Groups funded by the Koch brothers are campaigning against municipal broadband

https://www.wired.com/story/koch-brothers-are-cities-new-obstacle-to-building-broadband

by xbmcuser • 9 years ago

346 206 9 years ago

That's pretty terrible, that outside political interest groups took it upon themselves to meddle in a local community's little vote...

ikeboy2• 9 years ago

Why was the city able to get it at cost and private companies weren't?

Johnny5554• 9 years ago

Because the city is a government agency while a private company is not. Conduit space is a limited resource, so the state can't afford to let every interested company piggy back on an existing project. So instead they opened it up to other government agencies who, presumably, would use the fiber to provide some services to the public. There may even be laws preventing the state from allowing private companies to share their infrastructure.

ikeboy2• 9 years ago

So wouldn't everybody win if the city sold the rights to private company for say $1 million on condition they build out this network?

caseysoftware• 9 years ago

So the point of this is that a small number of super rich people exert massive influence through a series of shell organizations, media campaigns, and think tanks.

If that is true - which it appears to be - are the Koch brothers the only ones?

guelo• 9 years ago

No. There are a bunch of billionaires pushing their various agendas. Billionaire pet-causes is pretty much the only way things change in this country anymore. Democracy is dead, all we have left is billionaires fighting each other.

brandnewlow• 9 years ago

Citation needed. Also, is there any reason to believe this isn't how it's always been throughout history? Those with lots of capital set things into motion that impact everyone else?

clouddrover2• 9 years ago

Democracy is dead

According to the article the TPA's (and by extension the Koch's) campaign failed and the KentuckyWired project got the go ahead. Better funded, more powerful opposition lost a merits-based argument and did not get their way. This is an example of democracy working, wouldn't you say?

propman• 9 years ago

Democracy is not dead. But you're hundred percent right about Billionaires. Think Tanks are all 100% biased depending on who is funding what. Whether it's a company or a billionaire. Economists, professors, public figures, Historians, everyone is being paid.

The one tool we can wield in this information or rather misinformation age is critical thinking. I no longer follow any pundit. I have nowhere near their knowledge in their respective fields, but I can think and ponder whether their views make sense. Robert Reich, Krugman, Brooks, Shields, Shapiro or whomever. See what slant they are coming from, try to understand if they make sense. Immediately afterwards, read about the same topic from someone on the opposite side of the spectrum. Don't get lost in the doomsday world is ending, other side is evil BS. Then hold an opinion, but don't stick to it. Allow it to be malleable and change and try arguing from the other side constantly. I feel like our own ego is partly what let's us join each tribe of thought and we further reinforce it from reading similar viewpoints because we want to be good and right. Sounds simple, but it's so easy to get caught up in it without taking a step back and just thinking about that thought process.

So, that's how you keep democracy alive. Not through simple education where you reiterate facts, memorize or follow directions, but through improving critical thinking which is slowly worsening in college and high schools. In a conversation with a classmate, we reminisced how in 3rd grade we learned how to spot bias in news articles, practicing for months. I feel like that's disappeared too.

olavk• 9 years ago

Note that the recent presidential election was in large part decided by which groups didn't vote. The viewpoint that politicians are all the same, voting doesn't matter etc. is a also a political opinions which benefits certain interests.

api• 9 years ago

Was this ever not the case? Look into the history of e.g. how marijuana prohibition came about. I think we are just more aware of it today.

History is more of a battle between the haves and the haves than between the haves and the have-nots.

smsm426• 9 years ago

No, but they are a common punchbag for articles like this. In this case, Kochs probably had no idea what TPA is doing and exercised no control whatsoever over their actions in any way, they just gave money to a fund that gave money to ideologically affiliated fund that gave money to ideologically affiliated fund that gave money to TPA. But of course that doesn't make a good headline.

scarface745• 9 years ago

So now we accept that the brilliant billionaire businessmen don't know where their money is going? So their not evil just clueless - highly doubtful.

gadders2• 9 years ago

No, George Soros does a lot of this from a Democrat/left-wing perspective.

Dirlewanger• 9 years ago

Pathetic state of affairs for this website when you get downvoted for saying a fact.

