Following the vote to redefine "broadband Internet" as 25/3 Mbps, the FCC may be poised to act against state laws restricting municipal broadband.
The FCC is considering taking action in a dispute between ISPs and at least two cities: Chattanooga, Tennessee, and Wilson, North Carolina. In response to the rise of these municipal networks, both state governments of Tennessee and North Carolina took action to pass legislation preventing the growth of these networks from encompassing greater areas, and to prevent other cities from following the same path. Since the drafting of these bills, no further municipal broadband networks have been established, and the two that already exist have not been able to expand.
Now, following the vote last week to change the definition of broadband Internet to 25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up, the FCC is turning its attention to other ways to help provide faster Internet across the country. The draft is currently being considered by FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, and is expected to be circulated to other FCC commissioners in the coming weeks.
The draft aims to remove barriers that prevent the development of Internet services under city management currently imposed by state laws. In North Carolina, House Bill 129 prevents Greenlight from being able to competitively price Internet access, requiring services to be priced at or above competing Internet service providers. In Tennessee, the laws prevent municipal networks from expanding past a limited geographic area, so they cannot expand into multiple municipalities. In addition, large ISPs have risen up against both municipal networks, stating that the use of state funds for the construction of municipal networks is a misuse of state resources and should be outlawed.
Foreseeing future attempts to build municipal networks, other states have taken preemptive action. Currently, there are 19 states with such laws preventing cities from developing these networks. According to Section 706 of the Communications Act, the promotion and development of broadband networks inside of the United States is listed as a duty of the FCC, and as such, the agency has the authority to call laws into question that prevent broadband networks from developing.
To prevent possible intervention from the FCC, Republicans are taking action in Congress. A proposed bill by Senator John Thune of South Dakota and House Representative Fred Upton of Michigan is currently being deliberated. If passed, the FCC would be restricted and unable to use Section 706 to intervene in the decisions of state governments against municipal broadband networks.
The draft is expected to be voted on at the public FCC meeting, which will be held on February 26.
Alternate coverage at The Washington Post, Ars Technica, The New York Times, Fast Company, and FierceTelecom.
Related Stories
Boing Boing reports
After North Carolina Republicans banned cities selling internet, a town decided to give it away instead
North Carolina is one of many states in which telcoms lobbyists have gotten the state house to ban towns and cities from selling high-speed internet to the public--even in places where the cable/phone duopoly refuses to supply broadband.
FCC Chairman and decidedly non-dingo babysitter Tom Wheeler pushed through FCC rules invalidating these state laws, only to have Republican lawmakers and telcoms lobbyists use the courts to win back the right to force people to buy internet service from cable or phone companies, or do without if neither wish to supply internet to them.
The town of Wilson, North Carolina was one of the places whose municipal fiber ISP was threatened by the court decision, but after a close read of the rule, they've decided that since they're only banned from selling broadband, they can safely give it away for free. Wilson is offering free broadband to people outside the town limits, whose rural homes are not adequately served by Big Telco, and who were hammered hard by Hurricane Matthew.
The plan is to offer the service for free for six months and hope that during that time the state legislature--the same one that passed the awful, nonsensical "bathroom bill"--will come to its senses and strike down the ban on municipal internet service. Lotsa luck.
Previous:
Town Loses Gigabit Connections after FCC Municipal Broadband Court Loss
FCC Considering Action on Municipal Broadband State Laws
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 03 2015, @02:17PM
One of those aspects of the US that has always bothered me: It is now a hardened belief that private industry always does things more efficiently than the government. But those same people that hold that belief refuse to have the proposition tested by having the same service provided by the private sector and the government, with the government service funded entirely by the fees of those who use it. The closest I can think of is side-by-side comparisons of municipal power and water utilities versus private utility companies, but in that case libertarians could reasonably argue that the public utilities commissions are skewing the results.
So why not try it out? Why not see if municipal broadband is better or worse than, say, Comcast? Let the markets decide, based on price, quality of service, and so forth.
