How One Little Cable Company Exposed Telecom's Achilles' Heel (backchannel.com) 197
Reader mirandakatz writes: Forget net neutrality -- the real fight is over controlling price-gouging monopolies. As Susan Crawford writes at Backchannel, a little-known cable company, Cable One, just exposed the telecommunications industry's Achilles' heel: regulation. Cable One has been raising its data transmission prices quickly, and it's making cable giants very, very nervous. If people begin noticing that there's no competition, that Americans are paying too much for too little, and that the entire country is suffering as a result, that's a big problem for Big Cable. As Crawford writes, 'don't fixate on net neutrality... Even though the state of internet access is an issue that touches the bank accounts and opportunities of hundreds of millions of Americans and gazillions of businesses, very few people understand what's actually going on. Now you are among them. Do something about it.'
"Forget net neutrality" (Score:5, Insightful)
"Forget net neutrality - "
No. Paying attention to ANYTHING else does not justify forgetting net neutrality. Net neutrality SHOULD be a positive for anyone's political stance - it just means however imperfect the companies involved in providing services, they should have to treat content as just bytes, regardless of the source. That shouldn't be controversial, nor should it be forgotten, even 'for the sake of argument'.
Ryan Fenton
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back to encrypting everything. if they cant see the data they dont know what data to slow down.
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then it no longer becomes a net neutrality issue it becomes a service issue. i pay for X speed youre not giving me X speed. as they would have to slow all traffic.
Re:"Forget net neutrality" (Score:4, Interesting)
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Baloney. You've made a bunch of bullshit assertions without any backup. The FCC's network neutrality restrictions were VERY light handed. The basic default policy was no action unless a complaint was leveled and action would only be taken if the provider was discriminating against data sources, typically for economic reasons.
When we allow the last mile providers to put a toll on data you've requested the free internet is GONE. It is a direct abuse of monopoly and it's not something you can fix because these
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Correction: Oligopolies.
Monopolies are illegal under US law. Oligopolies are not.
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Cable companies were given monopolies in each territory they occupy by the municipal governments that run the cities in those territories.
Congress passed the law which allowed those local governments to give out monopolies. Without that law, those local monopolies would have been illegal under existing federal laws.
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Fix the monopoly problem and net neutrality is irrelevant
Absolutely. And "irrelevant" as in "will be maintained like it was decades prior". We've historically have had a (mostly) neutral network. It's just the way the Internet was made to work. And everyone played nice with each other's traffic because they needed them to play nice with theirs. Anyone trying to work against that would be eaten alive by the market.
But the market consolidated and now the players are powerful enough to chip away at Net Neutrality. And they've tried to repeatedly over the ye
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I've never liked net neutrality. It's not a layer that the government needs to meddle at, because laws change too slow for technology, and big corporations are great at gaming laws. Yes, yes, the intention is great, but that's not how law works.
Networks need different QOS for different traffic - it's not like you can mandate treating all traffic identically, so you get into fine wording about "we mean you can't charge more to carry Netflix traffic, you know, like that". But whatever you write will have l
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Just make the last mile a public utility already.
Or, ban those owning the last mile from working in any other business. That also solves the problem.
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Networks need different QOS for different traffic
Citation needed. Networks need adequate bandwidth. As long as the upstream is sufficient to supply the customers, the ISPs job is done. Each individual customer may wish to apply QOS to their own data but since that would be customer controlled it's not a neutrality issue.
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VOIP needs different QOS even with minimal contention. Control plane stuff needs different QOS. Different QOS for streaming video can improve everyone's experience. It's not just about oversold networks - networks simply aren't perfectly reliable, and delivering packets late (vs dropping) may be good or bad, depending.
. Each individual customer may wish to apply QOS to their own data but since that would be customer controlled
Consumer networks should not/i> be built for the preferences of IT geeks, sorry. We get no special privilege at the expense of others.
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So a consumer VOIP app or device should by all means set the appropriate QOS flags and the ISP equipment should honor the settings. But in practice, if the ISP is actually providing adequate bandwidth and maintaining the equipment, there won't be dropped packets. If Netflix needs/wants specific flags to make their streaming work best, they can set them.
The ISP should be a dumb pipe.
