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Comment by jandrese | Hacker News Reader

My water company is pretty well behaved. Sewer too. Trash pickup is without headaches although I don't know the cost. Even my power company is ok now. They had a bad part in the early 2000s when they were trying to semi-privatize and Enron was trying to horn in on the management, but once they went back to being an ordinary utility the bad behavior stopped.

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I have had horrendous experienced with Waste Management on three occasions. Moving out of the neighborhood they had a city-enforced monopoly on was the only solution (granted, i moved for other reasons, but getting someone else was a delight all its own).

Similarly my previous trash company raised rates several times the year before last nearly doubling the cost, then a competitor came in at the original price and virtually everyone switched. They offered to lower us back down when we canceled the service but they were a day late and a dollar short. They still send us letters begging us to come back.

But in this case the remedy is head to your local town hall and start complaining. The "monopoly" is usually a 5ish year contract that the city sends out for bids.

I'd love the ability to head to city hall and convince local leaders to switch from Comcast to X.

This was back when I was living in a large suburb. The whole place was divided among a half-dozen or so trash companies. I might have complained, but moving was a whole lot easier than waiting 5 years to maybe get a change.

Before the monopolies were granted, people could pick their own haulers. The monopolies were granted to cut down on truck traffic- the fact that WM took iver my street was evidence enough that one complaint would not dislodge them.

You might actually have more luck with complaining about your internet service. The rural area I moved to only had DSL, and the quality was so bad the town threatened to kick the carrier out if they didnt improve. Instead, they agreed to lay fiber to the entire service area, and it was only about a year after I moved in that we got it. (Way overpriced for full gigabit, of course, but thats rural internet).

Water, sewer, trash pickup, and power have very easy to understand quality metrics, and can be easily regulated.

An internet connection is not so easy to measure. You could have a very well provisioned and maintained local loop, and poor connectivity from there. I strongly support local loop unbundling --- you can regulate the local loop in simple terms, and let competition manage the messy network interconnection bit.

Btw, the same argument you make about an internet connection also applies to money. And money is not even a natural monopoly.

For what it's worth, your suggestion is very similar to the way that electricity is sold where I live - I pay separate prices for electricity generation (where I can choose) and electricity delivery (where I cannot choose).

I'm not going to pretend to know all the pros/cons, but it is reliable and cheaper than average.

I extremely do not want the situation where the state owns and operates the communications infrastructure of the general population.

That's turnkey tyranny, censorship both ways (what you can send, what you can read). Right now it's just expensive, but you can still use a few different (overpriced and anti-competitive) providers.

If the state decides you're a threat and unplugs you, it could be months or years before you can invoke your legal rights to get reinstated.

ISPs give the US government absolutely anything they want. You have no real protection from the government because of private ownership, the only difference is now both private organizations AND the government make decisions about your internet access. You also pay more for less vs most countries with more regulated infrastructure or state owned infrastructure.

I'm happy to look at any evidence you have, but everything I have seen indicates US internet is vastly worse than more public-oriented systems, unless you own internet infrastructure.

Yes, but if the state is the only game in town, you can't pop down to the next shop and buy a new SIM card, or order an install from a different provider.

Owning the infrastructure (the cell towers, fiber lines) is not the same as operating a network, the infrastructure could be public owned, while the service provider operating in data centers that connects to those public owned infrascture for a cost.

Municipal broadband where the county PUD owns the fiber and multiple private companies provide service over them works great. Which is why you can get gigabit internet for like $50 some places and struggle to get decent internet in the suburbs.

Also Comcast is not going to tell the federal government "no" to a data request if it doesn't benifit them.

The State owns USPS and it's not so bad. Before phones were introduced, it was the main channel of communication.

Some would take USPS as a demonstration of the state delivering a communication service with fair performance and competitive prices.

Others would take the USPS as proof that a strongman president can switch such services on and off at a whim, for political reasons.

> Others would take the USPS as proof that a strongman president can switch such services on and off at a whim, for political reasons.

When was it done?

This is why in most countries, phone systems were developed and run by the post office. I don’t think it worked out well.

I am supportive of municipal telecom infrastructure but this example always gives me pause.

The state currently performs suspicionless surveillance on the entire traffic graph of the USPS. Every piece of mail is weighed and imaged and sender anf recipient are placed into a database, so it is impossible to send a letter without creating a permanent record of source and destination.

You can, of course, leave off the return address, and this works fine for letter mail.

Packages, however, require ID to be dropped off. You cannot use the USPS to send packages anonymously.

The analogous version for a state-run ISP would be a blanket filter/ban on Tor/VPN usage.

I don’t think the USPS is a good example of a state-run organization for that reason. The state has already demonstrated their desire to eradicate personal privacy and anonymity.

*If the state decides you're a threat and unplugs you, it could be months or years before you can invoke your legal rights to get reinstated."

You've heard of no-fly lists, right? At least there are some protections with governments, in general. With private companies, not only do you get the risk from the government, but whatever censorship the ISP decides to subject you to as well, and you might not have a choice.

Luckily, there are some ways around some of the controls - in no small part, by doing regulation or allowing a hybrid system (government owns/maintains infrastructure, leases it to companies, for example)

There was a period of years between when the no-fly list was instituted and when there was a system of relief for people who were placed on it erroneously.

This is really just supporting my point that you do NOT want the government involved in the system at all.

You still can’t get off of the no-fly list (even if you haven’t been convicted of a crime!) if the government wants you on it and you weren’t listed by accident, “redress number” program or no.

Let’s not fuck up ISPs this badly.

Are you sure that having privately owned and operated communications infrastructure will actually prevent any of the things you're concerned about?

For example, AT&T rolled right over when the government wanted more access to their infrastructure after 9/11, even though it was pretty clearly illegal.

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