This happened with the "public option" in the Affordable Care Act too: If it had passed, we would have been able to determine, once and for all, if government could handle paying for health care better or worse than the private insurance industry.
My theory on what's really going on: The private industry in question pays good money to ensure our elected representatives will not allow that competition, because they think they will lose.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Geezer on Tuesday February 03 2015, @02:22PM
If the FCC follows through, in the long run this may do more for the benefit of the general public than Title II Common Carrier.
Hopefully, given the seeming inability of Congress to pass anything, the FCC should be able to proceed unfettered.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday February 03 2015, @02:32PM
You forgot the Republican majority. Pretty big difference from the Congress that gave us the government shutdown.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday February 03 2015, @04:26PM
That was the last Congress that gave us the government shutdown. Also, you forgot the Democratic President in the Whitehouse with veto power. The Republicans aren't going to get this passed unless it's stuck in something that BO feels he has to sign regardless of the riders.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday February 04 2015, @10:30AM
The Republicans aren't going to get this passed unless it's stuck in something that BO feels he has to sign regardless of the riders.
It seems like that was their primary strategy for the last year or two. "He can't possibly not sign THIS."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday February 04 2015, @12:16PM
Ya, they don't get that while he's as corrupt a politician as we've ever had in the WH, he's also an ideologue who's utterly unwilling to compromise. I mean, come on, he only barely managed to get one significant piece of legislation passed in six years. And he had both houses of Congress backing him for most of that. I don't see him giving an inch to a Republican Congress. More likely he'll reign by executive fiat like he's already started and the courts will refuse to shut him down.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday February 05 2015, @12:03AM
Umm...totally not the direction I was going with that. And the Republicans' definition of "compromise" these days is "You say you want this. We say no. You give in to us."
But what can you expect from the guys who did 35 pointless votes in a row trying to kill Obamacare. It's not like they've stopped since, either.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 05 2015, @12:57AM
Yeah, I figured it wasn't but it's exactly the same. I'm not a fan of either; the only difference between the parties is which flavor of oppression you'd prefer to be a slave under.
If anything though Obama is even less willing to compromise than the Republicans. Watch over the coming year and see how much ground he's willing to give to get something passed or how much he's willing to give in on Republican passed bills. My guess based on past performance is little to none.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday February 05 2015, @12:14AM
And there are few things that scare me more than the same party getting both houses of Congress *and* the presidency.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 05 2015, @01:04AM
Yep but get ready for it. As things stand right now the Republicans could run the guy in the goatse picture and win the whitehouse next time.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday February 05 2015, @01:56AM
I think that's a bit of an exaggeration. From what my buddy in politics tells me, the Democrats these days are starting off with such an electoral advantage right out of the gate that they'd have to pick a pretty crappy guy to screw it up that bad.
I'd hazard a guess that they want to run Hillary (not that I've been following that sort of thing at all), which I could imagine a fair number of people being grumpy about.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday February 05 2015, @03:00AM
Well, yeah, it was a fine example of hyperbole. Still, unless they absolutely shoot themselves in the foot, we're going to have both houses of Congress and the Whitehouse painted red soon. Sucks but there it is. Me, I like a nice, divided government. They either compromise or get nothing done. Either is fine by me as they're not letting their ideology fuck things up even worse.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday February 05 2015, @04:37AM
My line of thinking pretty precisely. Hindsight is 20-20 I suppose.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 2) by Nobuddy on Tuesday February 03 2015, @10:54PM
The tables turned, but nothing changed. The Democrats had majority but could be stopped (384 times, a new world record!) by filibuster. Now the Republicans have majority but not filibuster proof. I suspect we shall see a lot of hypocritical whining about the filibuster soon.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday February 04 2015, @03:01AM
It's not like Comcast doesn't give generously [opensecrets.org] to both sides.
Time Warner [opensecrets.org]
Time Warner Cable [opensecrets.org]
AT&T [opensecrets.org]
I wouldn't bet all my megabits on a Democratic filibuster of FCC-muzzling legislation.
