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from the cue-the-America-is-too-big-apologists dept.
Ezra Klein of Vox.com interviews Susan Crawford about treating the internet as a utility. Crawford is the author of Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry & Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age. Former Special Assistant to president Obama on Science, Technology and Innovation Policy, she may well be the Telecomm Lobby's enemy #1.
From the interview:
We need a public option for internet access because internet access is just like electricity or a road grid. This is something that the private market doesn't provide left to its own devices. What they'll do is systematically provide extraordinarily expensive services for the richest people in America, leave out a huge percentage of the population and, in general, try to make their own profits at the expense of social good.
When it comes to fiber penetration - that's the world class kind of network we should have - we're behind Sweden, Estonia, Korea, Hong Kong, Japan. A whole host of other developed countries. We should be looking the rest of the world in the rearview mirror. Instead, for more than 77% of Americans, their only choice for a high capacity connection is their local cable monopoly. So just as we have a postal service that's a public option for communications in the form of mail, we also need public options in every city for very high-capacity, very high-speed fiber internet access. That way we'll make sure and we can compete with every other nation in the 21st century.
What happens is that we deregulated this entire sector about 10 years ago and the cable guys already had exclusive franchises across across the country. They were able to very inexpensively upgrade those to pretty high-speed internet access connections. Meanwhile the telephone companies have totally withdrawn. They have copper line in the ground and it's expensive for them to build and replace it with fiber. Because of both deregulation and sweeping consolidation in the cable industry we've ended up on this plateau where for about 80% of Americans their only choice for a high-capacity internet access connection is their local cable monopoly.
In a sense I'm trying to have it both ways. This is by nature a monopoly. It really makes sense to have one wire going to your house. The problem is we've gotten stuck with the wrong wire. We've got a cable wire and it should be fiber and it should be then shared by lots of competitors. That's what drives prices down. If you hand the one company the ability to control that market they'll just reap their rewards and price discriminate and make lots of profits.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mrcoolbp on Thursday April 03 2014, @12:43AM
None of these compare to the geographic reach of the US, but yes we are behind on bandwidth in price.
As for the government providing it as a utility? I agree they need to invest in the infrastructure some, but utilities are mostly handled by for-profit entities. Not sure I want to see the governments idea of the internet 3.14 or whatever.
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mendax on Thursday April 03 2014, @12:53AM
Well, I'm not sure the government ought to "provide" the network, but it should be a service made available universally like the current land-line telephone network which is slowly being destroyed. The land-line network is universally available regardless of whether it's profitable to provide the service in the area because the other rate payers in profitable areas subsidize the service through government mandate. Everyone benefits from it. I'm not sure if there is any real benefit provided by more than one service provider operating in an area. ISP monopolies are not a bad idea. The bad idea is the cable monopolies. When everyone has fiber coming into their residence, we will be able to pick and choose what we want to subscribe to, like we should have been able to do all along.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
(Score: 1) by GmanTerry on Thursday April 03 2014, @02:41AM
I do not trust the government. The NSA will record every single thing you say and do on "their" Internet. It would just help them to further their Police State. Everything you said would be there for them to use to accuse you of something without any due process. I was in the Military and I love my country but I do not trust my government. Being that I'm a veteran, according to the Dept of Homeland Security, I am at the top of their list of terror suspects. Timothy McVeigh was a veteran and the worst home grown terrorist so, of course it follows, that all veterans are possible terrorists.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by frojack on Thursday April 03 2014, @03:07AM
This.
We already see this mentality exhibited, (sometimes here on SN as well as that other place), that you have no expectation of privacy while driving on the street.
You can be monitored, have your license plate scanned, and your papers demanded on a whim.
On a county road. Paid for by local taxes.
Anything provided by any level of government is fair game for all levels of government. There is no way to keep the federal government from grabbing 100% of the data. After all, you put it in a public place. You can't claim privacy any more.
Logically having government provide fiber backbones to the curb side just like they provide roads and water and sewer.
