The previous 3 presidents all had 2 terms. Any reason to thinks Trump or at least the republican party won't too? Just because you don't like him doesn't mean everyone else doesn't either. Real humans who really wanted him voted him in and they're probably happy with their choice.
That's a pretty small universe. Of the most recent 6, only 4 had two terms. Of the most recent 9, still only 4 had two full terms.
> Any reason to thinks Trump or at least the republican party won't too?
Yes.
> Real humans who really wanted him voted him in and they're probably happy with their choice.
Most of the minority that voted for him may, though polling data show that Trump has lost standing with most groups, including those he was strongest with, since the election. With a barely-sufficient minority win, Trump can't lose much ground and hope to be reelected.
Maybe the reason the market is uncompetitive is because of the price caps? Fighting monopolies with regulation constraining their prices seems like a risky solution. Isn't there some action that would open up the market to more competitors? Even if another company had to lay their own cables, that happens and isn't impossible.
Are you serious? I'm not being flippant here, but your question doesn't seem to be an honest one.
Laying cables is really expensive. It takes a lot of capital and the return on investment is long-term. Two things that aren't very popular among Wall Street or VCs. Even assuming you undertook such a venture, Comcast/ATT/Verizon have really _really_ deep pockets. They can undercut any price you care to offer.
The idea that "regulation" is causing high prices is farcical on its face. There aren't enough schools and libraries to make any difference to the bottom line.
The market is uncompetitive because broadband is a natural monopoly. Just like roads, water, sewer, and electricity. The capital costs are so high there is usually no business justification for having more than 1-2 providers in a given area. There are a few exceptions but they prove the rule.
A "free market" in broadband would look much like the "free market" in electricity: Either the government or a regulated utility granted monopoly power by the government should run the fiber. Any ISP that wants to compete can hook up at the local CO. The equipment on both ends of that fiber can even be owned by the ISP so if new technology allows faster speeds nothing blocks the upgrade (the favorite excuse for pro-corporatist shills).
The big three have fought anything that smells like a free market tooth and nail, outright purchasing legislation at the state level to squash municipal attempts to do anything like this.
The funny thing is the big ISPs rely on government-granted taking of private property in the form of right-of-way to run their cables... something for which property owners receive no compensation. So much for "using our lines" as the ATT CEO likes to claim.
If it's a natural monopoly, why are there all these laws only allowing one provider?
BTW, before the law enshrined AT&T as a "natural" monopoly, there were lots of phone companies who seemed to have no trouble at all running wires everywhere.
If you're referring to the Kingsbury Commitment[1] that was an agreement with the government after AT&T was already a monopoly. After Alexander Graham Bell's patent expired there was a brief period where competition sprouted but then AT&T started consolidating and buying up the smaller competitors. By 1913 AT&T was already in a dominant monopoly position.
A couple things:
1) While AT&T was not the only provider left standing, it was the largest and had scale advantages against its competitors. The Kingsbury Commitment was designed to halt AT&T's expansion and ensure that those competitors were able to compete. However, it failed: AT&T was able to continue to improve its dominant position by selling subscribers in certain areas while purchasing competitors in more strategically advantageous areas.
2) One of the reasons for "natural" monopoly regulation is that we do not want telephone wires, railroads, and pipelines running everywhere. Building a utility requires gaining access to rights of way. Society subsidizes all private utilities by creating rights of way and infringing upon the rights of property owners along the route.
3) The scores of companies running railroads everywhere were subsidized even further. At least in the West, the federal government gave land along the route to the railroad companies for construction. [1] In some ways, building a railroad was more about land speculation than private construction of transportation infrastructure.
I'm glad you wrote this as it is far more coherent than I was writing in my head while walking to the metro station.
To give an example of the type of competition an Isp upstart would face, just look at what happened with google fiber. That was a legal battle every step of the way for them and the incumbents defended against google's deep pockets. You have to have a heck of a defense to fend of a Google invasion. Yes, local government regulations played a role in this, but they blocked federal attempts to unravel the mess of regulations that allowed entire cities to be Comcast cities or time warner cities, and people argued it was a good thing to stop this.
Look at the few cities that can and do offer municipal broadband - competition thrives and consumers have good choices, and the big three have to play ball to get customers; rolling out new lines, better speeds and prices, no caps. Tacoma, WA has municipal broadband and it's great; you have lots of options, including Comcast and century link if you desire. And it's this way because of the municipal, not in spite of it.
> Isn't there some action that would open up the market to more competitors?
Sure there is. It's called local loop unbundling[1] (applied to Internet, rather than legacy telephone networks). Europe successfuly used it to boost ISP competition. In US though it didn't go further than copper DSL lines, and we still have this messed up monopolized market.
