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Communications The Courts United States

New York State Low-Cost Broadband Law Blocked by US Judge (bloomberg.com) 99

Posted by msmash from the tussle-continues dept.
A federal judge granted a preliminary order blocking New York state from enforcing a law that requires internet service providers to offer high-speed broadband service to low-income customers at a discount. From a report: U.S. District Judge Denis Hurley in Central Islip, New York, sided with telecom industry groups representing AT&T and Verizon, which sued to block the law. The legislation was enacted in April as part of the state's 2022 budget.
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New York State Low-Cost Broadband Law Blocked by US Judge More

New York State Low-Cost Broadband Law Blocked by US Judge

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  • That's the wrong way to do it (Score:4, Insightful)

    by fustakrakich ( 1673220 ) on Saturday June 12, 2021 @12:21AM (#61479218) Journal

    Just open the market up to competition, and put in muni/state service for under served areas.

    • Re:That's the wrong way to do it (Score:4, Informative)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 ) on Saturday June 12, 2021 @06:31AM (#61479598)

      The obvious problem is that cabling of any area automatically forms a natural monopoly. Other similar natural monopolies are electric grids and railway lines. In all those you need not "open the market to competition" but "manage the monopoly to allow competition over aspects that shouldn't be integrated into the monopoly".

      For example, in electricity delivery, it's common to separate the grid operator and provider of electricity. In rail, it's common to separate those that provide and maintain railway lines and those that operate the actual trains. In land line telecommunications, it's common to separate those that build and maintain said lines, and those that offer services over them.

      • The obvious problem is that cabling of any area automatically forms a natural monopoly.

        Yes, the state has to lay the cable and lease it out. The market has to be open or all bets are off. Oversight is up to the voters

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          Why wouldn't the state then handle the ISP instead of leasing it out? Leasing out gives control to evil capitalists. If we're already socialist, why not just go all the way?

          • Why wouldn't the state then handle the ISP instead of leasing it out?

            Not a problem. They can do that too, more competition is better.

            • Re: (Score:1)

              by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              >Not a problem. They can do that too, more competition is better.

              "If we totally eliminate competition by making this field a state's monopoly, there will be more competition".

              And this ladies and gentlemen is a great example why all socialist countries on the planet are shitholes in comparison to capitalist ones. Because people in pursuit of utopia that exists in their head are willing to turn reality on its head and happily conclude that as long as it agrees with their biases, yes, black is indeed white.

              • Wrong, the market will remain open.

                • Re: (Score:2)

                  by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                  Of course it will. Just like beatings will continue until morale improves, socialists will continue to monopolize sectors of economy until competition improves.

                  • That's utter nonsense. We have the right to pool our resources and use our government to compete in an open marketplace. There is no prohibition against private profits. They will just have to provide better service at a reasonable price to attract customers.

                    Regardless, whether it's government or corporation, oversight is our problem.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      I know you think it's nonsense. It's why the popular argument is that "real communism/socialism has never been tried", because when you have to address reality, your argument crumbles.

                    • I'm not making a "popular" argument, nor talking about communism/socialism, I said compete, not take over. We have that right.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      The reason why I pointed to that popular argument is because it is what your views of "We have that right" and "when government takes over a function in society, it frees it for competition" are ultimately based on.

                      Because the "government taking over functions" has been tried many times. It doesn't produce the outcomes you appear to find desirable. Instead, it produced the opposite outcomes.

                    • Here we are the government... 98% of congress was reelected to keep it just like it is. It is in our image. We have complete control. We are not helpless.

                    • Sorry for the second..

                      The reason why I pointed to that popular argument is because it is what your views of "We have that right" and "when government takes over a function in society, it frees it for competition" are ultimately based on.

                      Very presumptuous of you. Yours is a simple misinterpretation, possibly intentional due to personal bias.

                      We are responsible for our representative government. Oversight is our obligation. What we have today is our failure.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      You are now confusing owning responsibility with owning solutions to existing problems. Another common trait of people of that specific mindset I referenced.

                    • Well, that's why you have what you have. You fail to recognize ownership. You cannot separate our government from us.

                    • Re: (Score:2)

                      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

                      Let's grant that for a moment for the sake of argument. Do you have any arguments for the point that you also own solutions to existing problems?

      • The obvious problem is that cabling of any area automatically forms a natural monopoly.

        No it doesn't. In the past we had telephone cables, TV cables, and (for business) network cables laid down and operating side by side. It's only recently that these different services have converged into one, able to share the same cable. It's nothing at all like the electrical grid where you need separation between the cables for safety, or railway lines where there's the constraint of a certain minimum size to carry p

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          This is turning away from reality to justify ideology. Putting cables into the ground is extremely expensive, which is why there's so much problems with competition once someone has the cables in the ground and can offer service over them. No one wants to spend massive amount of money to dig the streets up again to put more cabling, and then close them back up. The costs compared to benefits are astronomical once the first lines are in.