In practice, I have never had any problem at all with VOIP, streaming, or anything else on a well provisioned network ignoring
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LAN is not WAN. WAN isn't perfect, especially when latency matters. Carriers identify VOIP streams and give them special handling, for good reason. You seem to be describing how a large corporation with a large IT staff might interact with their ISP, and that's fine, but consumers won't know any of this. Consumer ISPs should certainly have the right to shape their traffic for better customer experience.
All of this is just the wrong way to fix the problem of cable company price gouging.
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Why would the customer need to know how to flag packets with QOS, the app or device would do that. And I was referring to WANs in my last post. More specifically, a few LANs interconnected.
The world has changed a bit since the days when a T1 was big bandwidth.
This has everything to do with price gouging since it is a major part of the way ISPs sweep inadequacies under the rug and make themselves appear to be better than they actually are (for example, if you do a consumer lever speed test). Or alternatively
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Your lengthy explanation doesn't translate well into law, is my point. What about 0-rating? What about the next clever thing companies dream up to work around the regs. What about the regulatory change that the Cable company lobbyists get introduced.
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Screw Net Neutrality! I want telecoms to be able to operate free from government interference.
Net Neutrality is a trojan horse. The end-goal is to give the State control over industry. They want to censor what you're able to access over the Internet. The last FCC commissioner made it clear that she wanted to regulate sites such as the Drudge Report and that site just provides links to articles.
Get rid of the government supported ISP monopolies and the problems Net Neutrality claims to fix go away.
Re:"Forget net neutrality" (Score:5, Interesting)
Their pipe, their rules.
Don't like it? Invest your own millions into building a carrier grade infrastructure and charge YOUR customers whatever rates YOU decide
Sincerely,
Capitalism
Their pipes (in some cases), but a shared internet standard.
Don't like it, don't connect that sub-network to the internet, and don't call it part of the internet created and largely maintained with public funds..
Salutations,
Everything that allows markets and capitalism to exist and thrive.
(Oh, and Ryan Fenton)
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No, NOT their pipes! Our tax money has paid for and subsidised much of the infrastructure of the Internet. The reason that laws have been bought in many states that forbid municipal internet is that the big ISPs don't want competition, so that they can keep up the extreme price gouging that is going on today! Oh, and Data caps are a punitive measure to try to keep people from dropping cable TV and going with streaming services instead!!
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Their pipe, their rules.
If they want to argue that their network is completely private property with which they are free to do what they please, then they can first forfeit any government granted right-of-way access to land they don't own. The reason network operators get free access to public and private land to run their pipes is that it's nominally in the public interest. If they don't want to operate in the public interest then they can go back to privately negotiating access rights with every individual land owner. Let me
You forgot "with this one weird trick" (Score:5, Funny)
Your clickbait mind tricks will never work. The day before I read TFA before I start commenting is the day I turn in my SlashDot ID.
Re:You forgot "with this one weird trick" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Actually the summary was so incomprehensible that I was successfully fooled into reading the article. Well played, OP!
Truly! The article sucked. Every third paragraph was incomprehensible.
"Please feel free to post your thoughts on this Slashdot article in the Comments Section..."
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Indeed.
Honestly, the only thing noteworthy about what Cable One is apparently doing is that they were stupid enough to screw their customer directly, rather than waiting for the regulations to be rescinded so that they could screw the content providers quietly without their customers noticing. The big companies are waiting to do it the latter way, that way when the content providers (e.g. Netflix) invariably have to raise rates to offset the fees being extorted from them by the ISPs, the customers don't rea
gazillions of businesses.. (Score:2)
Seriously gazillions?!?! is it me or does msmash get worse with every post.
Basic Steps Needed (Score:5, Interesting)
In the USA, backbone data is cheap, the cable companies are a monopoly with built out networks that are 10+ years old, and they are raking in the cash with no price regulation and minimal oversight. It is high time that laws were passed to:
1. Determine a fair pricing model and require that where there are less than 4 ISPs available. Net neutrality is really about the quality of the product and what exactly you are buying every month. I am surprised no lawsuits over net neutrality have been filed over bait and switch yet.
2. Use anti trust laws to break up cable companies into cable providers and internet providers sharing the same lines owned by a third company that maintains and owns the lines.
3. Protect internet access in the same way that the federal laws currently protect US mail (both privacy and penalty wise) both the privacy of email and browsing.