1337biz3• 9 years ago

It is just an author's way to say 'I am a left winger'. If the author wanted to say 'I am a right winger' George Soros would take the role of the evil billionaire villain. Every group has its own enemies that help them strengthen their identity.

pjc5010• 9 years ago

Surely there's some underlying facts involved in this? I mean, if Koch is actually funding it and Soros isn't you can't just switch them.

charcoal23• 9 years ago

Not long after I moved to Kansas in 2012, I received a postcard supporting some tea party idiot for the legislature. Was a four color printing on thick glossy paper. Paid for by the Koch's PAC Americans for Prosperity. I kept getting these cards every other day until the primary. By comparison, the campaign materials for the other candidates were clearly run off of someone's photocopy machine.

The cards, and bigger publications, started up again before the general. This is in a small rural district. This entire process was repeated across the state and was accompanied by constant television advertising. Led to Brownback getting enough support so he could get his infamous, and disastrous, tax cuts through the previously hostile legislature. Tax cuts strongly supported by the Kochs.

2014 and 2016 saw a repeat of this advertising blitz.

When the Democrats get angry at the Kochs, it's for good reasons. When I saw AFP interfering in something as small as my tiny district, I thought it was quite creepy. Soros's funding hasn't been even remotely as large nor as pervasive.

blackrose• 9 years ago

Nope. A lot revolves around them, but there are plenty of ultra-rich ideologues pushing their agenda this way. You can find some good investigative research on this in "Dark Money" by Jane Mayer, which details a lot of the history behind dark money influencing politics, and the ideals these guys are trying to advance.

The Mercers are another influential family she's written about [0]

[0] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/the-reclusive-...

zeveb4• 9 years ago

If that is true - which it appears to be - are the Koch brothers the only ones?

Nope. There are e.g. Tom Steyer [0], Sheldon Adelson [1] and many others, both left & right (and the Kochs aren't really 'right' anyway — they're much more libertarian than they are conservative, supporting homosexual marriage &c.). Billionaires have the same right to free speech that paupers have, but they've got rather a lot more money to spend speaking than others do. Personally, I suspect that a lot of the anti-Citizens-United animus comes from billionaires (or employees of billionaires) annoyed at the competition: they don't want poorer citizens to band together to fund political speech.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Steyer

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Adelson

exabrial• 9 years ago

What if a taxpayer could care less? Is it fair to take their money to build something they don't want/need?

If the network build-out was completely supported by people that were going to buy service I think that's awesome.

I think in the case where it's subsidized by non-participants or non-subscribers there are some moral and ethical issues about using taxpayer money.

Johnny5554• 9 years ago

The city does a lot of things I don't really care about and doesn't directly affect me. Is it fair to use my tax money to provide library services when I haven't stepped foot in a library in decades? If the library was completely supported by people that use it, that would be awesome.

(substitute "library" with any service the city provides that you don't use directly)

isostatic12• 9 years ago

(substitute "library" with any service the city provides that you don't use directly)

The military

briffle• 9 years ago

I have yet to have the fire department assist me in either an accident, or fire.. We should turn them into a private company! (hint, that is how fire departments started out, and it caused so many problems, the cities took them over!)

scarface745• 9 years ago

Some people aren't connected to the city's water supply does that mean the city shouldn't have built out the water system? The same could be said for schools, libraries, public transportation, etc.

sjg007• 9 years ago

You have to pay to be connected to city water / sewer. They will dig the mains and maintain it but you have to connect to it.

smsm426• 9 years ago

Correct title would be "A non-profit, financed among others by Koch brothers, opposes all kinds of government spending and meddling with private economics, including, in one case, spending on municipal internet".

fastball3• 9 years ago

Do people really believe that infrastructure is not the purview of the government?

Roads, water, electrical, internet, etc. should all be built out first on a municipal level, then the state should connect those municipalities, then the federal government should connect those states. The various levels of government do not need to (should not?) be the ones to operate this infrastructure, but I absolutely believe that to foster competition they should build it out and lease it to others (and such an operational lease should never be exclusive / too long-term)

Is there a good argument against this? Who doesn't think the US Highway System has been great for our economy? Who doesn't think a US Internet System would be great for our economy too?

sitepodmatt6• 9 years ago

Yes, what you are describing is basically the UK railway. Network rail (government) subcontract out maintainence and build to the private companies (Alstom etc..) and then lease track access to private companies (Virgin trains etc...). The UK has possibly the most overpriced railway in the world, at least in this instance it fair to say 'it didnt work' unless you want to pay 300usd to get from london to glasgow in economy.

pjc5010• 9 years ago

Note that the system was fully private for a while (Railtrack PLC), until they went bankrupt. I think it's going to be expensive whether it's public or private, for complex reasons probably related to "legacy" hardware. If it was fully deregulated then the operators would immediately shut down all the tracks within 100 miles of London to build houses on them.

