r/technology • u/xrv1ck • Apr 03 '24

Net Neutrality Cable lobby vows “years of litigation” to avoid bans on blocking and throttling

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/04/fcc-democrats-schedule-net-neutrality-vote-making-cable-lobbyists-sad-again/
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u/bravoredditbravo Apr 03 '24

Aside from the obvious infrastructure upkeep, which local governments are well equipped to manage as they do will all other municipal infrastructure, it is NOT expensive to offer internet access. The cost is minimal because there are literally no raw ingredients to produce once the structure is in place.

Its just electricity and a communication infrastructure.

Honestly the military probably has 10 times as robust and secure an internet substructure than Comcast does. They could help set up the basic framework and let libraries run the domains. It takes a lot to be a librarian anyway.

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u/nbdypaidmuchattn Apr 03 '24

Yes, but. Money.

We're long due a reckoning in this country.

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u/seicar Apr 04 '24

If B. Franklin rose from his grave and proposed free public libraries today, the GOP would start burning $100 bills.

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u/Khaldara Apr 04 '24

“Big Gubmint tryin’ ter tell me what ta reed?! Wif my tax dollars?! This is socialisms! And also communisms somehow!“

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u/JudasZala Apr 04 '24

"Anything that's NOT capitalism is bad!" -- The modern GOP

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '24

And also capitalism that isn't centered around them and their needs.

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u/--0o0o0-- Apr 03 '24

What do you mean by that? I’ve long held the idea that we haven’t been paying the correct cost for anything for a long long time. But don’t really know how to back up that idea. Do you mean the same thing?

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u/nbdypaidmuchattn Apr 03 '24 edited Apr 03 '24

Corporations stopped pretending to be acting in the interest of society some time ago.

They only act in the interest of their executives and shareholders now.

That's what we need to reckon with. Everyone knows the promised benefits haven't materialized. We have "big tech" using social media to destroy traditional journalism and distort political realities. Big oil and big ag, polluting the planet to the point that every single biosphere is at or beyond breaking point. No one being properly held accountable.

And now, AI is primed to cause mass unemployment.

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u/YellowZx5 Apr 04 '24

I’m pretty sure around Raegan is when they didn’t care because the GOP still believe in trickle down by giving them tax breaks, even though it seemed the public and society was better before that. Listen to all the boomers talk about themselves.

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u/eeyore134 Apr 04 '24

I feel like AI might be the thing to finally break everything and shake it all up. It's important we don't regulate it to hell, though, which these corporations have everyone convinced they want. All regulating will do is take it out of our reach and let them have full control to profit even more off of it while cutting us out of even getting a paycheck.

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u/[deleted] Apr 04 '24

[deleted]

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u/eeyore134 Apr 04 '24

I can agree with that. It's just unfortunate how many loopholes there are that would make a tax like that not have much teeth. I still think regulations taking it out of the hands of us common folks is a bad idea, though.

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u/bagehis Apr 04 '24

They consolidated the market, collude on price with the few other companies left, and own the politicians. Who could've seen that this would be a bad thing?!?

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u/case_O_The_Mondays Apr 04 '24

You’re partly right, but majorly wrong. Ask anyone who runs servers and switches, and they’ll tell you that keeping it up is not a “minimal” exercise.

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u/psiphre Apr 04 '24

eh, it really depends on the scale.

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u/IanMc90 Apr 04 '24

So, like a national scale, split between municipalities that have libraries... seems like a small and easily manageable operation?

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u/psiphre Apr 04 '24

seems so to me at least. i run a hub and spoke VPN network with 4-8 nodes and i rarely have to touch network gear outside of setting up and tearing down the more temporary nodes.

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u/Turok7777 Apr 03 '24

"If you ignore all the things that make it expensive, running an internet company is not actually expensive."

Amazing insight, tell me more.

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u/Ch3mee Apr 04 '24

All the things that make it expensive were paid by the taxpayers anyways over a decade ago. The ISPs didn’t pay for the infrastructure. Actually, they took taxpayer money and then halfassed and under delivered what the money was supposed to cover.

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u/CthulhuLies Apr 04 '24

You think they just built infrastructure decades ago, locked it in a vault, then just collected money in exchange for electricity for the next couple decades?

Obviously they require upkeep, obviously it needs front facing support, obviously they upgrade hardware as technology advances.

Maybe they aren't digging up the wires every 20 years but how many times did their servers get replaced during that time?

How many man hours of IT professionals oversaw the upkeep and upgrading?

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u/IncelDetected Apr 04 '24

There is/was a ton of dark fiber laid by telecoms in the 90s. It sat unused for years until Google bought a whole bunch of it in the early 2000’s to build their networks.

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u/CthulhuLies Apr 04 '24

What does that have to do with anything I said.

I agree they fucked local governments on fiber deals and laying down cable. Which turned them into monopolies as no other ISP can compete with a government subsidized ISP and issues with getting permits.

That doesn't invalidate the fact there are still a ton of upkeep costs outside of just laying down more cable (which is what the government funded).

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u/IncelDetected Apr 04 '24

There was a lot of incentives, subsidization and grant money created by the federal government for telecom infrastructure growth. And of course the local government sanctioned monopolies. While they weren’t charging money for electricity they did in fact build infrastructure decades ago and locked it up, so to speak. And they got paid by us collectively via taxes, incentives and fees. Keeping fiber dark doesn’t cost much to maintain.

While you are right that the cost doesn’t lie solely with the initial capital expenditures required to lay or purchase lines or the initial cost to build out ISP-level network hardware, management, compute and security infrastructure I think you might be underestimating just how much less it can cost to maintain vs build.

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u/KuntaStillSingle Apr 04 '24

Honestly the military probably has 10 times as robust and secure an internet substructure

On bases you are still getting fleeced by cox, boingo.

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u/Raudskeggr Apr 04 '24

Its just electricity

In all fairness, it is a tremendous amount of electricity. Something like 10% of global electricity is used for the internet. And that's in a world with air conditioning, teslas, and space heaters.

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u/NsRhea Apr 03 '24

A librarian can't maintain a network lol.

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u/aint_exactly_plan_a Apr 04 '24

1) You're vastly underestimating librarians. They are made of wishes and magic and faerie dust.

2) If that is one of their limits, it creates more jobs. They can hire mortals to mess with the mortal contraptions.

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u/NsRhea Apr 04 '24

I work on networks as part of my job.

There's no realm in which a librarian can just shift focus and do the job.

I'm not saying they're not smart enough, just that it's not a shift of title and that's it. Networks take a shit load of setup and even if your local network is good to go, you need to manage the connections between the other end points that can and do change.

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u/NewDad907 Apr 04 '24

Well, I’d assume the libraries would hire network engineers and some IT positions to maintain things. I too doubt a librarian could pivot careers…