Power outage at CES
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
The same cannot be said for infrastructure. No matter how compelling an idea and the expertise behind it, the reality is that it will always be easier to start a website than to start an infrastructure project. Hungry, tech-savvy people know this and i believe it contributes heavily to the choice of medium for most companies.
The basic problem is that maintenance can't be filed as an investment, and thus gets filed as an expense.
And while investments can be written off over years, if not decades, expenses has to show up as a negative for the year (if not quarter) i gets approved.
Still is. Yes some internet is patchy in some places and US cities prefer cars over trains but US infrastructure is incredible.
I'm just going to leave this here: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42421417
The other thing I dislike about this incident is the "Lakewood Mayor warns a fatality/accident would happen soon", which though prophetic, the derailment had precisely zero to do with what he was talking about (which was, several miles north, the layout, offsets of pedestrian crossings of the track in the urban area).
Of course this problem seems to be unique to our implementation rather than inherent. Other countries use the same structure, but don’t chronically under invest (and their electric, water, and sewer rates reflect that!).
I can't remember the last time I had to call my water/gas/electric providers threatening to cancel service unless they undid a stealth rate raise.
I can't remember the last time I had a major utility outage that lasted multiple months while the provider tried to justify that it wasn't their fault, leaving me without the service I was paying for.
I can't remember the last time I found out a utility provider was throttling/filtering/negatively impacting my service in unexpected fashion. (Parallel to p2p throttling, throughput caps, ad injection, sudden limitations to tethering on my phone)
While there are many fair arguments to be made against imposing municipal ownership, comparing it to our current state of internet infrastructure is laughable.
As you say, other countries seem to manage much better than we do at utilities. So why not address these issues rather than demonizing what may still be an incremental improvement to the even worse situation present in our communication providers? (for the record, I see the same very vague meta-problem of misaligned incentives and low accountability as the root to both utility degradation and ISP misbehavior)
Although I think it's unfair to call the numerous problems of monopolistic ISPs "customer service" alone (service interruption, quality?) we certainly had our fair share of main breaks, probably once every few months/years you would see a fountain up through some major intersection, so I'll give you that. But they were fixed. Rapidly, and often motivated political will for higher investment, although unfortunately that never seemed to cross over past "reactionary" to "planning ahead."
Meanwhile. when Comcast has an exclusive agreement with an apartment complex, and their connections in a leaky electrical box are so corroded that 20%+ packet loss was the norm, there was effectively 0 avenue for improvement.
However, you've summarized the problem well for infra: There's simply a lack of funding/costs are not being accounted for. To my mind that's a MUCH simpler problem than convincing a free market to guarantee equivalent service for something that isn't "optional" in modern life, and that might not have effective competitive pressures. (It's not like our internet service market is miles ahead of competing first world countries, even within large cities where America-scale isn't as big a problem)
I’ve lived in Baltimore, DC, and Annapolis, and at each address I’ve had Verizon FiOS in competition with Comcast. (At my house, both companies offer fiber). Service was good enough where I’d take the duopoly over BGE any day. I think in most places, you can support enough competition (even with the "natural monopoly" tendencies of the market) to outrun poorly-run U.S. municipal governance/regulation. If you live in a reasonably-sized city or suburb and don't have competition, blame the government. (E.g. Baltimore doesn't have FiOS even though 80% of the rest of Maryland does, because the city denied Verizon a franchise.)
From a former councilwoman and president of Baltimore Development Corperation:[0] “The City Council had nothing to do with the fact that Verizon FiOS doesn’t exist in Baltimore city,” said Cole. “The city didn’t stand in their way. They made a business decision.”
And from Verizon's own communication in response to redlining accusations:[1] Verizon is not deploying FiOS in Baltimore City or in any other new areas in Maryland or across the country at this time because we’re now focused on delivering our FiOS services in those communities where we already have approved cable franchises and where we already have begun to build our FiOS network.
[0]https://technical.ly/baltimore/2016/03/03/broadband-got-hear...
[1]https://baltimorebrew.com/2010/02/28/waiting-for-fios-baltim...
As an aside, While BGE had a handful of outages, usually mid-winter, Comcast had it beat for me by a long shot, across 3 different apartments. I unfortunately had Comcast or DSL as the only options. (And CLEAR, which was surprisingly good ~8 years ago for what it was)
In a way, cable cutting will be a huge boon for broadband deployment. Municipalities’ right to regulate technically only extends to cable television service. Historically, most people have wanted cable television as part of the deal. (Almost nobody in my Baltimore apartment actually subscribed to FiOS because they couldn’t offer TV.) But if everybody switches to streaming, that dramatically restricts municipal authority over deployment.
That said... I still find smart lightbulbs kind of overkill.
> (2:13PM PT) According to the CTA, the culprit was, in fact, the rain. Here’s a link to a relevant Everything But the Girl video and here’s the official statement on the matter.
( that link is to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4sPkS8b62Q )
(Which makes me think all sorts of things about movies, but we won't go there.)
* Version XXX of Popular Software Released
* Provocative Study/Article about Male Genitals (Circumcision articles fall under this)