ISPs should remain privately owned and operated. But the so called "last mile" should be a shared utility like a road. Government should build it, maintain it, and support it. But once that last mile hits the exchanges then different competing private ISPs should pay a licence fee from the exchange onto the final mile to people's homes.
The last mile is the most expensive element in internat deployments, and also the one most encumbered by regulation (e.g. digging up roads, putting cable on existing poles, installing cable with other utilities, etc).
But most importantly other businesses depend on the reliable fast internet to make money. It is a utility. Entire new industries will crop up from superior internet (like video streaming services did from the last leap forward, and streaming music the leap before that). The US's entire ability to make money is being curtailed by low quality internet.
Google had the right idea, just not deep enough pockets and a long enough attention span to see it through. This is a billion dollar project per state.
Here it pretty much has been but for the last quarter mile. That's still copper because I guess the break-out technology isn't free and they love their existing coax cable infrastructure.
They're also able to get gigabit-type speeds over it, so I guess it's not a huge impediment.
Retraining cable techs to do fiber splices rather than coax crimps isn't going to be cheap. Can you put a barrel connector on those fiber lines?
I've only done datacentre grade fiber, not the stuff you'd sling outdoors. The only fiber they offer here is in condo buildings in a controlled environment.
> Nobody will do that if they know you are waiting to force them to share with competitors.
According to this logic, nobody would do that for water pipes and electric grid too, yet they are working. Local loop unbundling clearly works in many places already.
"Cable" often means "pole access rights". Very few companies have this, it's very tightly restricted, and by design. Normally it's telecom, cable, electric and nobody else.
If you made access to poles easier you'd have more competition. You'd also have a lot more wiring, pedestals and failure points, but hey.
> Even if another company had to lay their own cables, that happens and isn't impossible.
But highly improbable, because it's very expensive to lay cable and hard to recoup the investment. There are countless articles on the Internet as to why this is so. One from 2014 has this poignant sentence:
> There is a ray of hope, though. Just this month, FCC chair Tom Wheeler indicated that the agency might be willing to step in and help do away with all the state-level laws blocking municipal broadband projects.
Maybe not all, but many of those regulations and permits are there for a reason. The vast majority of the population cares way, way more about not having construction in their yard than they do about enabling a competitive market for ISPs.
If you try to dig up all the sidewalks and driveways on any given block block, most of the residents will raise holy hell with their local elected representatives and try to shut you down any way they can. Much of this regulation is in fact the will of the people, and I'm not sure it's wrong. It is a significant disruption to people's property, and it's silly to lay redundant network infrastructure. It's a bad solution to a stupid problem that only exists because of ideological intransigence.
In my neighborhood, and for miles around it, the internet cable is stapled to the telephone poles. Every few years they pull it off and staple another one on that can handle more bandwidth.
A while back a competitor appeared and tried to run another wire, but it got so mired in permits, regulations, and lawsuits that it gave up. It wasn't the cost of laying the cable.
> The high cost is due to regulations, laws, permits, and lawsuits.
No, it's due to private property owners. The regulations are mostly dealing with what it takes to bypass then, but in libertarian utopia, those regulations would be gone and the cost would be higher, not lower, for a new cable layer.
What's alarming is how silent the giant Silicon Valley companies have been as the FCC proceeds to destroy the foundations of the open web. It was little noted at the time that Google actually sent a letter in support of the new policy giving ISPs the right to sell customer browsing data. Without Sillicon Valley in our corner there's not much hope. It's all corporations in lock step aligned with the government against consumers.
Appointing the chairman is really one of the few influential bits that the President can do with the FCC. The chair sets the agenda for commission meetings, manages the commission's ~1700 employees, and sets enforcement priorities. Other than actually adopting new regulations (which requires a vote by all commission members), the FCC chair IS the FCC.
Also, while Commissioners Pai and O'Rielly were nominated by Obama, they were chosen in consultation with Republican congressional leadership (because the FCC must remain bipartisan by law). I'm not sure that one can say that they are "Obama appointees" in the same way that judicial appointees are.
The Trump reference is valid, he is POTUS. Despite the 'independent' claim, the agencies of the government are often influenced by their masters. There is only 1 Democrat currently on the FCC board, the other 2 (despite being nominated by the former POTUS) are Republican and since gaining the chair the GOP led (i.e. Trump) FCC is rolling back Obama initiatives that were in support of the Open Web in favor of Trump / GOP initiatives that favor the 'free market'.
> Can someone explain to me why an FCC that is currently made up of three Obama appointees is "Trump's" FCC?
Because it has a Republican majority as a result of Trump's election, and Trump selected the chair from among the two Republican members, so Trump's election and Trump personally have set the direction of the current FCC. Hence, Trump's FCC.
"Because it has a Republican majority as a result of Trump's election"
Sorry, its makeup has nothing to do with "Trump's election". All three current members were appointed by Obama.
Now, Trump is likely to get to appoint at least three members. At that point, it could, perhaps, justifiably be called "Trump's" FCC.