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(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Friday February 06 2015, @09:21PM
I admit the usefulness of the occasional filibuster, but using it as your default tactic for an entire legislative session is a cop-out.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tibman on Tuesday February 03 2015, @02:37PM
In a way it is price fixing too. The government has to offer the service at similar rate as private competitors. Except the city ISP is going to be collecting a lot of money now that it doesn't need. It will be able to afford continuous upgrades. Making it the law that government ISPs have to price fix just means they will now have a lot more money to expand.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tathra on Tuesday February 03 2015, @04:14PM
a far better solution would be to use taxes to provide internet for everyone (critical services are supposed to be provided from taxes). private industry would have to compete with the "free" service in order to attract customers, rather than suggesting that the public internet should fix its price somewhere around private industry's price (which is already way too expensive).
(Score: 4, Disagree) by M. Baranczak on Tuesday February 03 2015, @05:54PM
Internet isn't a critical service. If someone wants to live off-line, they shouldn't be forced to pay for it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tathra on Tuesday February 03 2015, @06:08PM
roads aren't a critical service either. we can live without them. same with a standing army. and we don't need trash pickup, or running water, or sewage lines, or public transit, or electricity, or healthcare...
in today's society, internet is absolutely a critical service. it has become so ingrained in our daily lives that some people even have withdrawal symptoms if they are forcibly "unplugged". and the benefits far outweigh the cost, especially since a publicly-provided internet would drive down the cost and drive up the quality of private providers due to competition, allowing more of a "free market" to exist than the bullshit sham we have now.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Tuesday February 03 2015, @03:17PM
The closest I can think of is ...
Postal delivery, security guards vs police patrols. Also there are privately owned general aviation airports vs "real" public airports. Schools. The dept of public works (or whoever maintains your streets) vs the dudes who pave parking lots.
Generally the less regulated and procedural the job, the better the .gov competes with .com.
Also lots of apples to oranges stuff going on, like the local catholic HS always beats the local public HS on all averaged numbers, although we always crushed them in every competition, because of statistical bias. We were larger and had more money to spend on everything, but we also had to accept all the proto-criminals and special needs kids which the catholic school could just kick out, boosting their average numbers and making ours look worse.
From a background in (.com) telecom and having worked with .gov people as customers, I'm pretty sure this is how muni-broadband will work out. Your connection will always be up and it'll be reliable and cheap, but god help the poli sci major appointee configuring BGP sessions with upstream providers. Even just the contacting with upstream providers will be a mess. How do I know this? Because providing .gov access (to schools and offices, not for resale to the general public) already is a mess. Sometimes it takes as long to get a contract approved as the length of the contract, etc. Of course some .com customers are slow, but the bell curve puts pretty much all .com customers faster at paper shuffling than all .gov customers in my decades of experience.
Imagine needing permission from the mayor to bounce a BGP session due to explosive CYA and paper shuffling. Or ALL complaints (spam, swatting, copyright infringement, whatever) being categorically forwarded to the chief of police. Not because thats the way it should be, but because thats how city government works.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 03 2015, @03:23PM
Oh another example, locally, residential garbage pickup is handled by the city, so only one garbage truck travels thru subdivisions and there's only one garbage day per subdivision, unlike the chaos you'd get with every resident signing a garbage service contract with a different company, but all businesses sign contracts on the side and can do whatever they please (more or less). So the manufacturing company has like ten cardboard recycling dumpsters and weekly pickup and the restaurants have daily pickup of food waste.
Another example of .com to .gov direct competition is we have city buses that provide unusable public transport by design (schedules, locations, etc) and a tiny handful of private buses (mostly rented for daycares to take field trips or whatever, its a pretty small business). There are also numerous private intercity bus lines, all both superior to public intercity transfer systems and enormously more expensive (like order of magnitude more money)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 03 2015, @04:31PM
Postal delivery is something that .gov does a damn fine job of doing, at least in the US. The fact that they can get a letter anywhere in the country, quite reliably, within a week or so, for about $0.50, is pretty amazing when you think about it. Their sorting and routing system is generally the most sophisticated and adaptable one that has ever existed anywhere in human history. FedEx, by comparison, at least used to route absolutely everything through Memphis, even if it was going from, say, Los Angeles to Santa Cruz. The only reason the USPS is in any kind of distress is that some people in Congress are trying to destroy it by making it fund the retirement plan 75 years in the future, which if you do the math means they're currently paying into a pension fund for employees that will be born 5 years from now.
