FCC Just Overruled State Laws That Were Blocking Municipal Broadband

What are you talking about? Of course they'll pay for it. Municipal broadband isn't free. Its just municipally provided. You pay a monthly fee just like you would for any other ISP, here is an example.

Considering that municipal broadband is faster for less than the private ISP's most people aren't going to care that its the govt. hand in their pocket instead of the private ISP's. Who knew providing better service for less was so terrible?
 
mesyn191 said:
What are you talking about? Of course they'll pay for it. Municipal broadband isn't free. Its just municipally provided. You pay a monthly fee just like you would for any other ISP, here is an example.

Considering that municipal broadband is faster for less than the private ISP's most people aren't going to care that its the govt. hand in their pocket instead of the private ISP's. Who knew providing better service for less was so terrible?
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Who paid the $60,000 per mile to lay the pipe?
 
Initially the municipal did. But they only do that if its approved by the local govt. (read: the people want it) and they know they can pay it off. No one is shoving this down anyone's throat.
 
mesyn191 said:
What are you talking about? Of course they'll pay for it. Municipal broadband isn't free. Its just municipally provided. You pay a monthly fee just like you would for any other ISP, here is an example.

Considering that municipal broadband is faster for less than the private ISP's most people aren't going to care that its the govt. hand in their pocket instead of the private ISP's. Who knew providing better service for less was so terrible?
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Ugh...
75Mbps Tier 75 Mbps 75 Mbps $54.95

I pay that much for 10/1 from CenturyLink DSL

Ridiculous ..
 
I also was able to ditch comcrap for a municipal provide, though they have some agreement with Click Cable TV, i still end up paying my bill to the local city.

https://www.rainierconnect.com/

As i recall it's pretty competitive with comcrap's prices for internet, though there's never any worry about the price changing or contracts etc.
 
However, allowing the gov to make their own is just a bandaid on the problem. I wish they'd solve the problem itself, which is that the government in the first place has allowed monopolies to form and agreements to be set which have prohibited competition.

Now the government is in a win-win situation. They can 'fix' the competition problem by giving themselves another stream of revenue. Sigh.
 
People seem to forget that Municipal ISPs aren't being run by the federal government. They are being run by cities and counties (mostly). So, when you use our 13 Trillion dollar federal deficit as a negative, you are being ignorant.
 
It's not a band-aid, the capacity is being built in many cities for their own infrastructure / facility needs anyway. Do you have traffic lights, pump stations or fire-halls in your city? Odds are they're already running, or will be running on an internal fiber network in the coming years.
 
OregonLAN said:
People seem to forget that Municipal ISPs aren't being run by the federal government. They are being run by cities and counties (mostly). So, when you use our 13 Trillion dollar federal deficit as a negative, you are being ignorant.
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I imagine you would have to examine each on a case by case basis.

SandyNet in Oregon used federal loans and grants to build at least some of their FTTH facilities. Concerns over federal debt are certainly applicable here.

Greenlight in Wilson NC cost 33 Million dollars. It appears that the loan from the state of NC. Although last year funds had to be taken from the states Gas fund in order to subsidize the program. (This is the kind of stuff a private corporation cannot do.)

The monies have to come from somewhere, and these municipalities typically aren't sitting on tens of millions of dollars.
 
chockomonkey said:
a 3-2 vote... who were the 2 that voted against this? I also got more excited than was warranted. This should have been a blanket overruling in all states. But yes, an important precedent indeed!
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XvMMvX said:
:mad:

Damn those republicans for supporting states rights. Lets give all power to Washington.

Let me know when the feds tell Colorado that selling and possessing weed is still a federal crime.
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Yeah, those republicans, always standing up for local authority. Oh wait, Texas state government is rolling back local legislation enacted democratically because they disagree with it. Republicans/Democrats don't have any principles, it's solely what is currently expedient for them to believe in to please their backers. Sticking to one party is idiocy...the only choice currently in the US is to try to nudge one party or another slightly towards sanity and back it when it makes sense...like when the FCC implements Net Neutrality.