Ugh, really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Trying to co-opt public outrage over net neutrality to a related, yet still entirely separate issue, is despicable. Net neutrality is absolutely one of the "real" fights. The idea that there can be only one is absurd. Who the hell is this woman? "Forget net neutrality?" No, fuck you. I will fixate on net neutrality as much as I damn well feel like it. She's actively hurting the case for her issue by spreading this nonsense, and that's a shame, since it is an important issue as well. Most U.S. Americans have absolutely no clue just how much more we pay for so much less than the rest of the civilised (and often, even uncivilised!) world.
Prices not that bad (yet?) (Score:2)
They charge $55/month for 100 Mbps cable, albeit with slow (3 Mbps) upload.
I was expecting double that amount if not more, to warrant an article like this.
triple play from $150/month. Expensive, but I've seen much worse.
Makes people vote for net neutrality? so be it (Score:2)
If this take on it helps people wake up and fight for net neutrality, then it is worth it. No doubt the article is right about the motives... it is always about profits and control from big businesses. The last thing they want is regulations.
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Except for the fact that in the United States, we don't do plebiscites at the national level, we elect representatives.
I don't get it... (Score:2)
Uh... (Score:2)
Cable One has been raising its data transmission prices quickly, and it's making cable giants very, very nervous. If people begin noticing that there's no competition
I'm probably being hopelessly naive here, but if the likes of Comcast are so scared of what Cable One doing when there is no competition, then maybe they should, I dunno... compete?
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BAM! You nailed it.
That is the (unsaid) crux of the article.
You win one internet!
Article was fact free (Score:2)
Cable one bad, big cable big meanies. I have Comcast as my ISP so I get hating your cable co, but there is just no information in this article. Cable One is raising it's rates too much ? How much is too much ? What are their current rates ? how do they compare to the rest of the country ? They charge too much for television ? How much ?
Good story (Score:2)
Cable One footprint is hidden? (Score:3)
You can get its footprint from publicly accessible sites like broadband.gov. It's not hard, just more work than the reporter wanted to do.
Jesus. (Score:2)
As Susan Crawford writes at Backchannel, a little-known cable company, Cable One, just exposed the telecommunications industry's Achilles' heel: regulation.
What a trainwreck. A summary is supposed to be useful.
Typical criminal behavior (Score:4, Interesting)
A friend of mine went to law school at NYU. Near where she lived, there was a park where the drug dealers did business. Drugs aside, it was the safest place in town. Because the dealers didn't want any shit going down that would attract the police.
Big Cable is pissed at Cable One because they don't want hearings on the industries business practices.
Everybody knows (Score:5, Interesting)
FTA: See the problem? If people begin noticing that there’s no competition, that Americans are paying too much for too little, and that the entire country is suffering as a result, that’s a big problem for Big Cable.
Really? People haven't noticed? BS.
Everybody knows.
Everybody already knows that territories have been divided up to avoid competition. Duh.
Anecdote: As president of my HOA (almost 100 units), I pushed through an opportunity we had to get every unit pre-wired with fiber from Verizon FiOS. That meant that every unit had on-order access to telephone, cable (TWC), and fiber (Verizon/Frontier). I turned my complex into a location that had actual competition between internet providers. The result has been lower prices for everyone.
And, politics being what they are, and me having spent my political capital on creating an even playing-field, I was not re-elected to the Board. Such is the nature of politics: If you do good, you will lose your elected office. I think it's a law of nature.
Again: Everybody knows.
Re:Data ain't free. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's just another good reason why the network - the data center, the cables in the road etc. should be a public service like water pipes and electricity.
Re:Data ain't free. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's just another good reason why the network - the data center, the cables in the road etc. should be a public service like water pipes and electricity.
Not the datacenter. Just a termination facility for the last mile that any ISP can hook into. The last mile, specifically, is what needs to be a public utility. That's where the natural monopoly is. The rest the market really could sort out, as the barrier to entry would be small.
Re:Data ain't free. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the correct solution. The last mile should be a public utility and brought back to interconnection points. Charges for use of these interconnection points would based on the cost of running them. Anybody can run a fiber into these centers, pay for use of router ports, and interconnect without further charge.
