Seriously. I don't understand why there isn't a movement to regulate ISP's like utilities at this point. Why aren't mayors and governors running on this as a major plank?
ISP investments, profits and pricing would all get regulated by the municipality. Performance is monitored and guaranteed.
I've lived in many, many apartments in NYC and each building has only ever had one choice -- Spectrum (was Time Warner) or Optimum. And it's always the same -- it's $24.99-39.99 at first, then after a year it's jacked up to $49.99-54.99, then another year up to $69.99.
It used to be you'd call to threaten to cancel and they'd re-lower it. But they haven't agreed to do that for over 3 years now -- they'll just let you cancel. They know you don't have a choice.
ISP's are so obviously by now a utility like water, gas and electric. Why aren't we treating them that way?
Because very large companies with a lot of money are willing to spend vast fortunes to ensure we don't. If it costs them $200 million in lobbying to ensure that they hang onto $1 billion a year in revenue, that's well worth it to them, while the rest of us are too busy paying our too-high monthly ISP bills to scrape together $200 million to counter their lobbying.
A regular diet of TechDirt[0] on the subject, going back many years, tells quite a story.
If I need to build new fiber/cable/whatever to X homes to get N% * X new subscribers, then those costs & profits have to amortize out to at least 0. And most of the time they dont.
We tried to fix this for electric power by separating transmission from distribution ("deregulating") and allowing consumers to have a choice.
There is conflicting evidence as to whether or not this actually lowered prices for consumers.
For internet services, bandwidth is essentially free for providers (for typical usage), so the main costs involved are infrastructure upkeep & customer support. Cable TV distribution & phone/security services typically subsidize these costs too.
Municipal broadband is a nice idea, but it takes a unique set of circumstances for it to work. Consider how many other municipal infrastructure services are 100% run by your city/county.
Maybe there's a different approach. The federal government wants to prevent Huawei from deploying telecom equipment in the US. Maybe we should look at a top-down approach to internet infrastructure funding, the same way we do with highways and schools. If they want to set the rules, they should put up the money to do so. But then again, look at the poor state of our bridges and tunnels...
What's abundantly clear is that telecommunications services are an essential piece of infrastructure for modern commerce. COVID eliminated any doubt whatsoever about this fact. So how do we make sure it's funded well, but also run efficiently? It's not a trivial question by any means.
> Municipal broadband is a nice idea, but it takes a unique set of circumstances for it to work.
If "unique set of circumstances" means "not getting snowed under by lawsuits from major ISPs", then yes, this is true. But that's the government's fault for letting ISPs get away with such tactics.
> Consider how many other municipal infrastructure services are 100% run by your city/county.
Consider how many would be if the government would stop favoring major ISPs.
With whom my city subcontracts is irrelevant to me. I pay my city, and get the service I want. The fact that my city opens up the contract every few years to new providers is irrelevant to me. My relationship is with my city, and I wish the same could be true for my internet service.
> Municipal broadband is a nice idea, but it takes a unique set of circumstances for it to work. Consider how many other municipal infrastructure services are 100% run by your city/county.
Where I live, my electric, water, sewer and gas services are directly run by the city. Trash and recycling are billed through the city but operated by a vendor. They're great. I would love to have internet service through them, and the fact that this town above all hasn't managed to do that is ridiculous.
I'm not sure what you're suggesting as an alternative. Large groups of people just marched in the street to protest far more heinous injustice that this corruption and the result was violent attacks by militarized police.
What do you suggest it looks like for us to not accept this?
Would you say that you avoid answering questions on a regular basis? Do you pretend your questions actually seek an answer, rather than just making whatever point you want to make in the superficial form of a question?
Still, I'll answer the question: Yes, I think we are clearly not yet in a totalitarian regime despite our general lack of choice in internet providers. I believe we are clearly still in a democratic republic, although a badly-abused one.
Your last "question" suggests that the direction in which things move is inevitable, but American history demonstrates that is not the case. There has been an ebb and flow between moneyed powers and the people for more than 240 years, and we've been both better off and worse off than we are today.
We will fight back, and make progress, but things like that don't happen on an internet timescale.
Since you've declined to answer any questions or offer any alternatives, I'll offer some of my own.
If you're an American an want to do something to push back against the corrupting influence of money in America, look here: https://www.unrigbook.com/get-involved
People like to claim that but I don't see that as a real reason. I honestly think Americans have just gotten used to being stepped on they just accept it.
If you grow up with no experience of not being stepped on, exactly what would you be giving up on? How exactly do you expect people on average to not accept the general state of the world as it has been for their entire existence?
Acceptance is the default. People, by and large, often do not have the experience of holding ideals of which to give up on that do not in one way or another map onto their experiences in a way suggesting they are living in-line with their ideals.
At this point only a general strike or an armed insurrection would be enough to budge the corporate/state system from its entrenched positions. Voting is not working- many politicians promise to fix this and other problems but once in office they have no incentive to actually do so.
> Seriously. I don't understand why there isn't a movement to regulate ISP's like utilities at this point. Why aren't mayors and governors running on this as a major plank?
Who do you think gave them these monopolies in the first place?
That's the answer to why most Americans have "no real choice" in Internet service providers, as well in countless other services like healthcare, where anti-competitive behavior has become normalized and tolerated (or actively encouraged) legally.
Even when it's not legally a "monopoly", it's a collusion among the most powerful corporations and their revolving-door regulators that allow continued exploitation of the public.
My local trash company, in fact, does not have a monopoly. The city I left to move to where I am now implemented a monopoly trash service shortly after I left, and gave my street to a trash hauler that is quite possibly the most consumer hostile company I have ever had the displeasure of working with... worse by far than Comcast. Also interestingly, internet options were Comcast or I think Quest fiber. Sucks to be whoever bought my house, I guess.
There are like four different trash services we can pick from. It's kind of crazy to me. I guess when all you need is a truck, it's not a hard business to get into.
This is correct. What happened to Wilson, NC is fairly illuminating. Big ISPs convinced governments to pass laws that make it illegal to make an ISP as a utility.
IMHO more important question is why ISP market in US is so broken, while it works in other places.
Instead of 'bad' regulation like heavy handed regulations of 'investments, profits and pricing', there should be 'good' regulation to improve competition without direct market intervention.
Running small ISP is extremely simple, i started one (non-profit) while studying a university. Why this does not happen in US?
US Internet system is rigged to benefit the providers. This exactly the reason after every year we switch back the internet connection between me and my spouse, to keep the internet cost low.
For most part US doesn't have functional government to manage these things properly.
>Seriously. I don't understand why there isn't a movement to regulate ISP's like utilities at this point. Why aren't mayors and governors running on this as a major plank?