I believe all European countries are required to have separate track and train operators for railways with some structure for competition in rail. It's just that most of them manage it better than the UK.

The UK telecoms industry was privatised and has ended up with BT Openreach operating most of the wires, leased out with local loop unbundling (LLU) to a variety of broadband providers. It works OK although not brilliantly.

pas• 9 years ago

Are there non-subsidized railways that break even, what's their quality?

The problem with rails is the same with roads.

Yes, AnCaps/Libertarians/Voluntarists/goldbugs think that "yeah, if the State weren't meddling in the market, people would form a corporation to build a [toll] road/rail", but of course, the same network effects would lead to very fine roads between major population centers and abso-fucking-lutely nothing else, because why would anyone connect a mining town in Wyoming anywhere? The mining company will use big all-terrain vehicles on dirt roads and that's it. Maybe they'll lay a track for the coal itself.

And I'd even argue, that yes, even if rail operates at a net loss according to GAAP, that doesn't mean socially it is a negative. The same applies to broadband.

However, maybe ... maaaybe not everyone should live so far from each other, so infrastructure TCO and commute times and energy use (and GHG emissions) would be lower.

isostatic12• 9 years ago

The UK has possibly the most overpriced railway in the world

The UK railway is still subsidised by the tax payer -- while some routes like Manchester-London make a profit, this profit is reinvested into loss making routes like the Welsh Valleys which help keep communities alive (the operating companies take about 3%, so a £100 ticket without a private company taking money would at cheapest be £97)

There is plenty of competition on the Glasgow-London route, including two Coach companies, Plane - multiple companies and routes, driving, two direct train companies (albeit with similar branding) and a third overnight.

The $240 peak time one way fare comes out at 58 cents per mile. It's valid on any train, just walk up and go.

For almost all trains it's actually $183 return, or 22 cents per mile - valid on any train other than the first arrival into London in the morning and the first couple out of London in the morning.

A train from Washington to New York will set you back $1.14 per mile, with less flexibility.

cjrp• 9 years ago

Part of the problem is that you can't have "real" competition, e.g. two train companies can't operate competing franchises on the same line, at the same time. I get terrible service and pay high fares on my Southern Railways route, but I can't opt to use a different carrier without moving house. But if my broadband provider decides to raise their prices by 5% next year, I can move to a different provider with a single phone call and a few minutes of downtime.

belorn• 9 years ago

Government maintained track system that lease track access to private companies is problematic system because of several points where that relationship breaks.

1: Rail maintenance dictate quality, but is shared between all competitors.

2: Rail is located on ground owned by the government. There is no practical or legal option to operate a private rail network.

3: Lack of distinguishable features to compete, high barrier to entry, and a limited number of companies create an environment thats prime for oligopolies. High price, low service.

In contrast to Internet service providers which:

1: Quality of service is generally not dictated by the back bone network.

2: Government tend to grant permission and funding to the first ISP that want to dig into government land to plant cables, but then deny completion afterwards and allow natural monopolies of those that were first.

3: Low barrier to entry could allow for many ISP.

CaptainZapp• 9 years ago

Virgin Trains at least are nice and if you book well in advance very reasonable deals are to be had. We paid ~42 quid from London to Manchester in first class, one way. Alas we bought the tickets month' in advance and, of course, non-refundable.

For shits and giggles I tried to figure out what the same ride costs like when you buy the ticket 30 minutes in advance. And there we come to 280£ each, which is completely ridiculous. It's not that good (2nd ist still ~90quid)

Now, don't get me started on Northern. Filthy, Expensive, Clueless and slathered with a heavy dose of disorganisation.

I think you can honestly say that privatizing trains in the UK was an experiment going horribly wrong.

scarface745• 9 years ago

Would your solution be better for most people on average? Probably.

