Deregulatory actions are only ever used in service of entrenching telecom monopolies. The part where we actually get meaningful competition never happens.
Even though I wish for minimal regulation, I can't trust the deregulatory side to provide it. Because that side is infected by people like Ajit Pai who filter out any deregulatory actions which might threaten the monopolists.
The majority of states (comprising the vast majority of the population) have little to no restrictions on municipal broadband. Here in Maryland, for example, there is no such law and the governor is actively promoting municipal broadband. But few municipalities are pursuing that option. I'm not aware of any states which have laws "favoring incumbent telecoms over ... Google fiber, or other market entrants." Can you point to anything specific?
> If "deregulation" advocates were actually serious, they would have pursued those actions first.
They did! Two years before Congress deregulated the industry in 1996, it made it illegal for local governments to grant exclusive cable franchises. Then in the 1996 deregulation, it required non-discriminatory access to utility poles and ducts.
The biggest impediments to deployment these days are at the state and local level: permitting requirements, onerous franchise license terms, etc. Congress could (and in my opinion, should) completely preempt these things, but that's a hard sell. Municipalities use these franchises as a vehicle for all sorts of social agendas ("wire up public buildings!" "wire up disadvantaged neighborhoods!"), and as a revenue source (taxing 5% of gross revenue). Google got most of these things waived in Fiber cities, but it was a move strongly opposed by the public-interest types: https://techliberation.com/2012/08/07/what-google-fiber-says....
Most states, including many of the most populous, New York, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Illinois, Georgia, Texas, etc., have no such laws. Many of the states that do have such laws don't have restrictive ones (e.g. in Washington, you just have to be a city with the power to make your own ordinances).
If municipal broadband was something that would actually happen in the absence of these laws, why don't we see these networks popping up in all the places without such laws?
There was a question about citing laws, that link cited 21 of them.
Not all cities are building their own internet so that means we don't need to do anything is logic that I just don't follow.
My city didn't build their own. Last time it came up the news reported that it was because Comcast bribed the city council to charge unreasonable fees for adding cables to the existing poles and ensure that only Comcast could do the work on their own schedules. No one disputes that, but everyone who can do anything about it shrugs because Comcast is still paying them and its not illegal because money=speech.
But I guess because some other states with more broadband competition don't have as many restrictions (sense a link there?), and "all the places" that can haven't built their own broadband, I can no longer complain about not having any competition in my market and my leaders are removing laws that protect me from them but instead put in more laws that protect them from me?
> Not all cities are building their own internet so that means we don't need to do anything is logic that I just don't follow.
If you're citing municipal broadband laws as something suppressing the development of competition, it's fair to point out that most people live in states that don't have such laws, yet we don't see municipal broadband emerging as a source of competition in those states.
The U.S. is a big place, and you can probably name anything and find it happening somewhere in the U.S. The question is, what are the things that are actually creating impediments. If states without municipal broadband laws aren't actually building municipal networks, then getting rid of such laws might be a moral victory, but wouldn't actually change anything.
> My city didn't build their own. Last time it came up the news reported that it was because Comcast bribed the city council to charge unreasonable fees for adding cables to the existing poles and ensure that only Comcast could do the work on their own schedules.
Do you have a link to the story? It seems suspect, because pole attachment rates are governed by formulas set by either the FCC, or by the state (if the state certifies that it regulates such rates). Also, most poles are owned by power companies, and they set the rates, not city councils.
> I'm not aware of any states which have laws "favoring incumbent telecoms over ... Google fiber, or other market entrants." Can you point to anything specific?
> The biggest impediments to deployment these days are at the state and local level: permitting requirements, onerous franchise license terms, etc.
I mean, the reason those things are impediments is because the state and local laws favor incumbent telecoms by imposing permitting requirements and allowing onerous franchise license terms. Aren't you kind of answering your own question here?
The OP's phrasing makes it seem like state and local governments impose in order to favor incumbents. Rather, state and local governments impose these regulations because they're short-sighted. Baltimore is a great example. The city has been railing against the incumbent, Comcast. But then it didn't let Verizon build FiOS in the city, because Verizon wouldn't meet its demand of building out to every neighborhood in the city. The city then appealed to Google, which also wasn't interested, because Google categorically doesn't agree to build-out requirements: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/08/snubb....
> Rather, state and local governments impose these regulations because they're short-sighted.
See, I don't think this is always true. In my city its more like "state and local governments impose these regulations because they're _paid by Comcast and that's ok because money=speech_".
Calling it short-sighted is letting them off the hook, IMHO.
"We didn't realize that this company paying us to put up barriers to competition would use those barriers to prevent competition later" is right on the verge of being ridiculous.
> Congress could (and in my opinion, should) completely preempt these things, but that's a hard sell.
It's always easier to do what big telecom wants. So we have action on "deregulating" Net Neutrality which allows the telecoms to further leverage their local monopoly power, but no action which might actually put those monopolies in danger of real competition.
> It's always easier to do what big telecom wants.
I'm pretty sure that "big telecom" never wanted to have their exclusive franchises eliminated, to be forced to provide non-discriminatory access to poles and ducts, be forced to provide universal service, etc. But Congress did all those things in the 1996 act. The cynicism misconceives the situation. The real problem is building a coalition to take away authority from state/local governments. It's hard to get republicans to say that state/local governments shouldn't have authority over the permitting process used for building wires in their jurisdiction. That's a quintessentially state/local issue. And it's hard to get democrats to say that state/local governments shouldn't be able to use these processes to advance various social agendas.
It's just a microcosm of a bigger problem, which is that while our federal government has joined with the rest of the world in deregulating large spheres of the economy, our state/local governments are hopelessly backwards, and for the most part Congress can't do anything about that. I was just in Tokyo and the loose zoning laws meant that even space under freeway overpasses was being utilized for stores and shops. You're just not allowed to do that sort of thing in the U.S.
So, with efforts past and efforts abandoned having failed to produce meaningful competition among ISPs... our response is to enlarge the market space in which monopoly power can be abused?
First: meaningful competition for the telecoms. Only then, does it make sense to even consider rolling back Net Neutrality.
And if deregulation is powerless to introduce telecom competition, who can blame people for turning to more aggressive last mile unbundling instead?
Even though I wish for minimal regulation, I can't trust the deregulatory side to provide it. Because that side is infected by people like Ajit Pai who filter out any deregulatory actions which might threaten the monopolists.