But until we can get our government under control we dare not trust them with our communications.
Discussion should abhor vacuity, as space does a vacuum.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by urza9814 on Thursday April 03 2014, @11:38AM
Isn't this why we say: USE ENCRYPTION!
I don't trust Verizon or Cox (my only two options) any more than I trust the US Government. In fact, I may even trust them less -- one of the fed's favorite tactics for violating the constitution is to let private contractors do it, since they aren't always bound by the same rules.
The NSA *already* watches everything we do, with the full cooperation of the corporate network owners -- so saying you won't accept a government network because they'll spy on you doesn't seem like a valid argument. We have a strong suspicion it'll happen on a government network, but we KNOW it will happen on a corporate one!
What we really need is something vaguely equivalent to credit unions. Give every subscriber a vote on any major decisions along with a share of any profits. Perhaps with some taxes on the wealthy ones paid to the poorer ones, because otherwise there's no way in hell the ten person ISP union you'd end up with in some of the villages in rural Pennsylvania where I grew up would have any hope of connecting to anyone else...
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday April 03 2014, @02:32PM
Except we DON't use encryption that much, and encryption isn't that safe. SSL is hopelessly compromised. Encrypted Email is almost unheard of in real life.
Discussion should abhor vacuity, as space does a vacuum.
(Score: 1) by Open4D on Thursday April 03 2014, @12:02PM
Count me in. Piloting a ton of metal at life-threatening speeds on a public road is definitely a matter of public interest IMO.
Any arguments about which layer of government is responsible for which roads is secondary; we probably come from different countries so we would be talking at cross purposes if we were to get into that.
Note, I am only referring to the driver, not the passengers.
And lots of other privacy invasions (like Internet snooping - to bring this back on topic somewhat) should be avoided even if it means higher crime.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Thursday April 03 2014, @10:23AM
There was an article a few days ago that covered how the Zetas had covered Mexico with their own radio network to keep their communications private. Why can't we citizens do the same? We could form a nonprofit to plan out the network and and administer it. There's a nonprofit in Redhook, Brooklyn, that did that after Hurricane Sandy knocked the neighborhood offline.
(Score: 1) by urza9814 on Thursday April 03 2014, @11:45AM
Probably easier for the Zetas since I'm sure they don't worry about things like licensed spectrum...
Wifi mesh networks have been tried, but we need something unlicensed with a MUCH larger range. And high bandwidth too -- the Zetas are probably just using voice, which doesn't need near as much as The Internet.
Some individual municipalities or neighborhoods *do* have such networks. But then they still have to route through a traditional ISP to reach anyone else. We need longer range radio links to get those connected across the dozens or even hundreds of miles you might have between networks. Preferably in a way that lets anyone in between tap into it too.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Thursday April 03 2014, @02:53AM
I disagree only because both options suck.
Shit sandwich - Telcos/Cable abuse the crap out of us because we only have two options in every city on average. Some of have WiMax and maybe something else equivalent, but it's usually not good and not deployed everywhere (Clear/Clearwire is horrible now). Prices are high, consumer satisfaction low, abuses often, and they will turn bitch to the government first chance they get.
Giant Douche - Government provides the network by tying in state cooperation with highway funds held hostage since they are both analogous enough for a Senator to understand. Initially the specs are good, and the government bids out to the incumbent technology providers with the glorious efficiency that is government awarded contracts. Citizens pay 7x the 2nd highest bandwidth cost in the world, but don't notice since it's all just part of taxes anyways.
It really does suck because neither side is good for the consumer either
Shit sandwich - We are going to charge you separately for the super duper responsive platinum turbo adult entertainment package featuring non-throttled and preferred bandwidth that allows for actual moving imagery. It's called movies. Leave still images behind.
Giant Douche - We are going to heavily regulate and block all the naughty naughty fun time unless you have a cryptographically signed connection linked to your citizen ID card. Think of the children citizen.