Would anyone have unlimited gigabit internet access for $70 a month (like I do)? Probably not.

So yeah, I realize the hypocrisy of being willing to pay taxes to help the less fortunate but not being willing to give up my precious gigabit service to help the less connected.

acover• 9 years ago

More socialist leaning countries privatize infrastructure. For example Ontario power generation.

Is there conclusive evidence that privatization is worse?

It seems like an age old question. That there are positives and negatives. It's also politically expedient as it raises money.

michaelt• 9 years ago

Big difference between privatising the parts of the system that are a natural monopoly and those that aren't.

Privatising the power cables going to people's homes is a dumb move - you won't get the benefits of the free market, as there's no competition between suppliers.

But once the cables are in the ground, competition between multiple power suppliers might be possible - so long as customers can compare prices and switch suppliers easily; and the power plants aren't incentivised to cut long-term investments and imperil the country's energy security.

afpx• 9 years ago

At the local level, I could deal with private ownership. But if and only if there were strict regulations in place and an oversight body. But, at that point, would it really save local residents money anyway?

The closer that the government is to me, I more that I can control it (albeit with much frustration sometimes). But, private ownership, I can't control.

Jedd• 9 years ago

It's also politically expedient as it raises money.

Raises is a very positive sounding word.

Would it be better to couch that sentiment in terms of who's getting shafted (it extracts money from) or who's getting rich (it redirects wealth to)?

mcv4• 9 years ago

It's also politically expedient as it raises money.

You don't get that money for nothing. You're selling part of the nation's infrastructure, that was paid for by taxpayers, to now be exploited for profit. The taxpayers end up paying twice.

It's better to keep the essential infrastructure nationalised, and allow private parties to use it.

andy_ppp• 9 years ago

Rich people can't create monopolies and rent seek as easily if government does the basic infrastructure well.

Peter Thiel gives the example of not wanting to open a restaurant in San Francisco because there is too much competition for it to be successful and you constantly have to work at it for little reward.

Of course the reality is that a successful San Francisco restaurant makes millions of dollars per year. Too little for Peter Thiel to be interested in but for most of us that would be considered extremely successful. The same can be true of websites and the Internet, ala Indie hackers.

charlesdm• 9 years ago

I think his line of thinking is more like, why spend so much time trying to get X to work, when I can just do Y and make the same amount of money? Unless you really really want to run a successful restaurant, he's not wrong.

If it takes 1/10th the effort to run a cleaning business and make $1m a year, vs a tech business, would you do it? Some people would, others won't. Operating in a space with (not just normal but) extreme cut throat competition can get tiring after a while as well.

pixl97• 9 years ago

Of course the reality is that a successful San Francisco restaurant makes millions of dollars per year.

Selection bias anyone? Of course a 'successful' $X makes money, it wouldn't be successful otherwise. That tells us nothing on how many restaurants had to fail in relation to the ones that did well. From a hypothetical investor's point of view if 1 out of 10 restaurants does well enough to earn a payback and you would have to put $1 million in each one to get it started, then the one that succeeds has to profit at least $10 million for the investor alone. Yea, seems like a pretty high risk environment.

dredmorbius2• 9 years ago

Drugs cartels seem to emerge without government assistance.

mcv4• 9 years ago

Do people really believe that infrastructure is not the purview of the government?

Well, the people behind these Koch-funded groups do. They believe that nothing is the purview of government, or at least nothing that can be monopolised and exploited for profit.

I think the purview of government is primarily to protect the people against this kind of monopolisation and exploitation. Privatised infrastructure is fine with me as long as it doesn't hurt people's access to it. But in this case, the government is clearly responding to a lack of access.

tremon• 9 years ago

Do they really believe that, or do they simply need us to believe that so they can keep pillaging the country?

cdoxsey• 9 years ago

Is there a good argument against this?

Yes. The infrastructure in and around NYC. All the bridges need to be replaced (you can literally see the water below through them), the subway system is in tatters, Penn station is a mess of train derailments and constant delays, and the whole thing is unbelievably expensive.

It's a textbook case of short-sightedness, mismanagement, and rent seeking from private parties.

A govt internet would work ok for a few years until it was driven into the ground by lack of innovation and special interests. With this model we'd all still be connecting to the internet via 56k modems.

