It’s like they are trying to confirm the President’s argument:
AT&T Inc (T.N) on Wednesday raised pressure on the U.S. telecom regulator’s work on new “net neutrality” rules, saying it would stop investing in new high-speed Internet connections in 100 U.S. cities until the Web traffic rules are settled.
The statement from AT&T Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson is the first business move by an Internet service provider in response to President Barack Obama’s unexpected call on the Federal Communications Commission on Monday to regulate such companies more like public utilities.
The statement came as AT&T has been spending heavily on acquisitions and days after it had cut its capital spending estimate for 2015.
The industry and Republican lawmakers have been protesting Obama’s proposal, saying stricter Internet traffic regulations would stifle growth and investment.
“We can’t go out and invest that kind of money deploying fiber to 100 cities not knowing under what rules those investments will be governed,” Stephenson said at an analyst conference.
Net Neutrality and expansion of a fiber network are not incompatible- in fact, I would expand more because of the chance net neutrality will pass, as it will mean that if you have the best services for the best price, people will use you, as opposed to using your monopolistic power to squeeze other companies and trap users and provide sub-par service. Which I guess is why AT&T is freaking out.
According to a recent study by Ookla Speedtest, the U.S. ranks a shocking 31st in the world in terms of average download speeds. The leaders in the world are Hong Kong at 72.49 Mbps and Singapore on 58.84 Mbps. And America? Averaging speeds of 20.77 Mbps, it falls behind countries like Estonia, Hungary, Slovakia, and Uruguay.
Its upload speeds are even worse. Globally, the U.S. ranks 42nd with an average upload speed of 6.31 Mbps, behind Lesotho, Belarus, Slovenia, and other countries you only hear mentioned on Jeopardy.
So how did America fall behind? How did the country that literally invented the internet — and the home to world-leading tech companies such as Apple, Microsoft, Netflix, Facebook, Google, and Cisco — fall behind so many others in download speeds?
Susan Crawford argues that “huge telecommunication companies” such as Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, and AT&T have “divided up markets and put themselves in a position where they’re subject to no competition.”
***If a market becomes a monopoly, there’s often nothing whatever to force monopolists to invest in infrastructure or improve their service. Of course, in the few places where a new competitor like Google Fiber has appeared, telecoms companies have been spooked and forced to cut prices and improve service in response to the new competition. But that isn’t happening everywhere. It’s very expensive for a new competitor to come into a market, like telecommunications, that has very high barriers to entry. Laying copper wire or fiber optic cable is expensive, and if the incumbent companies won’t grant new competitors access to their infrastructure, then the free market forces of competition don’t work and infrastructure stagnates, even as consumer anger and desire for competition rises due to poor service.
American business is no longer about making the best product. It’s about using political clout to squeeze the most amount of money out of the user and the government as is humanly possible.
Kryptik, A Man Without A Country
Why bother innovating and improving, when you can just use your total market power to keep squeezing blood from the fiber optic stone?
I’d say that municipal broadband couldn’t come soon enough, but I forgot, the telecoms have been winning battles to have municipal broadband outright outlawed in most of the places it was under consideration.
schrodinger's cat
You forgot exploiting their employees, in the name of increasing productivity.
BTW, Business has always been that way, that’s why we need regulation, to keep the business in check.
Schlemazel
We have lost. Most of the comments I have read online, many from tech people, run along the line “WHY DO WE WANT THE GOVERNMENT TO DICTATE HOW THE NET IS RUN?”
My favorite one said almost exactly that, followed by “Comcast sucks” these people are too stupid to breath but they will win because the goopers control congress. We are fucked.
Baud
It’s funny. When people were afraid the FCC would end net neutrality after getting the old rules tossed out by the court, they were in in arms.
Now that the GOP is fighting net neutrality, people are worried about government power over the Internet.
Kryptik, A Man Without A Country
@Schlemazel:
It’s so godawful amazing and depressing how many people attribute the practices of total lockdown and monopolization to the gov’t to fear monger about the dangers of net neutrality without realizing that this is exactly what the fucking telecoms are already doing, right now. But you know, it doesn’t fucking matter, because gov’t is evil, free market uber alles, etc. etc.
Yet another thing we’ve managed to lose on because most the country has decided to believe that up is literally down.
Mike in NC
@Schlemazel: How long before they start calling it “ObamaNet”? Morans…
Kryptik, A Man Without A Country
@Mike in NC:
Ted Cruz was already ahead of the curve on that. Just a matter of time before the media decides to parrot it endlessly, I’m sure.
napoleon
John, you are naive. American business has long been this way. Read up on, say, US Steel 80 years ago.
Rhoda
This is going to be an interesting fight to watch shake out: you’ve got the telecoms on one side and the techie Google, Apple, Facebook, and Netflix’s of the world on the other side.
It’s an old money v. new money fight; I guess we’ll find out who has the deeper pockets.
Corner Stone
mistermix got here a year ago.
An Important Thing Nobody Cares About
Why do we give a shit, at the end of the day.
Pogonip
I think U. S. Internet speed is pretty good for a 3rd world country.
I just realized you can sing “rock and roll welfare queen” to the tune of “rock and roll hoochie koo.”
beltane
OT, but very bad news http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/Family-of-Missing-San-Francisco-Tech-Worker-to-Hold-Press-Conference-282450491.html?partner=xfinity1 I am so sorry about this.
hilts
Tomorrow, a series of protests will take place across the nation in support of net neutrality.