It doesn't matter whether or not the government or corporations run it, they are going to fuck us. The real issue we need enshrined into government as some fundamental utility is the idea we can send packets of information to each other unregulated, unmonitored, unmoderated, and without discrimination whatsoever regarding content, destination, or origin. It's the citizen responsibility to deal with the packets.
Put that into law on how anyone provides the networks for us and then we will be talking.
(Score: 2) by clone141166 on Thursday April 03 2014, @03:03AM
Well put, I couldn't agree more. Wouldn't it be nice if we lived in a world that wasn't solely motivated by the desire for money and power.
(Score: 2) by prospectacle on Thursday April 03 2014, @01:18AM
As you say, governments need to invest in infrastructure, but when it comes to the internet, the infrastructure is - in a sense - the product, unlike with say water, gas or electricity.
You generally don't pay for the content of a website, but you do pay to have it transported to you.
I guess it's like a conveyer-belt network, as opposed to roads. You can have competing courier trucks using the same roads, and competing retailers using the same courier trucks. So there are three layers of service: network infrastructure, transport mechanism, and content.
But for our (hypothetical) conveyer belt network there's only two layers (network infrastructure and transport are the same physical thing, and content is separate).
So I guess my point is as long as transfer-capacity is priced fairly and equally and open to all, and especially if the government is willing to wholesale capacity to competing retailers (e.g. ISPs), who then divide it up however they see fit into pricing schemes for individual customers, then it's probably ok (better, even) to have the govt own and sell internet. You'll still have competition where it counts.
I don't know if that was convincing to you, but now I've managed to convince myself that we we need an automatically-switched international conveyer-belt network. That would be pretty cool.
If a plan isn't flexible it isn't realistic
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday April 03 2014, @02:56AM
If you had a point it was still-born, strangled at birth with an ill chosen analogy.
Government provides roads.
Government does not provide electricity. In most places electrical generation is by private companies.
Conveyor belts never enter into the picture.
Discussion should abhor vacuity, as space does a vacuum.
(Score: 1) by urza9814 on Thursday April 03 2014, @11:53AM
Those conveyor belts would need to be enclosed in some way, otherwise your packages could get knocked off or damaged by wind and weather. And you probably want to pull a vacuum in those tunnels, so you can move things at a greater velocity and more efficiently. At which point...might as well remove the conveyor belts and make it pneumatic -- a true series of tubes.
(Score: 3, Informative) by FatPhil on Thursday April 03 2014, @02:59AM
And what happened to the economies of scale? Shouldn't they act *in the US's favour*?
So stop making excuses, and start asking what you did wrong? (Or what the Nordics did right.)
Wasn't Nebraska, which has to be one of the most isolated parts of the mainland US, one of the first 30 sites ever connected to ARPANet?
http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/images/early-arpanet.png says yes - 1973
You were capable of connecting over vast distances 40 years ago - what's changed?
Making a public pledge to no longer contribute to slashdot
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Thursday April 03 2014, @10:24AM
I'm sorry but the geography argument just doesn't hold water as too many of our large cities have shitty service, coverage gaps, and all around just piss poor numbers. TFA is right that the phone company has all but walked away from their lines due to the fact that they can make so much more profit of of wireless, and both sides cherry pick the iving hell out of neighborhoods. If you are poor or black? Give it up, you won't be getting shit.
Oh and before anybody brings up the "free market bullshit" of "oh its just those neighborhoods don't buy"? yeah well that is what happens when you price the service out of the reach of a large number of people, again as in TFA. In my area with each passing year and people dropping cable TV we cable net users get to pick up the slack with higher bills, in my case the price of internet has doubled in the past 4 years while they haven't added a single foot of coverage area. the DSL lines are falling apart, my father's shop is practically atop a DSLAM in the middle of the business district and on a GOOD day he gets a whopping 3Mbps, most days he is lucky to get half that...oh and it costs $90 a month for that and a basic POTS phone for his fax, and you wonder why poor folks don't buy?