And because it's a government enforced monopoly, we'd have no choice.

fred_is_fred• 9 years ago

Municipal broadband exists because the lack of competition in the private sector has lead to "lack of innovation" and "special interests". The muni broadband projects fill in these gaps since multi-hundred billion dollar companies can't seem to roll out service at greater than 10MBps. Muni broadband is competition to a monopoly, not a monopoly itself.

jancsika• 9 years ago

I downvoted you because you relied on an analogy to train and subway infrastructure instead of looking at existing municipal broadband plans that have existed for more than "a few years."

For example, the municipal broadband in Wilson, NC, was grandfathered in because it existed before the NC state legislature wrote a law to prevent municipal broadband. It's existed for around 10 years. Rather than being stagnant, that plan delivers some of the fastest internet in the country with reportedly easy setup and decent pricing.

If you had made your argument citing municipal broadband plans in the U.S. which give worse-than-average speeds and pricing, I wouldn't have downvoted you.

nikanj• 9 years ago

Au contraire, we'd be connecting to the internet with _extremely_ expensive equipment. See https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/02/why-a-one-room-w...

slowandlow• 9 years ago

Isn't MTA semi-private???

dominotw4• 9 years ago

I lived in chicago, they did some maintenance work on the street in front of my house but improperly installed the manhole cover. Now evertime a car passed over the manhole cover it made a loud thud. This is moderately busy street and there would be lound noise all day long, I was jolted out of sleep several times because of this.

I called 311 who said they will look it into it. I called them again couple of weeks after that, some person rudely asked me to call local alderman instead. I called alderman who said they noted down the complaint, called them many times in the following months. After a while a they said its comed( electric company) fault and I should call them. I called comed, they asked me to call local city office. I took time off from work and went upto local city office and they said I should call 311 for complaints of this nature.

Sorry, I don't want govt anything. If something goes wrong you are at mercy of some govt employees who have no motivation or sympathy towards your problems.

People who know govt officials like alderman ect get things done but everyone else is out of luck, just roll the dice and hope it fixed.

Edit: why the downvotes? I think this is a on topic response to parents comment about how well govt maintains roads. You should come to chicago and look at the roads in working class neighborhoods. People are ok with poorer people getting horrible internet cos they can't raise enough taxes to fix their internet infrastructure. Its horrible, if you take CTA in chicago underground in winter, you'll see drops of water ( is it water?) drip on your head from leaky ceilings.

gech2• 9 years ago

People run into the same wall dealing with support for any company.

JonFish85• 9 years ago

"Do people really believe that infrastructure is not the purview of the government?"

I don't think anyone is arguing that the government shouldn't be responsible for certain infrastructure, it's the degree to which the government should be involved, and what its role should be. If I put on my more conservative hat for a minute to make an argument, I think the idea is that the government should be somewhat of a last resort for things, and that less is more when it comes to government involvement.

Part of the reason for that is that once the government is involved, it changes the incentive structure quite a bit. Using other infrastructure projects (e.g. roads, bridges, etc) for examples that others have pointed out, they're a great way to raise taxes earmarked for those projects, but then that's when politicians start to play games and move money around to their own projects, and now the roads are falling apart, so we need to raise taxes to pay for the roads!

It's also somewhat tricky because once something is a government project, it's basically that forever. It's fairly rare for something to go back to the private sector once it has become a government program. What is more likely is that the solution is more government involvement, and that's something that conservatives tend to view as a bad thing.

Obviously I'm not speaking for all conservatives, and this isn't even necessarily my own viewpoint, but I wanted to push back against the idea that "conservatives just want what's worst".

pjc5010• 9 years ago

once something is a government project, it's basically that forever

Hardly. In my lifetime the UK government has privatised electricity, water, gas, telephones, British Aerospace, British Steel, British Petroleum, Rolls Royce, Rover, British Airways, railways, coal mining, and Royal Mail. Experiments have been made with roads, bridges, schools and hospitals.

Success of these has varied. The utilities make a big profit while people struggle to pay utility bills: https://www.ft.com/content/ef488dc0-9168-11e7-a9e6-11d2f0ebb...

