SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
It's long-accepted common knowledge that high-speed internet access is a key to education, economic growth and even maintaining interpersonal connections. While the internet began as a public venture, in the last 20 years the private sector has provided the public with broadband connectivity. Internet service providers like Comcast and Charter have built out networks covering large swaths of the U.S., and for years have effectively monopolized internet connections to homes and businesses.
Because they operate with little or no competition, these companies have little incentive to upgrade their networks or reduce prices. This has left the country that invented the internet ranked 30th in the world for internet speed and affordability.
Communities frustrated with their available options – or without any options at all – have taken on the challenges of delivering fast and cheap internet for themselves. Often this municipal 100 times faster than the national average internet connection speed.
For the consumer this means faster Netflix streaming, clearer Skype conversations, faster downloads, better gaming and quicker uploads for video, documents and pictures. It also means stronger health care provision, emergency preparedness and business advantages.
That's why it was disappointing to learn of last month's Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals decision that upheld laws in North Carolina and Tennessee that discourage the growth of municipal broadband. The ruling overturned a 2015 decision by the Federal Communications Commission that voided these laws in the interest of promoting greater broadband access. How the issue gets resolved from here will affect American connectivity, competitiveness and communities. With all five members of the FCC slated to testify before Congress this month, in a general hearing about the commission's work, it's important to understand the legal and regulatory gymnastics that got us here in the first place.
By law, the FCC is charged with promoting advanced telecommunications (including Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which is vaguely worded. Through several years of court rulings, this part of the law has become both a powerful tool in the FCC's regulatory arsenal, and its Achilles' heel when interpreted by the courts.
[...] The digital divide is not shrinking as fast as it could be, and universal broadband is only becoming more of a necessity for participation in American society, culture and business. What action the FCC takes now – and how it interprets the range of its power – will send an important message to all Americans about their connected future.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ShadowSystems on Sunday September 11 2016, @06:45AM
Without actual competition there's no reason for the entrenched local monopolies to change at all. Without the customer being able to say "Shape up or I'll switch" then there's nothing the corporation need do; the customer can't switch because there's nobody to switch TO, thus ensuring the customer stays locked in with no recourse (except, perhaps, to cancel altogether).
If the government grew a damned spine & forced open those otherwise locked-down markets then there would be competition, growth, & improvements.
As an example, I live in a town not far from the infamous Silicon Valley. They have so much choice for internet that you can probably buy it at the local corner QuickieMart with a Slurpee, a grab bag of chips, & a Twinkie. No single company has a monopoly, there is plenty of competition, so the citizens get to tell any one provider "Shape up or I'll switch" & have that threat MEAN something.
However, here in my town I've got SweetFuckAll for competition & thus little to no choices at all. I can get DSL from AT&T if I'm willing to pay AT&T to upgrade their own infrastructure to be able to provide the service their ads keep promising. (The copper needs replacing from POTS & they would have to install a DSLAM near enough to make DSL an actual deliverable option.) I could go with cellular if I suddenly grew rich enough to make paying by the byte a non-issue. (There IS multiple carriers I could choose from, but even the least expensive is still too expensive.) I could go with DirectTV/DishTV/Hughes satellite, but only if I convince my neighbors to cut down all their trees so I can get LOS on the horizon. Or there's Comcast, my current provider. I've researched trying to get other cable providers in this area but every single offer I can find is merely repackaging Comcast service under a different name. So I'm locked in to Comcast at a whopping *Three* Mbps for a whopping $50 per month. Comcast has no need to improve my speed, fix the lines, make any haste to bring the line back up if something goes wonky, since I'm totally at their mercy if I want ANYTHING resembling a high speed internet connection. Notice I did *not* say a "Broadband" connection, since the FCC thinks that means a 25Mbps tier & I can't afford the ~$150/month comcast demands for that tier.
If this town had actual, viable competition (say Google Fiber or Municipal) then Comcast would be forced to offer comparible service (quality & quantity) lest their vict...errr Customers actually give them TheFinger & leave in droves like rats from a sinking ship. Google Fiber for $75 a month? Municipal for $80? Or Comcraptastic for $150? Oh now THERE'S a hard one to consider.
If there were actual competition *everywhere* (not just my town, merely using it as an example) then the entrenched monopolies would be forced to shape up, fly right, & actually fight to retain their customers. No more making them wait on hold for ~ten minutes to a phone rep in outer Bumfookistan just to be told "Shut up & reboot!" before being hung up upon. No more promising a line tech service call "tomorrow between 8AM & Noon" then finally showing up unannounced a week later at 6PM only to claim the trouble fixed. No more screwing up the bill multiple months in a row, claiming a refund for the error would appear "in next month's bill", & then never providing said refund until being threatened with a State AG formal complaint of extortion & fraud. No more claiming it's the customer equipment that's at fault even though said customer equipment is the *Number One* compatible device on their own "Compatible devices list" for devices the customer can buy instead of renting a cable box. (Really? My Motorolla ARIS DocSys 3.0 modem is NOT a 3.0 device? It's not compatible with Comcast? Funny because *YOUR OWN LIST* says it IS a 3.0 & compatible device. So which of you is lying: your corporate masters in claiming the device IS, or you in claiming that it's NOT?")...
