is that a lot of people are worried about the "government" limiting their liberty, whereas in cases like this it's the big corporations that need to be defeated to win back your freedom.
Maybe freedom-above-all folks need to rethink what freedom is all about in this new reality.
Huh? It's the state government that has the law mostly preventing municipal broadband. If the government wasn't so powerful, the corporations couldn't use it as a tool against us.
You are talking around each other because there isn't one "the government", but rather a bunch of different levels constantly pushing and pulling against one another. It's very reasonable to be a small government ideologue while simultaneously wanting a more powerful city government. Many people who want "small government" simply want a less powerful federal government. A few states are playing with this balance (Colorado certainly among them) at all levels. Should the federal government control the state's drug policy? Should the state control the county's or municipality's infrastructure or natural resources? What about schools, who should control those?
These sorts of questions are where you see major differences between lots of different people who would all identify themselves as "conservatives" and agreement with many people would would identify themselves as "liberals". It isn't a simple system!
I could not agree more with the liberty-above-all folks - in terms of sentiment. I could not disagree more with them that the greatest threat to individual liberty is the "government" - that was true back in the day of Paul Revere maybe. But times have changed.
Nowadays the greatest threat, and a much more intelligent and subtle threat, too, is from Big Money. There's a war out there for people's minds, and we-the-people are currently losing.
Chaining up the bodies is so medieval and inefficient, so why bother, when you can chain up the minds and then the slaves will passionately defend their own chains. It's easy, too, just set up some "think tanks", or promote some newfangled ideologies that seem to promise "liberty" while in fact weaken the very defenses that support it. Problem solved.
I lived the first 2 decades of my life under communist dictatorship, so I think I know from first hand experience what freedom, or lack thereof, truly mean.
> I lived the first 2 decades of my life under communist dictatorship, so I think I know from first hand experience what freedom, or lack thereof, truly mean.
So you experienced a regime where government became too powerful and oppressive in the name of protecting the interests of the people, and you conclude that the biggest threat to freedom is not enough government to protect the interests of the people?
I could not disagree more with them that the greatest threat to individual liberty is the "government" - that was true back in the day of Paul Revere maybe. But times have changed.
You've got to be kidding. Most of the violations of human rights that occur in the world come from governments. What other entity is powerful enough to take everything you have and thrown you in prison?
There's no such thing as a world without governments. A large scale stateless society is impossible. If you weaken the power of democratic governments, non-democratic entities will take their place as the de facto government.
Your statement sounds like the doublespeak to me. At the end of the day, it's government that physically enforces things with relative impunity. The "power" of corporations in this context is just the power of government being used for corporate interests; it doesn't work the other way around.
Nominally, governments act at the behest of the good of the people, powerful or not. Regulation is part of its purpose. If they are not operating for the good of the people, then who are they operating for?
This is a clear case where a government founded for the good of the people has been side-tracked to operate at the good of a corporation, at the expense of the people. So I will stick with my earlier statement: governments have power due to the will of the people, and blaming the existence of governmental power for the fact that corporations bought the legislation is doublespeak.
The problem is not the existence of government (unless you are anarchist), nor is the fact that the government has the power to regulate. The problem is that a corporation bought legislation to restrict consumer choice, and that neither the politicians nor the corporations are being held accountable for the implicit (or even explicit) bribery that went on to make it happen.
The time when you should have been worried about personhood and legislation has passed. It was when they messed with Citizens United, and gave humongous power over the political process to semi-anonymous legal fictions.
Now is the time to fix that.
> I also don't think that "get money out of politics" is a pragmatic approach to amending the constitution.
But that's the current root of all evil. Unless you pull that out of the ground, bad stuff will keep sprouting up.
Some of us benefit greatly from our semi-anonymous legal fictions. Keeping one's assets and liabilities at arm's length (or two) is a handy way to keep my 1099 and 1040's nice and simple. And I really enjoy getting quarterly tax refunds. That my legal fictions now have political power is just another added bonus for me.
So, don't fret about where the river is going. Jump on in and take a ride. The water's nice and warm.
Anyone know of a study or methodical analysis anywhere (on the web or in a publication) assessing the character and extent of the influence of this "money in politics"?
I would love to see it.
It seems to me that massive campaign donations from corporations are only effective when a large fraction of the voters is voting in an ill-informed, rather mindless fashion. And as long as voters behave thus, it's not clear (to me) that it would take much money at all to undermine the effectiveness of a democracy.
