Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/01/13/study-finds-municipal-broadban.html
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But, but, but what about the price efficiency offered by the privately owned telcos?
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You just have to be OK with ping-ponging between providers every 12 to 24 months. I just signed up for FIOS @ $40 again after Comcast raised me from $30 to $75. Lord I hate these guys! All I want is basic broadband, I’ve been fine with 25mbs.
What was fascinating and disgusting was how hard Verizon tried to convince me I needed to rent their their router for $10/mo rather than use my own.
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Yup. 10 a month for something you can typically buy for 20 or 30. Sort of like leasing an old Chevy impala with 200k miles on it for 500 a month.
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Just out of curiosity and because I am a cynical old SOB, do those government run ISP’s have “amusing” terms of service limiting what you can do (such as forbidding using torrents, viewing “offensive” material or using a VPN or encryption) and giving them carte blanche to snoop your data on behalf of law enforcement whenever they feel like it?
I cannot imagine a government provided service that isn’t laden with such things and worse. If they do not, I’d like to see some links to those terms as they may be well buried. Corporations and modern government are hard to tell apart and both are sneaky and underhanded and prefer you just keep quiet and hand over money whenever they ask for it.
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Any indication how local taxes subsidize the cost of this municipal broadband? I sure that my city taxes have paid for the installation of the city owned fiber network that this broadband rides on so I could see how companies are calling foul.
Lot of horseshit to upwrap here, so let’s get started!
Find one that does. It’s pretty easy to find corporate ones that do, so it shouldn’t be too hard, right? So far though they act like common carriers like a public utility should, so sounds like that’s a load of bullshit fear-mongering on your part.
You mean like AT&T and pretty much every telco already does?
Yeah, they do stuff like go and astroturf on forums in support of their practices.
Sounds like a good investment in a public utility regardless of how it’s paid since it benefits the citizens in the municipality instead of minimizing services and maximizing costs in benefit for the private providers.
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You rather selectively edited parts of my response…I posted corporations and governments are sneaky. As in, neither one should be given full trust and a blank check and reading the fine print is always in order.
"Find one that does. " That was the gist of my entire post…are there such? When the government sets the rules, violating them tends to have legal consequences even for trivial stuff. When stuff runs through government servers, they have a lot easier time of it sniffing through your emails since it can be argued you knowingly stored them on government owned equipment and willingly gave up an expectation of provacy by doing so.
“Yeah, they do stuff like go and astroturf on forums in support of their practices.” I’ve been posting here for years…I hardly think Astroturfing sources would go to that much effort to establish a presence.
You seem to be willfully misconstruing my post. I wish merely to point out that government “solutions” are rarely the panacea some people seem to posit them being. Governments these days are rarely noted for being efficient or even-handed in how they do things with a strong tendency towards “anything not specifically allowed is prohibited”.
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I’m pretty sure the government does everything you mention on private Telcos already. So even if they were just as bad on public ones, the only difference would be the cheaper cost and public ownership.
Of course, I already don’t think it matters because gigantic corporations already ARE the government.
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Yeah, it’s funny how often people forget that most of the shitty parts of the US comes from regulatory capture.
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One point worth keeping in mind is that US taxpayers have, and continue to heavily subsidize internet service at many levels. In the early 2000s we forked over hundreds of billions of dollars for a national fiber network that the major telecom providers lobbied into oblivion - and kept the money. You can find many articles about this with a little searching, e.g. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060131/2021240.shtml
I would much rather have my tax dollars go towards providing a valuable service like true high speed internet service than to have them subsidize the duo-opoly of noncompeting service providers the area where I live has now. We’re actually one of the few regions where Google Fiber is attempting to set up service (Raleigh-Durham NC). They’ve been at it for two years now, and by all appearances our existing telecoms have fought them to a standstill. GF is looking at micro-trenching and area WiFi as alternatives to continuing to battle for rights-of-way access.
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I didn’t know there was a word for that.
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I’m guessing they’re probably right there in the open. Or at least as easily found as the corporate ISPs terms of service. Do they forbid these things? Probably, because you know, lawyers. Does it matter? Not really because your current ISP already forbids these things.
Why is it cheaper than regular ISPs? Maybe because the point of a corporation is to make money for shareholders whereas a city owned utility only needs to cover its budget.
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Oh yeah man, the study of institutional corruption is advanced as heck; but the problem is, nobody who cares can seem to get enough authority to do anything about it.
Bernie Sanders is a great example of this.
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The most upsetting thing about this is the image of 9 tiles on a scrabble rack.
This is dumb. A municipality is not the federal government, it’s not even a state government.
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“Private” telco monopolies are also subsidized.
Go spend some time with your local city council. Take a visit to your city IT department. I think your fears will be assuaged after seeing the capabilities of your local government.
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The data reported in the study doesn’t align with the narrative. The studied community networks were $10/month cheaper than commercial competitors, on average, but also 7 Mbps slower.
So not exactly a slam dunk. See High Tech Forum for details.
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