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Comment by dboreham | Hacker News Reader

I live here and have some familiarity with the ISP landscape. I'm going to bet that all* ISPs operating in the state are going to have contracts with the state.

*Well, all ISPs of any consequence.

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Hey Now! ...but that's fair, the little ISP's were already for Net Neutrality. *

* ISP Owner in MT

Good to hear, since the FCC was so loud about a handful of small ISPs like yours being vaguely against the Title II rules.

Title II != net neutrality. Title II is a highly bureaucratic strong-oversight-in-all-things tool aimed at a completely different problem space, namely providing a legislative solution to the case-law-derived 1980s consent decrees with AT&T & IBM. It covers things that have nothing to do with what ISPs want to deal with as part of their businesses, and places the expensive burden of proof and compliance on the ISP. So yes, it makes sense that small ISPs would not want to compete with the AT&Ts and Comcasts of the world with their armies of compliance officers. You'd never see another small ISP formed again.

Instead Congress needs to create a separate Section III (or whatever) to address net neutrality specifically, and empower the FCC to act within that purview. The FCC does not get to decide on its own that it wants more authority than was previously granted it by Congress.

Congress (and the various involved presidents) deserve to have all the cannons aimed at them. As it stands, people directing their ire at the FCC chairs (on either side) are letting Congress get away with being irresponsible.

This is a common talking point against the FCC retaining Title II classification. While I don't disagree in principle, until Congress acts, Net Neutrality is only achievable in the US via Title II enforcement by the FCC. The FCC reclassifying ISPs as Title I without a corresponding push to have an alternative Net Neutrality plan in place was irresponsible, unethical, and against the will of the constituents of all parties. Ire at Congress for not acting is completely reasonable, but acting as if what the FCC did was in any way acceptable is not.

> and against the will of the constituents

It's Congress's job to be responsive to the will of the constituents, not the FCC. Congress has done a masterful job over the past several decades of outsourcing all the hard and potentially unpopular decisions to a regulatory body and then beating them up for their decisions.

> It covers things that have nothing to do with what ISPs want to deal with as part of their businesses, and places the expensive burden of proof and compliance on the ISP. So yes, it makes sense that small ISPs would not want to compete with the AT&Ts and Comcasts of the world with their armies of compliance officers. You'd never see another small ISP formed again.

The 2015 net neutrality rules applied Title II with forbearance. It left out those things you mention.

Partially applied laws are the building blocks of tyranny - Rule by law instead of rule of law.

> You'd never see another small ISP formed again.

Except the FCC was only enforcing the NN part of it.

>* ISP Owner in MT

Same, until last year. We never had state customers and of course we ran traffic shaping that didn't look at source address.

Sure but if push came to shove, if a non-net-neutral approach became a profit center for an ISP, they could afford to jettison those contracts.

You would think the state of Montana would/could also put conditions on contracts for using municipal telephone poles in the state (since states have imposed the condition that, say, municipalities can't operate their own ISPs). You'd think but you think incorrectly given the way things work in the US.

Bootstrappy conservative state rolls up sleeves and delivers municipal/coop Internet after being forsaken by for-profit corporation. The news story almost writes itself.

I’m unable to find any financial issues with Montana’s budget, and their bond ratings appear to be adequate to receive a great interest rate in order to borrow for a build out.

Twenty one states have enacted laws against municipal broadband, including ... Montana. The FCC under Obama overturned these. Given broadband providers now are effectively getting their wish-list, it seems like these laws may come back in force.

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qkvn4x/the-21-law...

They may, except the FCC is also abandoning considerable authority by throwing away Title II, so it may not be able to overturn (or over-overturn, or whatever) those and other rules — and perhaps may not even be able to enforce its prohibition against state/city net neutrality rules.

This is kind of interesting considering the state did provide broadband service from 2010-2014:

http://broadband.mt.gov/default.aspx

The Program was funded through the State Broadband Initiative (SBI) program, administered by the U.S. Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). It ran from Jan 1, 2010 through Dec 31, 2014.

I'm guessing the funding either ran out, or the program was discontinued due to cost?

The reason Montana is in the position they’re in is precisely because they don’t do stuff like that.

Take a look at California, a state that implements just about every idea under the sun without a care in the world for the tax payers’ money (latest example is Hyperloop). Not coincidentally, California is also a state that is broke, crime riddled, filled with toxic waste and pollution, just about burned to the ground (say what you want - that’s a result of bad land management), running out of drinking water, and just about every other thing you could cram into a B-rated dystopian movie.

Yeah, yeah, god it really sucks here, nobody should move to California. Thanks for helping to get the word out!

I must have spaced out. When did the state agree to build the hyperloop?

The states with the most violent crime? Alaska, Nevada, New Mexico, Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Carolina, …. I'm not sure that your hypothesis checks out.

Wish it was for Hyperloop research and implementation. We did pass a proposition for a $40 billion high speed rail system in 2008. Musk started thinking about the Hyperloop concept because when the plans for the California high speed rail came out, it was the slowest and most expensive high speed rail system on Earth. A decade later, no trains are running and the cost is up near $100 billion (who really knows what it would cost?).

Ah, thanks for the clarification. This over-budget high-speed rail is what I was attempting to refer to by Hyperloop. I forgot that Hyperloop was the new Musk idea.

Are we talking about the same state here?

It's a conservative town rather than a whole state, but something like this?

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/06/what-...

The state will stay out of the ISP business. I already have a coop with fiber to my house and I'm out in the sticks. Not everyone in the state is that lucky, but that isn't a real Montana-like thing to do.

I like both Montana's plan, and this plan.

"they could afford to jettison those contracts"

Don't they have to have a contract with the state to have access to the cables? IE: any ISP would have a state contract. If it ceased those contracts, it wouldn't be able to function as an ISP.

No, those contracts are with cities and counties; the owners of the land that telephone poles sit on.

Also a Montanan and I second this opinion. We are a small state (population) with few ISP's, especially in the rural areas. I am sure they all do some sort of business with the State.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure my ISP is the only one in the county, so there is a good chance the serve the schools and government buildings.

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