[HN Gopher] Court upholds New York law that says ISPs must offer...
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Court upholds New York law that says ISPs must offer $15 broadband
Author : nateb2022
Score : 69 points
Date : 2024-04-26 21:18 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| infecto wrote:
| Serious question here. Is this law more or less stating that the
| business gets no revenue back from local or state government? I
| have no issue with the argument that internet service is a basic
| right but if that is the case, I would expect the government to
| either offer the service or pay a market/agreed price to cover
| the cost for low income users.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| $15 probably _does_ cover the costs of these plans. 25 megabit?
| infecto wrote:
| I don't know what the costs are but my point is more that its
| setting price for a for-profit entity. It gets sticky because
| I don't know NY state law and perhaps these groups have
| lobbied for getting regions where you are unable to compete
| as n independent and with that defacto monopoly they should
| play by any additional rules.
|
| I would just assume that if you want to provide broadband
| service to low-income that the government would be making up
| for some of the lost revenue.
| outofpaper wrote:
| The government is letting you provide service using tax-
| payer fiber. That makes for a fair bit of profit. Take away
| the fiber n try operating an ISP. Oh I know there's
| StarLink but that's not going to giver everyone in a city
| broadband.
| toast0 wrote:
| 25 mbps isn't much, but... $15/month probably doesn't cover
| any line to your house.
|
| A low cost landline was $10/month 10+ years ago, and usage
| was extra. I think that's an ok baseline for a connection
| that needs maintenance and service.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think there's also the factor that the US government has
| already paid ISPs for last mile installations several times
| now - the line to everyone's house has been paid for... if
| an ISP diverted that money into stock buy backs I'm sure
| they can explain that to the court and instead be found to
| have fraudulently expended that subsidy.
| toast0 wrote:
| Some of that is one time cost, but you've got ongoing
| costs like pole maintenance and replacement, repairing
| breaks, trouble tickets, call centers, etc.
|
| I just don't think you can do that for $15/month, even if
| the capex of build out has already been paid for. Maaaybe
| if you had near 100% uptake, like landlines used to have.
| But no ISP is getting that. Most (certainly not all)
| people can choose between wired internet from a telco and
| a cable company, and 4g/5g is available in a lot of
| places, starlink in less dense places, and a lot of
| people don't need a separate home internet plan because
| the only networked device is their phone.
| ikiris wrote:
| it managages it just fine in other developed nations.
| singlow wrote:
| I think the logic here is that the government has already
| subsidized them by granting privileges to use public
| infrastrucure that was built with tax dollars. There can only
| be so many wires running on the poles or under the streets so
| in return for that privilege, you have to provide this in
| return.
| infecto wrote:
| Yeah I was thinking that might be the case as well and I can
| see that argument making sense too. This especially makes
| sense if they get assigned regions with zero competition.
|
| On the other hand these types of rules seem like they would
| be hard to perfect I would almost rather have municipal run
| internet.
| throwaway48476 wrote:
| It would be nice if there was as much interest in making
| laying new fiber cheaper as there seems to be in shuffling
| pieces around via regulation.
| tshaddox wrote:
| The term of art is "natural monopoly," and ISPs (at least
| landlines) are a textbook example.
| legitster wrote:
| Governments already charge ISPs to use said infrastructure:
|
| https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/ad-hoc-commitee-
| surv...
|
| So for those poles running down the street in front of your
| house, ISPs are already paying ~$20 per pole per year. Places
| like NYC probably also take a cut of the revenue on top. In
| some regions, this is the primary gatekeeper against
| competition!
|
| It's really hard to argue that this is a subsidy - if
| anything it's the municipalities using the power of their
| natural monopoly.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _$20 per pole per year_
|
| So low? That's approximately 0% of what the ISP makes from
| the homes served by that pole. I figured it would be more.
| legitster wrote:
| I think you are exaggerating a bit. I have a pole in
| front of my house that just serves me and my neighbor. I
| pay $480 a year for Comcast, my neighbor gets
| CenturyLink.
|
| So the cost for the pole rental works out to about 5% of
| Comcast's service cost to me.
|
| Keep in mind some poles cost more than others (up to $250
| according to the report), and that there are also hookup
| costs for the pole are ~$1000.
|
| I'm not saying ISPs are suffering here, but cities are
| not providing this infrastructure at a loss.
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| > _I have a pole in front of my house that just serves me
| and my neighbor_
|
| Hah. We live in veeeeery different housing densities I
| guess. I was thinking this was NYC, which would be closer
| to mine. If it's the whole state then probably somewhere
| in between.
| cogman10 wrote:
| This is where I think we are all wrong.
|
| In the UK, the lines are owned by the government and
| ISPs/telcos rent access to provide service.
|
| This allows for pretty strong competition from the ISPs and
| stops there from being a billion dead lines buried
| underground.
|
| To me, government owned lines and connections makes the most
| sense for society.
|
| I think that's also a big part of why the US train system
| sucks. Private entities generally don't want to own that
| infrastructure, they want the trains that can haul the goods.
| So make them rent the line and have the government manage
| access just like they do with airplanes and roads.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Tell that to the judge who oversaw AT&T's breakup.
| legitster wrote:
| I make this point all of the time.
|
| In the US, the rails are private and the government owns
| the passenger service. In Europe, the government owns the
| rails and the passenger service is private.
|
| People try to frame these issues as "socialist/capitalist"
| or some nonsense all of the time. But the reality is that
| neither system is more or less capitalist than the other.
| It's just one is better structured than the other.
|
| _However_ , having lived in a town in the US that has had
| a public ISP for decades, _it was abhorrent_.
| Municipalities only care about cost cutting - so there was
| no investment in wiring infrastructure or customer service.