And yes, the fed gov't still says to Colorado that it is a federal crime. In fact, two nearby Republican governors are suing Colorado over it. And Republican Congressmen were pissed when FinCEN gave banks guidance on how to potentially provide accounts to state-legal marijuana sellers. So yeah, keep on waving that Republican "state's rights" flag... :rolleyes:
 
As a [l]ibertarian I frankly don't see the problem with this.

- the FCC basically allowed local governments (not even really states) to be allowed to expand their services. This addresses zero competition in the current ISP market.

- the local governments react to and are directly held accountable to their citizens way more than the Federal government. They probably won't just start up a service because, there has to be a demand from the people and that demand is going to come from ISPs ass raping their customers.

- this is not some new legislation forcing entire states to create a state ran ISP.

- this is not the federal government creating a national ISP.

This is a far cry from my feelings on the healthcare law which is drastically different. Why Republicans are up in arms over this is quite simply hilarious. Though I will say that a free market didn't make ISPs not compete, but the sole blame also does not belong to the Federal government. That blame mostly lies with State governments.

Politics is a tricky business at times.
 
kbrickley said:
I think all of us oppose the state laws that restrict the cities from having their own systems (that should be up to the voters in the cities) ... however, we can oppose a federal agency interfering with state laws that should be out of their jurisdiction ... we can also be opposed to city owned systems because of the risk of a government owned utility that can leverage taxes and require voter participation (things that a private entity cannot do) ... that doesn't mean that city owned systems can't be successful or good, but they do have their own risks and considerations ;)
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I see what you're saying. But the fed do have the higher authority, and change things if they don't think it's right for the state to regulate in such a way. I can't say I would agree with them all the time, but who really can? I think though, in this instance, they are in the right. It's basically the feds telling states, they can't favor a certain company or companies. And from the sound of it... it isn't like it's requiring municipal broadband, it's just allowing it. And I wouldn't be surprised if it has a domino effect of allowing more private (smaller) companies to come up.
 
next-Jin said:
Politics is a tricky business at times.
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But in this case. ISPs think this is going to hurt there bottom line and anytime a big business meets with regulation that's going to hit the bottom line that's going to get instant Republican backlash. Plus, if Obama's for it, Republicans have to oppose it. Doesn't really matter what the issue is. 100% opposition to anything Obama is the core of Republican Party at this moment.
 
bbartlett said:
SandyNet in Oregon used federal loans and grants to build at least some of their FTTH facilities. Concerns over federal debt are certainly applicable here.
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Much of the money to make the private ISP's networks came from the govt. too you realize that right?

bbartlett said:
(This is the kind of stuff a private corporation cannot do.)
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Private enterprise can and does frequently lobby for govt. money to fund operations and expansions. They're also pretty successful at it. They also often don't pay it back or misappropriate it too via legal shenanigans. Remember when Verizon got $3.3 billion from the govt. to run fiber, pocketed the money tax free, and then 'gave' the debt they incurred from that to a spin-off shell corp that totally failed to run the fiber?

Shit like that happens all the time. Strangely its studiously ignored by those who think municipals providing cheaper and faster internet service is inherently a bad thing.
 
Entire thread reminds me of this quote.

How can I properly revere the founders but ignore history at the same time?
#CPACQ
 
what kills me with all the ignorance is DSL used to be Title II... it was regulated! that's why we had CLECs (remember those???) but then when they removed it from Title II the bells killed the CLECs and pretty much all their competition besides cable (which was never Title II)

but no regulation is bad and evil, and somehow will make less competition (what competition??? less than zero is zero)
 
heatlesssun said:
But in this case. ISPs think this is going to hurt there bottom line and anytime a big business meets with regulation that's going to hit the bottom line that's going to get instant Republican backlash. Plus, if Obama's for it, Republicans have to oppose it. Doesn't really matter what the issue is. 100% opposition to anything Obama is the core of Republican Party at this moment.
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Yea I agree, but the same can be said for Democrats at the moment too. Why are they demanding amnesty be voted on with DHS funding? Because Republicans don't want to be labeled as government shutdown shit birds. So they force the issue on them. If the vote were strictly about amnesty it would fail badly.

