Big loss for ISPs as Supreme Court won’t hear challenge to $15 broadband law
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Where I live in the US, we have municipal 1Gb fiber to every house for $49. Contrary to the ISP's FUD, the municipal utility gets no subsidy from any local or federal budget. The difference is municipal utilities don't have to clear $1B just to cover the annual salaries and bonuses of the (useless) executive team and the 10% annual profit growth for the stockholders.
Edit - added note on lack of subsidies.
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Because I agree they are greedy or accustomed to X amount of profit, the fact that low-income people will be paying much less will cause the ISP to look for that money elsewhere - me. In which case I'm wondering, since we're all going to probably pay for the reduction somehow, why not create a new state program instead and skip the obfuscation. Or, if you really want to cut into their over-profiting, regulate prices for everyone, not only low-income people and make their profits on par with other countries.
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uesc_marathon
Ars Scholae Palatinae
FCC will block community broadband efforts nationwide in a couple weeks, don't worry.
You live in a dictatorship now, America. This is what you voted for, enjoy your consequences.
You live in a dictatorship now, America. This is what you voted for, enjoy your consequences.
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Seems that if the bought-and-paid-for SCOTUS said "no, you can't do that", then maybe they actually can't.
Though perhaps I'm not cynical enough.
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The choice may never have been theirs. . .
The current SCOTUS is very committed to devolving nearly every question to the states, motivated chiefly by a desire to allow state to regulate anything to do with abortion. But, they at least seem committed to trying to be somewhat consistent in their rulings, so that they don't have self-contradictory precedents from the very same group of justices saying that the Constitution declares states have the power to regulate things, but also that the states do NOT have power to regulate things.
This way they can make it illegal for anyone to even drive vans, trucks, trains or whatever across states carrying mifepristone and misoprostol from one state where it's legal to another state where it's legal. They'll use "state regulation" to effectively ban mife and miso nationwide by making sure the post office can't deliver it and nobody else can either. Or it will have to be sailed from New York to California via the Panama Canal or flown, driving costs way up.
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That's not really true...
In many cases, the infrastructure wasn't even built. I mean, they took the government subsidies, but didn't do any infrastructure build outs like they'd promised; they just issued stock buybacks.
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From what I understand that is because the CPUC is a wholly owned subsidiary of PG&E.
/s but not really /s
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Unfortunately, that is the expected outcome when the corporation that is supposed to be regulated, sponsors the election campaign of the politician who appoints the commissioners.
Sadly, it is not much different from the FCC.
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Denmark: 42,04 dollars/month for 1000/1000 single mode fiber. In reality 970/960 ish. That includes 25% VAT, no cap, no hidden extra expenses, but also no ISP supplied router.
It's 13,92 dollars/month the first six months for new customers.
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Seems to me this is fraud or embezzlement, and people should be in prison. But I'm not going to hold my breath - corporate felonies hardly ever get prosecuted.
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Then supporters need to publicize the program repeatedly on every social media they have access to. And maybe put a sign on their cars saying "INTERNET TOO EXPENSIVE? $15/MONTH IF YOU QUALIFY, CALL [local ISP]!" Goal is to have the public see that message at least as often as they see the ISP's ads.
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Where I am (in the US) I'd pay $65/month for 500M up /down with no data cap and a free modem that gives you one Ethernet jack. They'll rent you a router/WAP if you want, or you can buy your own ($50-100). But until Congress failed to renew it, there was a $30 credit for lower income people, and the ISP has said "for now we'll continue to deduct $30 from the bill". So you know that their actual cost (for an account that's set up and installed) is less than $35. My guess is that it's significantly less than $10 to cover billing and actual usage. The install (hardware, buried fiber) probably wasn't cheap, but that's sunk cost.
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There are couple missing caveats hidden in that sentence, because when this Calvinball SCOTUS says 'you can't do that', what they really mean is "You* can't** do that***."
* -- unless you're someone we don't like
** -- unless we change our minds
*** -- unless the circumstances aren't exactly what we intend
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It would be great if they actually suffered the consequences of their own greed, but I won't be holding my breath. =S
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I'm not opposed to the latter option. I'm only opposed to the former because if all services are fully owned by the government, they also fully control those services. I'm for regulation, not full coopting of the public sector, as that's one of the steps a fascist regime takes.
