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Comment by crazy1van | Hacker News Reader

First, let me say that my local ISPs have left a lot to be desired. Comcast and Verizon have driven me crazy in the past. But making them a utility scares me. As bad as my ISPs have been, looking back 15 years, I was on a 56k modem. Now I have 50 mbps broadband. When I look at other utilities like power and water, I've seen zero innovation and my bill continues to rise.

Something should be done, but I'd rather the focus be on removing barriers to more local competition by getting rid of ordinances that create a defacto monopoly by constricting access to utility poles and right-of-ways. When Verizon offered fios to my area, overnight comcast dropped their prices and then raised their speeds significantly. I want more of that.

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What innovation could be done for basic utilities? I understand your concern and sympathize with it. But it seems like there is a difference. Everyone wants faster more reliable internet (Personally I'm more concerned about reliability at peak times at this point; >10mbps is plenty otherwise). But when is the last time you heard someone complain about the reliability of their power/water/sewage? Maybe I'm spoiled, but I haven't noticed systemic negligence with those utilities.

The electrical grid is (supposedly) badly in need of an overhaul. I don't know if this is correlated to electrical being a utility however.

Why would power companies upgrade? Their monopoly status has taken away all financial incentive to improve things. And their monopoly status is given by the federal government. That makes them far more interested in keeping the government happy instead of keeping me, the consumer, happy.

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> What innovation could be done for basic utilities?

I think even asking that question leads us down the wrong path. If 15 years ago, the "experts" had gotten together to brainstorm about new ways to communicate, we never would have gotten anything as disruptive as our current social networks. Instead let new people enter the market and let's see what we get.

I can only comment on the electricity utilities. The power grid of this country is a marvel of engineering, but it needs better monitoring and control systems for our future to have electric vehicles and solar panels as commonplace technologies. If everyone had electric vehicles today and plugged them in to charge overnight, the grid would crash. Unlike the internet, it is significantly more difficult to upgrade the power grid because you can't just cut offer power to upgrade, and also grid equipments are very expensive. On the internet we got cheap servers, cheap networking, easy to setup failover and backups.

With all that said, companies like Edison and PG&E are regulated monopolies, so at this point in time they don't have much incentive to innovate. You can't unsubscribe from your electricity provider.

> With all that said, companies like Edison and PG&E are regulated monopolies, so at this point in time they don't have much incentive to innovate. You can't unsubscribe from your electricity provider.

Yes, exactly. Instead of competing, they are in the business of compliance. I want my ISPs to ruthlessly compete for my business and not check the boxes provided by the government required to keep their monopoly.

That's actually a much more interesting question than the so called net neutrality. What regulations restrict competition, and prevent you from being able to choose between several ISPs.

Of course the innovation curve has been steep on broadband over the last fifteen years when compared with legacies like electricity and water. It could have been much better though, and many other developed countries have faster broadband speeds at lower prices than we do here in the United States, perhaps owing to some combination of different regulations or more competition.

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