ISPs fear wave of state laws after New York’s $15 broadband mandate
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Montana has required net neutrality for years. Of course, that's not the same as New York's pricing law, but surprising nonetheless.
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At least AT&T cares about the welfare of their "hello girls"*. Imagine how difficult their job would be if the switching rules were different for every state!
* slang term for the switchboard operators in the early days of telephone service, who would manually plug and unplug wires to route each call. If you've heard someone in an old movie pick up the phone and say something like "Cherry Hill 4835" they were telling the "hello girl" how to route the call.
* slang term for the switchboard operators in the early days of telephone service, who would manually plug and unplug wires to route each call. If you've heard someone in an old movie pick up the phone and say something like "Cherry Hill 4835" they were telling the "hello girl" how to route the call.
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Depends on how the law is written, but CA tends to maximally extend jurisdiction as the state is often fighting against the feds. So, CA would most likely extend that law to prevent a Texas ISP from paying Netflix because Netflix is a CA company. And once you take all the CA companies off the table, there's not much of a table left.
Automakers gave up having different models to meet CA emissions vs national ones back in the 80s - they just follow CAs. And that's because CAs economic strength is simply too big.
Democrats need to learn in this moment to embrace state over federal control. It's better to have a federal government devoid of services which shift to the states than to have a federal government that has weaponized those federal services, which is where we are now. States like CA and NY are going to pay outsized taxes and get nothing back because the president hates them. Once you weaponize that system you need to dismantle it until the people who weaponized it demand it to be restored. Better to have minimal federal taxes and high state ones and actually get the services you are paying for.
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The issue here is that the ISPs spent decades to perform regulatory capture of the FCC. However, they went too far, and had the agency they had largely captured completely abdicate its power to regular pricing, instead of ineffectually regulating it, so now the states are stepping up, and the ISPs are pissed they're now have to bribe 50 different government agencies, instead of just one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
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There are multiple constructive ways to use a pebble, while there are zero ways for Carr. Kakistocracies by design can't be constructive. And controlling one with oligarchs at least squares the uselessness.
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And stuff like this is why I was supportive of Chevron's repeal, under the principle of never give yourself power you don't want to give your opposition. Now the FCC, as with other agencies, won't go in to court with a presumption of constitutionality for their rulemaking. If they want to deregulate ISPs nationwide, Congress will have to change the law.
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I love how AT&T seems to think it's a company that has no competition and will just pull a program out of a market they decide they don't like, when one only needs to automate where the outgoing requests that connect to the Internet come from (like NY, CA, etc.) to determine the prorating for the charges. At least that way, they get the income from customers.
But, hey, if you end up in a state where AT&T is being a fucktard, change providers to one who isn't a fucktard.
And there WILL be ones who aren't, because once an opening in a market is created, SOMEONE will step in. It may not be a gravy train, but if the services are adequate for most people's needs, then it will become the dominant in that market.
The "good enough" thing is a thing. And I figure if ISP's start raping their customers, the customers will go someplace else where, if nothing else, the ISP's at least provide ample lubrication for it. If more people did what I did, they're going to end up losing out to local services, and that they can do nothing about.
And there's always the possibility of a state doing things to help out their citizens who are suffering under the greed of a national company and create a "municipal" shield that allows local governments to set up basic Internet access for folks.
I can see cell phone companies howling, since they'd have to monitor where a signal originates to determine the rates that can be charged, but that's why you'd need federal oversight. Since, near as I can tell, there won't be any, they're going to be howling into a power vacuum whose structure is then created by the individual states.
They don't want Internet to be a common carrier thing? Fine. Let them cope with 50 different state laws. They were the ones demanding an end to the push to make them common carriers. They can sleep in the shit they made of their bed because of it.
But, hey, if you end up in a state where AT&T is being a fucktard, change providers to one who isn't a fucktard.
And there WILL be ones who aren't, because once an opening in a market is created, SOMEONE will step in. It may not be a gravy train, but if the services are adequate for most people's needs, then it will become the dominant in that market.
The "good enough" thing is a thing. And I figure if ISP's start raping their customers, the customers will go someplace else where, if nothing else, the ISP's at least provide ample lubrication for it. If more people did what I did, they're going to end up losing out to local services, and that they can do nothing about.
