FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Opposes White House Plan For Government Run 5G Network

[Jito463]

5 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Can you please explain how comparing Sweden to the US is like comparing apples and oranges?

The comparison has been made in this thread before, but Sweden in the EU is more akin to a single state within the US.  It would be more like asking the EU to build and regulate the internet (or in this case, cellular) across all countries within the EU.

[Drak3]

9 hours ago, Jito463 said:

concur.  SocSec was never sustainable long term.  Each generation is paying for the previous one, and succeeding generations are accountable for supporting us.  It's irreparably and fundamentally broken.

Social Security doesn't quite work like that, theoretically, you get out what you paid in. Not what Jr pays in, not what Jr Jr pays in.

Realitity, those who pay in sometimes gets jack shit and that money is misappropriated.

6 hours ago, leadeater said:

Our country is also mostly mountains and forest which a lot are protected which causes significant issues as we are not that wide, you can't just lay fibre where you want.

US ISPs also can't lay fiber where they want, albeit for different reasons, and the process of figuring out where it can be laid is a time consuming pain in the ass, how big depends on where in the US you are.

[Jito463]

1 minute ago, Drak3 said:

Social Security doesn't quite work like that, theoretically, you get out what you paid in.

That's how it's supposed to work, not how it actually works.  I would say it hasn't worked like that in a long time, but I don't think you could ever say it actually worked like that.

[Drak3]

Just now, Jito463 said:

That's how it's supposed to work, not how it actually works.  I would say it hasn't worked like that in a long time, but I don't think you could ever say it actually worked like that.

The only aspect of SS that doesn't work is that greedy govt. started taking off the top. It's still a system where you don't get more than what you paid in, and it's your money that you're getting back.

[leadeater]

10 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

US ISPs also can't lay fiber where they want, albeit for different reasons, and the process of figuring out where it can be laid is a time consuming pain in the ass, how big depends on where in the US you are.

US has a lot more land area giving options to where it can be put, unlike NZ. Both aren't easy but simply having more land allows for more options, it does have the counter issue of needing to lay more.

 

I mean raising the point that it would cost more for the US to do it than say NZ, Aus or Sweden is just stating the obvious, of course it's going to cost more as the network has to be much larger. What matters is cost per mile for the deployment and if that would be higher for the US than the others, I find that unlikely.

 

The other point about being easier to reach densely populated areas in NZ etc is also just wrong, we have very few actually large cities and a very dispersed population outside of Auckland meaning Fibre to the Home (FTTH) per house cost is much higher than the US would be.

 

Fibre deployment to homes in the US isn't going to happen over night, or even complete in 10 years but that's no reason to complain it's hard or expensive and not attempt anything at all. You have very large and dense cities making it very economically optimal to do such a deployment and get quick return on investment and uptake in the new service offering.

 

The amount of times I hear "We need quick wins" in other US political discussions around taxes, health care and infrastructure it seems completely at odds with that notion when it comes to improving internet access. There are quick wins, damn it start doing it.

[Doobeedoo]

Though fiber optic infrastructure expansion is far more important than 5G heck 4G doesn't work as advertised everywhere or close to it's speeds. Just sayin'. 

[Okjoek]

22 hours ago, AlwaysFSX said:

News flash everyone, the government fucking sucks at making stuff.

When you've got to decide which sucks less: Government or a Monopolist.

 

Ultimately I choose the government in the internet field specifically because private investors and infrastructure just don't belong together at all.

[Beowulff83]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

Fibre deployment to homes in the US isn't going to happen over night, or even complete in 10 years but that's no reason to complain it's hard or expensive and not attempt anything at all. You have very large and dense cities making it very economically optimal to do such a deployment and get quick return on investment and uptake in the new service offering

This is already being done and has been done in most areas.  Company's fight to get into densely populated area as it offers the best ROI.  Its everywhere in between that is the issue.  Also Most ISP's and Cellular providers are still expanding their coverage territory it is just not at the rate most would like to see.

