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Comment by IanDrake | Hacker News Reader

That will be a sad day. Internet technology still has a lot of room to improve before the government steps in and kills all market forces that encourage those improvements.

If you don't like your current service levels now, just wait until the government gets involved.

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From all I have heard, places with better-regulated ISPs or even municipal broadband (gasp!) tend to have better service. You seem to be grinding a political axe rather than considering what the evidence says about the real-world effect of this particular change.

The simple fact is, getting approval to put your network somewhere is not only really expensive, but already heavily regulated, and this grants a de facto regional monopoly to companies like Comcast and Time-Warner in places where they have done so, because the startup costs of competing with them are unreasonably expensive and they can lobby to prevent competition. The market does not work efficiently in this particular area and no amount of idolizing market forces can change that.

>The simple fact is, getting approval to put your network somewhere is not only really expensive, but already heavily regulated

Very true. How does adding more regulation make things better? Are you telling me that the new FCC ruling will make all those existing regulatory problems go away? If so, that might help.

But if we agree the problem is regulation, I would hope we agree the solution can't be more regulation.

> Very true. How does adding more regulation make things better? Are you telling me that these new FCC ruling will make all those existing regulatory problems go away?

It could. For example, the FCC could force companies to lease their last-mile infrastructure out to competitors, which could add meaningful competition to the ISP space.

The devil will be in the details. How much is the price of the lease? Who determines that price? What then would be the motivation for upgrading the last mile infrastructure for the owners of it?

>market forces that encourage those improvements.

Like a Comcast monopoly? You mean those market forces?

Most municipalities grant monopolies to cable providers based on the theory that it's the only way to get someone to build and maintain the cable infrastructure.

Granted monopolies do not allow for market forces...

Yet public infrastructure requires granted monopolies (i.e. government power). It would be impossible to acquire the necessary land rights and right-of-ways needed - having to contract with every land-owner to build anything would fail due to expense.

The ideal case would be the government owns the infrastructure, taxes (and use fees from bidding out access rights) pay for construction and/or maintenance, private companies to bid for the right to run services for the public.

>Most municipalities grant monopolies to cable providers based on the theory that it's the only way to get someone to build and maintain the cable infrastructure.

The theory is crap. It's a way to give away public infrastructure to campaign contributors. It's corruption: pure and simple, and it worked really, really well for Comcast.

When some municipalities tried to build their own cable system, Comcast sued.

Granting a monopoly to telecoms have been illegal for over 20 years, nationwide.

It's just not profitable to lay a second or third network. It's a natural monopoly.

In fact, it's a coincidence that we have two networks in teh US. The telecom and the cable company.

> Granting a monopoly to telecoms have been illegal for over 20 years, nationwide.

Unfortunately, granting monopolies to information services is not illegal.....

Comcast is not a monopoly. This is the sort of misunderstanding that I'm talking about. AT&T was a monopoly and the USPO is still a first class mail monopoly.

I suspect Comcast is just the best option in your location and you're dissatisfied with it. Bummer for you, and I sincerely mean that.

When industries get regulated by the government they get "protected". Protected from upstarts with new and better technology, protected from cheaper alternatives, protected from dissatisfied customers, and generally protected from all market forces.

> Comcast is not a monopoly.

It's close to it. Ask those who have nothing else to choose from in their area, and they'll tell you whether it's a monopoly or not.

That's playing semantic games though.

If someone wants broadband at their house and the only possible provider is Comcast, then to them it may as well be called a monopoly.

It is also playing with semantics to exclude DSL from the definition of broadband. 99% of people served by Comcast are also going to have a telco that can provide an admittedly slower, but still broadband, connection via DSL.

> It is also playing with semantics to exclude DSL from the definition of broadband.

No need to play here. DSL is not broadband. Luckily you didn't try proposing to call telegraph broadband as well. Pigeon mail anyone?

>I suspect Comcast is just the [only broadband] option in your location [due to their non-compete agreement with Time Warner and the city council not letting other service providers lay cables] and you're dissatisfied with it.

That's a bit more accurate. If somethings the only provider of a service, that's a monopoly. Plain and simple. There's no exceptions, there's no misunderstanding. The definition of broadband is 25/3, and Comcast is the only company offering that. There's no chance for upstarts with newer and better technology. There's no chance for cheaper alternatives. There's no chance of market forces. If you want to be an ISP in this city, you have to go through the city council who says no one but Comcast can lay cable and only utilies companies can use their utility poles. Guess what, if Comcast is Title II and everyone has access to their poles and conduits, well here comes the competition.

http://www.engadget.com/2015/01/01/google-letter-fcc-title-i...