And there's always the possibility of a state doing things to help out their citizens who are suffering under the greed of a national company and create a "municipal" shield that allows local governments to set up basic Internet access for folks.
I can see cell phone companies howling, since they'd have to monitor where a signal originates to determine the rates that can be charged, but that's why you'd need federal oversight. Since, near as I can tell, there won't be any, they're going to be howling into a power vacuum whose structure is then created by the individual states.
They don't want Internet to be a common carrier thing? Fine. Let them cope with 50 different state laws. They were the ones demanding an end to the push to make them common carriers. They can sleep in the shit they made of their bed because of it.
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New York resident here. None of the internet providers are complying with the law. Spectrum plays dumb when you call them.
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New York is the best place in the US to be during the Trump era. Second highest life expectancy after Massachusetts. Educates the most doctors nationwide. Congestion pricing still going despite trump.
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Legislative progress tends to spread from trailblazer states like CA and NY (which is why conservatives hate them so much); they pass laws that impact massive userbases and corporations essentially have to fall in line. Once they're already falling in line, there's no political hay to be made talking about "regulation preventing good business" and the conservative states will quietly legislate benefits they're largely already getting.
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Good, be afraid you rat fucks. This is what you wanted, isn't it? States' rights FTW!
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Spectrum /Charter has lowered their internet price in the state of Florida
They also removed $172 off my bill to get my bill on track !
They also removed $172 off my bill to get my bill on track !
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Mine was the original post. I live in the country, with no competition, only Sprectrum. Was paying $85, so $30 is great.
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Those are good points…
But when ISP big, and ISP say people disposable… number go up!! FAST!!
-Business “leaders”, “magnates”, “luminaries” etc
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I don't know, there must be a Base cost for operating and maintaining the infrastructure, even if someone is using minimal / slow data? That cost is the same if they get 10 mbit or 100 or 1,000. A bit like power company has a "connection charge", which is fixed. Even if you use zero power, you still pay something for the connection. A higher data cap of course incurs a cost as that needs more upstream bandwidth, but will someone on a 50 mbit connection actually use less data? Or will they just wait longer for their game to download? Locally at least, once you are on an uncapped plan, the extra speed is minimal extra cost. We don't use more data at 950 mbit than we would on the old 200 mbit plan, we just don't wait as long for large downloads.
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Yes, with 5G you are limited by the bandwidth from the local tower, and how many other users there are. We don't have a 5g tower locally, but I've checked it out on my phone when travelling. Having dinner in a small (~1,000 people) NZ town, I see they have 5G coverage. Speedtest shows ~500 mbit, Great, but basically no one else was really using it. Big city, moving my daughter to Uni, and we are on the 11th floor, looking at the new 5G antennas on the building next door. ~100 mbit, I mean still OK, but you are sharing the bandwidth with 1,000 other users, so you will never get max speeds.
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I live in New York State and qualify for a low income plan. I cannot get the plan because the property owner sold exclusive rights to Spectrum under Bulk Billing for Multifamily units. I went from paying $20 to $62 and it is increasing $3 on the first of March. I have an 87 year old neighbor who does not own a compute rand is paying $62. Another neighbor went from $20 to $62. When this started last March 1 I asked if I could be grandfathered in or opt out. The answer was no. AT the time I contacted all of my elected state and federal officials, the FCC and the NYS Attorney general. I received to responses. A representative of one of one of the elected officials
said it is not illegal but it is not nice. I never heard from the NYS Attorney General but I know someone in her office contacted Spectrum because a representative from Spectrum called me to find out what was going on. He said that Spectrum was not doing anything illegal an would not allow the law to be changed. So far it has not been. There is just to much money that officials need to get reelected
said it is not illegal but it is not nice. I never heard from the NYS Attorney General but I know someone in her office contacted Spectrum because a representative from Spectrum called me to find out what was going on. He said that Spectrum was not doing anything illegal an would not allow the law to be changed. So far it has not been. There is just to much money that officials need to get reelected
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This is true, but my understanding is the ISP's own the lines / fibers / cable in the US. Here in NZ, years ago all the phone system was owned and operated by the State owned Post Office, now Telecom ltd. Zero competition, so not very efficient. Instead of breaking the Post Office by area, they split the "Lines" and "Phone" divisions apart. That allowed other companies to offer phone and internet services. This continued with the roll out of fiber, and none of that is owned by the ISPs, it's different Govt controlled companies. They then on-sell the line to ISPs, at "cost + a small profit". So I can get a fiber connection from maybe 10 different ISPs, with different plans. But it sets a "base" limit for a connection, if Chorus charge the ISP $20 a month for the fiber, they have to add their operating costs and some profit to that.