The biggest difference between security guards and police is that security guards are supposed to protect a specific customers' property, while the police are supposed to protect everybody. I'm not sure either do a great job of it, but they're given different mandates and resources, so I'm not positive it's an apples-to-apples comparison.
But as a resident of this city, I'm going to be happy about the cheap reliable broadband. That some poli sci major appointee has a bad time with BGP is really not my problem. And if s/he's doing such a bad job that my access gets cut off, there's a good chance there are enough upset voters that the mayor will pretty much have to do something about it.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 03 2015, @05:03PM
USPS is definitely not reliable. I lose incoming mail all the time. I've had to pay late fees multiple times because I didn't receive bills.
One time, I had to send a business a letter by mail. The first letter was lost in the mail. I sent it again, by registered mail, and the tracking information confirmed that that letter was also lost. I finally fedexed it, and it was delivered.
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday February 03 2015, @06:00PM
10 years ago the USPS was extremely reliable. It still seems to be quite reliable from my experiences. OTOH, so does FedEx. But FedEx doesn't cover as many places, and is more expensive. (For proof, just consider how much junk mail gets delivered by FedEx.)
The private carriers cherry pick the business. The USPS has to cover everyone and all mail. Not a good comparison.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 3, Informative) by urza9814 on Tuesday February 03 2015, @07:00PM
Where I live, UPS is the best, followed by USPS. But FedEx? I've actually refused to shop at online stores purely because they'd only ship via FedEx. $50 is about my limit for shipping things via FedEx. FedEx is *terrible*. Packages arrive opened. Packages arrive late. Package tracker says they haven't shipped yet when they're already at my door. Or the carrier leaves packages with one of my neighbors with no notice -- they don't leave a note, they don't tell me who they gave it to, the online tracker will say it's still in transit for a *week* after it's already been delivered -- I've just gotta *hope* that neighbor comes and lets me know eventually. Although it's getting better lately -- because they don't actually deliver anything anymore, they just hand it off to USPS for the last mile. Who still sometimes leaves it elsewhere without telling me, but at least it arrives intact and on time...
UPS is *fantastic* though. Everything arrives on time, if not early (I've even had "3-5 day" shipping take less than 24 hours). Everything arrives in perfect condition. I can usually place an order and know, within 24 hours of placing it, *exactly* when it will arrive -- to within an hour. I can instruct them to require a signature, leave it without a signature, leave it with a specific neighbor, or hold it at the sort facility for pickup all from my phone before it even ships. And the tracking is, as far as I can tell, accurate to the nearest *minute*. Always.
If USPS added proper tracking and the ability to hold packages at the post office though, I would likely never use a private carrier again. But when I order something like a laptop, I need to know that it will arrive intact and safe, and I need to know where it is. Which means UPS is the *only* viable option for that sort of thing as far as I'm concerned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 03 2015, @07:37PM
UPS is really good until they damage your package. Then you are screwed no matter what, because regardless of the circumstances, it was not packed correctly.
I had a girlfriend ship a box of that nice, thick Corning glass cookware (Visionware? or just Visions?), the see-through pots and pans. It was packed in its original packaging as it was purchased new and not opened. The package never arrived. Finally it was located and she was told that it was basically destroyed, with no pieces bigger than an inch or so. But, she was SOL because they told her it was not packaged correctly, even though it was insured. To do it properly, she was supposed to have had it packed by someone at the UPS Store.
