Anti-municipal broadband budget amendment gets nixed in New York

https://communitynets.org/content/anti-muni-broadband-budget-amendment-gets-nixed-new-york

by leotravis10 • 2 years ago

181 152 2 years ago

communitynets.org

AceJohnny2• 2 years ago

No information on who introduced the amendment in the first place?

Is such anonymity common?

toomuchtodo• 2 years ago

As we reported last month, buried in language near the bottom of the Assembly budget proposal was a Trojan horse legislative sources said was being pushed by lobbyists representing Charter Spectrum.

https://communitynets.org/content/trojan-horse-cripple-muni-...

masfuerte2• 2 years ago

Presumably Charter doesn't have the power to edit proposed legislation. Who actually introduced it?

shmerl2• 2 years ago

Charter is disgusting.

advael4• 2 years ago

I really think the fact that this kind of thing can be known and reported by a newspaper means we should have some kind of anti-corruption law triggering at least an investigation in cases like this. The fact that "lobbyists for [company] act to manipulate legislature against the public interest" is such a humdrum and daily occurrence is a problem

jimbob452• 2 years ago

How would you prefer the lobbyists act? Corporations do have interests and it’s sometimes beneficial for those interests to be taken into account when creating laws (e.g. Intel with fab construction).

nativeit• 2 years ago

“Against the public interest” might contain a clue for the distinction they’re making.

advael4• 2 years ago

Your example is too vague to make much of, frankly, but in theory I'd believe perhaps it's possible for lobbyists' positions to align with or at least not contradict the public interest, though recent decades have shown precious few examples compared to the sheer volume of fuckery like this. A law could be written to not target all lobbying activity while still being able to draw useful distinctions between doing harm in the name of profit and providing some kind of useful industry insight (whatever that may be) to the process of government

Retric6• 2 years ago

Intel fab construction is exactly the kind of corruption we’re talking about here. Trying to manipulate markets via subsidies is horrifically inefficient and thus a vast waste of taxpayer dollars.

xnyan2• 2 years ago

While I believe lobbing as practiced is actual corruption, it’s totally legal in the US.

Legality aside, there are a not insignificant number of people who truly believe that private industry is invariably better than government at providing virtually any good or service, and that government involvement in anything that could be done privately is by definition harmful.

I actually had a conversation about this exact subject with a family member just last week. We live in a rural area and have awful service from Spectrum. He opposes plans for better cheaper muni internet because “The county government can only do better because they get to cheat - they don’t need to make a profit, but spectrum does.”

I personally think that a hybrid system is best. The government should build and maintain the physical infrastructure like fiber and cell towers, and private industry should be able to access this infra at cost + a small fixed markup and provide all other needed equipment and services on top of that infra.

ang_cire• 2 years ago

The county government can only do better because they get to cheat - they don’t need to make a profit, but spectrum does.

Amazing... they're so close to realizing. :)

rayiner10• 2 years ago

Legality aside, there are a not insignificant number of people who truly believe that private industry is invariably better than government at providing virtually any good or service, and that government involvement in anything that could be done privately is by definition harmful

Given the type of government service they’re going to get—one run by New Yorkers, not Swedes or Japanese—are they wrong? Their frame of reference is the MTA (which runs subways that are late 15% of the time), the NYCHA, which runs some of the worst slums in the country, and NYC DOE which has a graduation rate worse than the subway’s on-time performance.

Maybe there’s a reason there is a market for the message “hey, however bad Spectrum is, imagine the city government running your broadband.”

jancsika• 2 years ago

He opposes plans for better cheaper muni internet because “The county government can only do better because they get to cheat - they don’t need to make a profit, but spectrum does.”

Tell him he needs to be willing to support for the muni internet in order to get Spectrum to offer symmetric fiber in the first place.

Same way he needed to be able to convincingly threaten to cut the cord to DirectTV the umpteen times he's forced them to offer him a discount, or to let XM radio subscription expire in order to get them to drop from $25/mo to $5/mo to get him back.

Dollars to donuts he's had the experience of paying out the ass for those services. Perhaps you're lucky and he's never renegotiated either of those. In that case tell him how to get those cheaper rates, and let him feel what it's like to instantly save an order of magnitude dollars monthly.

Then you'll get a better sense of how deep those beliefs go.

forgetfreeman6• 2 years ago

If government is installing and maintaining infrastructure then private industry becomes unnecessary overhead. This is, in effect, requesting government subsidies be directed to the corporate officers and shareholders of major telecoms firms to no obvious benefit to the larger public.

SoftTalker• 2 years ago

I oppose municipal internet because then the municipality has to hire a staff of network administrators and a staff of people to actually install the service to households and customer service people to manage subscriptions and front-line tech support questions (or pay contractors to do all that). Lots of graft and favoritism will go in on that. Friends will get hired although they are not competent to do those jobs. County government salaries typically aren't market leading so even when those jobs aren't given to friends, they aren't going to get the best people. I have to pay for all of that, so my taxes go up, even if I don't use their service or if I don't have internet service at all.

