Pai's dissent touched on a point no one I've talked to has considered: the hundreds of tiny carriers--mostly WISPs--across the US who might/will be affected by this. They can barely compete against big telco and cable as is.
Brett Glass has written quite a bit about the WISP perspective, but my interpretation is that WISP networks are so limited that they can only compete if they lie about either their speeds or about how much of the Internet they're providing access to. I don't want competition that bad.
I've personally had three fixed wireless installations over the past decade. Two residential, one business. I've researched the option in numerous additional cases for both business and residential service.
Both business and consumer services are typically more expensive by 10-100% and have installation (particularly LOS) requirements many -- if not most, in topographically unfavorable areas -- cannot meet. While the business services are usually OK once installed, consumer services are particularly unstable and the equipment prone to early death.
Notably, the wireless ISPs I'm familiar with ended up either shut down or moving to a different line of primary business as soon as any sort of viable wired service made it into town.
While far better than relying on mobile data if you don't have other options, it's still definitely not a substitute, even for DSL.
Under the hood, consumer fixed wireless is usually just wifi gear, but running on licensed frequencies and attached to big outdoor antennas.
If you're very, very lucky, the hardware might have been manufactured to run optimally on those frequencies, or it might just be a WAP in a different box running tweaked software.
This has the generally-crappy results you would expect.
Business gear is substantially more robust and expensive.
Comedians have a social context for their jokes -- the presumption of anyone looking at the content of what they say is to look for a second or ironic meaning first. Justine is just a normal person, so the presumption of the mob is that the literal meaning of what she says is what she meant to communicate.
There are a lot of people who are hungry enough to signal how righteous they are to their peers that they'll immediately jump to the least-charitable interpretation of anything anyone says, and Justine was their target for 24 hours.
That is my issue with this. Daniel Tosh makes sexist, racist, and rape jokes on a daily basis and people at large aren't up in arms threatening to strike if he visits their workplace. To me this says these psuedo-activists care more about picking on an easy target than actually preventing hurtful speech. Not to mention the hypocrisy of many of those tweets when they call her a bitch, or send her death threats.
I'll let another comedian, George Carlin, explain:
There is absolutely nothing wrong with any of those words in and of themselves. They’re only words. It’s the context that counts. It’s the user. It’s the intention behind the words that makes them good or bad. The words are completely neutral. The words are innocent. I get tired of people talking about bad words and bad language.
Bullshit! It’s the context that makes them good or bad. The context. That makes them good or bad. For instance, you take the word “Nigger.” There is absolutely nothing wrong with the word “Nigger” in and of itself. It’s the racist asshole who’s using it that you ought to be concerned about. We don’t care when Richard Pryor or Eddie Murphy say it.
Why? Because we know they’re not racist. They’re Niggers! Context. Context.
We don’t mind their context because we know they’re black.
It's the same reason that SF gentrification articles come in waves on HN. There is a cause du jour, and it only lasts a little while until the new one.
I believe that in amsterdam, even though you only have 1 fiber line running to your house, you can choose from many ISPs over that line. Since (I assume) google is not installing an entirely new fiber network, but merely buying fiber rights and doing last-mile construction, it seems like that would also be a reasonable framework to establish here.
I'm not saying it would be easy. It would take a lot of legal work. But if google's missions to not be evil, and disrupt the ISP market are to believed, they could make it easier.
Jacob Appelbaum is known for overstating his abilities and trying to pass himself off as someone who knows what he's doing. Glad to see others are realizing this.
