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Comment by metalliqaz | Hacker News Reader

Sufficient competition in the market would be enough. Unfortunately, the government has allowed total monopoly on fixed line broadband. They've done it in two ways: first through exclusivity contracts with companies such as Verizon, ATT, Cox, and Comcast. They give fat payments in the form of cash, tax breaks, and local monopolies in exchange for the companies to build out infrastructure. Second, they have allowed consolidation in the marketplace to a level that should never have even been considered.

I agree that, long term, only a replacement infrastructure will be a viable solution. Unfortunately the only technology that currently has a chance is 4G/5G mobile service, and it is even more consumer-hostile.

In the mean time, we need Net Neutrality.

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A third way is the ~20 state governments who've subscribed to this model peddled by ALEC, barring municipalities from deploying infrastructure, on the grounds of preserving competition. Given the typical size of incumbent providers, this instead has the effect of preserving duo/monopoly, which critics argue is its intended purpose. https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1908390-alec-model-m...

I also expect new infrastructure to be the most likely solution. I wouldn't expect it to be 4G/5G mobile service though.

I always thought that the next infrastructure would be a series of wireless mesh networks. They are extremely censorship resistant and can operate on unlicensed frequencies which makes them resistant to centralized control.

I've heard about projects like https://nycmesh.net and http://guifi.net that have sprung up even while the internet was fairly neutral. That leaves me hopeful that this type of project will quickly replace wired infrastructure if it quickly becomes needed.

I'm nowhere close to an expert in this field so I would love to be corrected if I'm wrong about any of that. I would also love someone more informed than myself to talk about the current state of wireless mesh and/or 4G/5G mobile.

Operating on unlicensed bands means it would die as soon as it became popular.

That's a good point but 900MHz did okay, didn't it?

Mesh can work for short-haul. But long-haul routes are a problem. For instance, how would you mesh network between Los Angeles and Phoenix? Or Phoenix and Las Vegas? Those are "local" but long-haul routes for me. I can see the (slim) possibility of Phoenix to Tucson or Flagstaff. There is (almost) enough intervening users (potentially) to form the mesh (although it would be very bottlenecked).

Mesh networks right now are great for large urban populations - megacities, dense sprawl areas, etc. But for everything in between, at least here in US where the issue of Net Neutrality is the thing - not so much.

My understanding is that the "internet backbone" market is fairly competitive, as it's not too difficult/costly to install new infastructure across rural land areas if existing network operators are price gouging, etc. Do you think mesh networks combined with consumer hardware could be a viable option to bypass "last mile" ISP/Telco mafia infastructure?

Ueber a trucker with a harddrive?

I don't think it's realistic to expect free-market competitors to build out massive infrastructure to compete with each other. They wouldn't even serve large swathes of the country at all if they didn't have to.

As someone who trends towards espousing free-market virtues but I have long sense accepted that do to the practical physical concerns of laying so much wire the only 'good' workable situation for running the internet is a centralized, probably gov anyone else is a rent seeker, body with strong net neutrality and privacy policy. But that doesn't seem like it's gonna happen.

I agree. The gov dropped the ball by failing to build out the infrastructure itself, such that they were kept public utilities. They obviously didn't understand the importance that these networks would eventually have.

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