from the socialize-the-costs-and-privatize-the-profits dept.
Broadband providers have spent years lobbying against utility-style regulations that protect consumers from high prices and bad service.
But now, broadband lobby groups are arguing that Internet service is similar to utilities such as electricity, gas distribution, roads, and water and sewer networks. In the providers' view, the essential nature of broadband doesn't require more regulation to protect consumers. Instead, they argue that broadband's utility-like status is reason for the government to give ISPs more money.
[...] "Like electricity, broadband is essential to every American," USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter and NTCA CEO Shirley Bloomfield wrote Monday in an op-ed for The Topeka Capital-Journal. "Yet US broadband infrastructure has been financed largely by the private sector without assurance that such costs can be recovered through increased consumer rates."
[...] While ISPs want the benefits of being treated like utilities—such as pole attachment rights and access to public rights-of-way—they oppose traditional utility-style obligations such as regulated prices and deployment to all Americans.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Friday August 17 2018, @07:23AM (1 child)
Previously from the Rural Broadband Association:
Rural Wireless Association Opposes U.S. Government Ban on Huawei and ZTE Equipment [soylentnews.org]
Wait, that [ruralwireless.org] is not the Rural Broadband Association [ntca.org]. How many of these things are there?
I can't wait for Starlink to arrive and grind these companies into dust.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday August 17 2018, @04:37PM
I would love an ISP that I could get for reasonable price/performance. Throw in no data cap for kicks and I'm hooked. Current ISPs won't even give me a wired connection. Screw that, my In-Laws were a block or two from a junction, and they couldn't get wired internet for 10 years or so. The people next door had it, but no we can't/won't service your house. They have wired internet now, but I'd almost choose anything else.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @08:14AM (2 children)
Only when aristarchus is freed will SoylentNews be what it had the potential to be! Until then, really lame posts like this are about all we can expect. Janrinok, come to your senses!
(Score: 3, Flamebait) by janrinok on Friday August 17 2018, @09:04AM
I have, and so has the person who modded you as a troll.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @09:49PM
What, potential to be a Marxist propaganda site? If aristarchus wants that, he can get his own site.
Of course, though, he won't. His cult-like devotion to it requires that parasitize other sites, drown out all other thought and convert all communication to politicized indoctrination.
Yeah, calling Internet-relevant news is "lame" because it doesn't fit the Agenda, right.
Someone needs to come to their senses and it ain't Janrinok.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @08:59AM (2 children)
This is a political problem par exellence. It shows how weak and effectively disfranchised you are as a people.
To fix it, you would first need to get rid of all the bones you have been thrown to fight over, all the insane unworkable ideas, all of concerns about issues remote or marginal to your lives, all divisions you feel so real, which are just compartment walls to keep you dissociated. You are intentionally kept minced, atomized, in feuds, so that you couldn't unite about anything, about any damn no-brainer issue common for most everyone. And then, when (allegedly or undoubtly) some Ruskies come and exploit already drawn lines of division to ire you in times of election, they are vilified for it like it was them who started it all. But it is so easily forgotten the divisions already existed, they have been made on purpose, by your own establishment (industrial and political), for profit (economical and political, in short - for power). And, no, it is not a conspiracy, it is business as usual. They do X, they profit p(X).
You need to learn how to at least temporarily put aside your differences and unite, on matters which affect you all, evade attempts to break you into factions again, or to loosen your focus, or to single out one person or a group as representative of all and then do character assassination in media on them, abstain from pushing your own faction's agenda along with the common issue or accepting special attention of media, and endure until the issue is resolved favorably and secured through laws or amendments from appearing again.
And after the fact you can return to hating each others guts, if you like it that way. That's rule of the people for you.