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It feels like the government is reneging but isn't because municipalities gave a monopoly and enforced buildout requirements, then the state came in and mandated broadband for the poor.
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You missed that stop a while ago. The 'private sector' already owns and controls the government. There is no separation between the public and private sector. It's been an illusion for quite some time now. The fascist MAGA movement 'came into power' with such ease because fascists were already in power. All the MAGA types did was take their masks off, Scooby Doo style, to reveal their true nature to the surprise of literally no one who has been paying attention.
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How's Starlink going to be affected by this "lack of" ruling?
Are we soon going to see a $15/20 Starlink plans?
Are we soon going to see a $15/20 Starlink plans?
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Canada, I have a 1Gb line for about $39 USD/month. I'm sure they can offer a 50Mb line for 20 bucks easy.
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TheMolesRevenge
Ars Praetorian
Colour me envious. Gigabit fibre has been promised as "arriving very soon" in my area for about 18 months, but no ISP is actually willing to offer me a price or connection date. It looks like the infrastructure rollout has stalled about 20 miles north of me.
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Texas will require ISPs to redirect you to gun manufacturer’s websites every hour.
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PG&E owns the CPUC, and its disgusting. 4 rate hikes in one year. But their coup de gras was tying the multi billion dollar settlement for killing 78 people in the paradise fire to their stock price, which they promptly tanked right after the judgement. The taxpayers in CA now have the privilege of making up for that. Its so criminal its almost not believable.
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I'm all for states being able to regular Internet providers since the FCC gave up authority but on the other hand, I do have an issue with governments setting prices for businesses. I hate ISPs as much as anybody say these prices are indeed below the cost of providing service. How can the government legally force a company to provide a service at a below cost price? That seems to be quite a dangerous precedent to me (unless the law allows the companies to offset the delta by charging a fee to "regular" customers, which is great for the ISP but lousy for the "regular" customers").
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Included in that $1B are the glossy flyers and spam snail mail they send everyday to my house.
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I think you might have misunderstood the situation. The government isn't making the company provide a service. They are saying "if you provide this service (ISP), then you must provide a pricing tier for this vulnerable population. and that tier must have these minimum features and cost no more than $X." The company is free to decide NOT to provide ISP services.
Here's an analogy: a high-end shoe store wants to operate in the area. The government says: "you must provide wheelchair ramps and wheelchair-compatible doors, even though the amount of money you make from wheelchair-bound people is nil." The company is free to decide to build that access, or not open the store. But the government is not forcing the company to build the access. They are conditioning the operating permission o aspects in the public good.
This sort of conditioning is not a new thing. There are all sorts of conditions: minimum wage laws, mandatory sales tax collection laws, etc.
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Honestly, this will be the telling point on how far Republican corruption will have gone. Pai ceded the ability for the FCC to regulate by reversing the Net Neutrality. De facto from there is states get to regulate what the federal government cannot or will not. So, if they're going to find a "have your cake and eat it too" solution, there will be no way to cover the hypocrisy and corruption behind it.
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Jon, why does the article miss the opportunity to refute the "rate regulation" whining from ISPs?
It's not rate regulation, but a requirement to participate in providing internet access for low income households.
Rate regulation: "You cannot charge anyone more than X for Y."
Requirement for participation: "Any ISP interested in participating in the low income internet access program must provide X speed for Y cost, or they are disqualified from receiving funds from our chunk of the $43B."
Not calling the telecoms out on their lies means readers may not know they're lying (which, given the crowd here knows that telecoms are lying if their mouth is moving, may be unlikely).
It's not rate regulation, but a requirement to participate in providing internet access for low income households.
Rate regulation: "You cannot charge anyone more than X for Y."
Requirement for participation: "Any ISP interested in participating in the low income internet access program must provide X speed for Y cost, or they are disqualified from receiving funds from our chunk of the $43B."
Not calling the telecoms out on their lies means readers may not know they're lying (which, given the crowd here knows that telecoms are lying if their mouth is moving, may be unlikely).