USPO is a first class mail monopoly because other players choose not to get in that game. Instead, even when you do ship via another carrier if that carrier deems your route to be too unprofitable they will give it to the post office because they cannot refuse. In fact, FedEx and UPS are the post office's biggest customers for this very reason.

Not true. It's impossible to truly compete at First Class Mail. The USPO(USPS) is a de-facto First Class mail monopoly because of the Private Express Statutes.

Yes, that damn government killing innovation. After all, AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon invented the internet all on their own, why should the government get a say in how their networks are run? Can you imagine how horrible the internet would be if the government had been involved from the start?

It's not like the government created the Internet in the first place...

The Internet as you know it? No it wasn't. Darpa created TCP/IP with the help of private contractors. Private companies like AOL made the Internet what it is today in the US.

Sorry, I know the Al Gore created the Internet for some people, but the it's just not how it went down.

Robert Kahn and Vint Cerf can recognize Al Gore's contribution to the creation of the Internet but you cannot? Without government involvement and investment, the global communications network might have started and ended at AOL.

It's easy now to forget what the internet was like even 20 years ago when things were just ramping up. There were huge government initiatives all around the world that made it viable for commercial ventures to use it.

HAHAHAHA AOL made the internet‽ AOL is the quintessential example of the closed, proprietary network that is not the internet until other forces made that change and then AOL disappeared.

While I understand what you are saying, please try to understand what I'm saying...which might be difficult because you probably didn't live through this era.

AOL was responsible for getting more Americans online than any other company. There wasn't a mailbox in the US that didn't get an AOL installation CD at least 2 times a year.

These weren't people "switching" providers, these were people thinking "what is this crap and why do I need it?". There was a day when no one knew why they should even go online and AOL sold them on the idea. So, while what you say is true, you don't seem to understand the context of the time.

Maybe you can think of it as the iphone of smart phones or the facebook of social networks. Closed systems typically make things easier for the masses to adopt.

God do I feel old now.

I was born in 1980, and I used AOL for several years before I understood what the internet was. So much for your speculations about me.

The "Internet" as we know it was just a tiny corner of what AOL offered. And wasn't even originally part of the package. The Internet itself developed separately from AOL and eventually people wanted it more than they wanted anything AOL was offering. I'm not saying you don't have a valid point, about AOL bringing lots people online, but AOL had very little to do with the development of Internet.

This is hand wavey bullshit. I'm happy with my water and power companies. I hope my ISP dies in a fire. They're product is subpar, overpriced, and their customer service is predatory and combative.

Has it ever crossed you mind that I'm happy with my broadband choices? And I'm not particularly happy with my water and power company?

The difference is that your ISP may get better, but my water and power won't.

Governments create and sustain markets in many cases. And in this case, the government created the entire foundation of the internet itself. The government involvement is the thing that made the internet exist.

That's what I'm worried about, you see all the news stories of the current ISPs magically improving once Google Fiber moves in.

Any 'utility' by government terms is highly regulated and has no market competition. Hell, they have to ask a judge before they can increase rates or change anything. Ha.

I realize HN is full of idealistic kids who never lived through the government taking control of something to "improve" it, so your down votes are forgiven.

Whether you're right or not, your point is shallow and tired. But I guess the "groundhog day" nature of HN resetting every discussion to zero every day encourages such comments.

Oh, they believe in it. They don't know how the market works, no, but they know they want to destroy it. Their goal is to stop progress, in the name of progress. It's not that they're aware of their goal - they're deliberately remaining ignorant in order to be able to support something so reprehensible.

No worries, plenty agree with you, but few fight the flood here on HN any longer. I never vote and rarely comment. The whole premise of comment voting is groupthink 3.0.

I cherish down-votes on HN, just like I cherish disagreeing with the idiocy that has plagued the progress of the US for decades, they'll keep swimming with the flow and wondering why things only get worse. It's like being the stern of the boat and wondering why wherever the country has been is shit, and looking at the bow as being to blame. You'll all get your turn at the bow of the ship, and I promise you it'll be far worse than your parents or grandparents.

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