[quasse]

What value do the ISPs actually add to the market?

It seems like a government granted middleman position to me, where I'd rather just purchase service from the government or the government's selected infrastructure manager.

Presumably there's already some base price for service that this infrastructure provider is charging everyone (a controller monopolist), what are you gaining on top of that by having a second middleman that is presumably also making a profit?

[ian_rees]

> What value do the ISPs actually add to the market?

They're the main point of contact for the end customers; as a typical customer, you only interact with Chorus (the public company that provides the fibre/copper in most of NZ) when they send technicians out to work on the connection upstream from your house.

So, the ISP handles billing, tech support, DNS, email, liaising with Chorus, etc. Different ISPs offer different service tiers, billing arrangements, options for buying/leasing the modem, etc.

Our residential electricity works similarly, which leads to retail companies offering both - for example I get one bill each month to pay for both fibre and electricity.

[jjeaff]

Given the government's track record with some big projects like healthcare.gov which is still a nightmare to use, I would not trust them to be an ISP. In fact, in the past, some states did (or still do) have their own ISP that they use at a lot of schools and public facilities. Ours was always slow with frequent outages.

I think a hybrid approach with the government managing and maintaining the physical lines and allowing isps to plug in and pay rent is the way to go. The ISP rent should be enough to cover the cost of physical line maintenance.

[Larrikin]

What are your specific complaints about healthcare.gov? I was out of the country when it initially rolled out, but have had no problems with it the past 2 years since I've moved back and needed to get it.

[icelancer]

Washington State exchange is notoriously terrible in terms of downtime, availability, and customer service. I won't go into what I dealt with for six months using their service vs. my previous low-cost insurer that left the market due to regulations, but it was an absolute nightmare for me and my family. Small business owners got absolutely screwed in our state.

[bcoates]

packet transit, installation, maintenance, customer service. Also most less technical ISP customers get a lot of value out of ISP managed equipment rental and don't want to buy and maintain a router-AP themselves.

Local loop unbundling for phone and DSL service was extremely successful in the US, there's not a lot of reason to think a government bid process would have done better than CLECs did.

[bloaf]

The most immediate one to come to mind is that a private ISP can't indict me.