Then force ISPs who own infrastructure to allow competitors to use it. Residents are technically the ones who own it and lease to these monopolies at the local level.
ISPs are more like Ma Bell than a free market while they keep getting exclusivity agreements from localities
This seems to be the model in Norway for both power and internet service. You pay a small fee for "line rent" in both instances. While this works well for electricity in Norway, IMO it's not that good for internet service. How many ISP's there are depends on who's got a server in your immediate area. I don't know the details of how it's regulated, though. This is just based upon what I see on my bill, and the competing ISP's in my area, whic surprisingly aren't that many, even though I'm in the middle of Oslo.
Residents don't own infrastructure if a local monopoly delivery company does. I don't own the electrical lines coming to my house.
Nothing wrong with a system where the infrastructure is a regulated utility and ISPs can use it. Just don't assume it will be better or cheaper than it is today. There's no reason to believe that infrastructure won't cost you $100+ per month before you buy service on top of it. Or that it will be more widely available than today.
> Nothing wrong with a system where the infrastructure is a regulated utility and ISPs can use it.
Or, alternately, ISPs could continue to own the infrastructure but be required to allow other ISPs to rent or pay for passage on their last mile infrastructure.
That seems to be the greatest point of contention smaller ISPs have. Getting a backbone connection seems relatively easy, but duplicating the existing telephone pole cabling and drops into people's houses seems to be very capital intensive.
There's no reason for every ISP to have their own cables on telephone lines. Unless I'm fundamentally misunderstanding how those connections work (which is very possible).
Considering all the broadband expansion contracts that ISPs have weaseled out of (while still keeping government grants) I imagine we've paid for most of the infrastructure many times over. Profits aren't suffering.
Nobody on HN can know what "regulate ISP's like utilities" means. The utilities aren't regulated in a uniform way and it isn't obvious what the term means when applied to internet providers.
The devil is really in the detail for that sort of term. Movements are probably held back by the cynical (and realistic) observation that "change the regulation" was the strategy that was tried in healthcare and made the situation worse. Somehow.
I’m not totally convinced that more regulation is needed in this case. It might be that fewer would be beneficial, because existing regulations might effectively be regulatory capture. I don’t know enough to know, but what regulations are keeping startups from entering this market?
Utilities are also guaranteed by law to make a profit. The prices are set to ensure that happens. Cities providing last mile delivery is a better approach to encourage competition.
One question on the $70 price tag. I get that it is high compared to, say, Europe or Asia, but not by much. Comcast/Xfinity gives 1 or 1.5 TB per month for that money.
Now let us compare to business connection. One would think a business has “options” - they are someone who can’t be toyed with. Even their rates are not cheaper! I am talking about price/mbps or price/TB . I don’t think you can get a business connection for less than $100 - yes, you get static IP. We (at home) expect the same “reliability” as a business.
We can cut it down to $50, may be, if we did muni internet. But it won’t become $20
I pay $75/mo for 30/30 fiber. It seems a bit steep to me, but I never think of it as outlandish, I guess.
I'm a bit curious as to whether the speed cap is due to old hardware or what exactly since much faster speeds seem to be common now, but I also never do anything that makes me wish my internet was faster.
optimum is now 90 BUCKS A MONTH. for basic internet, no TV, no phone. they are owned by some corporate entity called "Altice" which basically came in and ruined whatever slightly positive features the website had, like an outage map.
No company seems to want to be a utility. They all feel the need to compete on inconsequential, value-added crap and bullshit services when all we want from them is the pipe.
A few municipalities have decided to offer fiber internet through the city, but I don't know how common that is. These projects take several years, though.
Because half the voting base hears the word regulate and starts screaming communism. Just because it would benefit everyone doesn't mean there isn't a huge group of people who would rather cut off their nose to spite their face.
> Seriously. I don't understand why there isn't a movement to regulate ISP's like utilities at this point. Why aren't mayors and governors running on this as a major plank?
Politically untenable in this climate. There's a certain subset of the population who will claim that any type of regulation they disagree with is communism, and those currently in power have no problem boosting those voices to prevent ISPs from being regulated.
Do you want them metered like all other utilities? Why do people assume it will all be fast and unlimited? It may have claims that it will be but suddenly there will be service issues and the only way to be fair is to meter. You get people who will abuse any service and with them you get calls to make it so they cannot.
Why aren't we treating that way? Because they are still so new relative to other utilities and for the most part a large number of people don't find the internet as useful as people in our fields do. You would be damn well surprised how many families there are where only the kids see value in the net.
I was pleased when we lived in Boston where our building and many others was able to put microwave-based services on the roof. It was internet-only but very fast and inexpensive - just what we needed. Now we are in Louisville and back to the only two mediocre and more expensive choices - ATT and Spectrum. And if you go out into the country many homes are stuck with satellite internet service from Hughes which is damn near unusable.
As a transplant to Boston I was thrilled that for the first time in my life I actually had a choice of internet provider; I went with "not Comcast", aka RCN, because they were the one who didn't charge an absurd fee to let me use my own router, and the service has been extremely reliable and inexpensive. Apparently Verizon has just begun fiber service as well to my area, so with a whopping three providers to choose from I am perhaps the luckiest person in America.
(The microwave service you mention, Starry, sadly isn't in my area yet, but HN will be delighted to hear that their microwave relays use Rust internally in embedded context.)
There are alternatives in Louisville, like IgLou (on AT&T's network afaik). I'm happy with AT&T fiber 1gb service, although it's not available everywhere in the city and is expensive.
Yeah, I'm out in the country with Hughesnet, and it works fine provided you haven't hit the data cap. But streaming 720p or higher is going to be pausing rather consistently.
Online games on HughesNet are unplayable. Called and complained that ~500ms RTT is unacceptable but they made up some excuse as to why it couldn't be faster, some mumbo jumbo about the speed of light
They didn't make that up.. the satellites are literally no closer then 118ms (one-way). If you and the source/destination are directly under the satellite you may be able to get a packet + response in 480ms under most-ideal conditions. (that is four legs of transit between ground & space)
Elevation of orbit is 35,768,000 meters [1], and light moves at ~300,000,000 meters per second.
In case someone doesn’t know that the sp is joking, geosynchronous satellites are 36k kilometers above us. The speed of light being what it is, you’re looking at 250ms just to bounce the radio wave from earth to the satellite and back. That’s just between earth and the satellites, it does not include the trip from the satellite base station to hackernews or google or whatever and back. Processing and other silicon latency gets you the rest of way to half a second or worse.
This is what frustrated me the most with some of my friends "free market" arguments when net neutrality was in the news. I am also a believer in the invisible hand, but it doesn't work when I can literally only choose from one provider.
it's not the invisible hand's fault when that hand is tied behind it's back. there's so many politicians that have been creating legislation that prevents new entrants from coming into the market with regulatory capture. that's not a free market.
it's not the invisible hand's fault when that hand is tied behind it's back.
