Since access to the internet allows everyone to learn or to be informed should the government step in and guarantee internet access?
America’s internet system is strange. In the UK, I can switch my internet provider to one of half a dozen alternatives with a couple of phone calls. However, in the US, the cable companies have divvied up the country like a cartel, so most people are basically at the mercy of whichever cable company “owns” their area. These companies therefore have zero incentive to provide decent service, which is presumably why ComCast is America’s least popular company.
Since the free market has proven woefully inadequate to the task of providing decent internet, and since decent internet access is becoming a more and more crucial part of people’s everyday lives, from banking to finding work, I think it makes sense for the government to provide an alternative.
We did have some sort of subsidized phone access for rural areas. Maybe still so. Anyone know the details on that?
I think it’s reasonable to think that the advent of proliferated commercial low earth orbit communications satellites in the next several years could render this debate totally moot. These satellites could provide high speed, affordable, worldwide coverage, and just totally change the game.
Some countries do do it that way - Estonia I think was the first, more followed suit. It does make sense to treat broadband internet as a basic necessity like running water/sewage or electricity.
Municipal broadband is a great idea but I don’t understand how this would be anywhere close to constitutional:
How can the federal government directly compel states to allow their own subordinate agencies (municipalities in this case) to build and operate a particular form of infrastructure? Municipalities are part of the state, not a separate thing with their own separate rights (other than granted by state laws); if the state chooses not to offer a particular service (even if it’s a good idea), what power does Congress have to change that? This isn’t like a normal pre-emption, where a state is prevented from positively doing something, this would be an attempt to pre-empt the internal structure of the state itself.
The feds could build their own public broadband system in areas they judge to be underserved, similar to how they built a power grid in the Tennessee Valley. Or they could offer truckloads of money to the states so that they allow it, like they did with the Interstate Highway System. But I really don’t understand how Congress could just compel states to restructure themselves on demand.
That’s not what the quote says. The federal government would not be compelling the states or municipalities to provide broadband or any other infrastructure, but it would invalidate current state laws (usually passed after lobbying from the cable lobby) that prohibit municipalities from setting up their own broadband (which is a thing).
I know what it says. The big flaw is that municipalities are not separate from their states. They have no existence other than what state law, and only state law, says they do.
Where would Congress get the authority to say that when a state creates a municipality, it must endow it with the powers to operate a broadband internet utility?
As far as I know, this portion of Hunter v City of Pittsburgh is still good law:
I don’t think there’s ever been an “unless Congress doesn’t want them to” inserted into this.
I’m using municipal internet right now. It came about when energy deregulation (remember that?) was all the rage, prompting the city utility to implement direct meter reading by installing a fiber-optic drop to every building in its service area. This created a lot of unused bandwidth which they offered to the cable company — a local company which was later assimilated by Comcast — which turned it down. So they created a cable TV subsidiary and franchised out ISP services. I pay about 20% less than comparable service from Comcast.
(Interestingly, last time I looked Comcast was charging its customers in the utility’s service area quite a bit less than customers outside the service area. I wonder why?)
How does that work? I assume you don’t have half a dozen different cables going past your house, so does one cable carry different providers’ signals? Or does it all fundamentally come from one place, but the different providers buy and sell the right to send amounts of data through the common (or separately-owned) infrastructure.
Could they use purse power?
“Sure, North Carolina government, you can continue to be massive douches in the pocket of Spectrum Cable, and forbid towns from setting up public Internet. Here’s a list of federal grants and funds your state will be able to access again once you change your mind.”
Because that infrastructure allows Americans to conduct interstate “Commerce”. If the Americans living in these municipalities need improved access to the internet, the Feds have a place at the table to ensure these Americans aren’t denied access to an important avenue of commerce with other States.
Not to mention, they’ll create a pile of space junk.
Internet access is very similar to other utilities like water and power. You’re best off having “pure” internet - any sort of customization of your internet access by your ISP, by restricting or fast-laning any content, worsens the experience. ISPs basically cannot value-add to internet access because anything they do is simply worse than having free, open, unmodified internet access.
So just like you’d want clean, pure water and clean, pure power, you’re best off with clean, pure internet access.
As such, what do we need ISPs, with their conflicts of interests due to also being content providers, for at all? They’re only useful because of their existing infrastructure, but that can simply be spun off and managed separately as a utility.
Wired internet providers basically engage in monopolistic behaviors for a captive audience because there’s no real competition in most places in the US. They provide a basic service that pretty much everyone needs these days - access to the internet is not a luxury, it’s pretty much a necessity for modern life. The best form of internet access is standardized, unmodified, “clean” internet access. All of the value that the internet providers actually provide is in the infrastructure, not the product or service. As such, they are pretty much exactly the definition of what constitutes a utility, and there’s no good reason not to treat them that way. A “public option” run like a utility would basically amount to the same thing.
The current system does not serve any real purpose and is basically the result of corruption. Telecoms are, IIRC, the biggest lobbying industry in the country.
Relevant to the OP: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/all-americans-should-be-able-to-use-the-internet-how-do-we-get-there/2019/08/11/7d98a4d2-bad6-11e9-b3b4-2bb69e8c4e39_story.html
Possibly paywalled, but that shouldn’t stop anyone who knows how to internet.
I just lowered my ISP bill and got faster service by noting that a competing ISP wanted me as a customer.
I’ve also done the same with my electricity provider, several times since consumer choice came to DC.
Why should I assume that a public monopoly on those services would give me better service and prices?
I’m probably the odd man out, but I’m personally for nationalizing (or preferably building parallel, state sponsored) industries that rely on natural monopolies and subsequent anti-competitive practices (like lobbying for the banning of Google Fiber).
I am worried about state controlled telecomunications networks because I don’t want the state to have the option of turning off the communications of anyone they have cause to dislike, but that doesn’t seem to be the immediate concern here… and it’s not like they couldn’t just order Comcast or AT&T to do it for them.
You do not want the government being your sole ISP. There will not be advancement of technology. You want 7G? Forget about it. There would be no incentive for the government to build out new technologies. If the government had taken over two decades ago, we’d still all be on dial-up.
And by an identical argument cell phones don’t exist because land lines prevented their invention.