BAe and BA are still in business. British Steel were owned by Tata for years and the few remaining sites are now spun off and trading under the original name. BP are making a profit except when they spill in the Gulf of Mexico. The railways are a mess. Rover were looted by their directors who narrowly escaped jail.

blacksmith_tb• 9 years ago

Isn't the obvious objection in this case that the incentive structure at the moment is terrible? Hence the lack of competition in most markets? Without needing to endorse one philosophy or the other, I'd say the telecom system in the US is a failure (for ordinary customers, it's been a ringing success for the telcos), and municipal broadband is worth a try (being less terrible than Comcast & Co is a fairly low bar...).

at-fates-hands• 9 years ago

Is there a good argument against this?

I think one of the main issues is having a company that has spent millions, sometimes billions of dollars building out their infrastructure. Then you have the government come in, build out a competing infrastructure with tax payers money.

As a business, you're now having to compete with an entity that has unlimited budget resources, can build out wherever they want, grant contracts and favorable leasing options to whichever businesses they want to and quite easily put you out of business.

When you have to compete with a government entity as a business, you will always be at a disadvantage. In essence, governments don't foster competition, they basically do away with it, pick the winners they want to and then monopolize it and push other companies out.

haltingthoughts• 9 years ago

Who doesn't think the US Highway System has been great for our economy?

When one considers the hidden costs of increased urban sprawl, reliance on automobiles, and the associated increase in pollution, it isn't so clear. If roads were privatized then the true costs would be more clear.

ouid• 9 years ago

Are you arguing that privatization of an industry is likely to result in better management of its externalities?

rayiner5• 9 years ago

Do people really believe that infrastructure is not the purview of the government?

Sure. Lots of people do. Japan’s railroads, subways, and many highways, are private. Water utilities in France are mostly private, as are most of its highways. Almost all electrical systems in the US and Europe were privatized in the 1980s and 1990s.

Would public internet infrastructure have been better in the US? Our internet speeds in the US are faster than our big EU competitors: UK, Germany, France, Spain, and Italy. That’s pretty much the only piece of infrastructure you can say that for. Our subways aren’t better. Our roads aren’t better. Our regional trains aren’t better. But our internet service is better.

It’s not a philosophical question, but an economic one. How do you ensure adequate spending on very expensive infrastructure. Japan does it for rail by making rail companies private and allowing them to use land grants to enter retail leasing markets. (Japanese railways own lots of the land around stations and are the landlord for the associated retail establishments.) Many European countries have the political discipline to ensure adequate funding for public infrastructure. Both models can work.

But we already know that in the US we don’t have the political discipline to properly fund infrastructure. Infrastructure gets attacked from the right, who don’t want to pay taxes. But it also from the left, who want to use infrastructure as leverage for social issues. For example, in Stockholm, the publicly owned (but completely privately funded) dark fiber utility took 16-17 years to cover 90% of the city. There was no mandate to build in historically disadvantaged neighborhoods or anything like that—build out was based on demand. That approach is completely illegal in most US cities.

hodgesrm2• 9 years ago

Do you have a source on the US vs. the rest Internet speeds? That's not my impression from end user experience in those countries.

michaelmrose2• 9 years ago

First I'm not sure of the yardstick you are using to measure. There is still a not insignificant minority with no internet access at all in the US and further lots of people are stuck with truly mediocre dsl at speeds we no longer consider broadband.

Lets start with Germany.

Internet (60 Mbps or More, Unlimited Data, Cable/ADSL) 25.92 € or 30.59 usd

https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_result.jsp?cou...

United States

Internet (60 Mbps or More, Unlimited Data, Cable/ADSL) 56.60 $

Further in the US only 80% of households had a broadband connection at home or access to a smartphone with data.

In Germany its 98.

In summery the internet is almost twice as expensive in the US and lots of people don't even have access to it.

We could go through all the countries you listed and see if we could find even one where your assertion is correct but I feel like that would be a waste of my and your time because its not clear that being able to find even one nation in all of Europe worse than the US would prove that private competition has served the US well. It hasn't.

stuaxo2• 9 years ago

They are a barrier to further civilisation.

simasj• 9 years ago

As a libertarian I think that government should not do commercial projects like this fiber optical network. But then I raise a question - why private companies do not make such fiber networks? And it is obvious that it is not about cost. Google has plenty of money to invest (is YouTube already profitable or still burning 1 million USD a day?), but still they struggle with their fiber network.

