Yes.

Seems like a good idea

Asking the site that has been the MOST wrong on internet regulation is certainly something you can do, but what ever redditors think the opposite policy will be the correct one 😂.

Net neutrality anyone ? 😂

Regulate?

We should take them from private rich greedy crooks, and make them public utilities.

Reddit opposes Net Neutrality? I had no idea.

LOL! I’ve heard of municipal broadband before. I have no idea if it’s generally thought to be a good idea but definitely worth discussing.

I know, right? Is it me or has there been like zero discussion of this?

I'd rather we have true public internet. The state can be it's own ISP.

It's 100% a good idea. Everything that everyone "needs" should be public, as in access to needs should not be driven by market pricing. It's the most obvious place to land at if you care about people other than yourself to any degree.

Food, Medicine, Housing, Clean Water, Internet access, safe and efficient transit, Energy, it's all 100% necessary to live a comfortable life today. All of our policy should be designed around guaranteeing access to all needs for everyone. Instead we have hellscape capitalism where like 10k families have 50% of the wealth and 160 million Americans are a month away from destitution.

State public utility commissions regulate telecommunications services through guidance laid out by the FCC, which currently designates broadband service as an “information service” and not a communications service. This means it is not subject to Title II of the 1934 Telecommunications Act, which designates landline telephone providers as “common carriers” who are charged with establishing universal service of landline telephone. The problem is the internet’s current definition by the FCC, which leaves no room for regulation currently.

Given recent utility price hikes, even that may not sufficient to control pricing.

I’ve been paying $40/mo for xfinity for the past 2 years. Not an intro price, and not the most basic plan. Idk what y’all are doing, obviously not doing enough shopping around for deals. Look into different credit cards and their offers, that’s where you get the best prices for things. If you pay with a certain credit card, you pay a significantly reduced price for things.

Do you live somewhere with internet options? When FIOS came to the neighborhood, I could get good cheap internet. Before that there were no options to shop around. Not sure about other neighborhoods.

That's a nice idea but it raises some serious privacy / ethical concerns that would need to be addressed. There's pretty much nothing nefarious in my internet traffic but I sure as shit that cops have to jump through a bunch of hoops and compel a judge before they can see it.

Removing that figurative firewall would be.....not great.

Not to mention you're empowering the state to exploit the lack of net neutrality on traffic it deems inappropriate. And just the simple reality we've observed where things managed by the government are not inherently better or more efficient.

Any push to change the FCC definition?

I do but I’ve never used anything but xfinity growing up so it’s part loyalty, part capital one deal that led me to using xfinity. Capital one also has another card that pays 3% back on streaming services so I have those automatically come out of that and I essentially get a discount because I use that card. I’d like to think that I’m attempting to beat back inflation with little things like this.

The Obama admin’s FCC was able to get broadband classified as Title II in 2015, but it was revoked by the Trump Admin soon after. I’m not sure if any internet regulation was able to be implemented at a state level in that time span. To the best of my knowledge there’s no real push to reclassify broadband currently, however the FCC created the Affordable Connectivity Program which is a $30 monthly subsidy towards internet for low income consumers so that’s a start I guess.

And our internet will then be just as shit as the govt services e.g. mbta. I'm not a fan of private internet but having lived in countries that have public internet, it's absolute shit

I guess I’d trust that firewalls can be maintained between government agencies. That’s like the whole separation between, say, prosecutors and judges.

Super-helpful, thanks. And I guess based on what you wrote that the FCC truly does limit the states; I’ll do some Googling to see if there have been any creative legal attempts to do an end-run around them (or batter through them lol). Appreciate the insight.

Government services are dope. Fed came in and smacked some sense into the MBTA and made them fix shit. Keolis and the lack of oversight of the MBTA are the problem, not the government.

Source: I drink state water, consume municipal contract power, and actively visit state parks and beaches.

Would love to dunk on Cambridge's inability to act.

Norwood has municipal internet, tv, and electricity. Best service I've ever had in my life and it's not even close.

Norwood has municipal internet and it's great. Id sooner eat a plate of my own shit then get back on Comcast or Verizon.