There is no real way "untie" this hand in this case. The regulatory pseudo-markets that governments impose are often presented as "deregulation" but they aren't that. They're just a different kind of regulation. However, both companies and politicians put forward the claim that these pseudo-markets make their players "private enterprise" and so-absolved from responsibility to the public but that's a self-serving fiction.
The cost of the labor to build and maintain said cable makes it economically infeasible for a second ISP to build out service in many areas of the US. Permissive regulation will only enable competition in urban cores, as being a 3rd or 4th provider in suburban areas is not profitable.
Some areas have so few possible customers per mile that a fiber build by the incumbent provider would not break even for decades even with an 80% take rate by every building passed.
> A natural monopoly is a monopoly in an industry in which high infrastructural costs and other barriers to entry relative to the size of the market give the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, an overwhelming advantage over potential competitors. This frequently occurs in industries where capital costs predominate, creating economies of scale that are large in relation to the size of the market; examples include public utilities such as water services and electricity.[1] Natural monopolies were recognized as potential sources of market failure as early as the 19th century; John Stuart Mill advocated government regulation to make them serve the public good.
... and suffice it to say, I agree wit John Stuart Mill.
When a municipality is "not allowing competition on the poles", that doesn't the municipality is standing in the way of a natural free market. The act described as "allowing competition on the poles" is actually an act of regulation. It is telling whoever owns the poles what to do (even if that whoever is the municipality).
This is no more "opening up to the free market" than if someone owns some land and a regulator says "you have to allow other people's cattle to graze here and must charge what we consider a fair price".
--> This isn't to say free markets are the best or that we should unregulated natural monopolies in the name of private property. Rather, regulatory pseudo-markets often wind-up just as shams to allow effective monopolies without implied responsibility to the public that a regulated monopoly has.
I would love for the US telecommunications industry to be deregulated, but until that happens most are living under a government mandated monopoly, or a duopoly if you’re lucky. The government is regulating it, why should we tolerate regulations that are not in the interests of cheap reliable and available internet?
It’s really depressing in rural places. I had to teach online all summer with DSL 6mbps down/ 0.3mbps up. Forget uploading any video. My students never saw my face. Thankfully, the videoconferencing software I was using managed to allow me to share my PowerPoint and voice reliably enough. Otherwise, I don’t know what I would have done.
Regulation does't always spur open competition and often has unintended consequences.
Separate the last mile pipe provider/operator (infrastructure) from the service providers. All service providers compete across that pipe. Traditional ISPs, niche providers, etc. I may choose 5 of them as a consumer.
It does necessitate an open, multi-tenant architecture. Let's invest there rather than investing in trying to implement a new regulatory scheme.
Local loop unbundling, as it’s called in the U.K. has definitely driven prices down for DSL, but it means there’s very little in terms of actual consumer choice. It’s basically one ISP (virgin excluded cause that’s docsis and a totally different network) for everyone, with different people you can buy service from. If anything actually goes wrong with the network, open reach fixes it, but there’s no way for a company to differentiate on performance, only price.
There are "variants" of LLU that allow ISPs to install their own equipment in the ILECs central office buildings, which would allow the ISP to utilize their own equipment on both ends of the line (CPE and DSLAM). It is rare, though, and incompatible with Vectoring for example. Most xDSL ISPs just resell service and the ILEC uses a L2 VPN to route traffic from the DSLAM to the core network of the reseller ISP. Price is rarely lower, usually only with bundles such as IPTV or landline with cheap international calls...
> there’s no way for a company to differentiate on performance, only price.
That may be true for DSL, but for new infrastructure, you could have local fiber to the nearest meet-me room, and it's then your ISP's responsibility to light up that fiber. Fiber is capable enough that the limits on performance and service will absolutely be the ISP and the equipment you hook up.
Yeah, you might, but generally I’ve seen most deployments of FTTH being GPON, which would mean you have to light up a small neighbourhood as the smallest unit, unless you do something funky like WDM...
Heck, many Americans in metro areas have only one choice for internet providers. I've helped people here in SoCal whose only choice has been 5-10MB DSL service, and they were getting charged like $70/month for it.
Actually it was in a weird part of Costa Mesa. No one had fiber close enough and the cable provider wanted thousands to install the cable to the premises. You can be a block away and get cable or Verizon/Frontier
In a rural area where the local telco was granted a legal monopoly, their "high speed" comes in a 5/0.5mbps on a good day. The area is now blanketed in T-Mobile 5G coverage, but questions asking T-Mobile about a 5G hotspot with a wired LAN port have gone unanswered. I'd love to use a 5G hotspot as the house's modem, but WiFi-only just won't work. Do any 5G devices with a SIM slot and a wired LAN port exist?
I think the Netgear Nighthawk M5 for 5G Mobile Router might help you.
It is announced, but not yet released.
I have the previous generation, the Netgear Nighthawk M1.
I believe both have a wired ethernet port.
Cradlepoint makes very good enterprise-grade cellular modems with wired Ethernet support. They're expensive and I'm not sure if individuals in the US can buy them without going through a grey market vendor. For some reason or other, the cellular industry doesn't like it when devices are readily available to end users.
It's also possible to use some home routers 'in reverse,' to bridge a wifi signal to wired ethernet. Devices on the wired segment will be stuck in a double-NAT situation, however.
If there aren't already there almost certainly will be within months. Keep checking 5gstore.com (formerly 3gstore.com, go figure) among others.
Android phones can be configured to present themselves to PCs as a USB ethernet device, and you can then set up some iptables rules to make your PC a router for a wired LAN.
There are also Wi-Fi to Ethernet converters on Amazon, but this solution is kind of hacky.
Android phone as a USB-based modem plus a Linux-based router or PC will do it. An OpenWRT router with a USB3 port would be the best bet as it's got a web UI with sane default configurations for being a NAT router and the phone will just show up as a network interface (you just mark that interface as "WAN" and you're good to go).
It's not a realistic solution, but you could always use a secondary router as a client bridge (basically acts like a client, connecting to the hotspot, and then routes ethernet traffic through said connection). It won't be as fast as 5G, or even the wifi hotspot, but I doubt it'd be worse than what you're getting now.
That's exactly the type of program I'm looking for but it only mentions LTE. The LTE coverage there is spotty and speeds aren't great, so really hoping for 5G. Plus the fine print in the terms talks about how some streaming services can't be used, but doesn't name them. If T-Mobile rolls out a program like this with their 5G network it would be amazing. I really can't imagine them trying to sell 5G phones to country folk, at least not until the price comes way down. What else would they use that 5G bandwidth for in the meantime?