I have a live example I live in Lithuania. Until 1998 Lithuania had one monopolist telecommunication company owned by government. But in 1998 our government sold this monopole company (about 95% of shares) to Swedish company Telia, but at the same time they passed the laws to liberalize telecommunication market. Theoretically Telecom was obligated to allow usage part of their communication infrastructure to other competitors, but as monopoly they set such high prices, that for other companies it was cheaper to build their own networks. And laws allowed to build network for everyone. And that's where libertarian dream came true - even monopoly could not limit expansion of private networks when there laws allowed that. Soon there appeared many amateur networks that used simple UTP cables or wi-fi to connect to each other, some of them joined forces together and become companies who sold internet connection to neighborhood homes. That's how suddenly there appeared lots of small ISP's. Soon they understood that they cannot rely on UTP cables or wi-fi, so they started building fiber cable networks in largest cities. And keep in mind, that in 1998 - 2000 when those companies have appeared, the Lithuania was quite poor country who has just escaped USSR. It had a GDP only of 11 billion USD; average salary was about 150 USD/month, so you can imagine that average customer could not pay for internet a lot. That small fiber optical ISPs didn't had big investors behind their back, tons of money to invest, but still they managed to buy equipment on word prices and expand their networks. And now here in Lithuania we have plenty of ISP's who offers 100 - 300 mbps fiber connection to almost every home that needs it.

So I think real problem in USA is not about the money, it's about the laws that limit competition. And building government network would not solve this issue - building municipal networks is just the fight against the consequences, not the causes.

P.S. Lithuanian capital Vilnius has population of 650 000, so it is quite similar to the case described in this article.

vturner• 9 years ago

When I read your story, something jumped out to me: willingness to take on risk. Whoever was building all those lines was willing to take on a lot of financial and other risk to themselves, right? Why they were willing to do so, I'm not sure, but in the US we are facing the problem of having fewer and fewer people like that. There was a report recently that entrepreneurship has been falling for some time here, and I think it's due to risk.

Where I live, there is a single Internet provider (besides dial up of course!), and I have dreamed of starting up an alternative (funny as my grandfather was Lithuanian :). The risk involved though makes it not worth it, my desk job is too comfortable.

croon2• 9 years ago

And now here in Lithuania we have plenty of ISP's who offers 100 - 300 mbps fiber connection to almost every home that needs it.

How do these ISP:s access your home? Do all these competing ISP:s have cables running through your lawn? If not; is the government involved? It seems like a success.

monort• 9 years ago

It looks like this (Romania)

https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3628/3493868568_0538c4f264_b...

neolefty2• 9 years ago

it's about the laws that limit competition

In some cases it's not laws but simple entrenched ownership. If Google wants to run fiber on existing poles, they run into blockades by the pole owners or lawsuits by competitors who don't even own the poles but who can find a technicality about getting permission from the pole owner. The old 'possession is 9/10ths' factor.

topspin• 9 years ago

"why private companies do not make such fiber networks?"

It's a bad investment. There is a large front loaded capital cost and a long, slow payback over decades. Build-outs are plagued by difficult problems involving multiple levels of government and incumbent roadblocks. Private investors simply can't entertain things with such long time horizons, particularly if it involves legal and political entanglements, unless the eventual payoff is enormous. There are better, faster opportunities.

In the early days of electric and telephone service in the US we had a different model. The goal was universal service and it was supported by subsidies, special status for incumbents and legal force that precluded most of the roadblocks. Had this not been the case both telephone and electric service would be what broadband is today; a spotty hodgepodge of cherry picked areas servicing mostly well-to-do urbanites.

kebman• 9 years ago

Yes! More freedom for the rich! Meanwhile, except Comcast or Verizon to give you your former freedom with at a premium. What you don't know, is what you don't get to see.

ferongr• 9 years ago

This whole thing sound like a leftist twist on the right-wing Soros conspiracy theory.

gigatexal• 9 years ago

This strikes me as anti-American. Sure, I wouldn't go about building myself my own highway (to me the internet (access to) is to infrastructure as roads are to infrastructure). But... co-operatives can work in some cases and if a community wants to get together to build infrastructure and save the government money and do it better than both the feds and private institutions why not let them be FREE to do so?