But, if you would rather nonintermittently signal your incompatibility with another group then I guess you are paying a small price for your ideals, so shut up and suck up. After all what's a little bit more money to pay for shitty connection each month compared to ideals of justice and the ultimate destiny of the world? Or compared to just, you know ... bashing assholes.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Friday August 17 2018, @01:13PM
I'll let you in on an 'American' secret, but you can't tell anyone: we're very proud of our masses-hating ultra-rich. We work very hard to create and nurture them. It's tiring but very rewarding based on the outcomes, which are beyond expectations. They are the gladiators of the one-world economy. They're achieving outstanding results in keeping the people arguing, fighting, caught up in details, and wasting their lives writing on websites.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday August 18 2018, @03:54AM
Like what? You have anything concrete in mind?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @09:00AM (1 child)
The telcos got handouts AND they didn't deliver what they promised.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/590906b3e4b084f59b49fdbd [huffingtonpost.com]
https://newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm [newnetworks.com]
http://irregulators.org/bookofbrokenpromises/ [irregulators.org]
What the government should do is force the telcos to deliver what you bunch have already paid for.
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Monday August 20 2018, @05:07AM
So.. you are saying there is a precedent where telco's got money for doing nothing? Okay. Please pay again, see prior precedent.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Murdoc on Friday August 17 2018, @09:08AM (3 children)
"You can't blame the louse for thriving in a lousy environment." -Howard Scott
The point is that you can't blame them for trying, it's built into the system: whomever can get the most money by whatever means they can get away with, is rewarded by the very same money. All things being equal, it will be the actors using more unethical and illegal strategies (provided they get away with them) that will succeed over their competitors. You will only find ethical and successful actors when things are not equal, such as when a company is new and small, or in a new market so that they don't have competition yet. Sure we can try to curtail this behaviour with laws, but it becomes a never-ending war of measure-countermeasure, as the incentive will always be there to cheat, tempting those less scrupulous, and rewarding those who manage to outmaneuver the law. And that's not even getting into the fact that those rewards can then be used to reward those in control of the law to allow the cheating in the first place. The only solution is to change the rules of the game, so that the louses can no longer thrive.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @04:21PM (1 child)
This is just another symptom of the corruption that SCOTUS enabled by removing the limits on spending by corporate interests. This isn't a particularly hard problem to solve, but when you have major cities that only have 2 choices, I'm not sure why it would be shocking that rural areas are even worse.
Here in Seattle things have finally improved, we've got a 3rd ISP that's been installing wires, so we may finally have a 3rd option. Although, not everywhere, some folks live in buildings where there's only one choice because the building owner only allows access to one company for telecommunications.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Saturday August 18 2018, @07:05AM
Even just two choices is better than many places have. Here is Yuma you get Charter or a DSL solution that is very well engineered but just not technologically able to compete with a cable company. Sputum (aka Spectrum) does just enough to beat the DSL option and not one iota more. They are busy advertising starting at 60 Mbps and crowing at Gbps while actually delivering at barely 25 Mbps. Just enough to legally claim 'broadband' and mouthing highspeed because it doesn't have legal implications.
"I blow my nose at you, you silly English kniggits *blow raspberry* your mother was a hamster and your father smelt of elderberries!"
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Friday August 17 2018, @04:42PM
This explains the current state of Google.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @09:11AM (3 children)
You don't really get that money-meets-power-meets-your-face-with-a-stick sensation unless you have a reciprocal circle between government and corporate corruption, spending and suppression. You really do need the government to have an invested interest in ISPs using backdoored equipment, the ISPs wanting government to maintain their monopoly and the CEOs getting as much of the pie as possible so they'd be able to dominate campaign funding and choose the politicians that best pay out to them.