 

8 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Can you please explain how comparing Sweden to the US is like comparing apples and oranges?

I get that we are in totally different situations at the time of writing, but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to work towards a similar situation in the US as a long-term goal.

Setting aside the logistical difference of covering a country that is roughly 22 times larger.  The Governments and the way they operate are completely different.  If you had a Drunk uncle . . uncle Sam who has a track record of getting into all sorts of scams and losing money on all his projects all of his life.  Not only does he come to you and the other members of your family to borrow money all the time, but has also accrued massive debt in his life time.  And the only reason anyone listens to him is his father was moderately successful and his grandfather was very successful.  But sam has done nothing to earn this trust he is just riding on the reputation of of his fathers before him.  And even if the plan sounds like something that may be worth investing in.  Sam has a gambling problem and as soon as he gets money he pisses it away on other things that the money he borrowed was not intended for.  Would you want to lend to this uncle again?  That is the reason why, even if it may be a sound idea it will fail when implemented by a bad Government.

[arnavvr]

While all of you might hate Pai, he's correct. The government shouldn't be building anything besides basic necessities. The government cannot do anything correctly, they'll find a way to fuck it up. 

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, Beowulff83 said:

This is already being done and has been done in most areas.  Company's fight to get into densely populated area as it offers the best ROI.  Its everywhere in between that is the issue.  Also Most ISP's and Cellular providers are still expanding their coverage territory it is just not at the rate most would like to see.

I still hear a lot of resistance from ISPs to actually deploy fibre versus continuing to push cable services and try and get faster standards of that. That's not exactly a bad thing as it does get people faster internet access but it's still expensive to roll out those upgrades where you could be spending that on actual fibre deployment.

[GoodBytes]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

I still hear a lot of resistance from ISPs to actually deploy fibre versus continuing to push cable services and try and get faster standards of that. That's not exactly a bad thing as it does get people faster internet access but it's still expensive to roll out those upgrades where you could be spending that on actual fibre deployment.

Well the problem is the last mile with fiber. Everything now is fiber, but the last mile is either converted to phone line or coaxial cable as those are already installed on home (and inexpensive to install compared to fiber). Another issue is that people don't know that fiber is a line you can cut.. and in apt building, you have crazies, and they can cut the line which possibly means a rerouting of a new fiber line. Or they'll bend the line and break it. This can be apartment renters or landlord (especially if they hire cheap or under the table paid people to renovate them)

[Jito463]

2 hours ago, Beowulff83 said:

If you had a Drunk uncle . . uncle Sam who has a track record of getting into all sorts of scams and losing money on all his projects all of his life.  Not only does he come to you and the other members of your family to borrow money all the time, but has also accrued massive debt in his life time.  And the only reason anyone listens to him is his father was moderately successful and his grandfather was very successful.  But sam has done nothing to earn this trust he is just riding on the reputation of of his fathers before him.  And even if the plan sounds like something that may be worth investing in.  Sam has a gambling problem and as soon as he gets money he pisses it away on other things that the money he borrowed was not intended for.  Would you want to lend to this uncle again?  That is the reason why, even if it may be a sound idea it will fail when implemented by a bad Government.

Best worded analogy I think I've ever read.  If you don't mind, I'm going to copy that for later re-use.

[LAwLz]

6 hours ago, Jito463 said:

The comparison has been made in this thread before, but Sweden in the EU is more akin to a single state within the US.  It would be more like asking the EU to build and regulate the internet (or in this case, cellular) across all countries within the EU.

But I never said the federal US government should build it across the entire country. In fact, I even said it would be best to handle that on a more local level, such as municipalities handling the actual infrastructure part.