I can't imagine how 5G could leap-frog LTE. As I understand it, 5G has to blanket an area to be able to reliably transmit into a building. When the companies seem to put 2-3 towers per ridge in mountain areas, how is that going to happen? And generally, I'd expect any new 5G towers would also be LTE towers anyway.
You don't need a 5G device for decent Internet speed - at least not in my rural area (Nevada City, in town). T-Mobile is my only provider for phone/data/etc. At $60/month, 50GB cap, it's the best deal I've had for a while.
in NYC, I’ve only ever had the option for one cable provider at any given location, either Spectrum / Time Warner or Optimum, maybe RCN. but never more than one to pick from, unless you’re in a fios building then I think that’s an option. and there’s usually DSL but that’s not a real competitor.
The Ars article is interesting: the place is in Ammon, Idaho, where they label themselves as right-leaning, small government. That would be the stereotypical place to not do such a project.
> Here we get to choose from literally dozens of providers
How does this work? Is it similar to all the various wireless providers that are actually just resellers for the people who own the actual infrastructure? I don't understand how you could choose to get electric or natural gas from someone else when there is a physical line that comes to your residence.
There is a physical infrastructure, owned by company A. You pay a fixed fee for access as part of your energy bill. You have no choice in that. Your actual subscription is with energy company B, Who you can choose freely. Of course company B doesn’t hook up directly to your home, instead they look at the total amount of power used by customers of company B and they are obligated to supply that amount of power to the national grid.
Yes, it is. I (not op) live in the UK, and have the same situation but they are all resellers. Presumably the company I buy from (a snaller, self claimed "clean" company) pay a base rate plus some ount specifically to the sources they claim to generate from, rather than a company like EDF or Scottish Power who will likely charge resale + profit
"Competition for thee, but not for me" is the order of the day. Outsiders and upstarts wants competition, and once they establish a majority market share, they spend and fight to ensure nobody else can do the same. Money controls everything.
That's the difference why ISPs are not like gas, water or sewer.
There are places where there are multiple fiber lines leading to one's home. I don't know about 13, but I've used to live in a place where there were 6 different providers, each with their fiber or copper (sharing the communal conduits, so it did not require constant digging to bury every single line).
Solve the inability of new providers to get to the market, and incentivize settlements to provide conduits as an utility. If any regulations are needed - it's the regulations that nullify the exclusivity agreements.
That is already proven to work in many countries that have started late (esp. post-Soviet countries) and haven't had those ancient monopolies dragging them down. What else is proven, is that no matter how hard one tries to regulate an utility, it would suck, because there's absolutely no incentive for them to improve (unless they're forced to). Competition naturally forces to stay put all the time (you screw up - your customers are gone), regulation does not - just keeping it conforming to the regulations - i.e. tolerable, just above the bottom line (customers won't go anywhere).
No, I don’t need to. The gas I use doesn’t necessarily come from the energy company I’m contracted with. Say I use 2000 cubic meters of gas a year, then my gas company is obligated to pump that amount of gas into the national gas network somewhere. There is no gas line for each company, instead they are each responsible for providing enough gas into the national network to cover their customers.
In the same way I don’t have 13 fiber lines to my home. There is just 1 fiber from my home to a PoP. The company that owns that fiber is obligated to provide a level playing field, open access to anyone. They don’t actually operate an ISP, they simply rent out the fiber and rack space in the PoPs to the ISPs.
Some smaller ISPs may simply piggy-back on the equipment of larger ISPs and resell part of their capacity. Others install their own equipment and only pay a fixed price for each customers fiber + rent for the rack space they use. Neighborhood PoPs are connected to city PoPs which are then connected to whatever backhaul network your ISP has. Same applies here, you can either rent capacity from someone else or just pay for the dark fiber and run your own network.
You can be a pure ‘paper’ provider and simply resell someone else’s stuff, or you can only rent the dark fibers and PoP space and do everything yourself, or anything in between.
You can also transition from one to the other. My current ISP started out by reselling bandwidth, but after a few years they started converting to using their own network and equipment, one city at a time. That’s how they were able to provide gbit service before anyone else.
This makes sense to me on a conceptual level, and I think that's more or less how it works here. The difference is I believe the company you pay is just whoever owns the local infrastructure, and they take care of buying / supplying on the wholesale market.
For example, I live in Iowa, which is a huge wind energy state. Most of the wind farms are actually owned by out of state electric companies though. I'm sure the electricity actually gets used in the strictest sense right here next to the wind mills, but it gets credited to people hundreds of miles away.
The wind farm up by where I grew up is actually owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority [1], despite being no where near Tennessee.
> . The difference is I believe the company you pay is just whoever owns the local infrastructure, and they take care of buying / supplying on the wholesale market.
But in that case there is no competition. They buy on the wholesale market, but since they have a monopoly there is no incentive for them to lower the prices they charge to the customer. Here there is aggressive competition on price.
Living in NYC, I have one high-speed internet option (Spectrum, formerly Time Warner) and one not high-speed internet option (Verizon DSL with "up to" 3.1 - 7 Mbps). That's it.
They at least partially did. I’m in a not-wealthy area of the Bronx and somehow managed to get gigabit Fios from Verizon. But, yeah, it’s certainly not everywhere yet.
Questions for the people from areas that do have: do the different providers have separate infrastructures and facilities (optical fiber cables, switches, etc.)?
Local loop unbundling hasn't been a thing in the US for a long time, and never applied to cable or fiber to begin with. Separate ISPs means separate infrastructure. The coax, POTS and fiber cables in my yard all go to different places. However, a well-placed backhoe at the nearest major road can probably still take them all out in one swipe.
Almost always, the answer is yes. The exception is in areas where the municipality operates an open access network (i.e., the city installs and owns all the fiber, but multiple ISPs provide service). Community Networks, which is part of ILSR, has a list of some of those communities. [1] UTOPIA is perhaps the most prominent, as it covers several municipalities in Utah. Snazzy labs recently posted a video discussing their network. [2] I have family that has UTOPIA and they can choose from something like 11 ISPs all over the same network. [3]
Typically, you'd have one fiber provider and one cable (coax) provider. I've never met anyone that has two fiber, or two coax providers to the same residential address.
We have 3 different media options and 14 different providers. 4 media options if you'd allow for 3g/4g/5g internet, 56k modem internet and satellite internet, but I don't count those.
Differences:
Media is DOCSIS, DSL or Optical fiber
Providers have differences in facilities and services, differences:
- Plain internet vs. user-selectable filters (i.e. SMTP protection, SMB protection, content filters at the ISP level)
- VoIP options
- IPTV options
- Connectivity options (i.e. auto failover to LTE or special managed hardware)
- Addressing options (single IP, multiple IP, routed subnet if you want)
So you might find yourself wanting an all-in-one package over DOCSIS using the coax cable media, which is a common choice (at least before fiber rollout). Or you may like very fast internet in your own control, so you'd take fiber with no bundled stuff. Costs about the same as the other option.