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As a state's rights guy (not a party guy), I'm for this. To me, this allows states to implement rules and regs that works best for that state. Additionally, if something works well, it may encourage other states to adopt those practices and tweak them for their state. And some states may not adopt those practices, and that's ok.
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Municipal is the end-all fix for uncaring corporate monopolistic inefficiency. But of course, the fierce level of resistance against getting shut out of the market means heavy lobbying and paid for local politicians or regulators in their pockets.
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My dinky town in California just got fiber, with your choice of two ISPs, which I found odd. Once those lines are connected (a third company), I don’t think that the choice of ISP would matter much, as their ‘plans’ are almost identical. Regardless, they blow away ATT and Spectrum for a hard line. I’ll take it.
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It's called local loop unbundling. It allows for some competition for services over the same physical line. It's one way to try and keep prices down and quality and customer service high, since if you're unhappy with one ISP, you can switch to the other and get basically the same service.
https://meincmagazine.com/tech-policy/2014/06/we-dont-need-net-neutrality-we-need-competition/
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Right, and if the ISP is making less from home users, it will need to make more from those contracts to deliver the same service. That has been evolution of the commercial Internet, from when consumer ISP's all paid for a connection to "the backbone" to when CDN's and transit networks began paying ISP's. But, then Netflix created a brouhaha by overloading their circuits and blaming the ISP's for not carrying more traffic for free. Consumers were largely in agreement with Netflix. The FCC issued a Net Neutrality order, restricting what ISP's could do within their network, and promising to monitor interconnect agreements.
They did not, in fact, restrict these agreements, but the writing was on the wall for ISP's who might have been thinking about depending on increased revenues from interconnects to pay for new infrastructure investments. Notably, the FCC said there would be no restrictions on consumer pricing. Huge win for the content and advertising industry, which we all must subsidize with over priced home connections. Verizon sold off most of its wireline business and bought AOL. Facebook is now worth more than double Comcast + ATT + Verizon combined. We wade through cesspools of content that make us angrier and stupider. Thanks Net Neutrality.
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The ISPs collude to avoid selling to the same markets. Areas where there are two or more options are rare.
The ISPs then sue to prevent municipal broadband, even in areas they aren't selling, to prevent the government from coming in and doing a good job.
So that's not always an option; and it's not uncommon for the one other carrier (Comcast for example) to be just as bad.
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It's not even colluding, it's just common sense. Why build into an area that already has coverage? It's a lot of extra investment, with an ROI that is in the span of decades. and then the incumbent just drops rates to compete, and the new entry gets very little uptake.
Google Fiber found this out the hard way. At lot of investment into certain cities to be available to everyone, then the incumbent would drop rates to compete, and people largely kept the incumbent since they got the benefit of cheaper rates without the hassle of switching. So the competition helps consumers, but doesn't really make it financially viable for the competitor.
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Now that I am in Europe, I pay 23EUR (including VAT tax, similar to a sales tax) for 1GB symmetrical fiber and 1k of call minutes and 15GB of LTE phone data (I could go unlimited for +7EUR, but I don't think I'll ever breach those thresholds with my usage and can easily increase them if I do). Such a shocker for someone coming from the US.
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Why does this sound to me as a water company wanting to charge a fruit syrup producer 1 money to not charge me for the water I use to dillute their syrup, while charging me for the water when I dillute a syrup from producer 2 because the said water company doesn't have a deal with producer 2.
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Ask Burger King. I suppose the answer is "to make money selling to people in that area".
But the actual reasons are less interesting than the effect... monopolies throughout much of the country.
That's the classic "who has the deeper pockets" question. It doesn't need to be the incumbent. We see Walmart, for example, come into an area and undercut the competition until the competition is gone and then raise prices.