I work for a very large research facility, the kind that the UPS truck shows up several times a day for pickups and drop-offs. Even they ran into the "not packed correctly" mantra when trying to have UPS insurance cover lost or damaged packages. They even sent people to some kind of UPS packaging training so that they could learn the ways of the UPS packager, and even that wasn't good enough because UPS would refuse to pay more than the $100 they say they are liable for ("so sue us!"). Our shipping SOP is to never pay for insurance because it is just wasted money and losses and damages are treated as an operating expense. I bet one of these days UPS will find itself facing a class-action lawsuit because of this behavior.
So, as I said, when your package show up, it is usually on time and when they tell you it will be. When your package gets damaged, suddenly they are a bunch of sleazy corporate dirtbags who WILL fuck you over unless you want to go to great expense to recover your losses.
(Score: 1) by saracoth on Tuesday February 03 2015, @09:09PM
I really only understood the difference between FedEx and UPS when I learned how much they push out and take in, respectively. For one, FedEx Ground generally uses independent third parties for actual deliveries.
So even if FedEx is ultimately to blame for your problems, the first thing that comes to my mind is that FedEx partnered with the wrong people in your area.
The second is wondering how hard it is to deal with problems like yours. Seems like there's a lot of room for passing the buck and letting things slide by. If UPS has a bad driver, that's one employee to fire. But FedEx? I wonder how many times they've been forced to deal with bad quality because their options are to cut off an entire company of drivers or gently encourage them to improve.
But personally, I haven't had any problems of these sorts with FedEx or UPS.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Wednesday February 04 2015, @12:37PM
This whole discussion sounds like a typical internet discussion about cell phone service, which is a mere anecdotal statistical sampling of the towers nearby where people live, and seeing as there's a lot of towers (and a lot of delivery truck drivers...) it doesn't mean much.
It is possible to debate system wide stuff. UPS had a systemic clog in '13 and overhired and now rates are raising to make up for the overhire. However their nationwide package tracking is creepy fast and accurate, once I left a package I was waiting for in a tab and occasionally refreshed and saw my computer parts had been delivered so I could finally finish a build and close it up and I had just enough time, just seconds, to think "WTF its marked delivered but I don't have it" and then the doorbell rang. USPS on the other hand appears to be doing punch card batch processing on a roughly one day delay for their tracking, its more of a reactive "where was it yesterday" feature than the UPS "where is it at this second". Maybe its better now.
From memory of shipping weird machine tool parts and raw material, UPS as a system was more flexible WRT sizes / shapes / weights, but this may have varied.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 03 2015, @06:28PM
This is a bit OT
fund the retirement plan 75 years in the future
I hear this over and over and have for about 15 years.
Does anyone know how much left is on this big pile o money until it is fully funded?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 03 2015, @10:37PM
Here. [usps.com] Their Congress-mandated Retirement Health Benefits Prefunding is essentially the only reason for their losses. I'm not sure if there is a maximum they must put back, but its a required payment of 5.5-5.8 billion per year. They are the only federal service which must do this.
(Score: 2) by Nobuddy on Tuesday February 03 2015, @11:44PM
Or, alternately, you can look at the ones already in place and see they are not at all like that. You can speculate all you wish as to what could happen, but you also need to look at what HAS happened.
I benefit from a community broadband. 1G max connection. And it reaches it very often. During peak use it is still massively better than Comcast or Clearwire provided at their best.
No, encryption is not an issue at all. Ever. It is an ISP, and is run like a ISP. A school district has a massively different access policy than an ISP, and if you work in telecom as you say you damn well know that.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by srobert on Tuesday February 03 2015, @03:25PM
They don't just think they'll lose. They know so. Our Canadian friends pay 11% of their GDP for health care. We pay 16-17%. They cover everyone. We don't. Why don't we have single-payer? Because insurance companies' pockets are very deep, the art of public persuasion has become a science, and he who pays the piper calls the tune.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Tuesday February 03 2015, @03:42PM
I think a big part of the higher rates for health care in the US is because of a lawsuit happy society and an infestation of lawyers.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday February 03 2015, @05:31PM
There's very little evidence for that claim, and in places where there has been what is usually called "tort reform" (limitations on malpractice liability), there hasn't been a significant drop in the prices for health care.