There’s no way to win. I pay $118/month for 1000 down and like 20 up? Internet only. Then another $60 for YouTube tv. Which doesn’t include everything.

well considering my electic bill pretty much doubled im not exactly sure what you think the state is doing to "regulate pricing"

Yeah I know it sucks, but what would have happened to rates without the regulator?

does it cap increases or something? im genuinely curious, cause a rate hike of 100% seems like they can charge whatever they want

Ugh I know, it sucks. May not help much but consider getting the lowest speed possible and buying your own modem/router if you haven’t already.

https://www.wsj.com/graphics/faster-internet-not-worth-it/

Basically utilities are allowed to recover their operating expenses plus earn a reasonable return on their capital investments. See here for a quick overview: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_ratemaking

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i mean national grid is a nightmare... do I want some bid out and then stuck with the service those 1-2 providers give? I mean dont this companies comcast, RCN, Verizon etc. all have to have agreements with the towns they are in?

It's fucking amazing. Fast, cheap, reliable. I've had it for 2+ years and I think it's gone down, like, once.

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Price per speed has fallen by a factor of…I don’t know…1000 in the last decade? And stability has been significantly improved.

What’s the problem?

No problem. I do think broadband should be regulated to some extent, but idk how much I would want an ISP to look like currently regulated utility companies like eversource or national grid because they are pretty much monopolies. There should definitely be billing and termination protection for consumers and I think state government should be able to regulate the prices of basic plans, but I’m not quite sure how that could be implemented tbh.

Instead of governments at varying levels regulating services similar to utilities, it should own them. This doesn't just apply to ISPs but also to cable TV, electricity, gas, telephone, cellular telephone, everything. The federal government should also own and operate google and amazon.

Folks are paying wildly different rates for such a basic service. Our Internet costs aren’t internationally competitive. Poor people can’t afford service. More speed arguably isn’t what’s needed.

That’s a good question. Idk exactly what municipalities agree with the cable/telecom companies. Anyone?

What does municipal TV look like? Do they just rebroadcast Verizon/Comcast content, or something else?

Don’t forget Reddit.

I don't think reddit has engaged in the monopolistic and anti-competitive tactics of google and amazon.

Haha, I was kidding.

Yes, and everyone should write to their elected officials letting them know this. While you’re at it, write to your councilors letting them know you’re in support of municipal broadband :)

I disagree with or dispute every sentence.

All ears if you’d care to elaborate….

It’s shambolic that a city which is so quick to tout itself as “high tech” and “progressive” doesn’t have municipal fiber

I don't believe people are paying wildly different rates. Most people are paying +/- $30/mo for comparable service.

Our internet is internationally competitive. This is especially true when you consider the fact that the US is so huge and lacks population density. Plowing fiber in rural areas is very expensive. It can cost tens of thousands of dollars just to reach a single house.

Internet costs are the least of a poor person's concerns. Regardless, there are already govt programs that assist with internet expenditures for poor people.

We will always need more internet speed. More speed enables new technologies. Imagine if we were still stuck with 56kb internet. It'd be almost useless, even if it was free.

I don't have cable tv (or landline) but it seems to have all the same channel packages you would expect.

Here: https://norwoodlight.com/wp-content/uploads/PDFDirectory/NumericalCLU092022.pdf

Xfinity cost me more than double my power bill. Gonna get a dvr thru their office window soon enough

Well, yes. Obviously.

Instead we give tax money to Comcast and Verizon, who then don't spend it on infrastructure, who split up territory like cartels, and trap us in an upward financially devastating spiral.

It's a shame that Starry is basically dead. It stopped just like, inches from my apartment. I have literally no options for internet other than Verizon, in the second biggest tech city in the country. That's FUCKED

They had this in Finland when I visited Helsinki literally a decade ago. We stayed with my partner at the time’s grandma who was like 87 and had dementia and had no clue what the internet was and she had high speed wifi in her home lmao. It was convenient and made sense which is probably why we don’t have that here.

