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Comment by okket | Hacker News Reader

Most relevant Internet bodies are noncommercial organisations, like ICANN, IETF, RIPE, ARIN, APNIC, AFNIC, LACNIC, the various Internet exchanges (xxCIX), some DNS registrars are noncommercial too. But someone has to run the actual cables, manage customers, host servers, etc.

I'd say the Internet has a very good balance between commercial interests and the noncommercial "public good". So good in fact, that some very restrictive governments choose to opt out and create nationwide intranets (China, Iran, ...)

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In BC, Canada the provision of electricity and water are by provincial/municipal governments, have very similiar requirements in terms of running wires/pipes, and in my experience have delivered much better services.

They don't constantly try to gouge me. I've had to call their support lines maybe a few times my entire life (as opposed to many tens of times for telcos). And I really don't see how sending bits could be more difficult than delivering high voltage or pressurized water.

This is exactly right.

Most services that lend themselves to a natural monopoly (because most people only really need one power/water/phone/internet line to their house/business) should be implemented as a publicly run infrastructure with value added ISP's on the end.

The current vertical integration of internet providers impedes any new competition.

Arguing for integration is like saying that all roads should be owned by the "Road Company" that also happens to be the "Car Company" and you can only use an expensive car you bought from them on their road.

> The current vertical integration of internet providers impedes any new competition

Wouldn't the government owning the service be the ultimate impediment to new competition?

I'm not defending ISPs, but lets not too quickly throw them under the bus.

Also, your casual throw-away comment:

> Most services that lend themselves to a natural monopoly ... should be implemented as a publicly run infrastructure

Requires the government forcibly taking over quite a few large companies.

That's a weighty request, and would be exactly the opposite of what we should want to see in the world.

> Requires the government forcibly taking over quite a few large companies. That's a weighty request, and would be exactly the opposite of what we should want to see in the world.

Yet this is exactly what happened in developed countries in the 20th century, now many of these are again privatized with the predictable loss of efficiency and increased bureaucracy (supporting frameworks, arbitrage, watchdogs, etc...).

In my country the privatization of public transit and energy companies has been a total disaster. I remember when I could get things done without being pingponged between 12 different parties, things that used to take a day now take weeks.

The government could do it that way, but you have to trust them to do it correctly the first time. Because those government run utilities don't run on ten year upgrade schedules they run on 100year upgrade schedules. When homes and apartments are connected to water and power networks they never get upgraded.

A national internet service designed in 1999 might just be ADSL for everyone.

There is a lot of talk about how great municipal fiber is, but a town near me did it over ten years ago. Took out 30 year bonds to build a 10mbit up / 10mbit down system that's pretty expensive.

You only have to look at telecom regulation in the first place. After deregulation prices dropped and investment in advances started up again. Tons of money was invested into wireless. But AT&T wasn't pushing that forward at the time.

You have to consider political issues. Voters hate "rate increases" for power, water, and electricity. Proposals to jack up rates to build a FttH system to every home I the country would be shot down.

And if you mean true government ownership and operation of the network there are privacy and censorship issues. In the USA the government is allowed to censor government airwaves but not cable networks. I'd worry that censorship attempts would be tried on an government owned network.

>A national internet service designed in 1999 might just be ADSL for everyone.

Recognizing the irony here that for vast swaths of the country, that would be a marked improvement over the status quo. (Although it probably would have been cable in Canada given existing penetration at the time.)

"In BC, Canada the provision of electricity and water are by provincial/municipal governments, have very similiar requirements in terms of running wires/pipes, and in my experience have delivered much better services."

The internet is not 'electricity'.

The internet evolves rapidly over time, there are competing technologies etc.

My friend, the Province of 'British Colombia' delivers some of the worst healthcare in the Western world - and they don't even have your records online. How do you expect they will manage bleeding edge technology?

Also - you are gouged on pricing. Have you seen your electricity bill? In Ontario, we pay artificially inflated fees. The government subsidizes irresponsible solar installations to the tune of 85 cents / kwh. They charge massive 'transport' fees. Hydro One is a massively bloated public entity with masses of retired people earning $100K a year from age 55 onwards. Have a look at their staffing budget - it's downright scandalous.