All the pieces fitting together... That's when the real magic happens.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @10:48AM (2 children)
Don't worry citizen, president Trump will drain the swamp any minute now!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @11:18AM
Pretty sure Führer Trump is the last piece of the puzzle. Question is, if Bernie is Hermann Müller, does that mean Hillary is Heinrich Brüning?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Revek on Friday August 17 2018, @12:13PM
Not as long as him and his fellow scum is floating on it.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Revek on Friday August 17 2018, @12:09PM
Small providers get nothing from the government. Indeed we have to pay in to usac. They have subsidy programs for consumers but none for the actual ISP. Give my company 5 million and we would be able to provide for most of our region. Give us 10 million and we would provide service to new towns. Towns that currently have nothing. Most of those programs are made to target larger companies.
This page was generated by a Swarm of Roaming Elephants
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Friday August 17 2018, @12:52PM (4 children)
So, Americans that don't want socialism are asking for social assistance but want to make profits while not paying taxes but want fully funded government assistance but don't want to give money to government to fund the assistance but will gladly accept.....
......bluuuuurgggge......
Sorry: did I get some on you.....right there on your shoe?
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Friday August 17 2018, @01:24PM
No, you've got it. It's our system and it's working perfectly. What's your criticism?
Sarcasm aside, we 'Americans' are a bit more individualistic than I would like. Everyone wants for themselves, obviously. Nobody seems to want to elect team-builders. My simple-minded, very little time given to think it through observation goes back to the types of people who ventured to the "New World"- entrepreneurs, adventurers, wanderers, destitute, criminals, etc. Stir that pot, season it a bit, and voilà.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @09:55PM
Are you aware of the fact that government and economic systems can exist in forms that partly follow one philosophy and partly others? There aren't just a pile of pre-packaged policies to choose from sitting on the shelves like different brands of detergent.
(Score: 2) by archfeld on Saturday August 18 2018, @07:16AM (1 child)
We want basic utilities that provide the structure for what most would call a 1st world nation, and were originally paid for out of our tax dollars, to be available without a corporation raping and gouging everyone for as much money as possible, while providing as little service as possible. Power, water, sewage, garbage, internet, phone, roads, fire and rescue. Let the open market determine other things. I happen to live in an area where fire service is a subscription based thing. The equipment is bought and paid for out of my tax dollars, and yet to be serviced by said equipment I have to pay a yearly subscription fee. How is that fair, or to be considered socialism ?
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday August 18 2018, @11:46AM
" fire service is a subscription based thing. The equipment is bought and paid for out of my tax dollars, and yet to be serviced by said equipment I have to pay a yearly subscription fee. How is that fair, or to be considered socialism ?"
Sounds like our health care system in Canada, but we're considered socialists (even though your military has the same system).
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @02:47PM
well
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Friday August 17 2018, @04:20PM
The ISPs don't want to invest? Fine. But why do we let them block competition for customers they aren't even competing for? They won't serve a city, so the city starts up a community broadband service, and then the private ISPs cry about how unfair it is to them to have to compete with the evil government, and demand that the service be shut down. Very anti-competitive and anti-capitalistic of them.
Another very bad thing about the current ISP oligopoly is they are single points of failure. The MAFIAA lusts to turn the ISPs into copyright cops. Other forces are very interested in monitoring, injecting ads, slanting search results, and so on. Lots more independent competition makes it a lot harder to contemplate such spying and manipulation.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday August 17 2018, @09:51PM
They want to be utilities? Awesome. Then they can re-embrace having Common Carrier status again, and accept Net Neutrality for dessert.
Oh, and no. Broadband for rural was indeed financed by government and not delivered on. Maybe they can finish rural broadband infrastructure on their own nickel. Then we might talk about why they deserve any further handouts.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 18 2018, @08:25PM
suddenlink gets on my damn nerves as they are sooo incompetent but i have to admit, their parent company altice *is* rolling out fiber. two small cities near me are gig cities already. i wouldn't be surprised if i get 100mb up and down before too long.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday August 20 2018, @02:42AM
"ISPs Won't Invest Without Handouts"
That's true, 100% true. That's only half of the truth though.
The other half is that they won't invest with handouts either. I mean, they will invest it into their own pockets, but not invest it in the archaic sense of the word.
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