[ipsin]

I'm really surprised at the number of people on the side of the telecoms here. I think it's reasonable to want consistent pricing and quality of service, particularly in cities.

Redlining doesn't have to be because of racism or classism, but the result is the same. There are underserved populations that can't get better internet, even if they want it. Isn't fixing that a reasonable policy goal?

If we can't get it from companies, I'd be down to treat the internet the same way we treated rural electrification & phone service. That is, setting a high standard and deploying it to everyone. No more multi-billion dollar giveaways with no consequences for delivery. If we aren't getting results, fund municipal broadband and other schemes.

[derbOac]

This is all basically what was intended by the establishment of the USPS. The only reason why the internet isn't mentioned in the US constitution is because the technology wasn't available, wasn't even something they could envision. But if it had been they would have included it.

If you read the original correspondence about the Postal Clause, the point was not to establish paper mail delivery and postal roads per se, but to establish a system of information conveyance between the federal and state governments and citizens:

http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/tocs/a1_8_7.html

It's always been puzzling to me that people have been so focused on paper mail as the boundaries of the USPS when it was really about information conveyance. Having a narrow mandate to physical mail is sort of holding the US Constitution to an arbitrary limit based on year or era.

All of this should be handled in the same way as mail. If people want to build out private internet, fine, but the US government should be building out a public system as well.

These issues were all discussed in the 18th century but just with different mediums as a frame of reference.

[ixwt]

> Having a narrow mandate to physical mail is sort of holding the US Constitution to an arbitrary limit based on year or era.

Welcome to the current Supreme Court era of Historical Jurisprudence. If the founders didn't believe it (in their American Mythological head canon), then it's unconstitutional. Disregard the fact that many of the founders perceived the Constitution as a living document that would change with the times.

[psxdude]

That's kind of what EPB did in Tennessee.

There should be a federal law that stops telecom companies from getting cities to give them a monopoly in exchange for service and allow cities and counties to create their own ISPs as well. Ideally there would be fiber to every home and then allow any ISPs to come in and provide service similar to DSL back in the day.

[hibikir]

I don't think it's a matter of telcos or not, but about how the problem, as is, makes discrimination a natural result one has to actively fight against, in ways that are often economically detrimental to everyone.

The shape of American cities and towns makes all infrastructure very expensive: more miles of fiber per customer than basically anywhere else. More cell towers per phone too, if you are looking at 5G. This spread is also massively segregated economically and racially. I look at,say, any demographic map of St. Louis, and no matter whether we look at economic indicators, education, labor participation, wealth, race... you see the very same lines. So when a company just expands first where there will be more subscribers per mile of infrastructure built, they different racial outcomes are guaranteed. Given that deploying everywhere at once is physically impossible, every move to put someone ahead of the queue puts a different subdivision further back on the queue. Since fiber deployments will go on for decades, we might even see situations where a place becomes more desirable, and therefore makes different people try to buy it, just by giving it fiber 20 years later than it would have received it if we went just by subscribers per mile of infra. Municipal broadband might choose different winners, but with the same total build capacity, there is always winners... and I bet rich voters that would really use the broadband would get really mad if they are near the end of the 20+ years timeline, instead of year 3. Everyone wants a more equitable distribution of resources when it's not them losing massively

The low density suburb is what makes this malaise so bad. Americans do not want to tackle this though, because its costs are so well hidden, and often distributed to other people. The richer your neighbors, the more likely you get more attention for purely political reasons anyway. See how many rich and progressive neighborhoods, suddenly turn to NIMBY land when they think they have topay high costs.

The problem forces people to choose, and, as usual, those with less political clout will be last, just because everyone else pushes to be further ahead than the average, and someone has to be in the back. If the deployment was cheaper, and therefore faster, this would be far less of a problem, but the easiest time to fix it was 90 years ago.

[gumby]

Well we discriminate (as in pick and choose, not in the sense of redlining) as to where we want the cost to lie.

Typically core reticulated infrastructure is socialized: roads down to city level are typically funded at a high level (fed/state/county etc), mail delivery pricing is not destination-dependent et al. This makes sense as there are two parties and both benefit if the infrastructure is there. The local details (actual roads in the towns) are then a local matter.

Conversely some decisions are not socialized: if you live remotely your insurance rate reflects your distance from a fire station or even hydrant, or your proximity to forest fires etc; an urban dweller is likely to pay less as the expected loss is lower.

Anyway, telecom seems like an important universal service, as a human right; for the same reason roads are; and because it's in everybody's interest if people who want to vote have an opportunity to learn, both about "the issues" and be educated in other ways.

[YetAnotherNick]

Regulations adds costs because of added operations and red tape and the costs could only come from consumers in the long term. This would mean a proportion of poor can't afford them and become offline.

So regulation should be used only when required. Now if this is the case where the regulation is required is upto debate but the fact is that FCC isn't correcting any of the things ISP are doing currently but only few things that ISP could do in the future which would hurt consumers. And so this only feels like a political decision as "net neutrality" is a good sounding term and government which forces big companies to provide it is good.