Find more information at
https://www.battleforthenet.com/#protest
Another good source on net neutrality is the Benton Foundation
http://benton.org/headlines
Baud
@beltane:
That sucks.
dp
Your last paragraph is as accurate and succinct a description of 21st century America as I’ve seen.
Corner Stone
Obama’s call for an open Internet puts him at odds with regulators
“Hours after President Obama called for the Federal Communications Commission to pass tougher regulations on high-speed Internet providers, the agency’s Democratic chairman told a group of business executives that he was moving in a different direction.”
Baud
@hilts:
First I’ve heard of it, but good news.
@efgoldman:
Sure, but everyone else who supports net neutrality would join the GOP.
Morzer
Unfettered free markets lead to oligopoly, end innovation and leave customers screwed by corporations looking to make profits in return for the lowest quality of product and service they can get away with. Well, there’s a surprise!
How long before Smegma McArdle emerges to Kochxplain that we ought to be grateful that her paymasters are a bunch of fiscal terrorists?
hilts
Another good website for supporters of net neutrality
http://www.savetheinternet.com/sti-home
Corner Stone
Huh Huh Ernst is fucking spooky ass crazy. Thanks, Iowa. And GFY.
Morzer
@beltane:
Oh that’s the worst news of the day. Damn! All my sympathy to his friends and family and much respect for those who searched and hoped and did what they could.
Baud
@Corner Stone:
I’m not saying that story is wrong (it probably isn’t), but it presented no evidence to support that first paragraph.
Scott Peterson
Tomorrow, Google should publicly thank AT&T Chief Executive Officer Randall Stephenson for making it even easier for their Google Fiber to become the dominant internet provider. I suspect that would have a large and more impact.
(Yes, I know they’re only in a few cities right now and are rolling it out to others slowly.)
Johnny Coelacanth
@Corner Stone: “Why do we give a shit, at the end of the day.” You only say that because you’re stupid.
srv
Most of those countries with faster internet could fit in the Grand Canyon. Try running fiber in a big country over obstacles like the Rockies. Get out of Budapest or Bratislava and I bet your speed goes to zero because there’s no internet there.
All this hate for all these businesses that make your phone, netflix and computer work. You liberals always see the glass as half empty.
Corner Stone
@Johnny Coelacanth: The degree of whoosh here is so amusing it makes it hard for me to consider your comment an actual response.
Corner Stone
@Baud:
Are you doing performance art now?
napoleon
@srv:
Fuck you – that whole argument you make has been destroyed a million times already.
Baud
@Corner Stone:
No, I just have very little tolerance for shoddy journalism.
Corner Stone
@Baud: Well, is it or isn’t it?
Baud
@Corner Stone:
It is shoddy journalism.
Stillwater
American business is no longer about making the best product. It’s about using political clout to squeeze the most amount of money out of the user and the government as is humanly possible.
Word. I’d add that American business was never about making the best product and that it’s always been about using political (and other forms of) clout to squeeze money from the consumer. The first rule of a new business venture is to eliminate competition. Just drives down prices and all that. I mean, that’s not only common sense, it makes good *business* sense, yeah?
chrome agnomen
bu..bu..but ‘murka, fuck yeah #…uh…31…er…42!!!!111!!
rikyrah
@beltane:
So sad. Too damn young
rikyrah
What will they do….take their cable and go to another country…..Good luck with that.
burnspbesq
Once upon a time, we knew what to do about natural monopolies. Has that entire body of knowledge been flushed down the memory hole?
the Conster
It’s all rent seeking all the time from now on, forever and ever amen. Yay capitalism.
Mike E
This makes me want to watch Atlantic City again, just to make sure I get that baby laxative ratio right.
kdaug
Google ain’t the only one getting into the broadband space.
I’ve learned to stop snickering at Musk.
Citizen_X
@Stillwater:
Adam Smith figured that out about 240 years ago. Too bad right-wingers today would rather lose a limb than listen to what he actually had to say.
Villago Delenda Est
@Schlemazel: IT Glibertarians are the most stupid and gullible of all glibertarians.
They are a waste of skin.
tybee
same as it ever was.
AnonPhenom
@tybee:
It’s true that political power has always been used to leverage the marketplace to benefit the wealthy and well connected. But I think the point is that this time it feels different. There is a hollowing out, a raw extraction that is happening without any corresponding creation of something. Anything. It feels like theft, pure and simple.
bobbo
“saying it would stop investing in new high-speed Internet connections in 100 U.S. cities”
Sorry, you have to start something before you can stop it.
Groucho48
It’s not really that bad a thing that our average Mps down speed is about 20 Mps. Very, very few people need more than that. That’s enough speed to watch streaming HD movies, which is the biggest demand thing most folks do. Unless you are downloading dozens of gigs of data every day, fast downloads aren’t that big a deal.
What IS a big deal is how expensive it is in the U.S. to get that speed and how quickly that speed decays if lots of folks on the node you share are all online at the same time as you.
Neldob
email Tom Wheeler, chairman of the FCC.
http://www.fcc.gov/leadership/tom-wheeler-mail