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Comment by nonameiguess | Hacker News Reader

I laugh so hard at this every time it comes up. I live 5 blocks from AT&T world headquarters and they don't even offer service of any kind at my address, let alone fiber. Spectrum is the only option.

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ISPs collude and have deals on which of them are zoned where. It's not a conspiracy, it's just reality. Go to any area in the US and whoever the major isp is, only has dysfunctional att or a crappy satalite provider as their "competition." if Cox, Comcast, and spectrum (pick three big names) had to compete in every area the consumers would have a lot more options. Yes, you can't force business to sercice areas, but I think the collusion of these companies is what should be regulated. We all know it's happening and when they do, if the regulators treated them as a single entity, we'd have the antitrust violations and breakups consumers are so desperate for.

When Fiber disruptors like frontier, Google, or local metropolitans enter the picture: suddenly the ISPs have a lucrative deals because they finally have to freaking compete. Suddenly the data caps are non issue and consumers can get blazing fast speeds with no infrastructure changes because they are holding out.

Regulators need to prevent this in the USA, but have been captured by the isp lobbies. Cable crooks is what I call them, because that's all ISPs are now, crooks. They'll have techs steal or break your equipment. They'll hide evidence when damage was caused by their techs. They'll lie when outages occur due to their own infrastructure failures despite sending out contractors to repair. They'll say whatever they need to, no matter how fraudulent, to tack fees and monthly charges to your account. They've weaseled their way out of being classified as utilities despite that being exactly what they are.

I loathe the ISPs in USA. Of course they will push bills like this. I see no end to the hell of having them the as tollmen of the internet.

Regulated, you say?

Take a look at regulated monopolies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government-granted_monopoly

The issue is ... they are granted exclusive rights by the local government.

Conspiracies are often reality.

If ISPs have backroom deals that amounts to collusion in the market, that is a conspiracy.

While I'm here, I have an anecdote.

I just moved from an old house to a new apartment a mile away. The house had gigabit from ATT and another ISP for 60/mo.

The apartment only offers spectrum and ATT. ATT top plan is 45 Mbps symmetrical, and spectrum has Gbe down/35Mbps up, each for $90.

I'm all for municipal internet.

Why would they?

Spectrum's profits aren't even that high, so why would AT&T want to compete with them chasing down pennies, even 5 blocks away from HQ?

American ISPs without competition charge double what Norwegian ones do for substantially worse service. That money isn't used for physical plant; if it isn't going to profits, where is it being spent?

Executive compensation, stock buybacks (which is an extension of the former).

You can read Spectrum's annual financial report and see the numbers yourself?

I'm not really sure what your asking me, do you want my opinion on whether they're making it up?

If executives that live near the office are embarrassed about not using their own product?

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