The only description of what that $15 per month actually buys is broadband. The idea of a maximum price cap seems kind of ridiculous compared to a minimum service criteria, like a free meal at a soup kitchen compared to a minimum service guarantee.
You are not driving prices down by regulating them, you are driving them down by introducing more choice and competition, something that usa ISP market fundamentally lacks.
> You are not driving prices down by regulating them, you are driving them down by introducing more choice and competition
Deregulation has proven _not_ to work for internet service providers. They're natural monopolies and oligopolies and as such antithetic to free market competition.
There are some relatively good examples around the world of regulated, utility like fiber networks in particular that _do_ work at actually encouraging free market competition between internet service providers.
> Deregulation has proven _not_ to work for internet service providers.
Proved by whom exactly? It works perfectly in the rest of the world. I've got a choice of 5 internet providers. People living closer to the central part of the city have 10 to 15.
On the one hand, Eric Schmidt says the Telcos have overbid in the 5G auction and don't have cash left to roll out new networks without price rise, and on the other hand he pushes price caps. If they go through in NYC why should the rest of the country also not require it? And whats Big Telco's response then?
Just a weird ass character pushing random shit just like he did at Google.
I wonder if it would make more sense to just have a profit cap. Like “internet must be provided to low-income New Yorkers at cost + 10%”. That way it’s always at least profitable to reach more people.
The predictable result of the above is plenty of people getting cheap internet, but perhaps many people won’t get it at all because it doesn’t make any sense for Verizon to get the internet to them if they can’t recoup their investment - so they simply won’t. The above “profit cap” preserves the incentives for Verizon while achieving the boost in consumer surplus.
If they increase everyone's salaries in Comcast by 50% then "at cost" increases by 50%. Or they could order 5-star Michelin dining delivered by helicopters to WFH employees and call it a "business meal", and "at cost" would be higher as well.
The way to maximize profits in a "cost + 10%" scenario is to maximize cost x market, thus maximizing the 10% x market. Setting an indirect target is the quickest way to having a bad economic policy--if you want affordable internet legislate it and let the market figure out efficient ways to achieve it.
Good point. There has to be a better way than price caps though, price controls are well studied and have a tendency to reduce aggregate consumer surplus
Just dropping by to mention nycmesh.net an amazing self-organized Internet Service Provider. They're not everywhere just yet but where they are they're for sure providing the best (volunteered) service for the lowest money.
They're currently connected to two Internet Exchange points and have hundreds of antennas. See their map: https://www.nycmesh.net/map/
We need more self-organized cooperatives like that, whether in the ISP world (like guifi.net or ffdn.org federation) or in other areas of life. That's the only way we can effectively defeat capitalism without relying on our corrupt governments.
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There are some relatively good examples around the world of regulated, utility like fiber networks in particular that _do_ work at actually encouraging free market competition between internet service providers.
Proved by whom exactly? It works perfectly in the rest of the world. I've got a choice of 5 internet providers. People living closer to the central part of the city have 10 to 15.
On the one hand, Eric Schmidt says the Telcos have overbid in the 5G auction and don't have cash left to roll out new networks without price rise, and on the other hand he pushes price caps. If they go through in NYC why should the rest of the country also not require it? And whats Big Telco's response then?
Just a weird ass character pushing random shit just like he did at Google.
$15 for Internet service for all isn’t out of reach.
Dead Comment
The predictable result of the above is plenty of people getting cheap internet, but perhaps many people won’t get it at all because it doesn’t make any sense for Verizon to get the internet to them if they can’t recoup their investment - so they simply won’t. The above “profit cap” preserves the incentives for Verizon while achieving the boost in consumer surplus.
If they increase everyone's salaries in Comcast by 50% then "at cost" increases by 50%. Or they could order 5-star Michelin dining delivered by helicopters to WFH employees and call it a "business meal", and "at cost" would be higher as well.
Too easy to abuse.
Queens, Bronx, half of Brooklyn (aka east new york), etc... even Manhattan has lots of low income housing, and of course Harlem
You'd be surprised, but NYC is one of those places where there are more low-er income folks than most other cities.
They're currently connected to two Internet Exchange points and have hundreds of antennas. See their map: https://www.nycmesh.net/map/
We need more self-organized cooperatives like that, whether in the ISP world (like guifi.net or ffdn.org federation) or in other areas of life. That's the only way we can effectively defeat capitalism without relying on our corrupt governments.
NYC drivers are also at it with https://drivers.coop
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26850504.
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