| What we need is to move all last mile infrastructure to municipal broadband. US ISPs have been an unmitigated disaster that have exposed everything wrong with how infrastructure is built under a capitalist organization of the economy. Monopoly franchise agreements, rent-seeking, bundling of cable channels, lobbying for laws against net neutrality, lobbying for laws against municipal broadband and lobbying for laws against "overbuilds" in general. On top of that ISPs place significant hurdles over anyone who gets permission to build. This can be as simple as the process by which cables are strung up to poles. In some places each pole may require a separate planning application and existing cables may need to be moved. The owners may have 90 days to move their cables. They will take that. They may even take longer and just pay the fine. If several need to be moved they may be done serially so it may take 1-2 years just to get permission to put a cable up on a pole that the city technically owns. We have service blackspots where ISPs are given huge sums to roll out service and simply don't. A lot of municipal broadband started because Comcat, AT&T, Spectrum or whoever simply refused to provide service or charged a ridiculous amount (eg $50k to connect). The best Internet in the US is municipal eg Chattanooga. Utilities are heavily regulated because we know what would happen if they weren't: inelastic demand would simply result in providers jacking up prices to increase profit. People would die from necessities like electricity, water and heating being withheld. I support net neutrality but it largely wouldn't be necessary if we had municipal broadband and the infrastructure for virtual network providers. Some effort would still be required for peering arrangements. |