I understand your opinion but am not really convinced. As one data point, my sister didn’t know how to play the game with her cable company, and as soon as she did, her bill went from like $95 to $45 for basic Internet. Mine’s like $75 for the same service from the same carrier in the next town over. These arbitrary fluctuations are nuts for a basic necessity. You said you don’t think swings of $30 are a big deal, but yeah, they are. You can quibble about speed/cost of living in the many international comparisons of Internet costs that show the US at best is average, but I think it’d be challenging to make the case that we’re leaders. I agree rural connectivity is costly and a continuing problem. Maybe 5G will help? Not an expert there but I’m open to repeating what we did to electrify rural America, and in any case I am talking about Massachusetts, a pretty dense state. If you think Internet costs aren’t a big issue for low-income neighbors, I would invite you to reconsider, because I know from family experience they can be. Hell, folks can struggle to buy food, let alone pay Internet bills. Obviously Internet speed has marched on, to great benefit, and will continue to do so, but for the use case of household Internet, speed needs are nowhere near what’s on offer now. Even the slowest plans can handle multiple highest-resolution Netflix streams, etc. Right now there’s a lot of deceptive marketing falsely claiming households will notice speeds above, say, 100/250 Mbps, meaning that faster Internet is mostly about overcharging folks for speed they don’t need.

… people pay for youtubetv?

Why hasn't Biden unrevoked it?

I’m guessing lack of public pressure?

It’s really simple, the broadband companies literally fund whatever party is in power and hire armies of lawyers to write laws that then get passed so they never have to compete in the market.

Then they literally brag about being against capitalist competition to their investors and insiders.

The idea that you can create public competition against a private monopoly with an unlimited money printing machine who then bribe politicians (both parties) to pass laws to underwrite or outright fund their infrastructure…

I mean look at least Elon bought twitter right? Lol

Department of public utilities are the same folks responsible for regulating safety on the T….

The city should run municipal river but Verizon is too deep in Boston’s pants as being a pilot digital city with the 5g support for the city services. It’s terrible and a shame the city did that.

If you're interested in this, I strongly recommend reading "The Division of Light and Power" by Dennis Kucinich about his time as Mayor of Cleveland.. Talk about fighting windmills, man.. but he get limitless props from me for fighting against big business and for the people.

It's actually a convenient and comparatively less expensive option.

Based on what u/thedoormaan wrote below, it sounds like one party is trying to help, while another isn’t.

I’ve been paying $80 for 1000 up and 1000 down for the past 2 years with FiOS. Sounds like Comcast and RCN just want to screw people.

Does RCN still do cable TV?

Yes.

The price of internet has fallen on average over the last 25 years. Yes, that's right, internet service has averaged nearly -1% inflation per year for 25 years.

Additionally, there are programs for low income households that help get internet for free or cheap (eg Affordable Connectivity Program).

So again, I disagree. While ISPs certainly aren't perfect, I think there are much bigger issues.

I appreciate your willingness to be like the only one in this thread to state an opposing view. I’m actually kinda surprised no one’s raised stifling innovation as an objection. I don’t have your sources but it’s plausible that Internet costs have declined over the years. But that’s not really the core question, which instead is: Have they declined as fast as they should have? Yes, the subsidies are helpful, but no, I don’t think they’re a complete solution, and yes, of course there are bigger fish to fry (e.g., climate change). Thanks again.

RCN just jacked my rate for that speed from $45 to $105/month, and I did not catch it fast enough to avoid paying for the first two months.

Switched (back) to FiOS - I hate Verizon but they were offering the same service for $70/mo (after various discounts like, oh you have cellular with us) WITH A TEN YEAR RATE LOCK.

Man, I hate dealing with Verizon, but a ten year rate lock means 9 years I don’t have to be hyper vigilant about this BS.

Not really a start, that's tax payer money going to a corporation with nearly zero competition.

> Have they declined as fast as they should have?

I always find this thought experiment interesting. It's fun thinking about the path dependencies of tech and gov't policy.

In hindsight, it's quite clear to me that given where we are today with the current state of internet technology, it would have been beneficial for maximal government intervention. We'd probably have broader coverage, lower prices, and the fast speeds we're starting to see today would've been rolled out more quickly if the government just built it all itself.