Other things like having HD or 4K broadcasts may limit your choices, not all providers have all channels available in all formats, and not all kinds of media support all kinds of bitrates. So for non-cable (non-DOCSIS) you'd not be able to use 4k with DSL for more than 2 IPTV receivers.
Some providers come with extra on-site support in the package, like someone who will set it up, check that it works with your computer, setup your email if you still have ISP-bound email for some reason, and do your WiFi with extra access points (no repeater!) as needed. Others may be cheap and have no default service like that included and you then have the option to buy it on-demand at a higher price.
For me in Finland, yes, but all the fixed-line offers have different tech. The options from the big 3 carriers are (many mid speed tiers omitted, special offers omitted):
- Telia: DSL/LTE hybrid 50M 31.90 €/mo, 100M 34.90 €/mo.
- DNA: FTTB 100M 9.90 €/mo, plus ~5 €/mo/dwelling the building ~co-op pays which gets a base level of IIRC 50M "free" for everyone.*
And cellular options (all unlimited, special offers omitted, mid speed tiers omitted):
- Elisa: 100M 27.90 €/mo, 1000M 44.90 €/mo
- Telia: 100M 24.90 €/mo, 1000M 44.90 €/mo
- DNA: 100M 24.90 €/mo, 1000M 44.90 €/mo
* (rant: theoretically they also have/had 1000M 39.90 €/mo but they seem incapable of provisioning that to me after the old ISP's corporate acquisition, even after multiple times of "we have manually provisioned it for you now" and "we will upgrade our switches next month/quarter to allow auto-provisioning" - luckily I still have grandfathered 250M from old ISP times so I'm not stuck to 100M)
In our case they definitely do. We finally had an opportunity to ditch AT&T’s pathetic 3Mbps DSL offering in our area (which was their best plan...) recently in favor of Comcast’s 200Mbps which was cable-based (so obviously different infra). Same price, too...
I'm not in the US, but the apartment building I live in is connected to so-called dark fiber that is run by the municipality. My understanding is that the fiber cables are provided by the municipality and are then connected to a switch belonging to the ISP you choose. I can pick between 16 different ISPs with speeds up to 10 Gbit/s (both down and up).
I'm in the UK, and for the ozt part you have 3 options - DSL, fiber or Coax. If you have DSL or fiber, you likely are using openreach and are purchasing through a reseller. If you're using coax you're using virgin media.
My parents' current and previous homes both had two choices. One was AT&T's fiber option (probably FTTN, not FTTH) and the other was cable through the local provider.
I may be in the minority but my Internet has only gotten better, faster, and cheaper over the years, so I am hesitant to advocate for any major change.
But it should be noted that the municipalities are typically who are granting a local monopoly over the existing lines to the ISP and preventing someone else from coming in and laying their own new cables down.
You're not. These studies draw an arbitrary line for what counts as broadband. And they typically ignore wireless and satellite options. Most people will have a cable, a DSL, and several wireless options.
The profit margin of the large cable companies reflect that. They're pretty much middle of the pack for the S&P 500. It's a capital intensive and relatively low margin business.
Look at Google Fiber. They had cities falling over themselves to get it and huge consumer demand. Ultimately they abandoned it because it doesn't make enough money.
do you have neighbors within ~100 ft? if so, why not share internet (and cost) with them? with that much bandwidth, you can split it 10 ways and not even notice.
an smb-class wireless router will let you segment neighbors into their own isolated vlan, and with mesh/repeaters, you can cover a fairly large area.
I could probably reach two of my neighbors (two shared walls), but not more without better equipment. Actually, because of how our construction is, I could probably do a 3-way mesh router setup and put one node in each place.
I had an acquaintance who wanted to start a company flashing a custom OpenWRT image onto Linksys routers, he added a little captive portal with billing through Stripe so he could collect the neighbor's portion.
Your comment reminded me to go check and see if he ever decided to go through with it.
I recall looking into this a long time ago, certainly could do it, but recall some terms and conditions that prohibited it maybe.
The other thing is even with all that bandwidth, there is the 1.25TB monthly bandwidth cap, which is one way I think they limit scenarios like this.
I live in an apartment in Passaic County, NJ. My ISP, Optimum, has a monopoly on this group of apartments.
They take advantage of this to charge $75/month for plain broadband Internet service, which is about 50% more than the average Internet service (including Verizon FIOS) costs in the nearby area.
Thank you for sharing. This is exactly why Ready (YC S20) makes tools that help America's thousands of Local Internet Service Providers compete with the copper cartel. https://ready.net
Cool, it looks like this addresses one of the toughest parts of running a small ISP, which is a chicken-and-egg problem of having enough support operatives for your users, and enough user revenue to hire for support. Fortunately big ISPs have set a loooooow bar for support, but you're still facing an uphill battle against coax providers that are already in buildings, so you have to go above and beyond.
I have 4, which is unusual. To some the problem, more local competition is needed. The problem is curbing the anti-competitive prentices that prop up local monopolies. States don't seem to care about consumer choice.
Time and time again lately this issue comes up on HN as if it’s a single sector affected by the same umbrella of broken politics and broken system we have.
It isn’t. It’s the same old, rinse and repeated. America’s evolution of the free market capitalism experiment has failed and became a plutocracy. That doesn’t mean free market as a whole doesn’t work but it means our version of its evolution has failed for a bunch of different reasons some more illogical and childish than others.
The question is the same always too. How and when do we recognize it and start rebuilding it in a radically new way. Does it take a civil war? A world one? Does it take 99% poverty? Or does it just take for China to fail so we can’t have our mind numbing $5 electronics to keep us entertained.
How do we all (myself included) become citizens of a nation again and not consumers in a luxury work camp who are kept pacified?
What I don't understand is why do we keep repeating these same observations again and again and still nothing happens. I've been upset at Comcast constantly jacking up the prices, not having an internet only option in my area (gets bundled up with TV), making sure good prices are available only if you get a 12 month contract and so much more. I mean Southpark said it years ago and even John Oliver had a segment on it. What is new about this? And why haven't we seen an action against it?
There's been no action on improving Internet service for the median American because American governance is responsive to the whims of business interests (in this case, ISPs with monopolies) and indifferent to the interests of the public. This pattern is reflected across the entire spectrum of public policy and is not just limited to the market for Internet services.