AnthonyMouse6• 2 years ago

I actually had a conversation about this exact subject with a family member just last week. We live in a rural area and have awful service from Spectrum. He opposes plans for better cheaper muni internet because “The county government can only do better because they get to cheat - they don’t need to make a profit, but spectrum does.”

This argument is dumb because it has nothing to do with the government. A non-profit could take out a loan and build an ISP and not have to turn a profit.

The real argument in this nature is if the municipal ISP is being subsidized with tax money their competitors don't get. But you can solve that too: Either they pay for the network by issuing a bond and then have to pay it back from subscription fees, or if there is to be a subsidy then anybody operating an ISP gets the same one.

The actual problem here gets back to the original issue: The ISPs lobby the government to suppress any competitor. If the incumbent sucks and people hate them, why doesn't a non-profit, or any other for-profit business, enter the market and take their customers? Because the incumbent has lobbied for laws to prevent that, or will sue them under whatever pretext they can find to slow them down, try to bankrupt them and deter anyone else from making the attempt.

It's harder to do that to a municipal network because the government workers operating the network will have insider knowledge of how to deal with their own bureaucracy and have the ear of the government officials who approved the network to get any artificial roadblocks cleared away. But the real problem is that none of those impediments should be there to begin with.

The government should build and maintain the physical infrastructure like fiber and cell towers, and private industry should be able to access this infra at cost + a small fixed markup and provide all other needed equipment and services on top of that infra.

You can do even better than that. Have the government install cable trenches along all the roads, then provide cheap access to anyone who wants to install fiber in them. That reduces the build-out cost dramatically and then you get competition without anybody being able to make any claim of unfairness because access to install cable is available to every individual member of the public. It should be cheap and easy enough that if you want to run fiber from your house to your buddy's on the other side of town, your primary cost should be the two miles of fiber optic cable.

ClumsyPilot2• 2 years ago

government involvement in anything that could be done privately is by definition harmful.

They are religious extremists, kind of like the Taliban.

In my experience, they are not actually looking at data and are not ready to be convinced by deeper analysis, examination of natural monopolies, or examples of government successfully delivering something. There are a few in this very comment section

samtho• 2 years ago

I personally think that a hybrid system is best. The government should build and maintain the physical infrastructure like fiber and cell towers, and private industry should be able to access this infra at cost + a small fixed markup and provide all other needed equipment and services on top of that infra.

I fully agree and am on board with this. I liken this to a “public roads” approach and (in applicable countries) a nationalized rail system. So many businesses are successful operating on publicly-owned infrastructure without the burden of maintenance. However, if everyone had to maintain their own infra like that, this same burden creates a high barrier to entry for new companies, promoting a monopoly, which leads to a situation where there is non need to compete or innovate: Build once, bill forever.

In my city, Sacramento, the collectively owned power company (SMUD) owns all the power poles and regularly sells space on them for telecom with little restriction. For internet service, I have the option of 2 different FTTH ISPs, 2 DOCSIS ISPs, and 1 DSL ISP (which is 2-3 more options than many people have). Not perfect, but it does mean there is healthy competition and customer choice. I just wish SMUD would run their own PON and sell bandwidth on it, we would then see a number of ISPs pop up and ISP-adjacent innovation utilizing this (hypothetical) city-wide PON as a platform.

saagarjha• 2 years ago

Reporting on lobbying is also legal in the US ;)

cycomanic• 2 years ago

I personally think that a hybrid system is best. The government should build and maintain the physical infrastructure like fiber and cell towers, and private industry should be able to access this infra at cost + a small fixed markup and provide all other needed equipment and services on top of that infra.

The problem that I often see with these approaches is that the companies making the profits often lobby extensively to reduce the "fees, costs..." or have the infrastructure being continously funded by society via e.g. taxes (I actually don't have an issue with initial construction being taxpayer funded). This typically results in infrastructure getting into worse and worse condition because the funds to maintain are not there. Then the lobbying calls for public/private partnership investments (where the private partner reaps the profits and the public is left with the costs). Road infrastructure is a good example, a single truck causes 10000 times more damage then a car [1], but trucks pay only a miniscule proportion of road taxes.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

advael4• 2 years ago

That's such a ridiculous argument on its face. If the government can "cheat" and give you a better service, in what way do you care if they don't turn a profit doing it?

Propelloni• 2 years ago

I personally think that a hybrid system is best. The government should build and maintain the physical infrastructure like fiber and cell towers, and private industry should be able to access this infra at cost + a small fixed markup and provide all other needed equipment and services on top of that infra.

Adam Smith would agree. So do I.

whoitwas3• 2 years ago

It's true, we tried. At some point congressmen and senators decided to start handing billions to huge companies based on promises rather than creating public infrastructure. Now we give money to companies who say they will make the infrastructure, they don't, they legally eliminate competition, then consume more public resources when the public sues because they never created the infrastructure.