*Deep Breath*
Sorry about that, I'm just a touch miffed at Comcast.
They can, have, & will screw you over every chance they get, charging you ever more money each month for the priveledge of using them as your provider, & laugh at your feeble protestations since that's SFA you can DO about any of it.
If there were competition in this town then Comcast would have to stop being F'tards & actually TRY to retain folks instead of bending us over & raping us for our money.
And thus it goes for pretty much EVERYWHERE with a local monopoly.
The monopoly gets to rake in the bucks while screwing over their customers, all because there's SFA the customer can do to switch.
If the government would simply break up the monopolies like they did to the original AT&T, then maybe America would get a snowball's chance in Hell of becoming one of the leaders in global internet instead of one of the last ones to the field.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 11 2016, @07:05AM
There is competition; you just refuse to see it.
Nationwide there are four mobile carriers to choose from, and many mobile virtual network operators who resell service from the mobile carriers at various price points.
Speeds on mobile networks consistently reach dozens to hundreds of megabits. You might want to claim that mobile is not a replacement for wired broadband, but I say you would be wrong. I've been using wireless broadband service as my only internet service for seven years. I download at 20 Mbps. I pay $20 per month. I have no complaints.
There isn't any monopoly; you just want to believe there is.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ShadowSystems on Sunday September 11 2016, @07:41AM
YOU may have decent cellular broadband at reasonable rates but that does NOT mean the same holds true for anywhere else.
In my town there's AT&T that wants over a hundred a month for a semi-reasonable speed but then caps the data at an arbitrary point & throttles you down to 3G then 2G speeds thereafter.
There's Sprint but they have spotty coverage at best, can't maintain a viable signal in even remotely inclement weather, & want more than AT&T for lower speeds.
There's Verizon with it's attrocious coverage (less than 2 bars at my location) that CLAIMS to have me covered but can't be bothered to install towers outside the freeway corridore; then they want obscene prices for the service they CAN offer, but only if I'm willing to buy an overpriced dongle that if past history is of any indication the dongle will die catastroficly in about 3 or 4 months requiring the purchase of another dongle.
There's T-Mobile (my current carrier) that has good coverage (4 or 5 bars at the same place Verizon can't manage 2!) but their "internet device" (mobile hotspot) device data plans are more than I can afford (especially after the monthly raping by Comcast).
Cellular internet IS an option, just not an inexpensive one.
I can't consider it viable until it can maintain the same reliability as a wired connection, for about the same cost as a wired connection, & not require me to buy new hardware every time the carrier decides to upgrade their infrastructure.
Even T-Mo as the least expensive option of the four is STILL a pricey endeavor; I'd have to shell out nearly $100 a month for decent speeds & (fortunately) unlimited data.
So why it may be a viable option in your neck of the woods, especially if you live in a major metropolitan area, but not in my "cow town" barely 2Hours commute from Sacramento, San Francisco, or San Jose. I'm in the "Ven Diagram" spot between the three where fiber is NOT and only Comcast has any cable; T-Mo has coverage here but Verizon doesn't really.
It all boils down to location: you're in a good one, others like me are not.
You have good competition whereas I do not.
(Score: 5, Informative) by requerdanos on Sunday September 11 2016, @12:55PM
Cellular and Satellite are great to have if your area doesn't have, or you don't need, real, actual broadband Internet (the wired/fibered kind).
But the intermittent nature of their service (ranging from "not bad" to "too frustrating to use" depending on your location and use case) and the necessary draconian low bandwidth caps prevent their being a drop-in replacement for actually being connected to the Internet.
For example, like many here, I sometimes work on computers and need to do things like download operating system ISOs that measure in the gigabytes (when re-imaging a PC it's often necessary to download/install the exact flavor of whatever operating system's involved so that the license key will match). Assuming cellular or satellite Internet, a few jobs like that at the beginning of the month, and my so-called "broadband" would be dead--victim of draconian low bandwidth cap--for the rest of the month. Making it useless almost all the time.
To be sure, there are use cases--"Web browsing and e-mail with the occasional Youtube video" comes to mind--where these services are perfectly adequate.
But not all use cases are equal.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 11 2016, @09:49PM
Cellular and Satellite are great to have if your area doesn't have, or you don't need, real, actual broadband Internet (the wired/fibered kind).
That's some powerful bigotry you have there. Judging by the moderation, all the other idiots on here are also bigoted morons like you. If only I could be so fucking closed-minded, I could join your little circle-jerk of stupid shits who all believe the same sack of lies.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Sunday September 11 2016, @11:27PM
There's something to what you say - there are many ways to connect to Internet.
In pointing out that either someone is directly connected to the other hosts on the Internet, or they aren't and go through a radio-based gateway instead, I did not mean to cause you personal offense. For that, I do apologize.
However, the above is based on a simple observation, and I don't think as such it qualifies as a "sack of lies". Can you elaborate?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 11 2016, @04:46PM
last i checked all wireless carriers had penalties of various stripes for actually using more than $x amount of data and/or bandwidth. Even assuming coverage was full and constant, until wireless carriers lose their slavemaster mindset they are not a viable replacement for many people.