Put bluntly, American democracy is nowhere near as effective at protecting the interests of the American public as the American public has been made to believe. [0]
Internet access is merely a symptom of a deeper American problem and cannot be fixed without fixing the deeper problems with American governance.
right - and comparing its service to the AT&T offering, a residential Internet service provider in the California Bay Area said, "and, we don't send in those reports that most ISPs do" .. on a support call..
If you're talking about Start, Tekksavy, Tbaytel and similar, they're all bound to Rogers or Bell. I think the user you're replying to is pretty much right when it comes to Canada, and it shows in the prices you get. Same thing for phones.
A couple providers are through satellite and such in rural areas and in those cases it's typically even worse since the service truly sucks while costing much, and they're in no rush to do anything about it when there are issues on the line. And I'm not even talking about middle-of-nowhere stuff, just places north of Sudbury for example.
ISP investments, profits and pricing would all get regulated by the municipality. Performance is monitored and guaranteed.
I've lived in many, many apartments in NYC and each building has only ever had one choice -- Spectrum (was Time Warner) or Optimum. And it's always the same -- it's $24.99-39.99 at first, then after a year it's jacked up to $49.99-54.99, then another year up to $69.99.
It used to be you'd call to threaten to cancel and they'd re-lower it. But they haven't agreed to do that for over 3 years now -- they'll just let you cancel. They know you don't have a choice.
ISP's are so obviously by now a utility like water, gas and electric. Why aren't we treating them that way?
A regular diet of TechDirt[0] on the subject, going back many years, tells quite a story.
[0] https://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=muni+broadband
It's an infrastructure game.
If I need to build new fiber/cable/whatever to X homes to get N% * X new subscribers, then those costs & profits have to amortize out to at least 0. And most of the time they dont.
We tried to fix this for electric power by separating transmission from distribution ("deregulating") and allowing consumers to have a choice.
There is conflicting evidence as to whether or not this actually lowered prices for consumers.
For internet services, bandwidth is essentially free for providers (for typical usage), so the main costs involved are infrastructure upkeep & customer support. Cable TV distribution & phone/security services typically subsidize these costs too.
Municipal broadband is a nice idea, but it takes a unique set of circumstances for it to work. Consider how many other municipal infrastructure services are 100% run by your city/county.
Maybe there's a different approach. The federal government wants to prevent Huawei from deploying telecom equipment in the US. Maybe we should look at a top-down approach to internet infrastructure funding, the same way we do with highways and schools. If they want to set the rules, they should put up the money to do so. But then again, look at the poor state of our bridges and tunnels...
What's abundantly clear is that telecommunications services are an essential piece of infrastructure for modern commerce. COVID eliminated any doubt whatsoever about this fact. So how do we make sure it's funded well, but also run efficiently? It's not a trivial question by any means.
If "unique set of circumstances" means "not getting snowed under by lawsuits from major ISPs", then yes, this is true. But that's the government's fault for letting ISPs get away with such tactics.
> Consider how many other municipal infrastructure services are 100% run by your city/county.
Consider how many would be if the government would stop favoring major ISPs.
I suggest you dig a little deeper and find out where these services actually come from in your community.
Where I live, my electric, water, sewer and gas services are directly run by the city. Trash and recycling are billed through the city but operated by a vendor. They're great. I would love to have internet service through them, and the fact that this town above all hasn't managed to do that is ridiculous.
What do you suggest it looks like for us to not accept this?
Where does this end?
edit as I hit the fake "you're submitting too fast"
sorry if I hit a nerve there fella
Still, I'll answer the question: Yes, I think we are clearly not yet in a totalitarian regime despite our general lack of choice in internet providers. I believe we are clearly still in a democratic republic, although a badly-abused one.
Your last "question" suggests that the direction in which things move is inevitable, but American history demonstrates that is not the case. There has been an ebb and flow between moneyed powers and the people for more than 240 years, and we've been both better off and worse off than we are today.
We will fight back, and make progress, but things like that don't happen on an internet timescale.
Since you've declined to answer any questions or offer any alternatives, I'll offer some of my own.
If you're an American an want to do something to push back against the corrupting influence of money in America, look here: https://www.unrigbook.com/get-involved
...it ends with democracy ending.
Acceptance is the default. People, by and large, often do not have the experience of holding ideals of which to give up on that do not in one way or another map onto their experiences in a way suggesting they are living in-line with their ideals.
What I would like is for you guys to at least say this, instead of all the tiresome "freedom" stuff. Acceptance is the first step.
Who do you think gave them these monopolies in the first place?
Even when it's not legally a "monopoly", it's a collusion among the most powerful corporations and their revolving-door regulators that allow continued exploitation of the public.
Planet Money - Small America vs Big Internet https://www.npr.org/transcripts/865908114
Instead of 'bad' regulation like heavy handed regulations of 'investments, profits and pricing', there should be 'good' regulation to improve competition without direct market intervention.
Running small ISP is extremely simple, i started one (non-profit) while studying a university. Why this does not happen in US?
For most part US doesn't have functional government to manage these things properly.
There was one, it was called Net Neutrality...
How old are users on here?
I'm talking exclusively about pricing and profits.
Totally different things. How old are you?
ISPs are more like Ma Bell than a free market while they keep getting exclusivity agreements from localities
Nothing wrong with a system where the infrastructure is a regulated utility and ISPs can use it. Just don't assume it will be better or cheaper than it is today. There's no reason to believe that infrastructure won't cost you $100+ per month before you buy service on top of it. Or that it will be more widely available than today.
Or, alternately, ISPs could continue to own the infrastructure but be required to allow other ISPs to rent or pay for passage on their last mile infrastructure.
That seems to be the greatest point of contention smaller ISPs have. Getting a backbone connection seems relatively easy, but duplicating the existing telephone pole cabling and drops into people's houses seems to be very capital intensive.
There's no reason for every ISP to have their own cables on telephone lines. Unless I'm fundamentally misunderstanding how those connections work (which is very possible).
The devil is really in the detail for that sort of term. Movements are probably held back by the cynical (and realistic) observation that "change the regulation" was the strategy that was tried in healthcare and made the situation worse. Somehow.
Now let us compare to business connection. One would think a business has “options” - they are someone who can’t be toyed with. Even their rates are not cheaper! I am talking about price/mbps or price/TB . I don’t think you can get a business connection for less than $100 - yes, you get static IP. We (at home) expect the same “reliability” as a business.
We can cut it down to $50, may be, if we did muni internet. But it won’t become $20
I'm a bit curious as to whether the speed cap is due to old hardware or what exactly since much faster speeds seem to be common now, but I also never do anything that makes me wish my internet was faster.
I am content.
Regulation should instead focus on ensuring that consumers have multiple choices, as is the case in other countries.
Politically untenable in this climate. There's a certain subset of the population who will claim that any type of regulation they disagree with is communism, and those currently in power have no problem boosting those voices to prevent ISPs from being regulated.
