this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2024
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This is great, but we also need a law that mandates leasing of existing last mile, to bring a competition like we had during the days of DSL.
Ideally the fiber from POP to my house should be owned by my city and leased to whichever ISP I want to do business with.
Or you separate the infra from the provider. So all fiber is put into company A and the service offering is done by companies that buy capacity on the lines.
Regulate the shit out of the infra company and let the service offering co pa iets compete. You will see datacaps disappear and prices drop in no time.
This is a rational, interesting, and seemingly sustainable model to use for internet infrastructure companies, and unfortunately, that’s why I’m confident it won’t succeed. Comcast et al would lobby their balls off against any legislation of that nature.
Just like the return of net neutrality, abolishing of non-compete clauses in labor contracts, and a long list of other improvement made under Biden.
What I mean to say, don't be blind to all the hood things happening amidst the shit storm that is the current US political theatre.
Maybe even nationalize it? It's a very important part of modern lives an communication. It is of national interest that it works, is affordable, and is efficient. Why would it not be nationalized?
At least you want to prevent roads being dug up by a range of companies installing duplicate infrastructure. Each house only needs 1 fiber (for data) to them.. everything can come though that fiber.. that also saves resources and allows for easier coordination and less ground works.
I dunno of nationalizing is needed, or if heavily regulating is enough. This is done with water system, high voltage and mid voltage power too.. so the model is familiar.
At least separating the medium from the services and offering the medium under a FRAND model means that also the service providers will keep the medium provider honest and the service providers will compete with eachother for the customer. On quality, service, price and whatever they can think of.
And I fully realise the whole US does not nessecarily mean 1 infra owner.. maybe split across regions/states is better.. that's for lawmakers to figure out.
This would fix a boatload of issues and break down Verizon/Comcast into service vs infrastructure companies.
It will never happen.
Both companies would put forth a staggering amount of money into lobbying to kill this on top of all the politicians they already "donated" to.
It's sickening.
What's sickening is that it's not a staggering amount of money. Around the SOPA bullshit someone made a list of telecom campaign contributions per congressman, and most were < $10k.