That language is only proposed and carries no legal weight or significance. The call for a constitutional convention has to have a singular focus it's just based around money in politics. E.g., http://www.leg.state.vt.us/docs/2014/Resolutions/JRS027/ACTR...
The wording of the amendment would be decided and voted upon at the convention (75% of states required).
I was half joking, but I also don't think that "get money out of politics" is a pragmatic approach to amending the constitution.
Maybe something like "get governance back into politics" could take the form of a constitutional amendment requiring that every citizen vote (along with mandated funding to make that convenient for every citizen).
ahh, but who provides the framework that denies the local governments the right to implement this? That's right, the Judicial branch (local, state or federal). So, while corporations initiate and shepherd the process through the court systems, it is the court systems that allow this process.
The state of Colorado passed bill in 2005 [0] disallowing municipalities to offer their own advanced communications (read: broadband/fiber/wireless) services without a local vote. These local votes are what the OP was referring to.
Municipalities aren't "the people." The State has total police power in US federal system. Local governments only exist by the charter of the State government. Colorado eliminate all local governments if it wanted to.
If a group of citizens wanted to start a cooperative, they could do that.
It's more complicated than this, but it's the gist.
It is a difficult problem. Governments have a number of built in advantages over private companies trying to deliver the same services. I say this while being, in general, a supporter of the ability for municipalities to provide broadband if they choose to do so.
There are a number of complex opposing factors in allowing them to do so though. For example, Boulder has required companies leasing space on the public right of way to install, at the company's expense, fiber to be owned by the city. (http://www.branfiber.net/Conduit%20Lease%20Agreement%20betwe...) Basically, Boulder can force competitors for it's own broadband service to subsidize their own competitor. These are non-trivial problems to overcome.
> * Boulder can force competitors for it's own broadband service to subsidize their own competitor. These are non-trivial problems to overcome.*
If it is the will of the people, it isn't a problem. Nobody has a right to operate a for-profit SP any more than they have a right to operate a for-profit water utility.
"unfair competition" is all you really need to hear to understand that these companies hate the free market. so do the politicians that make laws to secure oligopolies.
the doublethink on this issue is amazing: the telecom companies are providing crappy internet, so let's make a law preventing competition, which is the nominal foundation of our economic system.
I'm fine with the phrase "unfair competition"; I want the competition between peers regulated. The horrible part is the assumption that the public is a peer, rather than the authority under which corporations are allowed to operate. If the public decides that it will be more efficient to provide some service itself, why would it grant special status to a project to provide that service less efficiently?
It's unfair to private corporations that we can do it cheaper without them?
I wish this would happen in Minneapolis. When ISP's get in bed with politicians creating laws that subsequently shut out all competitions, the ones that suffer the most are the consumers. Comcast has been the bane of my existence: slow speeds, high price, terrible customer service. The CEO has the audacity to say that people don't like COmcast customer service? Right, because I enjoy paying $90/month for 50mbps. Allowing municipals/counties/districts built their own will benefit the consumer overall, it might even improve neighborhoods to foster businesses to open up (or local offices, what have you).
If you're paying $90/month for just the 50mbps (no TV) then I recommend you call and be utterly furious. When they attempted to bump me to that price it took a phone call and insisting on escalations through 4 people but here I am- back at $40/month where I started a few years ago.
The first several people you get on the phone will tell you there's nothing you can do, just ask to be elevated to "somebody useful". It's rude but it's the game they force you to play, so go in swinging.
Boulder has a population of around 100,000 (about 30,000 are students at the University of Colorado.)
In some ways it feels like a (distant) suburb of Denver; there are people who commute from one to the other, though it's about a 40 mile drive. But in other ways it's very isolated. It's politically comparable to Berkley or Austin. It's racially a strong white majority with few hispanics (Denver is over 1/3 hispanic).
As another commenter mentioned, Boulder has intentionally created open space around itself. There's a city ordinance limiting water service to under a certain elevation in order to reduce the attractiveness of building up on the mountainsides. The city owns a huge amount of open space around its borders and allows only very limited, controlled development.
It's definitely not a suburb of Denver. It's relatively close, but it's a different place. It's a lot like Ann Arbor, Madison, or other cities of about 100k which have a large university in town.
It's actually got a fair bit of tech activity--nothing like top tier cities like SF, NYC, Boston, or even Austin, but for it's size the tech scene is significant.
I've heard over and over that Boulder (county, which is around 300,000 people) is #1 in the country for software jobs per capita - but unfortunately I don't have a tangible source for that.