I'd like to see towns stop renewing franchises for existing cable systems, nothing says they have to renew them. Give them five year warnings that the franchise won't be renewed and then conduct arbitration for purchasing the last mile infrastructure. It is not like you are throwing them out, they can hook up at the interconnect centers just like everyone else.
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Have you seen the infrastructure in the USA? You know how many bridges and overpasses have an F rating? I've seen how well the government handles that along with the VA hospitals.
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Have you seen the infrastructure in the USA? You know how many bridges and overpasses have an F rating? I've seen how well the government handles that along with the VA hospitals.
the current state of infrastructure is what you get when fiscal conservatives try to starve government of revenue. If we had a higher gas tax or mileage fees, we would have no problem funding infrastructure.
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Have you seen the infrastructure in the USA? You know how many bridges and overpasses have an F rating? I've seen how well the government handles that along with the VA hospitals.
It's almost as if putting people who hate government in charge of the government creates a a self-fulfilling prophesy. People (maybe not you) rail about taxation as "theft" and then complain about inadequate government goods and services.
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My taxes go up consistently and yet I see no infrastructure improvements. Do you propose I start giving the government blank checks?
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Sometimes you get the government to create a means for competition to exist at another level. Like the roads allow for commercial traffic, shared internet cabling would actually allow for more competition, by reducing the barrier of entry. Governments can help reduce the risk that provide corporations aren't willing to deal with. The government simply needs to commit to upgrading and maintint the shared infrastructure, though with fibre some of these upgrades are happening at the end-points.
In certain count
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Nice strawman, that's obviously not what he said or meant. But by all means, just scream "communism" as loud as you can until you get your way.
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Re:Data ain't free. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's EXACTLY what he said and meant.
Who told you that, and when will you get your own opinion?
Calling for the government to control infrastructure is not the same as calling for government to control everything.
Government already controls infrastructure, the only thing we have left to argue about is what that control should look like.
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> a public service like water pipes and electricity
vs
> All private property
EXACTLY: I don't think that word means what you appear to think it means.
Re:Data ain't free. (Score:4, Insightful)
That's EXACTLY what he said and meant.
So do you think, roads, power, sewage, water etc should all be in private hands with access to them charged at whatever rate the owner sets? Do you think they should be able to have any competition or be able shut it down with lawyers and lobbyist and buckets of cash (that they got from gauging you) instead of with, you know, competitiion? Is it that you don't see internet connectivity as essential as water, power and transport is? Or is it it more that you got yours and fuck everyone else?
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Hmm, we tried that over here in Britain with toll-pike roads, though the charges were regulated. Later on, with these things called canals. The toll-pike roads were pretty much taken in to public ownership by the 1820s, the canals in pieces in the 1870s-90s. That's about the time that cities started investing big-style in building sewers and water supply systems. They'r
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This word "all". Does it confuse you? Does that make you ignore it? Or, come to think of it, maybe it's the word "EXACTLY" that troubles you.
Re:Data ain't free. (Score:4)
That's EXACTLY what he said and meant.
No, he said, "That's just another good reason why the network - the data center, the cables in the road etc. should be a public service like water pipes and electricity."
Then AC said, "... The answer is always to take public ownership of all private property."
How you and he make the leap from "The network should be a public service" to " The answer is always to take public ownership of all private property" is the part I don't get. It is manifestly, demonstrably not what he said.
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What he wrote was "it's expensive, so the government needs to do it"
Whoa.
Re:Data ain't free. (Score:4, Insightful)
I fully agree, comrade. The answer is always to take public ownership of all private property.
What the fuck is wrong with you people? Do you really prioritise a company's ability to make as much profit as possible over your ability to get a fair and decent service? All the while you bang on about the free market fixing things while simultaneously doing everything to make the market as closed as possible. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you?
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I fully agree, comrade. The answer is always to take public ownership of all private property.
What the fuck is wrong with you people? Do you really prioritise a company's ability to make as much profit as possible over your ability to get a fair and decent service? All the while you bang on about the free market fixing things while simultaneously doing everything to make the market as closed as possible. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with you?
This is what happens when ideology becomes divorced from reality.
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I dunno. Who pays for the electricity and the water?
Re:Data ain't free. (Score:5, Interesting)
so dumbfuck - who pays?