 

And before you ask, I have no problems with the EU regulating (which they already do, and it's working very well) and setting goals for countries (not sure if they do) on what their internet services should be like in terms of availability, speed, cost and other factors like that. And since I know someone with poor reading comprehension will go "you want the EU to regulate how much 10Mbps costs in Sweden!?", that's not what I am saying. I am saying I would be fine with the EU going "the goal of all countries should be to have 99% of the population have access to 50Mbps for 30 dollars or less a month, by 2020". Something like that. Just set up goals which countries should work towards. Maybe give some intensive for reaching them.

 

Instead of doing what the US has done, when they give money to ISPs and goes "can you please upgrade your networks now?" maybe they should go "if you reach these minimum goals you will get X dollars in tax breaks".

[lewdicrous]

Why are we acting surprised..

[Jito463]

2 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Instead of doing what the US has done, when they give money to ISPs and goes "can you please upgrade your networks now?" maybe they should go "if you reach these minimum goals you will get X dollars in tax breaks".

I would actually have no issue with that.  I don't even have an issue with the FCC requesting ISPs reach a minimum speed to be considered broadband.  Though I do believe that people freaking out over the "10Mbps for broadband" was a severe overreaction.  10Mb is plenty fast for the majority of people.  Heck, I avidly use my internet connection and I still only have 12Mbps, yet it's plenty fast for me.  Could I use faster?  Absolutely.  Will I enjoy it when I finally get fiber installed?  Yes.  Do I need it?  Not really.

 

But now I'm getting sidetracked.

 

Would you be okay with the EU saying that Sweden couldn't build it's own cellular network, but instead would have to let them do it (or at least control the building of it)?  That's the issue we're discussing here.

[LAwLz]

2 hours ago, Beowulff83 said:

Setting aside the logistical difference of covering a country that is roughly 22 times larger.

The size of the country has absolutely nothing to do with this. This argument is really starting to bother me because it makes about as much sense as saying "the sky is blue, therefore what works in Sweden won't work in the US".

 

Here are some extracts from a few posts I made last year about it. Here is the full thread for context and more reading (including link to cost analysis for rolling out fiber):

On 7/12/2017 at 2:47 PM, LAwLz said:

Hello, Sweden here. We have a lower population density than the US and we are actually currently rolling out fiber to lots of rural areas. It is municipality funded.

 

"But a large portion of Sweden has next to no people in it!"

Yes, but the same is true for the US. About half of Sweden has very low population density (same for Finland, which also has a lower population density than the US), but about 1/3 of the US has very low population density too with the rest being high to medium high.

 

The US's shitty infrastructure (the concept of data caps on anything but cellular data is mind blowing to me) is not just because of population density issues. Your ISPs and government has a completely different mentality compared to a lot of European countries. I think that's a much bigger contributing factor than people per square km in some parts of the country.

 

I mean, your Internet connections sucks even in the areas with high population density.

 

The city I live in has a population density of about 5500 per square mile when you only include the "dense" central portion (not the rural areas surrounding it).

That means that my city, when only including the dense portion, would not even qualify for a spot in the top 130 cities in the US with high population density (the list starts at a density of 10,065.4). If my city was a state, it would be the 28th most population densest state. Just behind Mississippi.

If this was was a population density issue (which you are implying in your post) then it would be reasonable to assume that those 27 more density populated states would have broadband comparable to my city.

On 7/13/2017 at 2:14 AM, LAwLz said:

The total size does not matter when you're looking at cities or sections of cities. A city being large is no excuse for not having decent Internet anywhere in the city. You have to start somewhere.

Sure the same population density but at a 10 times larger area will be more difficult to build, but if you divide it into 10 sections then it becomes a 1:1 comparison. Having such a large area high density area also means that it is much easier to provide a large number of people with good Internet infrastructure.

In Sweden it might be easy to reach 1 million people, and then you got 1 million people that are spread out. In the US there might be 10 million people that are easy to reach, and then 15 million that are spread out. That should not be an excuse to not even provide 1 million of those 10 million easy to reach customers.

 

It does not matter if the US is 22 times larger, or 100 times larger than Sweden, because nobody is going to try and cover 100% of the country instantly with a single rollout. You have to start somewhere and build. 

