If You Want To Fix U.S. Broadband Competition, Start By Killing State-Level Protectionist Laws Written By Duopolists
from the long-overdue dept
For fifteen years now I've watched as phone and cable duopolies lobby to pass draft legislation designed to keep broadband uncompetitive. Specifically, in more than a dozen states these protectionist measures either hinder or outright ban a town or city's ability to wire itself for broadband (either alone or with a private industry partner) -- even in cases where nobody else will. If the laws don't ban such efforts outright, they force anyone looking to build a broadband network to jump through layers upon layers of bureaucratic hoops, during which the regional duopolies with limitless budgets harass the efforts with lawsuits and negative publicity campaigns (I've seen ISPs hire push pollsters to tell locals that a government-built network would ban their religious programming).The worst part of these bills is that at their base they're simply duopolists buying laws that keep towns and cities from making regional infrastructure decisions for themselves, whether that's building their own core fiber network or developing a public/private network build partnership. Carriers get to have their cake and eat it too; they're not going to build you better broadband networks, but they're not going to let anybody else do it, either. Some of these projects work, some don't (it depends on the specific business model), but if the country is actually serious about improving broadband competition, these miserable bills are the very first thing that need a long, hard look.
For many years these bills were quickly passed without much debate, public scrutiny and absolutely no tech-press attention. All too often, when they were noticed, they were defended using traditional partisan tropes. Locals simply trying to get connected by any means necessary are usually vilified and portrayed as supporting "government meddling with industry." It's a shame, given that, like so many technical issues, there should be nothing partisan about protecting your local rights. Fortunately, with Google Fiber's entry into the market I've seen a renewed flurry of attention on these bills, in large part because several would have impacted Google Fiber's expansion, and Google Fiber, as I've noted, appears to have captured the imagination of the public.
In Kansas, for example, cable operators recently ran into a bit of a chainsaw when they attempted to ban towns and cities in the state from running their own fiber or working with partners like Google Fiber (operating in Kansas City). SB304 claimed to allow such efforts if they targeted unserved customers, but then sneakily defined unserved as someone unable to even get satellite or a cellular dial tone, ensuring that nobody would get that designation (a pretty common trick to make the bills seem more reasonable). In Utah, SB190, one such bill pushed in part by regional incumbent CenturyLink, also won't be surviving this year thanks in part to the new attention Google Fiber (who purchased a network in Provo) has brought to the issue.
A few years ago, these bills would have flown through state legislatures with nary a mention. Not only are new bills starting to fail more regularly under heightened public awareness, I'm starting to see -- for the first time in my many years covering the industry -- pushes to roll back some of these ridiculous protectionist measures. In Tennessee, for example, there's four different bills in process that would roll back such incumbent-friendly bills, and they're coming from both sides of the political aisle. Jon Brodkin at Ars Technica, who has been doing an absolutely fantastic job lately making these important issues interesting for readers, notes how local ISPs quickly complained about the sea change:
"We are particularly concerned about four bills that have been introduced this session," Tennessee Telecommunications Associations chief Levoy Knowles said in an announcement. The TTA claimed to be presenting "concerns of rural consumers" but are more worried about the potential of losing customers. "These bills would allow municipalities to expand beyond their current footprint and offer broadband in our service areas. If this were to happen, municipalities could cherry-pick our more populated areas, leaving the more remote, rural consumers to bear the high cost of delivering broadband to these less populated regions," Knowles said."Yes, god forbid you'd have to face a new competitor and adjust your business model accordingly; you might even have to work with a local government to determine what works best in each region! Meanwhile, Google Fiber's recent announcement to help 34 cities in nine regional markets examine local fiber needs should bring greater attention to the issue. Google intentionally targeted regions like North and South Carolina, where regional incumbent Time Warner Cable passed protectionist bills a few years ago (on their fourth try). It only took fifteen years, but we're only just starting to see people realize that perhaps letting your regional duopolists write laws dictating what you can and can't do for your own community might not be the best idea.
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Filed Under: broadband, competition, local legislation, muni-broadband
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Google just has to sit back and enjoy the ripples.
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Knowledge is power. Awareness 'can' help you get there, but having awareness does not mean people have the correct facts. There is a lot of awareness in politics but surprisingly little real knowledge.
And even after having knowledge, it is only power when you wield it. Otherwise it is like food rotting in the corner... not doing anyone (except the microbes) any good.
In this case the microbes are the providers... think people will get off their duff and actually do something?
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A distorted awareness is just distorted knowledge.
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In regards to the saying "Knowledge is Power" implies that the "Knowledge" in question is accurate & understood.
Unfortunately being "aware" does not preclude being or having false and/or distorted knowledge. It is why I brought up Politics. Lots of awareness, but very little understanding of things.
Since Awareness is a subset of knowledge you were not entirely off base with your saying, I just wanted to tweak it making it better, but I failed at doing a good job of it.
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Most of the actual game changing competition is coming from muni's and independent overbuilders, who existed before Google Fiber and would still have existed without Google Fiber.