Why aren't we treating that way? Because they are still so new relative to other utilities and for the most part a large number of people don't find the internet as useful as people in our fields do. You would be damn well surprised how many families there are where only the kids see value in the net.
(The microwave service you mention, Starry, sadly isn't in my area yet, but HN will be delighted to hear that their microwave relays use Rust internally in embedded context.)
Elevation of orbit is 35,768,000 meters [1], and light moves at ~300,000,000 meters per second.
[1] https://www.hughes.com/resources/press-releases/echostar-xix...
Politicians paid for by the incumbents.
Not everywhere though:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Telecommunication_Open_In...
* https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/what-...
There is no real way "untie" this hand in this case. The regulatory pseudo-markets that governments impose are often presented as "deregulation" but they aren't that. They're just a different kind of regulation. However, both companies and politicians put forward the claim that these pseudo-markets make their players "private enterprise" and so-absolved from responsibility to the public but that's a self-serving fiction.
Some areas have so few possible customers per mile that a fiber build by the incumbent provider would not break even for decades even with an 80% take rate by every building passed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
> A natural monopoly is a monopoly in an industry in which high infrastructural costs and other barriers to entry relative to the size of the market give the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, an overwhelming advantage over potential competitors. This frequently occurs in industries where capital costs predominate, creating economies of scale that are large in relation to the size of the market; examples include public utilities such as water services and electricity.[1] Natural monopolies were recognized as potential sources of market failure as early as the 19th century; John Stuart Mill advocated government regulation to make them serve the public good.
... and suffice it to say, I agree wit John Stuart Mill.
This is no more "opening up to the free market" than if someone owns some land and a regulator says "you have to allow other people's cattle to graze here and must charge what we consider a fair price".
--> This isn't to say free markets are the best or that we should unregulated natural monopolies in the name of private property. Rather, regulatory pseudo-markets often wind-up just as shams to allow effective monopolies without implied responsibility to the public that a regulated monopoly has.
Separate the last mile pipe provider/operator (infrastructure) from the service providers. All service providers compete across that pipe. Traditional ISPs, niche providers, etc. I may choose 5 of them as a consumer.
It does necessitate an open, multi-tenant architecture. Let's invest there rather than investing in trying to implement a new regulatory scheme.
I'd rather everyone have great internet access at a fair price and let the companies battle it out for a smaller piece of the pie. Consumers win.
That may be true for DSL, but for new infrastructure, you could have local fiber to the nearest meet-me room, and it's then your ISP's responsibility to light up that fiber. Fiber is capable enough that the limits on performance and service will absolutely be the ISP and the equipment you hook up.
in a fiber scenario for example, different service providers could may customize various packages which include capabilities such as:
+ security + IoT + education + VPN + content
many of the above could have consumer and/or business flavors...
That sounds like regulation to me.
It's also possible to use some home routers 'in reverse,' to bridge a wifi signal to wired ethernet. Devices on the wired segment will be stuck in a double-NAT situation, however.
Android phones can be configured to present themselves to PCs as a USB ethernet device, and you can then set up some iptables rules to make your PC a router for a wired LAN.
There are also Wi-Fi to Ethernet converters on Amazon, but this solution is kind of hacky.
T-Mobile actually offers a home router with Ethernet out, they got accepted into the beta about 6 months ago and it's been a godsend.
- https://www.t-mobile.com/isp
$80/mo for Local ISP DSL - 10 Mbps down, <1 up
OR
$100/mo for LTE hot spot for $100+/mo. 25 MBps down, 5Mbps up with data caps and throttling.
The local ISP says they're installing fiber but they're only installing it where the federal government subsidizes or completely funds it.
Internet is a utility. Most people also don't have a choice in who they get electric, water, gas, etc. from.
It's unfortunate that internet service quality is so varied from location to location, but utilities tend to form natural monopolies.
You're missing the crucial difference. Public utilities are supervised by the public.
I have municipal fiber, which is not common, so I guess that's a fair point.
Then perhaps more local authorities should form Internet utilities:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_broadband
It's a thing in many places:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Telecommunication_Open_In...
* https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/what-...
Unless you are in one of the 22 US states that have restrictions on it:
* https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc...
The public infrastructure provides ISO Layer 1/2 connectivity, and let the Free Market™ compete at Level 3.
There was even an entire account on the cities subreddit named CitynameFiberBad lmao
What are the citizens' concern(s)?
The Ars article is interesting: the place is in Ammon, Idaho, where they label themselves as right-leaning, small government. That would be the stereotypical place to not do such a project.
Wait, you don’t get to choose who your electricity and gas provider is either ?
Here we get to choose from literally dozens of providers. Same goes for internet. I can choose from 13 different ISPs at my address on fiber alone.
I thought the US believed in competition and free markets ?
How does this work? Is it similar to all the various wireless providers that are actually just resellers for the people who own the actual infrastructure? I don't understand how you could choose to get electric or natural gas from someone else when there is a physical line that comes to your residence.
There are places where there are multiple fiber lines leading to one's home. I don't know about 13, but I've used to live in a place where there were 6 different providers, each with their fiber or copper (sharing the communal conduits, so it did not require constant digging to bury every single line).
Solve the inability of new providers to get to the market, and incentivize settlements to provide conduits as an utility. If any regulations are needed - it's the regulations that nullify the exclusivity agreements.
That is already proven to work in many countries that have started late (esp. post-Soviet countries) and haven't had those ancient monopolies dragging them down. What else is proven, is that no matter how hard one tries to regulate an utility, it would suck, because there's absolutely no incentive for them to improve (unless they're forced to). Competition naturally forces to stay put all the time (you screw up - your customers are gone), regulation does not - just keeping it conforming to the regulations - i.e. tolerable, just above the bottom line (customers won't go anywhere).
In the same way I don’t have 13 fiber lines to my home. There is just 1 fiber from my home to a PoP. The company that owns that fiber is obligated to provide a level playing field, open access to anyone. They don’t actually operate an ISP, they simply rent out the fiber and rack space in the PoPs to the ISPs.
Some smaller ISPs may simply piggy-back on the equipment of larger ISPs and resell part of their capacity. Others install their own equipment and only pay a fixed price for each customers fiber + rent for the rack space they use. Neighborhood PoPs are connected to city PoPs which are then connected to whatever backhaul network your ISP has. Same applies here, you can either rent capacity from someone else or just pay for the dark fiber and run your own network.
You can be a pure ‘paper’ provider and simply resell someone else’s stuff, or you can only rent the dark fibers and PoP space and do everything yourself, or anything in between.
You can also transition from one to the other. My current ISP started out by reselling bandwidth, but after a few years they started converting to using their own network and equipment, one city at a time. That’s how they were able to provide gbit service before anyone else.
