Nobody is going to run core internet infrastructure for free. The government can’t even handle our current infrastructure of roads, bridges, electrical grids, and utilities. How on earth is the government supposed to operate as an ISP? We need better regulation, not public ownership.
Or I guess we’ll just tack on another Trillion dollars to our annual deficit…infinite government expansion/spending can solve every problem right?! /s
there is a middle ground in between asking that the government run the internet, and allowing telecom behemoths to merge as they please and reduce consumer competition.
You can run a totally fine regional last mile ISP with 10, 15, or 50 FTE staff positions. Depending on your geographical scale. Or 500.
You don't need to be a Comcast, Centurylink or Verizon sized monster.
In fact some of the absolute best consumer-service quality 1GbE and 10GbE symmetric FTTH ISPs that I'm aware of are run by teams of less than 25 people in total. On a county sized scale.
Sure, nobody is saying the government should do nothing with the internet. It's already involved with subsidies. But the article is about government ownership of the internet. That's a very different thing.
I worked for a government telco and ISP, that serviced govenrment customers. At the time, our cost structure was about 30-40% less than an equivalent telco service.
Once you get past the “derp, government dumb”, the government has a lot of competitive advantages. Government entities have better ability to do capital spending as they aren’t beholden to Wall St analysts, who hate capital.
For an ISP, a .gov could bond out to build and contract private operators at a much lower cost than monopoly companies charge themselves internally.
Working for the public trust does not automatically make people incompetent. Publicly run projects have been run fine in the past with excellent results and there is no inherent flaw in the model that prevents public projects from succeeding.
The "Deficit" boogeyman is a tired scare tactic. Spending money on things that are worth their cost is not bad.
> The "Deficit" boogeyman is a tired scare tactic. Spending money on things that are worth their cost is not bad.
This is insane. Look around at the economic turmoil in the US right now. The government spent $400B last year on interest payments alone. That’s 2/3 our military budget. We’re never paying down our $30T owed.
They fund the difference by selling bonds to the central bank, creating money out of thin air. This destroys the lower class, who have no assets that move with inflation.
In what world do you think it’s appropriate to deepen our debt burden and destroy American savings to “deprivitize” the internet? Americans can’t even afford healthcare and shelter for gods sake.
You seem to be assuming government means federal, but local government is also government and there are many towns with municipal fiber their residents are happy with.
That’s awesome and in no way do I argue that shouldn’t be allowed. I’m arguing for the sane moderate position that regulation can be tightened instead of eliminating private internet. That doesn’t mean local government can’t build their own infrastructure.
Yes consumer focused regulation to ensure net neutrality, ISPs not spying on you to sell data, and good value for money would be the solution IMO. You pay for broadband, the watchdog ensures that the monopolies are doing a good job.
> The government can’t even handle our current infrastructure of roads, bridges, electrical grids, and utilities.
Other than the (private) electrical grid in California and the blunders in Texas, handling of the electrical grid has been pretty good. And despite all the complaining from government contractors who want more road/bridge repair funding sent their way, those things are honestly in pretty workable shape
> The government can’t even handle our current infrastructure of roads, bridges, electrical grids, and utilities.
If they stop doing this today, because they're so bad at it, what system do you think would take roads, bridges, electrical grids, and utilities over, and would they do a better job or hasten us into libertarian Mad Max hell?
Or I guess we’ll just tack on another Trillion dollars to our annual deficit…infinite government expansion/spending can solve every problem right?! /s