But this is in hindsight, and doesn't necessarily apply to the future. It very well may be the case for the intermediate future, too, but I would generally bet on the (sort of) free market over long time horizons when it comes to things that aren't quite broken. Housing and health care and energy (for f*cks sake, can we just utilize the super high energy density of uranium already!) = badly broken. Internet = 👌🤷 pretty decent.

This is an underrated comment!

He’s still trying to get the deciding vote on the committee (Gigi Sohn) appointed. Republicans are holding up the process, for exactly the reasons stated above.

I don’t think your argument that if it was state owned, prices would be stabilized. There are broadly to paths, municipal level, or federal. At the municipal level you’d be relying on individual municipalities to set up and maintain the broadband system. You’d get widely varying quality, procedures, and prices, just based how those locales manage this ish. At the state or federal level, you’d have fewer fiefdoms of policy, but then the prices and costs would vary widely because of political pork barreling. Some places would get economic boondoggle projects because their Congressperson is stellar, while others place few burdens and both end up paying the same? That’s not really right.

Yes the major broadband provides should be more heavily regulated but it should be in a way that forces them to compete more directly with each other and introduce other competitors into the market.

Another issue is technical choice, what if in 10 years satellite internet becomes the default Choice for access? Without competition or choice those determinations aren’t made and we end up locking into legacy tech hindering development. This akin to telephone access in the ‘developing’ world. Many of these countries don’t have land line infrastructure because they skipped straight to cellular.

What I and most other people are talking about is potential state (not municipal or federal) regulation (not ownership) of ISPs. The direction of that regulation takes depends I’d think on whether broadband constitutes a natural monopoly, as other utilities do. If it is in fact a natural monopoly, encouraging competition might be a fool’s errand. Innovation might indeed be an issue, but is there evidence it’s being stifled in already-regulated utility markets? These I’d think are the relevant questions.

This is why we can’t have nice things. :-/

I think it’s pretty reasonable to look at energy providers in electricity to see how particular regulation/utility status can hinder innovation. MA opened up its electricity markets in the 90s which cause more generators to enter the market, and then further liberalized generator regs to allow for wind, solar, and attempt at hydro. The variety of alternative sources wasn’t available until a variety of measures were introduced to allow more players in the market. IMO another issue with them being ‘natural monopolies’ is the products are able to be differentiated, somewhat technically but also business services (contract length, bundling, etc). Could you put regs in place that would limit those options and thus push them toward NM? Sure but I don’t think it would be popular. Personally, I switch from xfinity to Verizon recently and it’s made a world of difference.

It would be very difficult for the state to pass regulations that don’t end up superseded by FCC or other federal regulation, muni ownership is the only real way around that, which is why I jumped there. Your original prompt didn’t raise that prospect just some other commenters so my bad.

ISPs make alot from their high profit margins and government subsidies to build infrastructure. Something should be done to lower prices. One way of doing that is to end local monopolies. In most of the country if you want broadband then you only have one company to choose from.

No worries, and I think we basically agree. u/thedoormaan summarized the FCC issues and also suggested ISP regulation, but probably not exactly how we regulate electricity, for example. I totally agree with this approach. Electricity itself was an interesting example of decomposing the natural monopoly analysis to distinguish between those parts that truly naturally monopolistic (delivery) from those that aren’t (generation). I don’t think broadband can be similarly decomposed, but maybe one day?

I've really enjoyed Starry so far and it's been no bullshit same price never had an outage. And the customer support was excellent when I had to deal with them during setup

I think the problem is that broadband might be a natural monopoly, like electricity delivery, precisely because of the infrastructure you mention. https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=3267

Why can't they just skip committee stuff and just bring the vote to the floor.

Anyways, just gave $20 to Warnock. Hopefully they can just get to 51 votes and control the committees.

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Damn man, seriously? You must not know anyone in a community that has taken on the project. I, sadly, do not live in a place that has it either so I have worship at the teat of Comcast. My brother lives 20 minutes away in another town with municipal fiber and pays $75/month for gigabit up/down. I pay $125/m to Comcast for 300/10

OMFG. Eff Comcast, that’s obscene. I also don’t have municipal broadband and this is why I’m raising the question.