What's much more likely is that customers really don't have the choice to do without what the health care industry is selling, so sellers can charge pretty much whatever they want. I mean, what are you going to do, haggle over the cost of an appendectomy in the ER, knowing you'll quite possibly die if you don't get it taken care of in the next hour? Ditto for prescription drugs or medical devices that are keeping you alive - if it costs $5000 per month, you're going to pay $5000 per month, because the alternative is dying. By treating health care as a for-profit market, you're basically forcing anybody with a life-threatening condition into accepting offers they can't refuse.
Now, there is one role that insurance companies and the public insurers of Medicare and Medicaid can play in curbing that problem: Negotiating down health care prices with the threat of taking their business elsewhere. But there are limits on their ability to do that, especially where there is only one hospital, or for anything that is patented, because that one hospital or that patented drug/device has monopoly power. And as recent reports [usatoday.com] demonstrate, the prices vary wildly for the exact same procedure, which strongly suggests that the prices have absolutely nothing to do with the costs of malpractice insurance or indeed anything other than the desired profit margin for the hospital.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 03 2015, @10:46PM
Because the US is populated almost exclusively with sociopaths. Too many people are appalled by the idea of helping others, literally disgusted by the idea that even one cent of theirs might go to help another human being. Just look at any thread which mentions using taxes to provide a public service, be it healthcare, public transit, internet, anything at all - there is always, always somebody complaining, "Why should I have to pay for somebody else?" and they're far from the only people who despise the idea of doing anything that would benefit somebody other than themselves.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday February 04 2015, @04:27PM
It's not really sociopathy - the US is a nation at war with itself. Racist white Americans (which isn't all white people, but enough to matter) believe that black Americans are their mortal enemies who are trying to take everything they have and then kill them. And since this is a deeply held belief, not a factual judgment, no amount of evidence to the contrary will change their minds. You'll see this manifest itself in a lot of ways, including but not limited to (a) supporting police who kill black men and boys arbitrarily regardless of whether they committed a crime, (b) a belief in "real America" which is universally white and Christian, which someone like Barack Obama in particular can never be legitimately a part of much less in charge of, (c) avoiding living in the same neighborhoods as black people, (d) treating black protesters as rioters even if they're completely peaceful, and (e) opposing all government social spending in the mistaken belief that these help black people. With people in that mindset, the fact that a government program might help white people too is not a valid reason for supporting it, because keeping black people powerless so they can't hurt the racist white people is a more important policy goal.
It is definitely not all white people who think that way, but enough do that they're a force to be reckoned with politically. For example, in 2006, in my home state of Ohio, the Republicans nominated a black candidate who was ideologically similar to all the white leaders of the Republican Party, and that alone caused about 500,000 people who would have normally voted Republican (or about 30% of the Republican base) to vote Democrat.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Funny) by aristarchus on Wednesday February 04 2015, @02:51AM
So why not try it out? Why not see if municipal broadband is better or worse than, say, Comcast?
There's your problem, right there! Of course it is not a fair test, since nothing could, by all accounts, be worse than Comcast!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 03 2015, @02:26PM
Does it occur to anybody else, that the reckless disregard for communications as a civil right can be summed up by:
"25 Mbps down and 3 Mbps up"
Why does the fed regard your right to speak, disproportionally to your right to listen?
(Score: 1) by takyon on Tuesday February 03 2015, @02:41PM
It's likely to reflect the reality of already disjointed broadband down/up. It's not like it's hard to deliver 25/3. It's just that ISPs are greedy. The old broadband standard was 4/1. Google Fiber's symmetric 1000/1000 is an anomaly, even if it is a great thing.
Most customers download more than they upload. Although some of that is not due to choice. Gigabit upload makes P2P a lot better for everybody.
The most sinister explanation is that ISPs would prefer the Web to become a TV. They'll boost download rates a bit so you can get your Netflix, but forget about becoming a healthy node in a vast P2P network or something like Tor.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by Joe Desertrat on Tuesday February 03 2015, @05:14PM
The most sinister explanation is that ISPs would prefer the Web to become a TV. They'll boost download rates a bit so you can get your Netflix, but forget about becoming a healthy node in a vast P2P network or something like Tor.