| So I think there is an argument to be made that we may take
| for granted a bit the difference between rails /roads and
| fiber optics.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| The general image I get from the US is that public
| infrastructure and customer service _in_ _general_ is
| lacking in investment.
| legitster wrote:
| Maybe, infrastructure. But having spent time in both the
| US and in Europe, I cannot begin to even describe how
| much better _average_ customer service in America is
| compared to Europe.
|
| But I think that is also what holds up the adoption of
| public services - the difference between typical customer
| service in the US and say, the Post Office or DMV, turns
| a lot of people off from the idea of public ISPs or etc.
|
| (Although, based on some time spent in Munich makes me
| think the quality/availability of broadband in Europe is
| also not all that).
| cogman10 wrote:
| > Municipalities only care about cost cutting - so there
| was no investment in wiring infrastructure or customer
| service.
|
| Well, there's two aspects at play here.
|
| For starters, you do need to be a certain size as an ISP
| to really offer cheap services. Imagine, for example,
| being a town of 500 with a municipal ISP. You'd end up
| with a lot of equipment to store and maintain and to
| really be effective, you'd have to employ a bunch of
| people that spend most of their time doing nothing.
| (After all, how often would the customer service rep for
| a small town ACTUALLY be answering any calls?).
|
| That's why a state, county, or national? run ISP would
| probably make more sense, especially in more rural
| locations.
|
| That being said, in the UK with BT and the line rentals I
| described earlier those worked unreasonably well. ISPs
| could complain to BT to fix problems which ultimately
| left the various ISPs in a region to compete on tech and
| price. That was a win for the customer.
| philwelch wrote:
| The US train system is great; we move a much higher
| proportion of freight by rail as opposed to truck than
| Europe does for that very reason.
| barney54 wrote:
| The freight system is great, the passenger train system
| in the U.S., not so much.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| If the government owns the lines, what are private
| telcos... actually doing? Operating the webpage that lets
| you put in a credit card to pay for service?
| ranger_danger wrote:
| > There can only be so many wires running on the poles or
| under the streets
|
| True, but I think using DWDM this is mostly a non-issue.
| tzs wrote:
| That logic works, perhaps, for wired ISPs but not for
| wireless ISPs. Does the New York law cover wireless ISPs or
| only wired ISPs?
|
| Yes, wireless spectrum is a limited public resource that
| requires government permission to use, but the government in
| that case is federal government.
| hanniabu wrote:
| > For consumers who qualify for means-tested government benefits,
| the state law requires ISPs to offer "broadband at no more than
| $15 per month for service of 25Mbps, or $20 per month for high-
| speed service of 200Mbps," the ruling noted. The law allows for
| price increases every few years and makes exemptions available to
| ISPs with fewer than 20,000 customers.
|
| Okay, so they're either going to make the application process an
| extremely painful experience so nobody will want to go through
| it, or make a ton of shell companies where each one is dealing
| with less than 20k customers.
| vidarh wrote:
| I don't know New York law, but pretty much every jurisdictions
| has mechanisms for determining that a company is a subsidiary
| that is not an independent entity. Whether or not the law
| currently takes that into account, if anyone plays stupid games
| with that expect the law to be changed accordingly. This is
| hardly difficult to untangle.
| hanniabu wrote:
| > expect the law to be changed
|
| There's tons of loopholes everywhere allowing companies to
| get away with ridiculous stuff, getting it fixed is the last
| thing I'd expect
| swatcoder wrote:
| You think it's more cost effective for a company to
| artificially restructure itself into a obscured collage of
| vanishingly small cells than for them to offer a fixed-price
| minimal-service tier to a specific set of low-opportunity
| customers who probably have high collections issues under
| normal circumstances?
| BugsJustFindMe wrote:
| 200Mbps isn't minimal service. It's more than most people
| need for anything they do online. Netflix suggests 25Mbps for
| 4K streaming.
| loceng wrote:
| Not accounting for government-produced inflation is interesting.
|
| I wonder if city could sue Federal government for printing money
| and causing such consequences?
|
| Reminder that deflation should be occurring with the benefits of
| automation technology, where the buying power of the dollar
| should be increasing.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| This has happened before.
|
| Most cities capped transit fares at one nickel when streetcars
| got started and the US was on the gold standard. These laws
| remained in effect even through massive inflation through two
| world wars, and usually didn't get repealed until the companies
| failed, the government took ownership of these services and
| then realized how much they cost.
| rizzom5000 wrote:
| Have price controls ever ended with a positive outcome for
| consumers, or anyone for that matter?
| gms wrote:
| No. Unfortunately wielding them is always an act of either
| ignorance or malice.
| legitster wrote:
| This seems... excessive. I'm all for cheaper internet, but why
| even bother with $15 at this point? Why not just make it free?
|
| Both companies and consumers are going to be completely at the
| whim of regulators. If they start jiggering around with the means
| testing and or the completely arbitrary price point, I'm not
| confident the quality won't deteriorate or ISPs pull out of the
| state altogether.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| At this point, internet is like electricity. Except that I have
| more choices for power providers than I do for internet. In my
| building in New York City, I have one option (cable via
| Spectrum), and the cheapest plan they offer is $80 per month.
|
| It recently got a lot faster, which is nice, but I'd happily
| pay $30/month instead for a small fraction of the bandwidth.
| But I can't.
|
| I wouldn't qualify for the hypothetical state enforced $15
| option anyway.
| legitster wrote:
| > Except that I have more choices for power providers than I
| do for internet
|
| I've lived in over 15 different places in the US, and I have
| never, ever had more than 1 option for power provider.
| internetter wrote:
| $15 is a fair price for 25mbit
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