How viable would it be for the government to set up its own state-owned ISP company with minimal or no political influence?
this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2024
268 points (99.3% liked)
News
23361 readers
3147 users here now
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
As far as technology goes? Extremely. As far as politically? Impossible.
The government can’t even set up a tent with minimal or no political influence.
Tent company donated $10 to the campaign so we're paying them $20M for a tent.
In Switzerland we basically had ISP monopolies back in the day on cable (DOCSIS) and on the phone (xDSL) networks. Prices were ok, but not low. Then fiber optic as a viable tech came around, but neither of the large ISP was particularly eager to build out a fiber infrastructure, as it was more lucrative to just sit on their "old" tech, knowing the ohter party won't be building fiber, so won't have a better offer either
So what happend then was that munincipalities built their own fiber networks, renting them out to the ISPs, large and small ones, either as an IP service or as dark fiber for ISPs which want to provide their own equipent. Only the largest ISP still builds their own fiber infrastructure, in parallel, and they are required by law to rent out that infrastructure to other ISPs as well.
This has really leveled the playing field, brought good competition and lowered the prices.
So I think government owned infrastructure is the way to go, but it takes a long time to build out and needs the right policies and legal framework to succeed.
It’s literally illegal to do this in some municipalities here in the U.S.
That would require the government to not be bought out by billionaires. That would require the government NOT working for the billionaires that control them. That would require the government to actually give a fuck about anyone poor.
In other words it’s never going to happen.
Worked in my home town for about 20 years until they outsourced to our version of Comcast as a 'cost-saving measure'. Wow, were they stupid.
It actually worked astoundingly well before that. Hated ISP a? Make a phone call and within an hour your same gear was now on ISP c.
At a recent job I worked closely with some muni IT people. Their plan is to fibre their area and then price the backhoe access out so the ISPs have to compete over the common infrastructure and can't restrict access. City doesn't want to be an ISP; just manage the glass.
My state has it's own fiber network that they send to local governments and schools, but as far as I know is not available to the public.
I thought the thumbnail was of fighter jets doing a display for a second.
I was wondering what jets had to do with internet!
Pin the price on 5 minimum-wages per month.
are objected
Do they speak English in what?