I'm not saying that electricity should be entirely privatized, but the internet, at least for now, should probably be.

Unless there is a big 'build out' (such as they have done in China or S. Korea) - I don't see government taking a direct role, other than perhaps regulation, and sponsoring access to rural communities and the poor.

> worst healthcare in the Western world - and they don't even have your records online.

One does not imply the other. In many ways I'm quite happy my medical information isn't all over the web. As a resident of BC myself, I don't see much of a difference between our heath care and ON or AB; other provinces I've lived in. You can argue that the Canadian system is flawed, but I have the Cambie centre that I can pay for and receive care on par with US quality right now.

>Also - you are gouged on pricing.

Demonstrably False. Your made in ON problem isn't shared by everyone else, thanks.

https://www.bchydro.com/accounts-billing/rates-energy-use/el...

http://www.hydroquebec.com/publications/en/docs/comparaison-...

>Unless there is a big 'build out

There should be one, right now. The entire country should be getting fiber to the door. That will be the last required physical infrastructure upgrade required for a long time. A national not-for-profit entity should own all of that, and the carriers can then compete/lease it to provide services.

Imagine the utilities had to deliver water at an increasingly high pressure, every year, or you would be furious and frustrated. So, in 2000, they're running at 5 psi.

By 2005, they need to be at 50 PSI in order to keep you happy.

By 2010, you expect 250 PSI.

By today, you'd not be willing to tolerate anything less than 1000 PSI.

Internet is not water, it is not electricity. It should not be a "public good".

This is nonsensical. Upgrades to both water delivery, electric grids and other utilities are in fact a thing, and they happen all of the time.

Funny enough, in keeping with the BC, Canada example, the BC Hydro had every customer upgraded - ie, the ENTIRE CUSTOMER BASE - to smart meters a few years back - the equivalent to running fiber to every last mile residence in the province.

Upgrades and enhancements have no bearing whatsoever on the corporate governance of the service is structured. The simple fact of the matter is that I don't need 5 companies to provide 5 different physical data delivery methods to my end point. I don't need a cable line, a phone line and a fiber line connected to my home concurrently any more than I need a 220V line to run my washing machine and a 120V line for my lights.

I need a single hookup for water. A single hookup for electricity. A single hookup for internet (or rather, communication). Any more than required is just inefficient and not cost effective.

Water delivery methods and techniques haven't changed much in 100yrs. Network tech changes rapidly. Government doesn't seem like the kind of place that deals with upgrades well

China and Russia are doing this largely to avoid Western cultural and political influence. Their choice to opt out does not necessarily imply that we're structuring our networks in the most just or efficient way.

To me it is a testament for the resilience and sane architecture of the Internet as we know it that restrictive governments can not achieve their goal without changing the underlying structure of their part to a central controlled version. Other technologies like the radio or telephone were centralised by default, so much more "dictatorship friendly".

The U.S. government seems to have no trouble achieving its commercial and surveillance goals under the current architecture.

Really? I only hear western governments whining that encryption threaten their surveillance powers [1][2].

[1] http://bigstory.ap.org/article/7d57f576e3f74b6ca4cd3436fbebf...

[2] http://www.theverge.com/2016/8/24/12621834/france-germany-en...

Your argument assumes it's not within their power to end this threat. In fact, the Senate proposed a bill that does just that [1]. There's nothing inherent to the current architecture that prevents the government from compelling companies to do their bidding. We've seen that time and time again with NSA surveillance. The crux of this article is that the Internet was largely funded by the public, then handed over to an oligopoly of telecoms in the 1990's. There's nothing about this arrangement that protects average users. In fact, it is partially responsible for the U.S. having the slowest average broadband speeds of any industrialized nation [2].

[1] http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/encryption-backdoors-legislat...

[2] http://gizmodo.com/why-americas-internet-is-so-shitty-and-sl...

It does imply that we are structuring our networks in a way that doesn't have the capabilities for restriction that they would like.

That's correct. We don't enforce restrictions on political speech or deviant pornography, for the most part. But we do enforce intellectual property restrictions that largely benefit Western corporate interests.

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