 

 

2 hours ago, Beowulff83 said:

The Governments and the way they operate are completely different.  If you had a Drunk uncle . . uncle Sam who has a track record of getting into all sorts of scams and losing money on all his projects all of his life.  Not only does he come to you and the other members of your family to borrow money all the time, but has also accrued massive debt in his life time.  And the only reason anyone listens to him is his father was moderately successful and his grandfather was very successful.  But sam has done nothing to earn this trust he is just riding on the reputation of of his fathers before him.  And even if the plan sounds like something that may be worth investing in.  Sam has a gambling problem and as soon as he gets money he pisses it away on other things that the money he borrowed was not intended for.  Would you want to lend to this uncle again?  That is the reason why, even if it may be a sound idea it will fail when implemented by a bad Government.

By that logic, the US should be an anarchy because you don't trust the government to do anything ever again.

You even said it yourself, even if they come with a brilliant plan you would not want them to execute it because you don't trust them. Why not just look at facts and try things which might improve the situation? Why assume that they will fuck up and therefore take the position that it's better to do nothing at all?

[LAwLz]

7 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

Would you be okay with the EU saying that Sweden couldn't build it's own cellular network, but instead would have to let them do it (or at least control the building of it)?  That's the issue we're discussing here.

Where did you get this idea from? I have not seen any mention of the US government banning ISPs from building their own networks. All I have seen was that the government was talking about building their own infrastructure.

 

Yes, I would be completely fine with the EU building their own network which they would allow other operators to use. I would not be OK with them banning ISPs from building their own networks but that ban is something you came up with, not something that is mentioned in the article.

My assumption all throughout this thread has been that it would work like in Sweden, where the government owned company Telia built their infrastructure (essentially government owned) which other providers can use, and in addition to that providers can build their own network to increase speeds or get better coverage than the government owned network has if they so desire.

 

If you think the government would ban private companies from building 5G networks then I understand why you are so against it, but I have not seen any evidence that this was actually their plans. I think it's a pretty illogical thing to assume as well. Banning private companies from deploying 5G would not help anyone.

Having a government funded, neutral 5G network which any operator could use in addition to their own infrastructure would however benefit everyone.

[Jito463]

3 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Where did you get this idea from? I have not seen any mention of the US government banning ISPs from building their own networks. All I have seen was that the government was talking about building their own infrastructure.

I concede that it's an assumption on my part, but here in the US we don't generally like having the public sector (government) directly competing with the private sector.  There's too much conflict of interest when you have government - which is literally incapable of running out of money (at least, not so long as there's people to tax) - competing against private companies which must make a profit in order to stay running and continue employing people.

 

As such, it's not too far fetched to assume that if they planned to build and control the 5G cellular network, that there's little chance of it being in addition to private sector networks rather than a replacement of them.

[mr moose]

17 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

I concede that it's an assumption on my part, but here in the US we don't generally like having the public sector (government) directly competing with the private sector.  There's too much conflict of interest when you have government - which is literally incapable of running out of money (at least, not so long as there's people to tax) - competing against private companies which must make a profit in order to stay running and continue employing people.

 

As such, it's not too far fetched to assume that if they planned to build and control the 5G cellular network, that there's little chance of it being in addition to private sector networks rather than a replacement of them.

I think either system would work, but there has to be separation of corporate entities from influence in government and the government has to be accountable to the people.

 

That said, if the US government built the entire 5g network, then only  wholesaled that service to any ISP/telco that wanted to operate in the country, it would be a fair and even playing ground for all operators who would not be in competition with the government (because they all buy from the government) and no company could strong arm or unfairly price new ISP's/telcos out of the market.  Basic competition ensures people have a choice.

 

This is exactly how the NBN works in Australia (and I believe NZ) and barring physical network issues the system works exceptionally well.

