[cadence-]

Americans have been dismantling and weakening their regulatory bodies for quite a while now. The idea is that this will unshackle big corporations and allow them to innovate faster. This sounds like a great idea, until you realize that this “innovation” is most often about increasing profits. And the quality of the product is often sacrificed to increase profits. Just look at what is happening to telecommunication services, with big corporations growing their profits while Americans get stuck with slow and expensive service that becomes relatively worse comparing to other western countries.

Lack of proper regulation (or enforcement) might lead to short-term gains in some economic indicators, but in the long term will lead to worse quality, relative decline of America comparing to other countries, and sometimes -like in this case- avoidable deaths of hundreds of innocent people.

[dahart]

Regulatory capture is one term for this unshackling. I was a bit surprised to see how long and detailed Wikipedia’s list of examples of regulatory capture in the U.S. is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture#United_Stat...

[w1nst0nsm1th]

We could also say that about American healthcare system or how the life expectency is greater in cuba than it is in the US.

[StreamBright]

I think you slightly confuse regulations and enforcement.

[ceejayoz]

Effective regulation requires effective enforcement of regulations.

[StreamBright]

Exactly, I think there is nothing wrong with the legislation but many things wrong with the enforcement.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/faa-knew-another-boeing-737-max...

[jayess]

> Just look at what is happening to telecommunication services, with big corporations growing their profits while Americans get stuck with slow and expensive service that becomes relatively worse comparing to other western countries.

I get 1 gig internet service for $80 a month in a mid-sized American city in the midwest. No complaints here. The offerings just keep getting better and cheaper.

[mchristen]

You must realize that is not the norm though, right?

It wasn't until Google Fiber came into my area that everyone else starting offering competitive pricing, but the vast majority of land in the US is a high speed broadband wasteland.

[o-__-o]

Google fiber never came here. It was Verizon 5g that made Comcast and at&t offer gigabit internet in my neighborhood. I was even ready to shell out the $2k setup fee and Comcast was like mmm no gigabit for you.

So I don’t believe it is subsidy I fully believe it is competition. Google realized that it’s incredibly difficult and expensive to lay fiber and stopped. 5G realized they don’t need fiber to be competitive.

Competition always ends in a win for the customer

[mchristen]

FWIW Google is still rolling fiber in my market.

And you are right, it's not subsidies, it's engineered monopolies causing the problem which is why you see the competition actually working.

Google had to use microtrenching because they couldn't get access to existing rights of ways on telephone poles owned by other providers, mainly AT&T in my area.

[o-__-o]

Depends on your state. My state allows pole sharing but a 48hour line break fix req or other providers can “fix” it for you and etc

Its really expensive to run an isp here

[rconti]

Not only is it EXTREMELY rare to get 1 gig internet anywhere in the US (I just got it in Silicon Valley, 3 months ago) (btw, hopefully this is symmetric FTTH), but that price is extremely far from impressive in the places that get similar speeds.

[o-__-o]

I’ve got 3x1gigabit connections for a total of $160/mo and I live in the us of a!

[tpm]

From an EU country with 1 gig for about $30 a month (city with about 500k people) that doesn't look very cheap.

[w1nst0nsm1th]

Even in Belgium, we have better price, and we have the most extensive prices in EU.

[magduf]

In places like Romania, you can get internet service for a fraction of that price.

[wlesieutre]

I was curious how that compared with prices of other goods/services so I found this: https://checkinprice.com/cost-of-living-in-bucharest-romania...

    Monthly public transport ticket 14.55 USD
    1 ticket to the movies (adult price) 5.70 USD
    High speed internet per month 9.50 USD
    1 month gym subscription 41.30 USD

Assuming that's accurate, other stuff is cheaper than US cities but not by nearly as much as internet service. I could go for a $10/month high speed connection.

[magduf]

Yep, this is exactly my point. A lot of stuff in various European cities isn't cheaper, or not that much cheaper, than internet service, so internet service in America is comparatively overpriced.

Of course, everything else in America is overpriced too, and you're not actually getting a better overall experience for that money. If it were an extremely safe, clean, and well-managed country, then it'd make sense for the cost-of-living to be high, but it isn't: gun violence is an epidemic, environmental regulations are being gutted, and the political leadership is utterly incompetent. And don't get me started on what an utter disaster the healthcare system is.

[sbalea]

It's accurate. Just got back from spending a few weeks at my dad's country house that's wired with 940/450mbps fiber. No problems remote working from there, except, of course, time zone differences. Here's the ISP link, in Romanian unfortunately: https://www.digiromania.ro/servicii/internet/internet-fix/fi.... The price is 40 Lei / month, which is approximately $9.5 at current exchange rates.