This is America. Give companies our tax dollars to be legal monopolies and make our lives suck.

AngryData• 2 years ago

Im in a rural area and couldn't even get DSL at any point, best available was a fixed wireless LTE connection until about 6 months ago, and this is a low swampy area with tons of tall trees and the network was consistently overloaded, so it was garbage service.

Finally though there was a cooperative formed with the local power company and they hung fiber up on the power poles and brought drops down right into the home and now we get 1 gig for less than the wireless cost and completely sidestepped the garbage local telecom company who had been promising internet and not delivering for near two decades. And it didn't take them long at all to string it up down all the roads around here and then drops to peoples homes.

westmeal• 2 years ago

Sorry but your family members argument does not make any sense. In an effort to make profits, spectrum will desperately avoid spending any money on upgrading the existing network.

forgetfreeman6• 2 years ago

Short of a complete reboot of both federal and state governments it is unclear how anything meaningful can be accomplished in this space. Understand this is politicians doing their job by promoting legislation their constituents support. The issue here being corporate and special interest groups pay for politicians to run for office, making them the constituency that is served.

patmorgan232• 2 years ago

Fixing the electoral commission to allow for better influence from the public could be helpful.

Independent redistricting commissions, banning political Gerrymandering/requiring competitive districts, publicly financed political campaigns, and rank choice voting would all have positive impacts on who gets selected and the ability of a constituency to replace them when they don't vote in their interest.

euroderf• 2 years ago

One word: perestroika.

non-chalad3• 2 years ago

The only way to stop corruption is to remove the violence inherent to the system. When corporations can no longer use government to force people to buy from them (mandates, subsidies, IP), this kind of corruption will end.

yard2010• 2 years ago

And a new corruption begins? The problem is with human nature rather than the system

mhuffman• 2 years ago

I remember that they actually got a law passed in North Carolina, I believe, that had a hilariously named law like "Save NC Jobs Act" which straight up made it economically impossible to create municipal broadband if it didn't already exist. It had things like: Municipalities had to add "phantom costs" to their rates and adhere to additional vague laws and regulations, couldn't use certain types of financing to build it, required public entities to make "commercially-sensitive data" available to private industry competitors, etc. If I recall it passed overwhelmingly just because of the name of the bill.

mgraczyk2• 2 years ago

What if the broadband companies are right though? I would prefer having a voice in government that isn't just a politician. Obviously an unpopular opinion but municipal broadband would likely not be good for me personally.

advael4• 2 years ago

I have no idea where you get this impression. Municipal fiber projects have by and large provided consistent symmetric fiber broadband at reasonable prices, while ISPs have invariably gouged people, provided both inconsistent and outdated services, while also selling basically any information about your browsing history they can get their grubby mitts on to everyone under the sun. Between that and abysmal customer service, there's a reason they consistently ranked among the most hated companies in the world. And yet every single one of them is making bank. What world do you live in?

winter_blue• 2 years ago

Absolutely agree. Utility company lobbyists in California recently ruined net metering (with something called NEM 3.0 that cuts solar benefits down by 75%), and wrecked the solar industry in California in the process. Nothing has been done to resolve it yet. The corrupt officials in this case were members of the California Public Utilities Commission, who are appointed by the governor. They put the interests of some greedy utility companies (who, on a different note, have caused many forest fires) above the interests of the people of California, the environment movement and its impetus for green energy, etc. It's a sad and horrible state of affairs.

whoitwas3• 2 years ago

This is how laws are created in the US. It's corruption.

aaomidi• 2 years ago

Okay. I'm glad this happened. I depend on municipal broadband where I am...

Scubabear682• 2 years ago

What really shocked me most about lobbying and campaign contributions is how little money companies can spend to effect radical change. I always thought there were millions of dollars being given to campaign funds. But it’s often just a few thousand or tens of thousands.

Our politicians are bought cheap.

non-chalad3• 2 years ago

Check politicians' speaking fees.

jfengel2• 2 years ago

Ex politicians can make speaking fees. Current ones can't.

There are ways to sneak around campaign finance laws but it's not that simple.

jfengel2• 2 years ago

You can't give millions of dollars to politicians. There are laws, and yes, they're enforced.

It's not even "thousands". Those are actually just the individual employees making donations. You have to name your employer so that the election commission can make sure they aren't filtering money.

The power brokering happens in terms of trading favors. Often, trading votes. (And these days, "issue ads", which was the Supreme Court's big ole fuck-you to election finance laws.)

Scubabear682• 2 years ago

PACs let companies nearly bypass that.

nycdatasci• 2 years ago

Bill Gurley’s talk during the 2023 All-In Summit provides interesting perspective on the type of regulatory capture that leads to bill modifications like this. It’s worth listening to if you have an idle 30 mins. https://youtu.be/F9cO3-MLHOM

Glad to see the clause was nixed!

Anti-municipal broadband budget amendment gets nixed in New York

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