For example, I live in Iowa, which is a huge wind energy state. Most of the wind farms are actually owned by out of state electric companies though. I'm sure the electricity actually gets used in the strictest sense right here next to the wind mills, but it gets credited to people hundreds of miles away.
The wind farm up by where I grew up is actually owned by the Tennessee Valley Authority [1], despite being no where near Tennessee.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_Prairie_Wind_Farm
But in that case there is no competition. They buy on the wholesale market, but since they have a monopoly there is no incentive for them to lower the prices they charge to the customer. Here there is aggressive competition on price.
Our provider is technically a non-profit electric cooperative [1]. Maybe it's dumb, but being from a rural area, I've always been big on cooperatives.
[1] https://consumersenergy.coop/
[1] https://muninetworks.org/content/open-access
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e9DNwInTE4
[3] https://www.utopiafiber.com/residential-pricing/
Differences:
Media is DOCSIS, DSL or Optical fiber
Providers have differences in facilities and services, differences:
- Plain internet vs. user-selectable filters (i.e. SMTP protection, SMB protection, content filters at the ISP level)
- VoIP options
- IPTV options
- Connectivity options (i.e. auto failover to LTE or special managed hardware)
- Addressing options (single IP, multiple IP, routed subnet if you want)
So you might find yourself wanting an all-in-one package over DOCSIS using the coax cable media, which is a common choice (at least before fiber rollout). Or you may like very fast internet in your own control, so you'd take fiber with no bundled stuff. Costs about the same as the other option.
Other things like having HD or 4K broadcasts may limit your choices, not all providers have all channels available in all formats, and not all kinds of media support all kinds of bitrates. So for non-cable (non-DOCSIS) you'd not be able to use 4k with DSL for more than 2 IPTV receivers.
Some providers come with extra on-site support in the package, like someone who will set it up, check that it works with your computer, setup your email if you still have ISP-bound email for some reason, and do your WiFi with extra access points (no repeater!) as needed. Others may be cheap and have no default service like that included and you then have the option to buy it on-demand at a higher price.
- Elisa: Cable 50M 32.90 €/mo, 100M 39.90 €/mo, 1000M 56.90 €/mo.
- Telia: DSL/LTE hybrid 50M 31.90 €/mo, 100M 34.90 €/mo.
- DNA: FTTB 100M 9.90 €/mo, plus ~5 €/mo/dwelling the building ~co-op pays which gets a base level of IIRC 50M "free" for everyone.*
And cellular options (all unlimited, special offers omitted, mid speed tiers omitted):
- Elisa: 100M 27.90 €/mo, 1000M 44.90 €/mo
- Telia: 100M 24.90 €/mo, 1000M 44.90 €/mo
- DNA: 100M 24.90 €/mo, 1000M 44.90 €/mo
* (rant: theoretically they also have/had 1000M 39.90 €/mo but they seem incapable of provisioning that to me after the old ISP's corporate acquisition, even after multiple times of "we have manually provisioned it for you now" and "we will upgrade our switches next month/quarter to allow auto-provisioning" - luckily I still have grandfathered 250M from old ISP times so I'm not stuck to 100M)
* AT&T's DSL service ($40/mo for 10Mb down / 1Mb up), served on copper phone wires
* Comcast's cable service ($30/mo for 20 Mb down / 2 Mb up, plus $10/mo equipment rental fee), served on coax
I’d bounce between EarthLink and TWC to get new customer bonuses. EarthLink was cheaper ($25 iirc vs $45 several years ago) but slower.
https://www.starlink.com/
But it should be noted that the municipalities are typically who are granting a local monopoly over the existing lines to the ISP and preventing someone else from coming in and laying their own new cables down.
The profit margin of the large cable companies reflect that. They're pretty much middle of the pack for the S&P 500. It's a capital intensive and relatively low margin business.
Look at Google Fiber. They had cities falling over themselves to get it and huge consumer demand. Ultimately they abandoned it because it doesn't make enough money.
We can get 940Mbps down/35Mbps up w/ 1.25TB cap and mid level cable TV from Cox for.. wait for it $270/month. O_o
Currently I get 150Mbps down/5Mbps up + mid level cable TV... $130/month. It’s fast enough for work, but feels so expensive.
an smb-class wireless router will let you segment neighbors into their own isolated vlan, and with mesh/repeaters, you can cover a fairly large area.
I could probably reach two of my neighbors (two shared walls), but not more without better equipment. Actually, because of how our construction is, I could probably do a 3-way mesh router setup and put one node in each place.
I had an acquaintance who wanted to start a company flashing a custom OpenWRT image onto Linksys routers, he added a little captive portal with billing through Stripe so he could collect the neighbor's portion.
Your comment reminded me to go check and see if he ever decided to go through with it.
I recall looking into this a long time ago, certainly could do it, but recall some terms and conditions that prohibited it maybe.
The other thing is even with all that bandwidth, there is the 1.25TB monthly bandwidth cap, which is one way I think they limit scenarios like this.
Good idea though thanks for suggesting it.
They take advantage of this to charge $75/month for plain broadband Internet service, which is about 50% more than the average Internet service (including Verizon FIOS) costs in the nearby area.
Just sayin'.
It isn’t. It’s the same old, rinse and repeated. America’s evolution of the free market capitalism experiment has failed and became a plutocracy. That doesn’t mean free market as a whole doesn’t work but it means our version of its evolution has failed for a bunch of different reasons some more illogical and childish than others.
The question is the same always too. How and when do we recognize it and start rebuilding it in a radically new way. Does it take a civil war? A world one? Does it take 99% poverty? Or does it just take for China to fail so we can’t have our mind numbing $5 electronics to keep us entertained.
How do we all (myself included) become citizens of a nation again and not consumers in a luxury work camp who are kept pacified?
Put bluntly, American democracy is nowhere near as effective at protecting the interests of the American public as the American public has been made to believe. [0]
Internet access is merely a symptom of a deeper American problem and cannot be fixed without fixing the deeper problems with American governance.
[0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c...
* https://canadianisp.ca/
One is still limited to the limits of the underlying technology (e.g., copper distance with DSL), but it's better than nothing IMHO.
Where are you located? Even my grandparents in Northern Ontario have some 5 or so options, and not just skins of the Big 3.
I checked 8 providers when I lived in Kingston.
For cell phone, you are right.
A couple providers are through satellite and such in rural areas and in those cases it's typically even worse since the service truly sucks while costing much, and they're in no rush to do anything about it when there are issues on the line. And I'm not even talking about middle-of-nowhere stuff, just places north of Sudbury for example.
They have the choices of picking the one that's available, continuing without an ISP or creating their own.