Heh, yes. I live in Boulder. I am not quite sure where others get the 40 miles to Denver number. To South Denver, sure, but it's about 23 miles to Downtown.
I don't consider (nor do any of my friends) consider Boulder to be a suburb of Denver. If anything it serves as "the city" to places like Lyons, Longmont, Lafayette and Louisville.
Of relevancy to this article, Longmont approved municipal fiber a year ago.
Taking 93 or 36 it might as well be 100 miles away :) The commute between Denver and Boulder (which I did for 3 years) is brutal no matter how you slice it.
I don't live there, but I've been several times. As I understand it, Boulder county owns all of the land around Boulder and won't sell it, so the city can't expand. I think there's also a lot of restriction on how high buildings can be. The result is a small-town feel, but with a college atmosphere. There are a lot of engineering firms in and around Boulder, and plenty of beer. Add to that a culture of outdoorsy-ness, and it's one of the most lovely places I've had the pleasure to visit.
I've lived in Boulder for about 6 years now and stay for the environment. It's about a 40 minute drive from Denver on a good day and has a very different feel from the city. There's definitely a lot of opportunity in technology work-wise, endless opportunities in the outdoors, but some left to be desired culturally.
As a sibling mentioned, the city and the county together own a "green belt" around the city proper that is meant to be permanent. It was actually started in the 50s and has been a great legacy for us nowadays.
Land east of Boulder a ways (30 minutes+) can be affordable. Land < 30 minutes from Boulder in the North and East directions can get _very_ expensive. Lots of land west of Boulder in the mountains that can be built on too, but it's also expensive and can be pretty rough regarding roads, fires, floods (as we learned last year), etc....
6 acres of land IN Boulder with one house, water rights, and agricultural zoning has been for sale for a few years for $5m. One of the last parcels like it in the city. Will probably sell soon though for redevelopment.
EDIT: Regarding "cheap" being a subjective term. The neighborhood I rent in is < 10 minutes by bike to downtown and has mostly 1/8th acre single-family-home lots. Recently rebuilt houses with more 2000+ sq. ft. on these lots sell for ~$1m+. There is a lot of money being spent to live in the area.
Wow, maybe I should look at other parts of CO? I just looked on zillow and saw some properties for sale in the mountains to the west, but they all seemed to be 1.5+ hours from Boulder. (even though they were less than 30 miles) I didn't see anything closer in my price range.
Loveland, Longmong and Niwot are all relatively close, and have similar quality of life properties, but are quite a lot cheaper--they don't have the university, which can be a bug or a feature depending on your perspective.
Fort Collins is another university town but with a lower national profile than Boulder, which again can be a good or bad thing.
+1 on Fort Collins - relocated here five years ago. It's a fantastic town - many big city amenities for a small city. (For example: it has a ton of restaurants. I used to live in NYC, and many places in Fort Collins are comparable in quality.) Cost of living in town and in the surrounding area is very reasonable, and quality of life is great.
Mountain views everywhere - the whole town is only a few miles from the mountains, similar to Boulder. Tons of parks, trails, mountain biking, etc. The city is very bike-friendly. Whitewater rafting is also close by on the Cache La Poudre River, which exits the mountains ~10 miles NW of the city. Public access boating available on Horsetooth Reservoir.
Also there's a lot of stuff in Erie and Lafayette which are both fairly close and less expensive. In a Zillow search I found some 4 bedroom houses in Lafayette with an acre in the $400k region, a 20 min drive from being in town.
I lived there for several years, and yes lots of people also live there. The view from Google Maps should make it clear that it is definitely not a suburb of Denver.
Once you get there you realize that the two towns are worlds apart. It has a decent tech-scene and extremely beautiful outdoor environment. Good food and beer can also be had very easily.
This is discouraging to me because, in my idealistic mind, academia should transcend "lobbying" and produce information for the public to consume. I don't have a problem with academics earning a livable wage from their research efforts, but I have an increasing sense of corporate "plants" in the academic realm that generate the results from research that benefits the corporation. It seems like things have gotten backwards - research used to be used to make a better product/service/commodity for which a company can charge a premium. Now it seems like research is used to justify stagnation tactics.
Anyway, germane to the actual content of the article, this is encouraging, but as has been noted, many of these are very small communities anyway. There's not as much of a loss if they are not part of the larger loss of a metro area. The notable exceptions are Boulder (which is, honestly, considered to do its own thing) and Cherry Hills Village. CHV is a curiosity for me because that's where the extravagantly wealthy of the Denver metro area live and is a fairly "red" area so I wonder if this is becoming enough of an issue that it's transcending party lines and affiliations. Poor service knows no political alignment, I guess. Enough rambling.