Public power is common in America. About 50 million Americans, or about 15%, get their electricity from government owned utilities. They get a monthly bill and pay for their electricity the same way that the other 85% do.
So does "public power" work better? No, not really. But it doesn't seem to be any worse either. It is about the same in terms of both reliability and price. In general, a competitive market is superior to government provision, but since power generation is a natural monopoly anyway, competition isn't really possible, so the government isn't any worse than a regulated utility.
www.publicpower.org [publicpower.org]
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50 million households is far more than 15% of the American populace. Even if it was actually 50 million people that's still far more than 15% of the American populace (~300million).
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50 million households is far more than 15% of the American populace. Even if it was actually 50 million people ...
It is 50 million people, not households.
that's still far more than 15% of the American populace (~300million).
The current population of the USA is about 320M. 50/320 = 15.6%.
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So does "public power" work better? No, not really.
Well where I live it does indeed work better.
My city owns the "power company" that provides electric power to the people/businesses that are here.
And it's significantly cheaper (and from anecdotes, better service) than the investor-owned utility that operates in the cities surrounding mine.
The IOU in the cities next door is Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E). For a similar house in PG&E area vs. in my city - the house using PG&E will spend more than 2x for electricity because they charge more.
And
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They do subsidize, but not how you're thinking:
A public company generally needs to make a profit to stay in business.
A government entity cannot make a profit (over any period of time) as far as I'm aware.
Also consider, that power plant had to be purchased or built somehow - costs are probably built into the electricity cost - but borrowing as a government body (bonds) is far cheaper than private/commercial lending so you have further savings there.
On the flip side, you see governmental waste in manpower and
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I realize this is just an anecdote, and other localities may have the opposite situation, but I live in a small New England town, served by a private power company. I currently pay ~$.23/kWh for residential electrical service (when my PV array isn't pushing into the grid). There is a neighboring town that maintains a municipal (town-owned and operated) electrical system, and they pay ~$.06/kWh, and their system is better in almost every way, including buried lines instead of overhead lines on poles in the
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I realize this is just an anecdote, and other localities may have the opposite situation, but I live in a small New England town, served by a private power company. I currently pay ~$.23/kWh for residential electrical service (when my PV array isn't pushing into the grid). There is a neighboring town that maintains a municipal (town-owned and operated) electrical system, and they pay ~$.06/kWh, and their system is better in almost every way, including buried lines instead of overhead lines on poles in their town center, and better overall reliability. I don't know all the details or the history of their municipal system, but that certainly seems better to me.
When there's no real incentive to improve something it won't get improved. Say your neighbour town starts offering the same deal to your town. The private company would obviously have to up their game or go out of business. You can bet what would happen though is, instead of that, they would fight tooth and nail, and spend a lot of cash, to stop the competing service coming in. You don't say but I bet there aren't any real competitors to this private company.
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I used to live in a city which had a city owned power plant. Rates per kWh were about 20% lower than surrounding cities, and there were no monthly connection fees. Depending on how much power you use, the total bill is 25-35% lower.
Reliability numbers are slightly better as well, but not by much.
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so dumbfuck - who pays?
Everybody, collectively; since everybody benefits from it, collectively. It's fairly straightforward. I'm not sure where your confusion lies.
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Re:Data ain't free. (Score:5, Insightful)
So, my datacenter that I have built and put together myself should be a public service for everyone to use without compensating me for things like startup costs and growing pains? I don't think so.
No. In this simile in which the internets are like roads (which is relatively apt, it's better than tubes anyway) your data center is analogous to a shopping center. People do retain certain rights which people expect in a public place when they enter a shopping center, like photography, or not having your car towed away unexpectedly. People retain certain rights in your data center, like privacy. But they don't get space in your data center for free. They get access to the digital network used to get to your data center for free, just as they get access to the road network used to get to a shopping center for free.
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Well, you might be right, but not for the 'for free' part.
Nobody said it was free. The claim was that access was free, which is the case for non-toll roads. The majority of roads are not toll roads no matter how you measure.
Government steals my money to pay for those roads so it's hardly free for me.
If you're getting something back for your money then it's not theft, it's taxation. Those who derive the most benefit from the road network (or any other aspect of the government) should pay the most to support it, which is precisely the kind of thing a graduated tax scheme like the one we employ here in the USA accomplishes, or at least it wou
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There's also some really nice places in the South Pacific that have no tax.