This is especially likely with the continued attempts of content to merge with providers. They will naturally want you to view their content.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday February 03 2015, @09:16PM
What good is symmetric if you don't have the right to serve [forbes.com]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday February 04 2015, @03:05AM
That's old news.
Google Fiber now explicitly permits home servers. Commercial servers still off limits, but a business product is in the works. [arstechnica.com]
Has anyone gotten banned for operating a commercial server? I imagine they would raise a stink about it.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 04 2015, @02:14PM
Thanks for the post.
Google: "This is a standard practice of network management"
It is a hobbled service, intended to create differentiated products. It may be common practice, but it isn't standard practice. The only people doing this are consumer last mile carriers. Which is to say, that these differentiated services are differentiated based on economic class.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by tibman on Tuesday February 03 2015, @02:41PM
Unless you are speaking in gigabyte sized movies/shows then i think asymmetric is okay.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 03 2015, @02:47PM
> Unless you are speaking in gigabyte sized movies/shows then i think asymmetric is okay.
Cool story bro!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by tibman on Tuesday February 03 2015, @08:01PM
Okay, so i know someone disagrees. That is very useful to continuing this discussion : )
To further my previous post. I would prefer symmetric, of course. But i am being realistic and realistically people are consumers. When people create original works they do not host them on their home computers. They upload those creations to servers where other consumers can access them. The internet as it is used today can be asymmetric and it does not limit anyone's speech. If you disagree, please mod this post "disagree" and i will continue shouting into the room until we can find something to agree upon : )
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(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday February 03 2015, @08:16PM
I posit that it is this way because people do not have a choice. If you want something hosted, you have to upload it somewhere else because there is no easy way to host it yourself. This hypothesis would be extremely easy to test if symmetric connections didn't cost many times the price of asymmetric lines.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Tuesday February 03 2015, @09:33PM
There are other problems involved though, ignoring bandwidth. Client machines would have to run outward facing servers. There are some hurdles with self-hosting both during setup and maintenance. Then you also have to 24/7 uptime requirement and the fixed IP address. Fixed IP doesn't matter as much if you use a dynamic ip dns service (could cost money). But 24/7 uptime would matter to people. Maybe people these days don't even have desktops and use laptops exclusively.
So self-hosting would require a lot more than symmetric bandwidth. It requires running a publicly accessible server (probably http), a static ip or dynamic dns service, and 24/7 up-time.
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(Score: 1) by takyon on Wednesday February 04 2015, @03:09AM
24/7 uptime is nice, but I bet if people could utilize their gigabit connection for commercial purposes with 99.9% uptime at the low cost of $70/month, they would not care. I have also seen reports of Google Fiber customers getting discounts on their bills for downtime.
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(Score: 2) by tibman on Wednesday February 04 2015, @02:27PM
Yes, that would be great. I think if earlier (commercial) web had started symmetric with static IP then we wouldn't be stuck in this client->server model. It could be that every client would have a simple static content service. Content is much more decentralized that way and the control remains with the creator.
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(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday February 03 2015, @03:39PM
I'll provide an alternative interpretation, which is zoning regulations. I'm not supposed to be running a business at home. Period. Pretty much full stop. There are some exceptions and I can always apply for a variance and as long as its not retail or industrial the local board has a history of rubber stamping (the city is full of consultant types with a business address == home address). I can run my table saw all day long on my own projects and they can't / won't stop me, but they flip their lid if a home renovation guy applies for a variance to run a one man custom furniture / cabinet shop in his garage legally, but that's not my area of interest.
Anyway technologically I probably could host this entire site in my basement, its only a couple linodes worth of machines, and connect to a theoretical muni network, but I'm not supposed to do that kind of stuff in my basement, at least under current zoning rules without a variance.
I would imagine if the theoretical muni network hooked up to a warehouse that I rented and turned into a data center, something could be arranged to provide much more BW, as much as I'm willing to pay for, likely.
