This is why I think that if there has to be an unfixable Kafkaesque bureaucracy, I'd rather it be in the public sector rather than a monopoly in the private sector.
There is not much your local councilman / state rep / US Rep / US Senator / etc can do about a problem with Comcast. But I've seen appeals to elected officials fix lots of issues with government bureaucracy.
And then dealing with a large private entity that has a major public-facing requirement like Comcast makes you want to nationalize the entire operation again. Round and round we go...
Comcast isn't a public service, it's a private monopoly.
If it was a privatized public service then the network would be owned by the municipality and maintained by a private company under a contract which is put up for bids every few years, in the same way that the roads are owned by the municipality which puts private contracts up for bid to do road maintenance.
Privatization works when the government retains ownership over the infrastructure and never signs a contract for longer than ten years. Anything else is almost certainly corruption, and nothing in government works when the government is corrupt.
Umm, a company like Costco has a large public facing requirement and is great. You do realize that Comcast has been effectively been granted government status through its various federal and state grants of monopoly over cable infrastructure?
Government would beat Comcast? I would really have to see some data before I’d be convinced of that. You must have some really strong faith in government but there is nothing in my experience that would suggest a government entity would have any incentive to actually be good at anything.
Government in general is really inefficient. Way less efficient than, say, Comcast, Microsoft, or Fedex. So unless there is some good reason it must be Government solving a problem, why not have someone (anyone) else do it?
Having Government do our broadband is very dangerous. Besides "fiber optic cables to nowhere", and outages and delays in major cities, there is the possibility of "packet shaping", blocking access to certain websites (e.g. The Pirate Bay), listening to our conversations (in case we're terrorists), requiring the installation of DRM software to go with internet access, and not allowing the use of cryptographic protocols granting anonymity or privacy. Why should we trust the Government to do those things less than companies that at least need paying customers and have less power?
Interesting. Personally I believe people should have total freedom to change governments, but I'm a utopian thinker so /shrug though I wonder in such a world whether you'd feel the same way. "Too Like the Lightning" explored this if you enjoy sci-fi.
I'm hung up on something though - in this specific subject, there's been massive market capture in the USA by one to four ISPs, depending on region. For most of rural america (something insane like 80% of the geography) there's only one provider. In these situations, the provider provides subpar service, often asking for handouts from the government before being willing to build more infrastructure (hm.. is that still "private?").
If the private market is better, why does Comcast, which routinely wins "worst company in america" awards, still exist, despite providing abysmal service to its customers? Surely a private enterprise could have eaten their lunch by now?
If the private market is better, why are local governments providing the highest rated internet services in America?
So basically, your feeling rests in the belief that you have more choice when it comes to private options - but in telecom, that doesn't seem to be the case, and of the options available, they're all widely considered to suck. Perhaps this isn't true for every industry, Stalin and Mao certainly showed us that it doesn't work for food, but does that mean the private option is better for everything we use? What does it mean to have a "private highway" system, or a "private fire department?"
Regulating an industry is not the same as running it. For an industry to truly not be regulated, it needs to exist in an imaginary space, perhaps next door to physicsland with its frictionless surfaces and spherical cows.
At present the only example of governments running - or at least owning - communications utilities in the United States that I'm aware of are municipal broadband [1] providers, which tend to be much more well-liked by their users than something like Comcast. (and bitterly opposed by The High Priests of The Invisible Hand, who want competition but not that competition)
Of course, other countries have state-owned communications monopolies, which actually run the gamut in terms of quality and cost.
Comcast has a virtual monopoly in most areas which leaves most people with zero choice. There needs to be a way that physical infrastructure is owned by public utilities and the ISP's only sell network connectivity and other services.
This really needed to be part of the public discourse. It is a component which received little attention. However, it is quite typical IMHO. Government creates a problem for itself to solve. Infinite recursion then ensues.
What you suggested is definitively a good idea and closer to the spirit of the free market.
But lets take a closer look at the Comcast subsidy. Why is that not a solution based on the free market? It's because there is no reason for Comcast to actually provide the value it promised. It's a monopoly and if there must be a monopoly then it should be in control of the government. Did the government become an investor in Comcast and receive voting shares to steer the company on the right path? No? You just donated money to the owners of that business. Don't expect anything in return.
Which is precisely why we need infrastructure companies and service provider companies and never the twain shall they meet. Frankly local governments should contract out to a company to lay fiber all over the place to each house and then provide a local hosting center where service companies can put their equipment and connect to the fiber. Comcast wants to connect to x number of people? Fine. Verizon wants to connect to xx number of people? Okay. Mom and Pop Internet Co. has a couple dozen customers? Open Access! Fiber's tiny, you could lay enough strands to each house that each provider could connect to one. Infrastructure company not living up to their end of the bargain? Not being responsive to outages and such? Kick them out on their asses and get a new one. Other than setting up the relationships and policing for abuse the local government can just stay out of it.
We had a time when a company spent billions of dollars building infrastructure for their competitors. We've never had as good competition since that time, the dial-up days.
Are you so sure the government can run a high tech ISP better than the private sector? That they will employ the best and brightest and pay them market rates or better?
Or will it just turn into yet another jobs program, filled with sub-par employees that can never be fired for poor performance... While the infrastructure rots away?
Say what you want about Comcast... But my internet never goes down, is always fast, is a reasonable price, and support is readily available within a couple minutes if needed.
Can you say the same for any government run program or infrastructure project?
I 100% agree. In my ideal world, the government builds fiber to every house and pulls it back to a central POP where private entities compete to provide service over the top. Thus creating REAL competition and removing the barrier to entry. Unfortunately we've got a lot of people with their heads in the sand that think government is the root of all evil... so I'm working with what I've got :)
I'm pretty conservatively politically but even I have come to the conclusion that a government owned monopoly on telecoms might be the only solution, especially given the criticality of internet access in the modern world.
To some extent it's a natural extension of the postal service.
I'm not sure why more politicians don't run on this platform.
There is not much your local councilman / state rep / US Rep / US Senator / etc can do about a problem with Comcast. But I've seen appeals to elected officials fix lots of issues with government bureaucracy.
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