FCC Investigates Municipal Broadband Battle In North Carolina And Tennesee

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Randy Garrett

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Feb 2, 2015
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How about getting the government completely out of the Broadband business and smash the barriers to entry erected by municipalities, county, state and federal governments.
 


Right because that worked so well with telecoms, railroads, and other infrastructures in the past. A good example of poor regulation and infrastructure is Nigeria. Would anyone like to live in that mud hole? No thanks, I'll pay taxes and drive on the interstate highway system.
 

acadia11

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Well clearly of the cities were able to build a faster network for ch worr obviously the private sector isn't the best answer. And who the he ll said my money is required to go a private company I'll give my dollars who ever does it best, whether that's the government or a private company it's not a philosophical issue for me.
 

kenjitamura

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" AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and others are multi-billion dollar companies that should be capable of establishing networks able to compete or outperform those set up by cities. The cities that have set up their own networks only paid an average of $28 million in order to provide a faster and cheaper network for their citizens."

Well yeah, the large ISP's COULD put more money into infrastructure. But if they did that it'd reduce the budget they can use for lobbying government officials to pass laws that prevent municipal governments from creating infrastructure. Fixing competitions in your favor gives a much more certain return of profits than actually competing.
 

cyphacipher

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I live in Wilson NC, and Greenlight is a good network. They provide tv services and very fast internet. Its also more affordable than TWC and Embarq. If the city can do a better job than TWC, I'm all for it.
 

alextheblue

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One issue I have with local government ISPs is that they use taxpayer money to subsidize a lot of the cost. Another issue is that if they eventually sink private ISPs, you'll end up with a true monopoly. It's a dangerous path to tread and I'm not sure they're handling it right.
 


We already subsidize the large ISPs, and they make windfall profits.
 
In many instances the infrastructure is already there. Much fiber was already laid in the 1980s and 1990s, but ISPs just refuse to use it. They have no financial incentive to improve service other than competition. They sure cry like babies and get legislation passed quickly at state level to make sure that no one can compete.
 

Baumy15

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hate articles like this "between 40MBPS and 1GBPS" how fast was it before it was updated it just pisses me off when people in countries that get "slow" 20MBPS and is AUS where I live I have to use mobile broardband which I get a max speed of 6MBPS download and 128KBPS upload and the so called great NBN was meant to be here back 4 months ago BUT they set up faster internet for places that already have heaps faster and I am stuck on 8GB a month for a horrible $79.95 a month. if anyone else is like this they will understand and no one else knows what its like to wait forever for things to download or watch videos its why articles like this get me so annoyed
 

kyee7k

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It's so easy to criticize the large ISP's for monopolizing and keeping broadband speeds low when its the county and state representatives who are at fault for accepting the bribes and siding with the various ISPs. And we vote for these same fools again and again for various reasons on both sides of the aisle.
All companies like Comcast (here in Wash. State) do is use their financial muscle and legal expertise to thin the companies available to provide broadband services and decrease market-based competition that would inevitably drive down costs while increasing broadband speed and quality.
 

f-14

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so the internet should be government controlled and owned eh?
N.S.A.
Welcome to the National Security Agency - NSA/CSS
https://www.nsa.gov/
United States National Security Agency
National Security Agency/Central Security Service Public Information.
GO AHEAD SIGN UP, REMEMBER THEY ARE WATCHING YOU, DON'T DO ANYTHING THAT VIOLATES THE LAW.

less than 50,000 people live in wilson north carolina, yet they all shelled out over 560 each to pony up 28 million dollars... that doesn't sound right. i can believe it's possible, but this is a rinky dinky little city with about 3% of it's population coming from barton college alone.
(how many colege students do you know up and pony $560 for 1 single local tax?)
this doesn't pass the smell test.
who paid the 28 million dollars, and who pays for the yearly salary of the support people required to keep this net work up and functioning every day?

for any one complaining about communities being shut out of businesses, gtfo of america and go move to the CCCP (USSR) or communist china or communist-socialist/fascist europe. because those places with their community state ownership of business have innovated how much in the last 270 years? the chinese had gun powder for over 3,000 years. the best they could do was fireworks for the advancement of progress in civilization.
(The invention of gunpowder is usually attributed to Chinese alchemy, and is popularly listed as one of the "Four Great Inventions" of China. It was invented during the Tang Dynasty (9th century), and the earliest record of a written formula appeared in the Song Dynasty (11th century).
It reached Japan, Islam and then Europe in the 13th century and the Arabs improved gunpowder for military use. (LULZS thoughts of the first suicide vest spring to mind as ' military use.')
History of gunpowder - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

aside from nazi germany how much of todays great inventions and innovations came from europe?
and how much from capitalist united states?
and knowing the history of capitalism and monopolies in the united states with

Right because that worked so well with telecoms, railroads, and other infrastructures in the past.

capitalism creates necessity, the mother of all invention. rail roads were by passed by pipelines, somebody forgot the very lesson Rockefeller taught the railroad barrons when he relegated them into obsoleteness (yes i made up a word 4UgrammarNAZIS, again necessity@work&thisnotbeingadeadlanguage=LATIN)

used to be you had to have a wire to get telephone/HBO, then cellular phones came about and satellite tv came about to compete against cable, satellite internet later came out. now we are on to wireless.

