this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2024
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None of this would be a problem if the government didn't sell us out for what we already paid for and allowed these vultures into the system. It should have be national from the start. It costs them about nothing to have data run through those lines. All those caps exist purely to garner profit.
There's a better idea really. Let the government not take money from the budget on infrastructure. Let it not give that money to companies, whatever the conditions.
Let it just fine to the ground those ISPs who prevent competition in their areas.
You know, sometimes you only need a gun and can do without that kind word.
It's a profitable business, so if competitive environment is created, there will be infrastructural improvements.
It's not government's job to directly finance private businesses.
Mostly correct take IMO. I don't blame ISPs for trying. I blame government (and not necessarily just federal) regulations/regulators for allowing it.
I grew up in NY. We paid a boatload in taxes to make fiber happen everywhere. IT. NEVER. HAPPENED.
NY is strongly Democrat. Acting like Republicans are solely the problem is asinine, and nothing stops states from enacting their own laws within the state. If California and NY made it happen. Guess what would basically happen throughout the whole country?
I would just say, I do blame ISP's for trying. It's unethical to try and squeeze every cent out of your customers, community and country. It's never just "business". Businesses are operated by people while exploiting people. It's not a cold hearted machine doing the thinking, it's normal people making these unethical decisions.
Yeah point to me where I said this was the fault of the Rubes? Because I didn't say that. This was a joint captilistic operation to severe untold amounts of wealth from the working class. You paid all them taxes and nothing happened because the ISPs decides to pocket the public funds instead of doing anything and the government let them.
I didn't say you did... But the original article DOES try to paint it all on the Republicans. You know...
I was taking your point and adapting it specifically to my thoughts on the original article.
I can only agree with the original article. The internet is a series of tubes.
Nah it's more like a Starbucks
I said that because that was a Republican argument against Net Neutrality a little while back. Hmm, why are Republicans always against Net Neutrality? Hmm..
Naw, last thing I want is the government running our internet. Hell, it would have never kicked off 30 years ago if not for private enterprise. Back then your average Joe knew jack about this new "information superhighway". Voters would have never agreed to fund it, let alone blow it up as fast as the capitalists did. And yes, we've entered the "last stage" of that particular game. Enshitiffication is well under way.
As of 10-years ago or so (thoughts?), internet access is a need. Not as important as power or water, but it should clearly be regulated like a public utility. I've worked for a few ISPs, so I know the devil in the details, but:
tl;dr: Government's role is to dial it in, not take it over.
i currently have one of the few municipal Internet plans in the United States.
best Internet I've ever had. gigabit symmetric fiber for a flat $60/mo. no fees, no outages, no data caps.
during the one outage i experienced in the three years I've had them i was quickly able to find multiple places to see status updates about the hardware issue they had and it was fixed in under an hour.
they also have a 2.5 gig and a 10 gig option for reasonable prices. I don't think many other companies even offer anything above 1 gig outside of business packages.
it will be difficult for me to move anywhere else. with the work that i do this has been life-changing. come to Longmont Colorado, we have good Internet, amazing mountain sunsets, and lots of tacos.
i love my government Internet. it's one of the biggest things keeping me here.
Where do you think the Internet came from? It was a government project that began as Arpanet. And we would never have had it opened to the public if it wasn’t for Al Gore.
We can also thank Tim Berners-Lee for giving us the WWW
This is a bad take. Several cities in my state banded together to create a municipal fiber network called UTOPIA. The fiber is owned by the cities that bought in and is used by several different ISPs. The ISPs pay UTOPIA for access, and then they have to compete with each other for subscribers based on performance, features, and cost. Like, there's genuine market competition for internet! If the state owns the infrastructure and then forces the playing field to be level, then everyone benefits. People in the cities with UTOPIA got fast fiber internet waaay faster than anyone else, they have a plethora of choices (want a static IP and a business plan in your residence? There's an ISP that sells that!) at great prices, ISPs get access to subscribers without having to maintain fiber, and the cities who bought in get to make money from this and attract residents and businesses who benefit from the service.
My city didn't buy in. Google Fiber eventually came to town so I was able to kick Comcast out, but I am uneasy about what'll happen if Google decides to drop their ISP business. If I was in a city with UTOPIA, it would just be one ISP folding and I'd be able to pick a new one and switch over right away.
EDIT: cool, Cory Doctorow wrote a blag post about it: https://doctorow.medium.com/https-pluralistic-net-2024-05-16-symmetrical-10gb-for-119-utopia-347e64869977
UTOPIA users have access to 18 different ISPs. I feel like that speaks for itself right there. This is the future we all should have had.
What a ridiculous take, tax payers ABSOLUTELY DID PAY FOR IT! WTF?
Private enterprises pocketed the money we gave them, and didn't provide what they promised.
Fuck the corporations and their bootlickers.
Yeah I can't agree with that after decades of ISP dick jacking, public theft, and absolute neglect. They may have burned bright but they also burned fast. Internet service is such bullshit now when it could just be a utility bill, and we can't even get at that cause utilities are fucked private corpos too trying to ratfuck the system so they can continue to charge plebs for energy we have figured out how to capture for free so now we all have to die so some silver spooned diaper can continue to get his.
LOL, you get the award for most uninformed and ignorant comment of the day. Did you get your views on and the history of the Internet from Ben Shapiro or something?
I can think of well over 400 billion reasons why private industry control of the internet infrastructure is a bad idea.