cross-posted from: https://vlemmy.net/post/152995
Alternative published title: AT&T/Verizon lobby group pushes for payments from Big Tech
Or maybe we should hold ISPs accountable for the $400 Billion they pocketed instead of laying fiber in the late 90s.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5839394
Yeah I’m surprised they’re saying anything about this since it immediately made me remember that garbage they pulled.
Retired telecom worker here:
Every single time your telecommunications provider goes to DC to lobby against their taxes they promise “Please oh please please if you’ll just lower our taxes we pinky swear to expand broadband. We’re going to expand the reach of DSL, we’re gonna lay cable for Uverse internet, we’re invented this thing where high speed internet goes over your electrical grid. We promise you we can do the thing if only you’ll cut our taxes.”
So DC does and guess what happens? Job cuts. Cut back on techs needed to actually do the work. The money is used for stock buy backs, to buy a company or two (bought at a high price then sold at a loss of course) and the CEO bails with a golden parachute:
Maybe they figured we had all forgotten about that by now lol
The internet never forgets
ISPs: “Fine. We’ll build fiber now. And this time, we’ll do it for only $350 billion. Such a bargain!”
Never forget, never forgive
Omfg this
Where is the bill to take all infrastructure made using this public money and give the infrastructure to the public?
They surely do love that corporate socialism when daddy sam is paying but “free markets” where they are a monopoly when they are raising my bill every year.
I wish. I also wish I could be connected to the fiber that is literally 1 mile away from my house.
I wish I had fiber as an option at all in our area.
Only options are comcast or DSL. Both suck.
I got cable (spectrum) with terrible latency, T-Mobile 5g, this one was new this year, and DSL… I do wish i was closer to that fiber line lol
I just moved, but my previous house has fiber 100 feet away, but the ISP wouldn’t hook me up because they insisted that they needed at least 10 houses to commit in a neighborhood before they’d put service in it. I tried to get my neighbors on board for 3 years before I sold my house to move an hour away. Still no fiber, but there’s no fiber to tease me with now, heh
Such a shame. It would even be more helpful to other neighbors by bringing competition in.
I have fiber running LITERALLY through my back yard, because they couldn’t be bothered to string it from pole to pole for my neighbor, but yet they ‘Can’t’ run service to my building with 7 households/customers.
I have fiber but my town is building muni fiber that will be $25/mo cheaper for the same speeds. They just finished another segment. It stops 200 ft south of my property. They’ll be back to finish the area in about 18 months after they do most of the north side of town first.
Jealous they actually plan to expand your side better than not knowing at least!
Yeah, ISP’s were given a considerable amount of money to improve internet infrastructure 30 years ago and they did not. Classify them as a utility. Heck, we should nationalize the utilities anyway.
A national regulatory body could be good but I’d rather see them under local control personally.
Funny, when Google started building fiber, ISPs threw a fit and tried to make it illegal in a lot of places for big tech to build broadband networks.
So uh, which is it guys?
We need municipal and public utility broadband.
We sure but the ISP lobby does not permit it and instead they are able to funnel taxpayer money into executive and shareholder pockets. See comment above.
They don’t always succeed.
Sitting comfortably in Longmont, Colorado
Can confirm, we have it and it’s fantastic. Super reliable symmetrical gigabit for $60/month
Agreed. I have the same deal.
They were paid to do this thirty years ago! Instead, they stuffed the money in their pockets and did next to nothing to earn it.
I expect to see further erosion of Net Neutrality if big tech firms are required to pay for internet infrastructure. I have no love for big tech, but if they are required to pay for infrastructure, then how long until smaller companies and hosts are required to pay? The Biden administration seems to agree: “[it] is difficult to understand how a system of mandatory payments imposed on only a subset of content providers could be enforced without undermining net neutrality.” I have no love for ISPs either - ISPs should be run as public utilities, not as for-profit private corporate conglomerates.
As others have already pointed out the US government (and Comcast, Verizon, & Century Link customers) have been defrauded by the major telecom companies for nearly 30 years worth at least $400 billion dollars (data from 2014, the current total is likely over $700 billion). They’ve been pocketing obscene amounts of money instead of investing in infrastructure for decades, at this point additional infrastructure should be publicly funded, owned & operated and the telecommunications companies should be forced to sell the internet infrastructure to local public utilities.
The Irregulators are a group of experts who have been fighting this fraud since 1999, and they have a couple books about this:
how long until smaller companies and hosts are required to pay?
Oh they never will. They’ll be locked out immediately, enshrining our corporate overlords as a permanent position
at this point additional infrastructure should be publicly funded, owned & operated and the telecommunications companies should be forced to sell the internet infrastructure to local public utilities.
Now you’re talking. Go run for office somewhere i can vote for you.
ISPs already got money for this.
They can all go provide more dumpster fire kindling with Elno, spez and Zuck.
This is like Godzilla and Mothra arguing about who should pay to rebuild downtown Tokyo after one of their brawls. Meanwhile, the citizens don’t care who pick up the tab. They just want it done.
ISPs are the greater threat here. Big Tech may be popular, but you aren’t actually forced to use it. You are forced to use whichever ISP is available in your area.
Please no. I don’t like big ISPs, but neither do I want big tech to feel entitled to control the network infrastructure somehow more than they already do.
This is like building a toll road then not only charging the people driving on it but also charging their destinations too. Hilarious.
That’s like asking Whirlpool and Kenmore to pay for water and sewer expansion.
Or car manufacturers to build more oil rigs
Hmmmm…wonder whose fault it is that many municipalities won’t approve new line construction by upstart ISPs 🤔
It couldn’t have anything to do with lobbying by monopolistic ISPs.
Poor ISPs! Why does everyone pick on them?
Oh wait … 97% profit margin on internet, they trying to get that up to 99%?
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/time-warner-cables-97-pro_b_6591916
No thanks, this feels like it will just lead to big tech gaining even more legitimacy in ruling over the future of the internet.
You just know if it happens when big tech asks for something’s they’ll have this big chip on their side to say “well we paid for”.
The Biden administration last month urged the EU to reject the forced payments proposed by European ISPs, saying the plan “could give operators a new bottleneck over customers, raise costs for end users, and alter incentives for CAPs/LTGs [content and application providers and large traffic generators] to make efficient decisions regarding network investment and interconnection.”
The Biden administration also said payments from tech firms may violate net neutrality principles, saying that it “is difficult to understand how a system of mandatory payments imposed on only a subset of content providers could be enforced without undermining net neutrality.”
So… did someone from the administration even bother writing this themselves, or did they just copy/paste what Meta sent them?
Even if it was written by Meta, it still isn’t wrong.