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In my country, 1 GB is 10 € per month and 10 GB is 15 €. So NY prices are actually expensive, particularly considering it is a very high density city.
https://www.digi.pt/net/
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Where I'm at Ziply fiber offers 100 Mbps symmetrical for $50/month. So logically they should be able to profitably offer a plan for 25 Mbps for about $12.50/month if required to do so. Charging $15/month per subscriber would provide an additional $10 per month which would help amortize the cost of the three extra hookups required.
So simple math shows that ISPs that don't suck could easily meet New York state's requirements and still make a profit. As usual, the issue seems to be that most ISPs suck and would rather not bother serving customers if the profit margin isn't fat enough for their taste.
So simple math shows that ISPs that don't suck could easily meet New York state's requirements and still make a profit. As usual, the issue seems to be that most ISPs suck and would rather not bother serving customers if the profit margin isn't fat enough for their taste.
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Heh, on the continent, in DK I pay roughly the same amount for 1000/1000 mbit. Which is also 1000/1000 IRL.
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No, bandwith is cheap if nobody has to profit excessively from it. My non-profit housing association, along with several others, has their own resident fiber network. Right now I pay 100 DKK (USD 14.07) per month for a 1000/1000 Mbit connection with unlimited data. From February 1, 2025, it will drop to 95 DKK (USD 13.36) per month.
It is only the greed of ISPs that makes internet connections expensive.
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Simple math shows that US citizens are being ripped off by profiteers. My ISP is a non-profit owned by several non-profit housing association. I pay the equivalent of USD 14.04 for a 1000/1000 Mbit connection with no data caps. As a bonus, from February 1, 2025, it will drop to 95 DKK (USD 13.36) per month.
A few years ago my connection was upgraded from 100/100 Mbit to 1000/1000 Mbit, with no price increase, because my ISP upgraded the network, so even at these prices there is enough profit to pay wages and upgrade the network, probably because there isn't some capitalist profiteers that have to get rich(er) at my expense.
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https://www.fdcservers.net/ip-transit will sell you transit in the US for $50/Gbit/s (at the most expensive end of their offering). Because consumer ISPs contend their networks, and it'd be surprising if you can't contend a 25 M or faster service at least 10:1 without congestion (if not 50:1, and the contention ratio you can get away with tends to increase as the per-user speed increases), the NY mandate is for a service that requires at most $1/month of bandwidth.
The remaining $14 pays for your capital costs setting up the network to link the household to the transit provider, and the running costs of your ISP.
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You can get 100 Gbps transport+transit to any major Carrier Neutral data center in the US from pretty much anywhere there's already Carrier Fiber for under $20k per month. Maybe $50k to $90k if you actually want the full Internet and need multiple providers (Thanks Cogent). And less than double that for physical diversity.
Netflix, Fastly, Akamai, and other content providers will usually be available for free. The bigger providers, especially Comcast and Deutsche Telecom always want to get paid though.
It's expensive for small scale providers and if you insist on getting your users low latency to the local city instead of looping via Ashburn or LA. But AT&T Air is carrying everyone's traffic to California for some reason so what do I know?
It's signing up brownfield users, permitting, and customer service that's expensive. Bandwidth is cheap. But if you're Comcast it makes you money (especially downloads).
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It doesn't scale that way for fiber. Assuming you're not a new build, there's a minimum threshold amount where you don't make money. Above that, for medium size providers like Ziply it costs around 1$/TB on top of that. This assumes you don't contact customer care and especially so if they don't have to do a site visit. If they show up ~10 times a year and especially if it's contracted there's no profit. May even lose money on you.
That's why
1. Outsourcing call centers is prevalent.
2. They want you to replace hardware you picked up yourself.
3. They really really really don't want anyone coming to your home unless the neighborhood has a fault.
4. They want their own CPE connected so it can see what's going on. And why providers, especially Comcast have really improved on WiFi and are embracing fair queueing with codel
For new builds, let's just say they aren't happening at this price. Providers generally want their money within two years. And $600 definitely isn't going to cover it.
Raw margins are usually 60 to 90% in the USA.
I heard Ziply got acquired, seen any differences?
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TheMolesRevenge
Ars Praetorian
Yeah, if they ever get around to rolling out the new fibre another 20 miles or so down to my town I should be able to get a very similar deal.
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