Yeah, tell me about it. I unfortunately live in a place where Comcast is the only “high speed” internet provider available. Nowadays “high speed” doesn’t mean what it did in 2005. It just means, useable internet in 2022. I work from home. Like most people my family streams our entertainment, etc. My other options are literally fucking DSL (there’s 2005 again) or satellite at a fraction of the speed for the same price. It’s a racket and I hate it.

I know this is r/Boston. I don’t live in the metro area or even the east side of the state anymore but we are all victims of this to some degree. Affordable and “high speed” internet access is as much a necessity today as all utilities. It’s not a luxury. Municipalities need to take note, especially if they want to attract residents.

It wouldn't be necessary if the state did its job of not tolerating monopolies.

But sadly the local governments were heavily lobbied to create monopolies.

Youre downvoted but youre correct. Im in networking, the infrastructure is already horrid, would be worse knowing how shit our govt is with these things. Govt can definitely already spy on the citizens but making it even easier to manipulate would be a bad idea. Plus like you said, opportunity for censorship.

Heavy regulation is the way to go but itll never happen. The big companies are the only ones who can afford to build the lines. Currently what the “solution” is, is to force the big isp’s to wholesale at cost the usage of the lines to third parties who can then “compete”

They wont and dont already

Your advice is not bad but damn, that article SUCKS. Most of it is wrong

One interesting note here is that Starry (a Boston-based WISP) is suffering serious financial trouble right now, and it may be possible for the city to pick their assets and staff up seriously on the cheap.

>It's a shame that Starry is basically dead

They really overexpanded and tried to get into single-family markets that they couldn't serve economically; unfortunately, they're in really bad financial straits right now.

One interesting possibility that this might enable is for the city (or cities - they're in a number of markets) to pick their assets up for really cheap. It'd facilitate continuation of service and could serve as a jumping off point for community internet.

Yeah. Even ONE competitor can be a game changer. I had RCN at $35/mo for 500/15. They upped it to $80/mo after the contract. Then, I cancelled, my gf signed up with RCN for… $30/mo for 600/15. We have Comcast in the area too but I’d rather use anyone else if possible. But just having another name to put on the account is great.

The state should just rollout their own ISP and undercut the shit out of RCN and Comcast. It would save residents a boatload and the state could probably even make money off it after the initial rollout.

Haha, in general what’s the main part that’s incorrect?

The state as the ISP is a bad idea. Too much power given to the state. It needs to be more regulated like the power grid but not actually run by the state.

It failed in Braintree. They sold the internet wing of Braintree Electric to Comcast this year.

I agree it's a good idea but it needs to actually succeed

I think people really fail to grasp just how much work and manpower goes into an ISP. Are they subcontracting out installation, maintenance, repairs, support, and all the back-end shit that needs to exist?

I've worked with a LOT of ISPs and the municipal ones like Norwood Light has are a clear step down in terms of pretty much every factor except for cost. Available service, reliability, support, repair time, etc are all garbage.

what power would this give the state that it otherwise doesn't have today?

I don’t know if there’s easier ways to do this. But one idea I had was that the state guarantees a certain level of internet connectivity anywhere in the state. If someone isn’t getting that, the state loans them a starlink dish and they pay some fee cheaper than any internet provider. The internet providers would then be incentivized to finish running fiber throughout the state so they can continue receiving revenue.

If you live in a neighborhood or city/town with multiple options for internet it’s fine.

I lived in Hyde Park and I could get RCN or Verizon FIOS and RCN was cheap it was $29.99 a month.

I live in Mansfield now and we can get xfinity or Verizon. Xfinity was a ripoff, I went with Verizon $39.99 a month for 300mbps up and down.

It’s sucks for people in places with only xfinity which I think is the north end, and Cambridge. No options there.

Interesting. I was talking mostly about ratemaking but this also may have merit.

Their testing is flawed long story short. I can break it down later maybe but essentially streaming services can detect the bandwidth on customer side and pass off different types of bit rate. Its not just about resolution.

Same, and I agree

Noted! You shared the main point, no need to belabor. :-)

Well the problem I have isn’t the rate but I just can’t get anything better than 1 Mbps DSL. If they said “you can’t charge more than $10/Mbps” that might also work.

Im a couple towns over. V jealous

It’s your tax dollars at work!