AT&T CEO seems confident industry can kill Biden’s municipal broadband plan | Hacker News Reader

AT&T CEO seems confident industry can kill Biden’s municipal broadband plan

arstechnica.com

9 pointsTangokat7 comments

America: the best representative democracy money can buy.

And when the power of the second estate exceeds the king's, popular revolution or collapse is not far off.

Why not declare AT&T, Comcast, et al. to be public utilities, by an Act of Congress?

The (non-communist reds) reds would see (communist) reds under the beds. I think some of the blues would too.

New Zealand has had the government fund a large portion of its fibre rollout and taken ownership of portions of the infrastructure companies. Infrastructure ownership is by different companies to service providers.

This has been controversial but it has had pretty good results. Gigabit is available in cities, with 2,4 and 8gb/s being rolled out now.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-Fast_Broadband

https://hyperfibre.co.nz/hyperfibre-options

more realist view: shareholders would revolt because these stocks would seamingly have less value.

broad realism: most of todays monopolies are accepted because the dumping of retirements into 401ks and pension funds means private interests and corporate interests resist any thing that could potentially devalue their holdings.

you dont need politics to see this, just the tendrils oc capitalism and privatization

> Why not declare AT&T, Comcast, et al. to be public utilities, by an Act of Congress?

Because of the expense (5th Amendment.)

Making them more-regulated-but-still-private utilities would have a lower up front cost, and probably work just as well.

It's worth considering the opportunity cost of making them state-owned vs. the net costs of lack of access and excessive charges by corporate exploitation to see which is cheaper and better. Internet access and usage shouldn't be held hostage by a few, greedy rent-seekers.

Regulation as utilities is a minimum need, but corporations will always find ways to conduct regulatory capture and game the rules. This is why I think utilities need to be mostly social venture nonprofits that are highly-regulated.

"AT&T CEO John Stankey yesterday called President Biden's plan to fund municipal broadband networks "misguided" and said the US shouldn't pay for any broadband deployment in areas that already have networks. But as AT&T and other ISPs lobby against public networks and government-funded competition, Stankey said he is confident that Congress will steer legislation in the more "pragmatic" direction that AT&T favors."

I suppose that's what he's supposed to say. Good to at least get a discussion about this topic. How good internet people should have is very much a question of viewpoint. Is 10mbit good internet?

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