But yes: this is also why drugs-past-patent can be so unnecessarily expensive. If I drop a few billion into building and certifying a factory for a competing brand of the drug, the incumbent with paid-off everything and deep pockets just gives away their product until I go out of business... that or they buy me.
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My town tried to get funds for Municipal Broadband. Soundly rejected by voters every single time. It's almost like folks want to live in the early (dial up) days!
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It's way easier to set up a second shop within a certain geographic region than to run wire to every single building, or at least down every street so you could then run it to any building that signs up pretty fast.
NYC has a critical concentration of Starbucks, but Verizon learned the hard way it's difficult to run fiber to every building, and has tried to back out of their commitment.
https://www.scrapehero.com/location-reports/Starbucks-USA/
https://meincmagazine.com/tech-policy...ith-fios-to-settle-years-long-fight-with-nyc/
So those situations are not the same.
Monopolies aren't bad, if well regulated. Almost all of us deal with a water company monopoly, electric company monopoly, maybe a gas company monopoly, a single street to our house, etc.
Sometimes a given service is a natural monopoly, i.e. it makes sense to only have one in a given geographic area:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
For telecommunications, this was known for a long time, with a single telephone company, and single cable TV company, for a given region, but regulated by local, state, and federal laws and agencies. Then the internet came along, and since both cable and phone companies intially were offering similar services, the lie that "competition" would keep the market in check prevented it from becoming regulated. However, DSL service started to lag behind cable TV, and instead of making the infrastructure investments to keep DSL competitive, they just... stopped, ceding the market to cable companies, especially since cellular service was taking off, so phone companies pivoted to that.
So we're again stuck with a natural monopoly for wired broadband internet in most areas, but it's nowhere as regulated as phone or TV service was, and ISPs push the idea of "competition" with cellular data and satellite service to help keep regulation at bay.
It's not about deeper pockets though, because the investment/cost/revenue ratios are all skewed. For the incumbent, their investment in the infrastructure was largely years, if not decades, ago, so costs are mainly maintenance, and low. So their high prices have a massive profit margin, and if they have to lower prices to compete with a newcomer, they're just making less money per customer, not losing money.
Meanwhile, the newcomer is, short term, losing money for each customer, in the hopes of making it up in the long term. But that only works if there's some level of adoption. I.e. if they install onto a given city block, they need
Google has gigantic pockets, but couldn't make Google Fiber work.
It doesn't even have to be "given away," the incumbent can just match price, and people are naturally going to prefer the better known, more established brand, if pricing is the same. If I'm a patient with a subscription, and I see the price of it suddenly drop, I'll just think "oh, nice," and keep getting my subscription, and get it renewed, instead of going to the doc to ask him to write a new prescription for the new brand.
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Yeah where is that? Not in my neighborhood. Spectrum finally got some competition from a couple local (not muni) fiber companies, but all of them are roughly the same price and it's ever increasing in increments as whatever "special" wears off. Yes, I can do the "I'm leaving" dance and maybe get a promo again, but it's exhausting. Nothing ever goes down,
That's my experience. And sure I get an added "100mbps more download at no extra cost" but honestly I'm working on a VPN all day so I'm not hitting the max downloads anyway, so that's not a value to me. And upload never changes which would be better.
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"Despite overall inflation soaring, broadband prices have been dropping while speeds are getting faster"
Funny, cause I pay more for less now from AT&T. This is just fiber price from 2020 compared to now. Guess I'm just imagining things.
Funny, cause I pay more for less now from AT&T. This is just fiber price from 2020 compared to now. Guess I'm just imagining things.
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No.
It is not the government's job to step in for business incompetence. If isps are that incompetent at running a business they they can step away and hand control of the business to someone who is competent.
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So, are you saying the US ISPs don't want to provide decent broadband service at reasonable prices like the rest of the world?
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_connection_speeds
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_price_rankings?itemId=33
Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Internet_connection_speeds
https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_price_rankings?itemId=33
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But the government did step in to regulate how ISP were allowed to manage traffic, largely for the benefit of big content providers, at the expense of consumers. Now they are finally doing the right thing, by capping consumer prices.
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I'm sorry. I'll get back to you later. You haven't paid for priority queue.
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Yeah, your ISP will cut you off if you don't pay them. You don't get a free connection just because the party you are communicating with paid for their connection.
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