Until that happens, though, calling an independent agency in which all of the members were appointed by Obama (and over which the executive branch has no direct authority) "Trump's" is so disingenuous it crosses the borderline into dishonesty.
Appointing the chairman is one of the few ways that a president can influence the FCC. The FCC chairman runs almost all of the commission's functions, including managing the agency's hundreds of employees and setting enforcement priorities. One of the few major things that Chairman Pai cannot do alone is adopt new regulations. It is fair to say that Pai is Trump's FCC chairman and thus it is Trump's FCC.
edit: At least to the extent that any independent agency can belong to a president.
> Sorry, its makeup has nothing to do with "Trump's election".
Yes, it does. It's not a 3 seat commission, it's a five seat commission, and the Senate blocked the renomination of a Democrat whose term ended in December to keep the seat open for Trump to name a replacement, and Wheeler resigned at the end of Obama's term, as is customary (but technically not required) for FCC chairs at a Presidential transition unless asked to stay on.
Had Trump not been elected, the FCC would either be in a 2-2 deadlock (had the Senate blocked Rosenworcel's renomination despite a new Democratic administration waiting in the wings, which would be unusual but not implausible), or still a 3-2 Democratic majority.
This is Trump's FCC, even if he hasn't appointed the two members (only one of which can be a Republican) he can to fill vacancies.
53 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 49.7 ms ] threadYou mean the same polls that were 100% sure that he wouldn't win? [1]
[1] https://i.imgsafe.org/ed39a859e5.jpg
"Trump will never make it past the first debate"
"Trump will never win the Republican primary"
"Trump will never win the general election"
(You are here)
(I'm over here)
"Trump will never do jail time."
"Trump will never lead a prison riot that gets a thousand prisoners killed."
"Trump will never cruise the nuclear wastelands of America with his gang of misfits in their hacked together deathmobiles..."
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trum...
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_obam...
That's a pretty small universe. Of the most recent 6, only 4 had two terms. Of the most recent 9, still only 4 had two full terms.
> Any reason to thinks Trump or at least the republican party won't too?
Yes.
> Real humans who really wanted him voted him in and they're probably happy with their choice.
Most of the minority that voted for him may, though polling data show that Trump has lost standing with most groups, including those he was strongest with, since the election. With a barely-sufficient minority win, Trump can't lose much ground and hope to be reelected.
Remember 2004?
Laying cables is really expensive. It takes a lot of capital and the return on investment is long-term. Two things that aren't very popular among Wall Street or VCs. Even assuming you undertook such a venture, Comcast/ATT/Verizon have really _really_ deep pockets. They can undercut any price you care to offer.
The idea that "regulation" is causing high prices is farcical on its face. There aren't enough schools and libraries to make any difference to the bottom line.
The market is uncompetitive because broadband is a natural monopoly. Just like roads, water, sewer, and electricity. The capital costs are so high there is usually no business justification for having more than 1-2 providers in a given area. There are a few exceptions but they prove the rule.
A "free market" in broadband would look much like the "free market" in electricity: Either the government or a regulated utility granted monopoly power by the government should run the fiber. Any ISP that wants to compete can hook up at the local CO. The equipment on both ends of that fiber can even be owned by the ISP so if new technology allows faster speeds nothing blocks the upgrade (the favorite excuse for pro-corporatist shills).
The big three have fought anything that smells like a free market tooth and nail, outright purchasing legislation at the state level to squash municipal attempts to do anything like this.
The funny thing is the big ISPs rely on government-granted taking of private property in the form of right-of-way to run their cables... something for which property owners receive no compensation. So much for "using our lines" as the ATT CEO likes to claim.
BTW, before the law enshrined AT&T as a "natural" monopoly, there were lots of phone companies who seemed to have no trouble at all running wires everywhere.
On the other hand a lot of America only got telephone access after the att monopoly was formed in 1913.
Most of the rest of the world only has one hardware network run by a well regulated monopoly.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsbury_Commitment
Note that scores of companies were running railroads everywhere, it doesn't make sense that running a telephone wire was infeasibly expensive.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Railroad_Acts
To give an example of the type of competition an Isp upstart would face, just look at what happened with google fiber. That was a legal battle every step of the way for them and the incumbents defended against google's deep pockets. You have to have a heck of a defense to fend of a Google invasion. Yes, local government regulations played a role in this, but they blocked federal attempts to unravel the mess of regulations that allowed entire cities to be Comcast cities or time warner cities, and people argued it was a good thing to stop this.
Look at the few cities that can and do offer municipal broadband - competition thrives and consumers have good choices, and the big three have to play ball to get customers; rolling out new lines, better speeds and prices, no caps. Tacoma, WA has municipal broadband and it's great; you have lots of options, including Comcast and century link if you desire. And it's this way because of the municipal, not in spite of it.