any one still complaining? go back to powering your pc on 5.25" single sided floppy discs and stuff your face hole with pie. BECAUSE HOW MANY GOVERNMENTS INVENT STUFF? remove the incentives and you will rot in stagnation. who wants to spend the next 3,000 years on 25MB/1GB internet?
well you are no corbin dallas talking to your mother via video phone either are you!(not that i am looking forward to that)

so, what has communist china invented recently to advance mankind? the USSR? socialist-communist europe?

what are the internet speeds in the gobi desert? death valley california? tabernas desert in spain?
come on even the saudis have internet faster than that!

the big bad united states tied for 18th with itty bitty belgium. how many km of internet cable does belgium have vs. km of internet cable or canada or russia or the united states.

i'm pretty sure even mexico and brasil have more km of internet and users than belgium.

http://mapfight.appspot.com/us.mi-vs-be/michigan-us-belgium-size-comparison

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Belgian_municipalities_by_population

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_municipalities_in_Michigan_(by_population)

the facts speak volumes for themselves. i have been all over the united states and michigan can be considered average in terms of population and size for american states.
 

f-14

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"the chinese had gun powder for over 3,000 years. the best they could do was fireworks for the advancement of progress in civilization."

yes i messed this up, i was going to quote "BC
c3000 An early form of the abacus, built using beads strung on wires is used in the Orient" and changed my mind and forgot to finish editing that after dinner SO SUE ME.
i don't get paid to write, i'm not going to waste alot of time and effort on website peanut galleries. p.s. i'm sure it shows i didn't spend $25,000 a year for a university degree in journalism also and idc dear fellow peanut gallery reader.
 

kenjitamura

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Greenlight first went live back in 2009 and has been under consideration since 2005. With a population of ~50,000 and the money spread out over the construction/operation of the service the tax looks to be ~$100 a head a year. It looks like the service is out of the red from an article that can be found on newsobserver:
Greenlight initially lost money, as was expected of a startup, but made a small profit of about $723,881 last year.

 

Anaxamenes

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For everyone complaining about government run ISPs from cities; I live in a state that has a ton of Public Utilities that provide power to many of our cities and small towns. We have some of the cheapest power rates in the country and those utilities pay for themselves. What they also pay for is upkeep that happens often BEFORE part of the system fails. Sure we have winter storms, but I've noticed that my power is out less and fixed faster than the areas that have for profit companies providing electricity (We have those too).

People need to realize if we need to allow the citizens to build their own networks with their own tax dollars to compete globally, then that is the choice of the citizens and it should be respected even if it doesn't profit some large corporation.
 

bluekoala

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Feb 8, 2008
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f-14 for some unknown reason you think the NSA doesn't tap your ISP and could only do so if it were the municipal government.
Your argument is also quite backwards because the monopolies are creating the necessity for competition and you refuse to side with municipal governments coming up with their own solutions because any form of government is so bad for competition that you want the state government to put a ban on competition.
I can't attribute your trolling to malice of course...
 
Competition is good for business. I don't care where the competition comes from. The ISP's have grown lazy collecting huge sums of our money without bothering to upgrade their networks at the speeds they should have.
Im beginning to really like the FCC Commissioner. I think he understands the whole picture, and is making the ISP's shiver in their pants. They might actually have to spend some money to keep their customers if he gets his way.
 

Jalapenoman

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Feb 3, 2015
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where I work we have a municipal internet service, and they are not allowing google to build out in our area. Where's the competition in that. We only have one option for internet, I would call that a monopoly.
 
"I've only been a Republican for 2 minutes, and I already want to screw somebody ..."
(punch-line from old joke)

North Carolina just elected a new Republican US Senator ... bought and paid-for by the Big ISPs and ALEC.

This is the individual largely responsible for not only the law that restricted expansion of municipal nonprofit systems, but forced additional taxes on them to increase pressure on their pricing models (to drive their low prices closer to the high rates charged by the Big ISPs).

If you like what he has done for broadband expansion, wait until you see their plans for the death of Net neutrality, and the expansion of packet throttling ...

edit:

where I work we have a municipal internet service, and they are not allowing google to build out in our area. Where's the competition in that. We only have one option for internet, I would call that a monopoly.

:lol:

Pants on fire ...


 
@ kenjitamura , February 2, 2015 9:22 PM
Quote:
snip.

Greenlight first went live back in 2009 and has been under consideration since 2005. With a population of ~50,000 and the money spread out over the construction/operation of the service the tax looks to be ~$100 a head a year. It looks like the service is out of the red from an article that can be found on newsobserver:
Quote:
Greenlight initially lost money, as was expected of a startup, but made a small profit of about $723,881 last year.

It doesn't say it paid back the taxpayers for the infrastucture costs. Even if they made $1million in profit each year, it would take 28 years to pay back the taxpayers.

It's easy to criticize private ISP's when your not looking to make a profit and using taxpayer funds to create your infrastructure. At those payback rates, there's no way the private ISP's can compete.

We are not a socialist country, the government should not own businesses.
 
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