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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 Meanwhile the telephone companies have totally withdrawn.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: 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.