Mind, you. The roads are terrible... and the internet is slow, unreliable, and expensive. Enjoy!
You didn't build it (Score:3)
And the total cost of providing high speed internet (datacenter + everything else including cust service)? $9/mo. How do I know this? Comcast puts that little tidbit in their SEC filing. You can lie to everyone in America except your major
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So, my datacenter that I have built and put together myself should be a public service for everyone to use without compensating me for things like startup costs and growing pains? I don't think so.
And neither does anyone else, so relax. This is about the cost of being connected to the Internet; not the servers that serve the data.
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these people think the "magic government will give us everything!" i got modded down for bringing this post back to reality. this place is turning into more of a dump than it was.
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because that shows your intelligence level.
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adding to debt daily... you call that efficient? i would fire you.
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I'm pretty sure you're comparing apples to neutron stars here.
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That's a stupid example. Prior to using their own source, Flint was paying Detroit for water. And Detroit's water provider is a government entity.
Re:Data ain't free. (Score:4, Informative)
Building networks is actually quite cheap, in comparison with the profit margins of major telecommunication companies. This is how many less developed countries are able to offer higher speed internet access to residents for far less money, using the same commodity networking equipment.
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Do you have any idea what a profit margin is, or what the actual profit margins are?
Comcast average profit margin - 11%
Charter average profit margin - 0.57%
On the other hand
Google - 28%
Apple - 25%
All averages were over 4 years (2013-2016)
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Looking at the figures for the last few quarters at Charter, I'm going to suggest there's some "accounting" going on:
March 31, 2017 1.52%
Dec. 31, 2016 4.42%
Sept. 30, 2016 1.88%
June 30, 2016 49.78%
I don't think a company struggling to make a profit stock goes from $228 to $327 in the same period.
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Read the reports. That one quarter you hilited had a $3.5B income tax benefit as result of reversing some previous over valuations. That was the only reason they were profitable that quarter. Prior to that quarter, going all the way back to 2004, they operated at a loss in every quarter except 2.
The stock increase is because of the merger with TWC.
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Further you read the further you get an explanation of why they have had steady value increase regardless of the merger.
They would be making $billion profits if they weren't spending all their money on capital and interest. Instead they're getting $billion increases in value, and not blah blah future earnings Apple/Facebook value, tangible assets.
What they are /not/ is doing it tough.
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Wow, what a financial genius! If you want to claim a company is making massive profits, all you need to do is hand-wave away all the costs of running the business. Brilliant!
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Yeah, that's why capital gains tax doesn't exist. Oh, wait....
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It appears you have absolutely no idea what capital expenditures are if you think capital gains tax would ever apply.
A capital expenditure is any money spent purchasing an item that is expected to be useful to the business for more than one year. For an ISP this would include things like: fiber, coax, servers, routers, modems for rent, fiber to coax converters, test equipment, tools, bucket trucks, service vans, office computers, and so on. NONE of those things will ever appreciate in value. In fact, the
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Not gains on the company assets, gains on the shares everyone involved holds.
Whatever man, I'm sure you're right, Charter are clearly some kind of magical business that can lose money every year for 10-20 years and no one is worried. They're not arranging their finances to minimize their tax obligations and expressing their profits elsewhere.
We should set up a gofundme page to help out.
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Nah, I hate those asshats. But they sure know headline figures like Net Profit Margin alone aren't representative of a company's position.
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I'm not sure what your point is here? Sure Comcast the conglomerate may have 11% profit margin, but everything I've read estimates the profit margin to be around 20 - 30% for their network services. I've heard the broadcasting division is one that's really dragging down the profits.
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We did deal with it. We let google fiber in.
You faggots immediately came running with halved prices and tripled bandwidth, knocking frantically on every door.
You don't have to call it "cheap" but you're gonna have to pick a word that means effortlessly handing it out because of easy margin. That's not an opinion, it already happened.
Re:Data ain't free. (Score:4, Insightful)
You can pretend all you like, but you've been shafted twice to get internet access.
I got this from a 20 second search. [dailykos.com]
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That only goes to show that subsidies and grants need to require actual production. not just money to fuck off where ever you feel like fucking it off. That would stop a lot of abuse of the program
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you mean 250 megabits UP ?