[bigbillheck]

> I'm really surprised at the number of people on the side of the telecoms here

I'm not, and most of the pro-telecom people here would have been equally opposed to rural electrification and phone service.

[zmgsabst]

People are objecting to racializing business decisions: that’s a reasonable and laudable goal.

If we want to address “underserved populations that can't get better internet”, we can do that directly without adding racism.

[SamoyedFurFluff]

I’m really confused by arguing this is “adding racism”. If I just so happen not to build a ramp into my building aren’t I de facto discriminating against the disabled? It might be economically beneficial to me to save on the cost of ramp building, and I may not be like “fuck wheelchairs”, but I’m still discriminating against the disabled.

Also, I don’t understand why it’s unreasonable to consider race in any broad societal inequality where it just so happens the inequality is concentrated on race. I consider slavery to be a form of societal tech debt of the United States where this discussion is happening: the United States literally enslaved a race of people for over a century and then fought tooth and nail in every level of government against ever giving blacks anything. Within living memory blacks weren’t allowed to vote because of their blackness in that country. Black adults now had to be sent to white schools with national guard protection because the United States populace was going to be violent to children just for going to a non-black school. In this context how the hell can anyone dissociate race from anything in that country? Race was practically in every government policy, drove their only civil war, was part of every subsidy and even in their constitution.

[kayodelycaon]

“Protected classes” already exist and have been tested in courts.

It’s a lot easier to use that than to come up with completely different criteria businesses will find loopholes in or create loopholes through lobbying.

Personally I don’t like that our best option is to use protected classes to enforce better behavior. But most of the time it’s a good equivalent, and it’s a good example of those nasty compromises that allow democracies to work effectively.

[appleskeptic]

There's a big difference between banning discrimination against protected classes and mandating discrimination in their favor, which is what this basically does, see the comment and discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38304639

[kayodelycaon]

Correct. Protected classes is being used as a proxy for all economic situations.

It prevents a telecom from under-serving poor neighbors. It has significant historical precedence: https://www.fcc.gov/general/universal-service

[icehawk]

So the FCC found no evidence of racism, but they're 'racializing' it anyway?

That makes no sense.

[tbrownaw]

Politics often makes no sense.

[golemotron]

I miss the days when Congress passed laws rather than delegating decision making to agencies that get to change rules on whim.

[crazygringo]

Most stuff is best done by agencies staffed by experts that are set up by Congress in the first place -- not by Congress full of non-experts micromanaging things.

Congressional lawmaking is for the big-picture, long-term stuff. Agencies are supposed to have the ability to set rules as needed and respond quickly. This is a feature, not a bug.

And if Congress starts to see a pattern of a particular agency going way too far in some direction, then it can pass a law to further clarify the scope/limits of that agency whenever it wants. Congress hasn't given up any of its power. If it's not doing that, it's because it doesn't want to.

[macinjosh]

I disagree. Ask a panel of expert JS developers how something should be done and you'll get as many opinions as their are seats on the panel. In regulation it's the same but the decisions affect human lives and businesses that employ people.

Experts aren't unbiased either. It is nice when the experts you like are in power but what happens when someone else comes in?

[crazygringo]

So to continue the analogy, you'd rather have the board of the company, consisting of MBA CEO's, making decisions about a company's JavaScript standards?

Experts may disagree, but it's still a whole lot better than non-experts disagreeing.

[sigspec]

You mean delegating a task to people whose actual JOB is to complete that task?

You'd rather this be decided by a failed football coach?

[ixwt]

As funny as your comment is, I believe you're both correct. If we actually had a functioning Congress, and not the clown circus we currently do, they could actually be getting things done. But the people that actually understand these problems aren't normally morally bankrupt enough to make it into Congress.

[Analemma_]

I don't. I want decision-making delegated to professionals with lifelong expertise in that topic, not the troop of howler monkeys that is Congress. Did you hear that now they're kidney-punching each other and then going "NUH-UH! I didn't touch him!" like four-year-olds [0]? That's who you want to be making life-or-death decisions on e.g. how far apart to space landing aircraft? Get real.

[0]: https://www.politico.com/live-updates/2023/11/14/congress/mc...

[golemotron]

If the FCC is staffed with discrimination experts we have a serious problem.

[enragedcacti]

This ruling is the direct outcome of congress passing a law to accomplish exactly this. You could contest the scope or specificity but this is about as far from changing rules on a whim as it could possibly get.

[stronglikedan]

I'm on the telecoms side because I believe it's yet another power grab disguised as a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, and no one has convinced me otherwise.

[smoldesu]

Why even comment, then? What do you stand to gain from espousing an opinion you admit is too ridiculous to contend with serious criticism?

[robomartin]

> There are underserved populations that can't get better internet, even if they want it. Isn't fixing that a reasonable policy goal?

Sure. Yet, looking at problems as if they are single-variable cause-effect issues is to reduce complex multivariate issues (they all are) to ridiculous fantasy models.

The government should not force businesses to make unprofitable decisions or contort their decisions into bullshit racism implications.