There are some interesting technical concerns such that there are FCC (and obvious safety) limits to the power levels a cablemodem is allowed to transmit at, and until some theoretical DOCSIS 4, 5, 6, 7 allows bonding multiple upstream 6 mhz channels the way it allows bonding downstream channels, its going to be tricky to get 50 megs up, even if 50 megs down is COTS at this time. You'd have to scrap the HFC coax and run fiber to the house or last mile wifi or something. Or end the current relationship where broadband pretty much equals cablemodem. Its not like you can lower noise levels on coax, and if the fcc (wisely) limits transmitted power levels and the standards in the market limit analog BW to 6 mhz wide channels, then Shannon's Law is a law not a suggestion, so you aint getting 10000 megabits a second upstream under those EE requirements using COTS tech and current laws.
(Score: 2) by fadrian on Tuesday February 03 2015, @03:41PM
Because I really have no need to serve more than 3 Mbps upstream - it's not like I run a streaming porn site or one of the most popular blogs in the world. And, if I did, I wouldn't be running it from home - I'd switch to either a cloud service or a colo-ed server. Because you can't actually depend on the speed of a local segment.
That is all.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by tathra on Tuesday February 03 2015, @04:28PM
but you should be able to do so if you wanted. it should absolutely be symmetric, or at least less asymmetric, as close to symmetric as possible, so that people could run their own streaming or cloud services if they wanted to. isn't that what freedom is all about, being able to choose for yourself instead of having the choice already made for you? why should you have to pay somebody else for the ability to do something that you want to do, and should be able to do if not for artificial scarcity?
as for unstable speeds, my understanding is that its entirely due to the local private industry carriers far overselling the amount they can actually handle and then selling their customers on the theoretical max ("up to" speed). a public internet service shouldn't have this problem since they already know how many people they must be able to handle through census data, and if its planned properly there should be scheduled upgrades every few years (or every year).
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Wednesday February 04 2015, @10:23AM
I can't imagine that anyone who spoke as much as they listened in their life (1:1) would be easy to get along with. Either they'd be constantly talking, or seldom listening.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 04 2015, @03:47PM
Cable broadband uses Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM). The amount of capacity over one coax cable is fixed, but divided into "channels". Similar to TV. Each channel is transmitting data. At OSI layer 3 your broadband appears to be one Ethernet, but at OSI Layer 2 cable broadband is actually many parallel connections.
By making service asymmetric, the carrier frees more of these layer 2 connections for consumer use. So it is a cost savings thing for the ISP. They can supply more customers with less equipment if the connection is asymmetric.
HOWEVER, from a legal standpoint the FCC regurgitating this technical economy into regulatory language is an act of regulatory capture. This economy of scale ONLY applies to networks that use FDM all the way up to the CPE (Customer Premise Equipment). DSL broadband doesn't do that. So the FCC is stipulating by regulatory means, a preference for bus over point to point communications. Which is to say: they are siding with cable providers OVER telephone providers in terms of equipment and cost structure.
It is an unnecessary distinction. Rather than saying "X upstream, and Y downstream", they could have said: "a send/receive, or receive/send ratio of not greater than X/Y, and a total transmission capacity of Z". Which wouldn't distinguish between them. But by saying "25 Down, 3 Up", what they've done is codified a ratio that effects both trade and the first amendment. It isn't the FCC's job to standardize technology. (That is why the ISO and IETF exist) Their job to prevent the technology from facilitating the dilution of the rule of law. As described, what they've done is the opposite. They've used their authority to mitigate civil rights and regulate trade which is completely outside of their jurisdiction.
Network Neutrality is not about a corporate disagreement. It isn't about how consumer products are provided to consumers either. It is about the use of technology to dilute and divest the rule of law. It is a civil rights issue. Source code and legal code are similar in that, what you don't say, is more important that what you do say. It is unlikely that this concept comes easily to people who write for deadlines. Perhaps that is why popular journalism on this subject is so universally wrong.