Can you elaborate on this sentence?
> There's not as much of a loss if they are not part of the larger loss of a metro area.
I appreciate you posting the link, it was an interesting counter-point. Yet your comment doesn't really address anything he writes about, instead going off-topic with something about lobbying.
Focusing on his article, what is your response to his study of 75 municipal-operated ISPs/telecoms all costing the region (often significant) money?
Is there a reason you consider his main point wrong? (Specifically, his point that the discussed regulations only require voter approval before undertaking a costly ISP infrastructure business.)
City hall != community. Eventually this will become just another tax on house, impossible to opt-out. In Germany you MUST pay for privileges such as TV or rain water disposal.
There are many community networks build by volunteers, for example CZFree had almost 1M users at its peak.
The city government in Boulder is claiming that they intend to lease out the 100+ miles of fiber in the city to interested ISPs so that they can provide fiber to the citizens. Right now, my understanding is that the majority of the fiber is dark.
Wolf in sheep's clothing. In a few years a big internet company will bid to be the "provider" of said broadband. Voila, you now have to buy comast with your legislated tax dollars.
I'm not saying this isn't going to happen in Colorado, but it hasn't happened in Chattanooga, TN. They've had municipal broadband since 2009 [1] which far outstrips the national averages for speed and price.
Colorado is leading the way to freedom on multiple fronts. Maybe they have taken the place of California in terms of moving forward with innovative ideas like municipal broadband and removing wasteful laws.
Of the communities listed in the article, Boulder is by far the largest (with a population just over 100,000.) The rest of the counties and small towns combine for a population of under 25,000.
These projects are going to have a very different profile in terms of cost and difficulty compared to the same project in a major metro area.
[Sources: wikipedia. Plus, my great grandparents homesteaded in Wray in the 1890s, and relatives in the area still host family reunions.]
Fair point! My understanding is that, when Xfinity/CenturyLink have laid fiber in Boulder in the past, they were required to lay city-owned fiber along with it. So, hopefully the build out is much more feasible. (I may be entirely _underestimating_ the "last mile" costs relative to larger infrastructure though...)
I wish this could happen everywhere. In Weston, FL we had one local provider (Advanced Cable). The customer service (and product in general) was much better than that of Comcast/ATT. I guess competition forces better products/service to be offered to the individual, go figure.
What laws prevent other communities from doing the same? And what justified their existence?
Because ISPs sign deals with cities for exclusive rights to provide broadband in the city. The offer incentives to the government (providing cheaper/faster service to schools and government buildings) in exchange for exclusivity.
Part of these deals prohibits local governments from becoming ISPs.
The root of the problem is that ISPs are not classified as common carriers.
"[..]states have laws limiting the ability of local governments or their partners to offer their own broadband services, often passed with the encouragement of big commercial broadband providers who complain about unfair competition."
Amazing statement considering that the providers in question are likely to be local monopolies.
Here is a video explaining some developments in the area of community rights by the Executive Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.
and the nearby city of longmont did the same thing, and it hasn't gotten the people anything, last i checked. (not that voting for it was a bad idea; i'm largely ambivalent.)
digging under ground and laying cable is significantly more expensive than most people realize, and when they get the quote, they're suddenly a lot happier with 100Mbps.
comcast probably didn't fight it because it doesn't matter. or they figure they can lease some, and it'll be that much less they've got to bury for their business customers.
This is not true. Longmont has proceeded with building out a fiber utility for its citizens [0] called NextLight. As I mentioned in another comment [1], my understanding is that Boulder city has required private telecom operators to lay city-owned fiber alongside its own.
ok, so starting 3 days ago, some people are maybe getting something. that's a lot better than i expected, but let's be clear to folks not clicking the link, the whole city isn't magically rolling in gigabit, and won't be for some time yet.
"Digging underground is expensive" isn't that justified, it always depends on the environment in which you're digging.
In city/village areas with roads, shitloads of existing cables and pipes it literally can take days to dig a trench deep enough to bury a telco cable pipe (here, 60cm below ground minimum - most electricity in the 230VAC level is also at this ground level, 20kVAC and water are deeper in most cases) due to all the cable crossings.
In rural areas you can usually just forget about cable crossings and easily do hundreds of meters a day (we call this "Bodenrakete" aka ground rocket).
(I'm working as a digger and technician in Germany for the current 100mbit/s-in-the-fucking-desert campaign)