The solution is very simple: If the FCC thinks these communities are not served well enough, they are free to trench the streets, install fiber to every home and provide them with amazing government run service at low cost or zero cost.

And yet, that would be a terrible solution. We need to pull back from the micro level and look at it from a broader perspective.

The federal government is burning $1.7 billion PER YEAR maintaining empty buildings for decades:

"The 132-year-old brick structure is sitting on prime real estate six blocks from the White House. It was once a school, but it's been vacant for almost three decades."

https://www.npr.org/2014/03/12/287349831/governments-empty-b...

That money is being burned...every year.

What would happen if they just got rid of those properties and shifted just one third of that budget to subsidize such things as internet access to various underserved areas? That's over $500 billion PER YEAR.

Charter Communications, one of the largest companies in the sector, has a gross annual revenue of approximately $50 billion per year. Give them $50 billion of the money being wasted and stipulate that money has to go towards delivering outstanding internet connectivity in designated areas. Heck, with $50 billion of free money they could probably get 1 Gigabit fiber to every single one of our homes, including less profitable areas.

Do that with nine other companies. The result would be unbelievable. And here's the best part: It's a one-time cost. We would be saving $1.7 billion per year and spending $500 billion one time. Even if the actual cost is double that, it's still a deal.

The point is that it is easy to get lost in the feelings and outrage of our sad victim society while ignoring the absolute fact that we could be doing a lot better for everyone if we demanded better results from our government.

Here we are, discussing the financially-microscopic problem of relatively few underserved communities while not making the connection with government waste and incompetence --in the trillions-- that could do magical things for every single person in this nation if brought under control.

A trillion dollars is a massive amount of money. If put to good use most of the problems in this country would evaporate, from housing to healthcare and internet access so everyone can be on Tik Tok all day.

Perspective is important.

We have already done enough damage to our industrial and commercial business sectors. Before we achieve total internal destruction, we might just want to consider that getting our government under financial control (at all levels) would have the effect of injecting trillions of dollars into the economy, which would be nothing less than magical.

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/18/heres-how-the-federal-govern...

[Retric]

> What would happen if they just got rid of those properties and shifted just one third of that budget to subsidize such things as internet access to various underserved areas? That's over $500 billion PER YEAR.

No, it’s not 500B per year. Just as a sanity check we aren’t spending more than twice as much on empty buildings than the Air Force.

Also, the US government has heavily subsidized broadband rollouts, arguing about profits while ignoring subsidies is silly. If we’ve learned anything over the last 30 years of broadband subsidies is handing them more money won’t solve the problem.

[robomartin]

> No, it’s not 500B per year. Just as a sanity check we aren’t spending more than twice as much on empty buildings than the Air Force.

Just for sanity check, why don't you do a modicum of research before posting nonsense? What a concept!

Here, I'll help you. Read this report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office:

https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-23-106200.pdf

From the document:

"the 24 FRPC agencies spend about $2 billion a year to operate and maintain owned federal office buildings. In addition, agencies may postpone maintenance and repairs to assets in their portfolios for various reasons, which over time can create a backlog of costly deferred maintenance and repairs."

"In addition, allowing unneeded leases to expire would directly reduce costs. Federal agencies spend about $5 billion annually to lease office space from the private and government sector"

And here's the "Oh, shit!" realization:

"GAO and others have reported on issues with managing repairs and maintenance in federally owned facilities, which are costly to the federal government. Federal agency financial reports have reported $76 billion in deferred maintenance and repair costs in 2021, an increase of about 50 percent since 2017."

$76 BILLION in deferred maintenance and repairs just two years ago. What do you want to bet this number doesn't go down any time soon and will absolutely explode into hundreds of billions if not dealt with in some form within a decade?

In other words, it is worse than the $1.7 billion per year being quoted, massively worse.

Here's another article on the subject:

https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-pol-ca-jeff-denham-gover...

How about we look at other issues? Here's a simple one:

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/04/18/heres-how-the-federal-govern...

"Improper payments, which refer to payments that are made incorrectly by the government, cost the U.S. $247 billion in 2022, according to the Government Accountability Office. The U.S. government has lost almost $2.4 trillion in simple payment errors over the last two decades, by GAO estimates."

> If we’ve learned anything over the last 30 years of broadband subsidies is handing them more money won’t solve the problem.

Duh. Any business person knows this.

Here's a concept: Establish clear objectives, milestones, accountability and supervise, supervise, supervise.

The problem isn't subsidies at all. The problem is that our government is incompetent at nearly every level.

Again, big picture instead of hyperventilating at the micro level. Fix root causes. The root cause has to do with truly incompetent and unmotivated people managing billion dollar programs. Why would these agencies be any better than the DMV? There's a fundamental need to drive for competence and results in government. Until we do that nothing else will ever be solved.

[tbrownaw]

> I'm really surprised at the number of people on the side of the telecoms here.

Yes, I too would have expected a non-zero number of libertarians to be here saying that any amount of regulation is bad. But the closest I see to that is a couple saying that the government forgot to include appropriate strings on previous handouts.