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Comment by afriend4lyfe | Hacker News Reader

If the big ISPs started throttling data and putting up walled gardens, what would stop competitors from entering the market to offer the "net neutral" flavor of internet we're used to?

Some communities are already banding together to start their own ISPs. I'm not familiar with how they deal with the "last mile" infrastructure challenge. But if it only took a big investment up front then that begs the question why did Google Fiber fail? Lack of community support?

If net neutrality was as valuable to us as we make it out to be, then what would stop local grassroots efforts from installing their own community-based ISPs in response to losing it?

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> what would stop local grassroots efforts from installing their own community-based ISPs

High meatspace costs (digging, permits), obstruction of easements by incumbents (like pole access [1][2]), and in 19 states, state laws [3], are some of the barriers to municipal broadband efforts in the US.

[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/08/att-e... [2] https://www.wired.com/2016/09/utility-poles-important-future... [3] https://muninetworks.org/communitymap

> Some communities are already banding together to start their own ISPs. I'm not familiar with how they deal with the "last mile" infrastructure challenge. But if it only took a big investment up front then that begs the question why did Google Fiber fail? Lack of community support?

Google Fiber failed because Google doesn't care about fiber; they care about creating competition for ISPs to ensure continued access to its services. They realized they don't need fiber for that-5G technologies will be good enough to create competition for ISPs but can be deployed far more cheaply.

> I'm not familiar with how they deal with the "last mile" infrastructure challenge.

In many localities, they can't, because laws and regulations have been put in place giving monopoly access to one of the big ISPs.

In most of Europe competition in last mile networks is enforced by law and ISPs don't have nearly the scope for all this nefarious stuff. If they block/throttle or charge premiums you can just go to one of their competitors.

This is because the companies who own all the last mile networks (mostly former state monopolies,) are legally compelled to wholesale that last mile access.

Wow, that was really forward thinking of places that do this. Can you cite some speeds and costs?

We should push for this in high density areas of the US. Not just beg a federal agency not to roll back net neutrality, which, under Trump, they may be able to do without losing much popularity.

Well it was also possible as most European companies had state-run telephone monopolies into the 1980s. And when they were privatised the government's were in a position to impose rules on the newly created private companies - namely that they had to sell local access to competitors.

As the US govt. didn't own AT&T, not the Baby Bells, nor today's Verizon & AT&T, the situation is a bit different.

The irony that the US has a much worse situation because there is so much less competition (despite it being the home of capatalism).

In terms of speed I know Ireland (where I am,) and the UK can both get you VDSL2+ service (so like up to 80Mb) on copper pair from numerous suppliers. One service slow access to netflix? Go to another.

> The irony that the US has a much worse situation because there is so much less competition (despite it being the home of capatalism).

Yup, pretty interesting stuff. In some ways we're more free; in others, more restricted.

Good question. I wouldn't say Google fiber failed. They've paused expansion.

Also, living overseas in Taiwan I get 50+ Mbps down/5 up for $4/month on a landline (cable), paid a year in advance, and in SE Asia you can get 3g Sims giving 5gb data for $10. Here I pay $6 for 1gb 3g per month, prepaid.

Granted, Taiwan is much more urbanized so costs for this go down, but it begs the question what sort of stranglehold ISPs hold over urban America. Perhaps urban America is subsidizing rural America, and Google didn't want to play that game to its finish. Just a wild guess. Anyway, much too soon to call that product a failure, particularly since it is still active.

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