I just said it's tricky business because you can't just look at this like "BIG GUBMINT" and pick a side. It takes effort and knowledge to understand what is going on and politicians (and Americans) have to do their due diligence to understand what's going on most of the time hence "tricky business".
 
next-Jin said:
I just said it's tricky business because you can't just look at this like "BIG GUBMINT" and pick a side.
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But this is exactly what the Republican base is doing. They're complaining about the complexity and size of the unfinished net neutrality regulations yet are completely missing that just the three clear bullet points that the FCC outlined are completely at odds with the ISPs.
 
next-Jin said:
but the same can be said for Democrats at the moment too. Why are they demanding amnesty be voted on with DHS funding? Because Republicans don't want to be labeled as government shutdown shit birds. So they force the issue on them. If the vote were strictly about amnesty it would fail badly.
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The Dems suck right now but they suck FAR less than the Repubs. Yes they're playing politics with DHS funding bill but not the way you think. They're forcing the issue because if they don't then the Repub led House of Reps will just stuff any bill full of stuff they know won't pass and then send it to the Senate or President where it'll fail and then they can shift the blame on to them.

next-Jin said:
I just said it's tricky business because you can't just look at this like "BIG GUBMINT" and pick a side. It takes effort and knowledge to understand what is going on
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All the arguments against Title II ISP regs boil down to "BIG GUBMINT OH NOES" though. There is nothing tricky at all about this issue. Its about as clear cut good as you can get right now. The only legit complaint I've heard is they're not going to focus on controlling ISP costs just quality of service and net neutrality for now.
 
Gavv said:
Tech and politics never mix.
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To paraphrase the famous quote from Dune ... When tech and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong – faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thought of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it’s too late. :cool:
 
kbrickley said:
To paraphrase the famous quote from Dune ... When tech and politics travel in the same cart, the riders believe nothing can stand in their way. Their movement becomes headlong – faster and faster and faster. They put aside all thought of obstacles and forget that a precipice does not show itself to the man in a blind rush until it’s too late. :cool:
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I knew it! Super conservative republicans really are just using their genetic memory to channel Leto II and keep humanity on the golden path though our ten thousand years of suffering grinded into our bones building up our resilience for the eventual rise of man-hunting machines.
 
Chas said:
You ever hear of something called a bond?
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pierce-brosnan-james-bond.jpg
 
XvMMvX said:
Who paid the $60,000 per mile to lay the pipe?
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Who pays for the bridge that you don't use? Who pays for the k-12 education that a childless person does not benefit from? Who pays for court salaries that your own family never bothers to need to use because they are not degenerates?

The answer is everyone. Don't like it vote against it, or vote against representatives that support it. And if you lose, guess what that means? Sometimes living in human civilization means that some of the tax money you pay out goes to things you don't benefit from or support, and things you do support may be areas another person does not support. What are you going to do? Act like a libertarian cry baby whining that the entire universe does not bend to your own standards? That's part of the deal with living in modern society. Deal with it.
 
Tybert7, while I agree to a certain extent. This is now why roughly 50% of people's incomes are taken up by some form of tax.

How long until one's entire paycheck stops being "my money" and becomes "our money".

XvMMvX may be a bit "tinfoil" about it, but he's not ENTIRELY wrong. Things like this can be a very slippery slope.
 
Slippery slope arguments are usually wrong because they make unfounded assumptions about the future. EU countries for instance have had higher tax rates than the US for decades but have never progressed to a point of 'my money' becoming 'our money'.

If the taxes are largely spent properly then society in general is improved or maintained which is of benefit to you since you can't have a modern lifestyle without the modern society.
 
mesyn191 said:
Slippery slope arguments are usually wrong because they make unfounded assumptions about the future. EU countries for instance have had higher tax rates than the US for decades but have never progressed to a point of 'my money' becoming 'our money'.

If the taxes are largely spent properly then society in general is improved or maintained which is of benefit to you since you can't have a modern lifestyle without the modern society.
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True. But my opinion of the US government (federal, state and municipal) is about as low as it can go without me getting pissed off then going out and bagging myself a bunch of politicians with a high powered rifle.

My big beef is that the money I'm paying in taxes isn't really bettering quality of life for everyone.

My big beef is that the money I'm paying in taxes is going towards supporting a bunch of indolent, stupid, indiscriminate breeders who abuse the system because they think they're owed something by the world.

That and all the special interest "pork projects" that do nothing more than line some crony's pockets.
 
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