[o-__-o]

What kind of speeds do you get to non aws, gcp, and azure sites? I’ve found in my travels that you get ridiculous speeds to “net neutral” sites but once you go off the grid you’re back down to T1 speeds.

Like good luck seeing 10mbps+ to a server in the US. In the us I know my transfer speed is limited by the router I’m hitting. So I can go to .jp sites and still pull 30mbit

[yarrel]

That's expensive compared to elsewhere in the world.

[tyri_kai_psomi]

This is a common misunderstanding I see repeated a lot. The idea isn't unshackling big corporations, it's about unshackling small to medium sized businesses and entrepreneurs. Big corps actually love regulations for the barriers to entry they create, and most of them already have a whole host of regulatory compliance teams armed and ready to dissect the next big regulation that comes.

> Americans get stuck with slow and expensive service that becomes relatively worse comparing to other western countries.

Internet speeds in most suburban, and urban locations in the US have dramatically increased as of late due to increased threat of competition (namely Google Fiber, which prompted AT&T to start heavily developing Fiber, which prompted the Spectrums of the world to increase speeds) and could be further accelerated by deregulation. Regulations are actually the primary reason that keeps cable companies in their monopolistic/oligarlistic positions.

As far as I am aware, the only western countries that have surpassed the US in internet speeds and stability for the majority of its populace are actually east, in countries like S.Korea and Japan.

Interestingly enough, Japan is mostly voluntarily self regulated.

[pjkundert]

It astonishes me that so few HNers have (evidently) tried to start businesses. The staggering regulatory, tax and accounting burden that small business are groaning under is incomprehensible, unless you've experienced it.

I'm a Canadian, in a super-simple business (no payroll, no significant hardward stock) and we are forced to spend double-digit percentages of our gross income just to stay "compliant" with regulations -- and our big, national-level accounting firm is still not certain that we are!

In my opinion, any small business owner that thinks they are complying with regulations is probably deluding themselves; one false step, one "investigation" by tax or regulatory authorities (of, if they get on the bad side of someone in these offices) -- and they are toast.

So, before you go about chanting in the streets for more regulation, think about who you're hurting.

Any company with an office tower, with several floors of lawyers and accountants is laughing at you, for being a "useful idiot", working on their behalf. They can trivially comply.

Because, remember -- they wrote the legislation. Your esteemed member of parliament or congress person doesn't write legislation. At best, they might adjust it after it gets dropped on their desk. The lobbyist, and the corporate lawyers and accountants who oversee them, wrote it, and gave it to your legislator.

[jdavis703]

I'm an HNer who has started and sold my own businesses, I have family who have founded & operated businesses in highly regulated areas, and I'm an investor in startups. I have also been audited by the IRS (the US tax service). One wrong step does not mean you're toast. It means you need to admit and fix your mistake and make sure it doesn't happen again.

I'm sure agencies such as the FAA or DOE might be more of a PITA to deal with. But that's because they're regulating functions that are literally life and death.

[pjkundert]

You sound very successful; unfortunately, most small businesses remain small. Year by year, the ever-increasing drain of time, energy and money expended to accomplish nothing of value (to the owner, their families who often work in the business, or to their clients) increases.

Unless they quickly cross this "chasm of despair", it is inevitable that the small business owner will simply give up and close the business.

Soon, all you have left is dead-eyed, heartless corporate strip-miners, laying waste the landscape (see: modern industrial livestock production and processing, vs. local farmers and butchers). And they have a very limited risk of any viable competitors crossing the chasm.

There is one thing that could change this -- remove the "economies of scale" for compliance to all regulatory and tax requirements. This means: the amount it costs the company to comply is calculated to be in direct proportion to their gross revenue.

If it costs a small business 10% of their gross revenue to comply, but it costs Apple, Eli Lilly, Exxon, Walmart etc. only .1% of their gross revenue, then taxes would be levied/refunded to ensure that the regulatory burden is equitable.

You would be able see the big corporation's lobbyists lining up in Washington, DC from orbit, to get the regulatory burdens on small businesses reduced!

[rsynnott]

So, on the high end, the US is fine, and thus is does fairly well on mean speeds (top 10 on some metrics). However, if your internet in the US is bad, it's often really, _really_ bad. In areas without competition, providers still sometimes use ADSL1! (Max 8 down, <1 up, if you're lucky).

In general, the tendency in most European countries has been to force wholesaling and/or LLU, and set minimum standards for both; this has generally at least wiped out ADSL1. The FCC is somewhat lighter touch.