 

 

[Jito463]

2 minutes ago, mr moose said:

That said, if the US government built the entire 5g network, then only  wholesaled that service to any ISP/telco that wanted to operate in the country, it would be a fair and even playing ground for all operators who would not be in competition with the government (because they all buy from the government) and no company could strong arm or unfairly price new ISP's/telcos out of the market.  Basic competition ensures people have a choice.

And now we've come full circle, back to not trusting the federal government to actually build it right or on budget.  These are the same people who couldn't even build a website properly, for the much-maligned - and with good reason - ACA (a.k.a. "Obamacare").  If they can't even build a website portal properly, how could we trust them to build an entire network infrastructure?

[ARikozuM]

6 minutes ago, Jito463 said:

And now we've come full circle, back to not trusting the federal government to actually build it right or on budget.  These are the same people who couldn't even build a website properly, for the much-maligned - and with good reason - ACA (a.k.a. "Obamacare").  If they can't even build a website portal properly, how could we trust them to build an entire network infrastructure?

Why are you using non-communications fields as examples? They gave money to ISPs to lay the infrastructure and the ISPs did nothing with the money. If they won't do anything with government subsidies, what makes you think they would do anything without government-owned infrastructure. With this, Google might actually be able to lay infrastructure down rather than be c#ck-blocked every time they ask for a permit to lay.

[mr moose]

1 minute ago, Jito463 said:

And now we've come full circle, back to not trusting the federal government to actually build it right or on budget.  These are the same people who couldn't even build a website properly, for the much-maligned - and with good reason - ACA (a.k.a. "Obamacare").  If they can't even build a website portal properly, how could we trust them to build an entire network infrastructure?

This is reoccurring argument in nearly every thread from internet through health to tax and corporate law. 

 

Time for a new government,  we are not talking about things that are intrinsically hard, if they can't do it, then vote someone in who can. Change the system.  As has been said, governments all around the world can manage to do these things and do them exceptionally well, so the problem lies specifically with your government. 

 

The fact of the matter is there is nothing intrinsic to the nature of telecommunications, healthcare, internet, tax, power generation, etc that makes it unfair to be state run.  Any issues you encounter are ideological issues that can be overcome with good management. 

 

 

[Ubleron]

I mean, he is not really wrong here, governments tend to over complicate things and spend a lot more money on it than it should, however, had this statement came from any reputable and honest person it would definitely had a different reaction from people.

[Jito463]

10 minutes ago, mr moose said:

As has been said, governments all around the world can manage to do these things and do them exceptionally well, so the problem lies specifically with your government. 

I have to disagree with your assessment that it's been done "exceptionally well".  How many times have I seen you complain about the state of the internet service in Australia?  In any event, I doubt either of us are changing our minds any time soon.  We have inherently different views of government.  You (seemingly) see it as necessary, while I see it as a necessary evil that should only do what it's absolutely required to.

[mr moose]

Just now, Jito463 said:

I have to disagree with your assessment that it's been done "exceptionally well".  How many times have I seen you complain about the state of the internet service in Australia?  In any event, I doubt either of us are changing our minds any time soon.  We have inherently different views of government.  You (seemingly) see it as necessary, while I see it as a necessary evil that should only do what it's absolutely required to.

But the issue with the complaints about internet in Australia are issues that have nothing to do with government building it per se or are ideological complaints based on political propaganda.  The issue is mainly that we have less than 10 Million internet users and everyone wants 1Gb fibre to the premise but no one wants to pay for it, not that the government is building it and not that we are being screwed over because of it.   

 

Every single NBN customer in Australia has the choice of more than 50 ISP's

 

https://www.nbnco.com.au/connect-home/service-providers.html

 

They all buy wholesale data from the NBN, the physical network is not managed by the ISP so any issues in infrastructure are not due to ISP's being pricks.  The system does work exceptionally well.

 

Same with health, depending on who you ask it's either Canada, Australia or the UK that has the best health system and the best outcomes and they are all state run/funded systems.   Sometimes Norway/Sweden gets a toe in and I think they are partial state run/funded.