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I believe in capitalism, but in the case of crony capitalism, I think the best solution is to go to the logical conclusion of their argument. If they don't like government "meddling" in their affairs, than they should not be allowed to own or control any network built using government funds (even if it only supplemented their own, and/or they received funds from the government for, during construction, or as a result of the build.) If they don't like it, don't accept the money in the first place.
Now that the government owns and controls the entire infrastructure (since government money was used to build it,) then the government can open it up to anyone who wishes to pay to connect to and provide infrastructure support. Problem solved.
Good thing I am not a politician...it seems so easy to figure this stuff out when you don't have to worry about who's going to pay for your next round of hookers and blow.
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Uhm... It was made with taxpayer dollars, yes... But it ignores how private parties are trying to keep it private to maximize revenue to themselves.
The solution would be to take it out of the hands of the private market or ensure the public has access to it via government/worker control.
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Isn't that more or less what he said?
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That's pretty dangerous when you set up the public as antagonistic to the government. There certainly is a pressure to having the government bend to your will, but that requires a push from the people to prevent them from only hearing to people with the most money.
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I admit I had to go back and read what I said, because I don't remember ever saying anything of the sort. Luckily, I did read exactly what I said, and I am pretty sure you are putting words in my mouth. I can't be certain, as what I said was said before I had enough coffee.
I believe what I said, and what I meant, was exactly what you said (as nasch pointed out.) If the companies want to use government money to help purchase and build their business model, then they can't be upset when the public (through the government) comes back and takes their infrastructure away and gives it back to the people who actually paid for it (as in, the American public.)
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The DC Circuit court struck down the FCC's net neutrality rules, so that pretty well demonstrates how little control the government exercises over the infrastructure.
And the idea that government "built" the network is popular but wrong. Saying it over and over doesn't make it any more correct.
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The DC Circuit court struck down the FCC's net neutrality rules, so that pretty well demonstrates how little control the government exercises over the infrastructure.
I think you're conflating local and federal government.
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Trust me, not many politicians are worried about that. They already know exactly who is going to pay for it.
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Sadly, I believe you are correct about this.
Unfortunately, the laws that exist to keep government employees from benefiting in corruption such as bribes and kickbacks don't exist for the politicians. Sure, there are laws against bribing politicians, but campaign donations don't qualify.
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Competition
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Re: Competition
but these issues only serve to PROVE, they have NO PRINCIPLES: it is ALL about jumping when their puppetmasters say 'frog'...
they will hop this way today, and that way tomorrow, ALL DEPENDING on their paymasters talking points that moment...
thus PROVING (for the millionth time) they are hypocritical liars who have no bedrock principles, no morals, no nothing but their unchecked power and the desire to wield it to benefit the 1%...
fuck 'em all...
the VERY FEW good ones are no reason not to hang the lot...
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Sale Lake City refused, but Provo (down south) and Brigham City (up north) got it, but not the main most-populated city.
It didn't do too well, being sold off a few times, until most recently it is still around, but tiny regional internet providers I've never heard of are the ones providing the internet. The big names such as Comcast and Century Link all refuse to use this "open" network, probably because anyone can use whatever provider they want to, and they don't want to provide internet for the cost the others do.
I checked just last week, and they charge (unless you buy the install out-right for almost $3000) 30/month for the equipment, and the ISPs charge about 35/month for the internet of synchronous 50 mbps. So, 65/month total.
And Salt Lake City still has no fiber-to-the-home network, because.... it would be too good? I can't understand how Century Link can justify it. At all. Without lies.
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That part's easy, they just leave the justifications to their bought-and-paid-for politicians, politicians have no problems lying through their teeth.
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ALEC
This leads me to call out yet again former Sen. Don Nickles, patron of the Copyright Alliance and ALEC supporter, who's lobbying firm The Nickles Group LLC, serves COMCAST, AT&T, MPAA, Walmart, and Intellectual Ventures. My first thought is that it's really too bad he's facing a headwind these days. But on second thought, increasing resistance probably just means more lobbying work and gravy coming his way. Shiny.
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Outright war
Ideally our mesh network will have multiple vendor ISP connections in case one vendor's network has technical problems. The idea here is to have a large private network with external internet access. Bandwidth is managed by the mesh software. It is slick, reliable and inexpensive. Why pay over $50/month for bandwidth you don't use when you can all benefit from each other?
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Re: Outright war
If you have a choice of multiple broadband providers, why do you need the mesh? Not being snarky, it just seems like a chicken and egg problem (sort of). You need the mesh because there's no competition among ISPs so they suck. But the mesh works best with multiple independent ISPs, and if you have that then they have to compete with each other, so they won't suck, so you won't need the mesh.
And I cannot ever type "mesh" without first typing "mest" and then fixing it, for some reason.
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Re: Outright war
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Tide is changing
Once a few more major cities make the change companies will have to fall in line. The samething is happening with wireless service and the competition with metro PCS expanding. (still totally messed up hoping google jumps on the wireless phone provider band wagon too)
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nice opinion piece
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