[jquery]

How is American internet when taking into account its rural-bias and sheer size? My understanding is it's reasonably good, all things considered (not that it couldn't be improved, especially in dense metros). I remember seeing an apples-to-apples comparison chart a while ago, but I can't find it. I understand we're 9th in the world on average in 2017[1], which I believe is not a bad place to be considering our density. For comparison, the highly dense city-state of Singapore has a non-mobile average broadband rate about double ours. Our speed also rose 40% that year so we may have moved up the rankings.

[1]https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinmurnane/2017/08/14/speedte...

[14]

Side not as a Canadian...you can bet the farm the the second satellite internet becomes mainstream, Bell Telus and Rogers will be shitting them selves because they provide the shittiest service for the worst price you can imagine and just like BCTel had us by the balls at one point the second competition came in they were done for and people left in droves. I really hope it pushes these crappy business to offer better service for the price.

[Sanzig]

We're veering off-topic, but I was very pleased to see that the CRTC effectively told the incumbents to shove it with last month's telecom order setting wholesale access rates:

https://crtc.gc.ca/eng/archive/2019/2019-288.htm

Background - incumbent ISPs in Canada are required to sell last-mile access to third-party ISPs. Third parties pay a speed-dependent per-user access fee as well as an aggregated per-Mbit capacity fee which defines the size of the pipe at the carrier hotel where they interface with the incumbent network.

The incumbents were asked to provide rates they thought would be fair for wholesale access, as well as financial justification that those fees were reasonable. Their responses contained a range of creative accounting features and omissions. In response, the CRTC eviscerated the incumbents in their decision and cut the capacity fees almost in half, and set the access fees to a flat rate regardless of connection speed. They also made the new rates retroactive to 2016.

If the order stands (the incumbents are doubtless going to challenge it), we should be seeing some significantly cheaper internet options from the third-party ISPs in the near future.

[merb]

well is ADSL1 that bad? in most cases (non video on demand) bandwidth is never the problem. no matter how good your bandwidth is as soon as the latency is bad, it won't get better.

[oarsinsync]

There are times when my mobile speeds degrade to around 1-2Mbps (typical ADSL1 sync speeds), with variable latency depending on how much throughput is being used (typical ADSL1 experience). Webpages (being the insanely bloated things that they are today) stop loading at that point, and I have to wait for my phone to sync to a different tower. This often happens during my commute when I hit congested towers. It's annoying that the experience on a 56k dialup connection in 1999 was better than it is on a 4G mobile phone in 2019.

[rsynnott]

Yes, ADSL1 is that bad. 8Mbit/sec is the best case, but closer to 1 or 2 is common depending on distance from exchange. About a 30ms latency penalty, IIRC.

[tompccs]

Some of the problems are unique to America - for instance, states each have their own regulations, as well as federal ones, which makes nationwide roll-out far costlier. You also have way more geographic concentration of homes in Europe, which makes the ROI for roll-out over a particular area way better.

UK's utilities are generally quite good (despite grumbling), which I think is because regulators focus on creating frictionless marketplaces - ie, easy to switch, providers can't obfuscate costs, proliferation of comission-based switching services.

[rsynnott]

I don't think the "US is big" argument really works when it comes to forcing telcos to get rid of their 20th century DSLAMs. Like, obviously ideally they'd be upgrading to something semi-modern, but even swapping out the last of the ADSL1 for ADSL2+, like it was 2006, would be an improvement.

[minikites]

>Big corps actually love regulations for the barriers to entry they create, and most of them already have a whole host of regulatory compliance teams armed and ready to dissect the next big regulation that comes.

So then why do big corporations spend so much time and money lobbying against regulation?

[jtc331]

It’s more nuanced than either of these ways of putting it. They lobby for specific regulation packages that work well for keeping competitors out.

Regulation does set up barriers to entry, generally by definition. Needing to have lawyers e during compliance etc. is expensive. So $BIGCORP’s ideal position is regulation that they can absorb easily but smaller competitors can’t.

[pixl97]

And I will ask, why do big corporations spend so much time and money lobbying for regulations that benefit them?

[mobilefriendly]

I live in a DC exurb and literally do not have land-based internet access at home. The US broadband regime is a massive failure. It delivers neither high speeds nor universal access.

[mannykannot]

> Big corps actually love regulations for the barriers to entry they create...

When they can get regulations that have that effect, then they are indeed in favor of them, but in this case, Boeing was doing all it could to avoid and subvert regulation in its haste to catch up with its competitor.

[peteradio]

I don't think its useful to say big corps vs small/medium corps without specifying industry.