Sure there is. It's called local loop unbundling[1] (applied to Internet, rather than legacy telephone networks). Europe successfuly used it to boost ISP competition. In US though it didn't go further than copper DSL lines, and we still have this messed up monopolized market.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local-loop_unbundling
ISPs should remain privately owned and operated. But the so called "last mile" should be a shared utility like a road. Government should build it, maintain it, and support it. But once that last mile hits the exchanges then different competing private ISPs should pay a licence fee from the exchange onto the final mile to people's homes.
The last mile is the most expensive element in internat deployments, and also the one most encumbered by regulation (e.g. digging up roads, putting cable on existing poles, installing cable with other utilities, etc).
But most importantly other businesses depend on the reliable fast internet to make money. It is a utility. Entire new industries will crop up from superior internet (like video streaming services did from the last leap forward, and streaming music the leap before that). The US's entire ability to make money is being curtailed by low quality internet.
Google had the right idea, just not deep enough pockets and a long enough attention span to see it through. This is a billion dollar project per state.
I don't think it's technically feasible.
They're also able to get gigabit-type speeds over it, so I guess it's not a huge impediment.
I think they should like passive optic networks more. Altice for example plans to upgrade Optimum hybrid fiber-coax network to full fiber optics.
I've only done datacentre grade fiber, not the stuff you'd sling outdoors. The only fiber they offer here is in condo buildings in a controlled environment.
In practice, they rarely splice fiber optic cables. That's why you see those messy coils[1] on the poles often.
1. http://i48.tinypic.com/mvqkvq.jpg
And really, we can get gigabit over coax, so I'm not really sure we do need to spend money upgrading.
According to this logic, nobody would do that for water pipes and electric grid too, yet they are working. Local loop unbundling clearly works in many places already.
If you made access to poles easier you'd have more competition. You'd also have a lot more wiring, pedestals and failure points, but hey.
But highly improbable, because it's very expensive to lay cable and hard to recoup the investment. There are countless articles on the Internet as to why this is so. One from 2014 has this poignant sentence:
> There is a ray of hope, though. Just this month, FCC chair Tom Wheeler indicated that the agency might be willing to step in and help do away with all the state-level laws blocking municipal broadband projects.
Not bloody likely.
https://consumerist.com/2014/05/10/why-starting-a-competitor...
If you try to dig up all the sidewalks and driveways on any given block block, most of the residents will raise holy hell with their local elected representatives and try to shut you down any way they can. Much of this regulation is in fact the will of the people, and I'm not sure it's wrong. It is a significant disruption to people's property, and it's silly to lay redundant network infrastructure. It's a bad solution to a stupid problem that only exists because of ideological intransigence.
A while back a competitor appeared and tried to run another wire, but it got so mired in permits, regulations, and lawsuits that it gave up. It wasn't the cost of laying the cable.
No, it's due to private property owners. The regulations are mostly dealing with what it takes to bypass then, but in libertarian utopia, those regulations would be gone and the cost would be higher, not lower, for a new cable layer.
Trump did name Pai as chair, but he was already on the commission (appointed by Obama in 2012).
That's a terrible, click-baity headline, even by the low standards normally set by vice.com.
Also, while Commissioners Pai and O'Rielly were nominated by Obama, they were chosen in consultation with Republican congressional leadership (because the FCC must remain bipartisan by law). I'm not sure that one can say that they are "Obama appointees" in the same way that judicial appointees are.
Because it has a Republican majority as a result of Trump's election, and Trump selected the chair from among the two Republican members, so Trump's election and Trump personally have set the direction of the current FCC. Hence, Trump's FCC.
Sorry, its makeup has nothing to do with "Trump's election". All three current members were appointed by Obama.
Now, Trump is likely to get to appoint at least three members. At that point, it could, perhaps, justifiably be called "Trump's" FCC.
Until that happens, though, calling an independent agency in which all of the members were appointed by Obama (and over which the executive branch has no direct authority) "Trump's" is so disingenuous it crosses the borderline into dishonesty.
edit: At least to the extent that any independent agency can belong to a president.
Yes, it does. It's not a 3 seat commission, it's a five seat commission, and the Senate blocked the renomination of a Democrat whose term ended in December to keep the seat open for Trump to name a replacement, and Wheeler resigned at the end of Obama's term, as is customary (but technically not required) for FCC chairs at a Presidential transition unless asked to stay on.
Had Trump not been elected, the FCC would either be in a 2-2 deadlock (had the Senate blocked Rosenworcel's renomination despite a new Democratic administration waiting in the wings, which would be unusual but not implausible), or still a 3-2 Democratic majority.
This is Trump's FCC, even if he hasn't appointed the two members (only one of which can be a Republican) he can to fill vacancies.
And? All three of the members were still appointed by Obama. Not Trump.