ThrowawayKoch• 9 years ago

A lot of left-wing and media groups attribute a lot of influence to the Koch brothers. But honestly, their efforts are often ineffective or outright counter-productive to their stated goals. It's funny to see them portrayed as boogeymen when you know how bad they actually are at wielding influence.

I've worked with the Charles Koch Institute before, and it's a mad house. Their other orgs are about the same. But don't take my word for it--check out their Glassdoor reviews[1] to see for yourself how many current and former employees feel about them. (Read the negative ones; many of the positive ones were posted because HR told people to do it.)

[1] https://www.glassdoor.com/Reviews/Charles-Koch-Institute-and...

acqq• 9 years ago

their efforts are often ineffective or outright counter-productive to their stated goals.

The fact that the employees complain doesn't mean that the money they invest isn't effective for the goals they have: to increase doubt in the facts that they don't like and therefore prevent or even just slow down possible actions against their interests.

Then, what is the support for your claim that they are ineffective?

gech2• 9 years ago

I think the Koch brothers are more active and problematic than the other side's boogeyman, George Soros.

soundwave106• 9 years ago

The main issue with groups pushing single boogiemen is that life isn't that neat: there are, as alluded to in other places, multiple people (mostly billionaires these days, but not always) with major influence pushing multiple opinions. I am also not surprised that life behind the scenes at one of these advocacy groups is as Dilbertesque as any corporate environment tends to be.

I think the main issue here is that, with decisions like Citizen United in particular, political power does seem to have shifted towards those who can spend the most money even more than usual. Often, their priorities are out of whack with what the priorities of the common citizen are. I do not get the impression, for instance, that tax cuts aimed largely at corporations and high earners were the top priority of most who voted in last year's election (certainly the polling on the tax cut seems to reflect that). Yet this appears to be the single issue that the national GOP unifies itself on. Go figure.

Paradoxically, I think the very messiness that you are talking about might actually contribute to this particular issue. Instinctively, the Koch corporate interests shouldn't care about muni broadband much. Koch is largely resource extraction, meaning a lot of operation in rural areas. Given the current state of broadband (quasi-monopolistic), some rural communities miss out on good broadband because, quite simply, rural broadband isn't profitable enough for the current broadband monopolies [1]. Frankly, good broadband makes a given location that much more attractive to potential employees and other people living in the area. It would seem like the Kochs would at best simply keep mum about a muni broadband fight, even if it didn't necessarily gel with core beliefs.

Instead, my best guess is that their "libertarian oriented" cause funding got tied into the network of old school broadband monoplies' desire to restrict competition by legal decree (not exactly a libertarian thought, but currently aligned with Republicans). Voila, via the magic of political coalitions, the Koch brothers now "provide" some of the funding for anti-muni broadband campaigns.

[1] http://www.roanoke.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-minnesot...

kabanossen• 9 years ago

The Private depends on the Public - https://georgelakoff.com/2017/11/26/protect-internet-freedom...

jernfrost2• 9 years ago

I am all for municapal internet in the US, but really it is a bandaid. The fundamental problem is how competition is regulated in the US. Most European countries I know of did not achieve high speed internet by making it municpal. Rather we did it by forcing competition. Cell phone and broadband infrastructure owners in Europe typicall have to let competition offer services on their hardware. Same with power. Here in Norway companies owning the power cables going into my house are not allowed to exclude competitors from using their lines to send power to me.

You, need struct regulation of natural monpolies and that is what the US lacks. That is why Americans ironically end up with government solutions.

See the same with so many things. Government mandated minimum eages because unions are so weak. In Nordic countries, Germany etc there has never been a need for go ernment to provide this as unions have solved the problem with exploitative wages.

Ironically by fighting government regulation you just end up with more government.

ihsw2• 9 years ago

How do you reconcile that with the fact that competition is by all means opposed? Sections of the country are carved up into fiefdoms where rent-seeking is the norm.

gozur88• 9 years ago

The Koch brothers fund libertarian groups, so it shouldn't be surprising to find these groups are against ISPs funded through tax dollars.

ajr0• 9 years ago

exciting to see opportunities [0] popping up for community based networks, it would be interesting to see a rewards based approach to hosting access points for others.

[0] https://nycmesh.net/

Groups funded by the Koch brothers are campaigning against municipal broadband

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