          Same applies for electricity, same applies for rail. The reason is exact

  • any source that isn't paywalled?

  • Being that its AT&T and Verizon, yes they do have area's that are fiber but i would bet most of their area's are still old copper phone DSL. What is considered "high speed" in this area's isn't even 20mbit in most them. AT&T where i live which is in a different state, the best they offer is like 16-18mbit.
    • Spend a few more minutes thinking as i walked around the house, if they had a low cost offering with near same speeds of likes of spectrum/comcast. They would now get a new influx of customers paying 15-20$ for internet. That means they would have to put money in to maintaining the dsl lines of service they want to get rid of as its not remotely competitive without many multiple billions of investment to upgrade.
    • 16 megabit? Try 1.6 in the middle of silicon valley if you're unlucky
      • your local political problems are none of our concern, and yes its a political problem and no that doesnt mean go cry to the feds it means man the fuck up and take care of local shit

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      You can have good speeds over copper. With old school telephony networks, VDSL2 offers good speeds. If you have coaxial for cable TV, DOCSIS 3.0 and higher is great.

      Digging up streets to put in new cables is extremely expensive, time consuming and everyone who lives around those streets hates the problems that come with streets being dug up.

      • Where i live we have docsis 3.1 which most cable area's i think have least that on downstream side.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          4.0 already exists, but in my experience, anything from 3.0 and up is good enough for home and small office use.

  • In other countries, if you cannot afford or access wire/fibre broadband, you get wireless. No humiliating charity claims needed.
    With 4G/LTE, you get high speed but less GB data per month. No expensive connection. Modems are cheap, or use your phone.
    Any service aimed at the poor should be fee-capped (no surprise bills!), and preferably pre-paid.

    In Australia for example, anyone can pay around us$100 for a pre-paid SIM with 12 months access, unlimited calls, and 120GB. So 10GB/month.
    That's not going to get

    • I pay 100 RMB a month in China for unlimited home internet and phone service with 20GB a month. Adjusted that's a little over 15 USD and I am not even shopping around. My old place was 50 RMB and unlimited but less phone data. I regularly torrent between 1 to 5 MB/s. I rarely have outages. Yeah yeah you are going to complain about censorship and my data being snooped but I regularly work around these things with minimal effort. I just don't go yelling about tank man on WeChat.

      The US's telecom industry is on

      • I pay 100 RMB a month in China for unlimited home internet and phone service with 20GB a month.

        How the fuck is 20GB unlimited?

      • Their virtual monopoly has essentially guaranteed that the US has some of the worst internet speeds of any modern industrialized nation.

        We're well past the point where the developing world has better Internet access than the United States. As tgeek points out, former Communist Bloc countries have better Internet service than the US, and yes, they had ancient legacy copper networks to deal with too, at least in the cities, nor is their population density exceptionally high.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tgeek ( 941867 )
      In Romania I pay roughly $9USD total for 500Mbps fiber internet PLUS digital cable per month from Vodafone (formerly UPC). Top notch reliability and service, BTW. Cellphone service is another $7 prepaid for an 80GB plan with tons of loyalty bonuses. (cellphone service is roughly on par with US service, maybe slightly worse)

  • Hurley said the stateâ(TM)s rate regulation intrudes on and is preempted by federal law.

    I can see this, as it may conflict with the Commerce Clause, but he may also be wrong here.

    He also said it conflicts with an FCC order that concluded common-carrier regulation of broadband is contrary to the public interest.

    Ajit Pai. The gift that keeps on giving....

    • It seems to me the interstate commerce clause is what justifies the existence of the FCC, yeah.

      The supremacy clause says that because the FCC exists, the state of New York can't reverse what the federal government has done.

      > Ajit Pai. The gift that keeps on giving....

      If you think he's wrong, show me where in the statute it says anything at all granting the FCC authority to a) decide all on their own their ISPs are common carriers or even b) do anything at all with ISPs.

      You seem to be aware that it's the

      • If you think he's wrong, show me where in the statute it says anything at all granting the FCC authority to a) decide all on their own their ISPs are common carriers or even b) do anything at all with ISPs.

        The Communications Act of 1934 established the FCC, opening with the following epic compound sentence:

        For the purpose of regulating interstate and foreign commerce in communication by wire and radio so as to make available, so far as possible to all the people of the United States a rapid, efficient, Nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges, for the purpose of the national defense, for the purpose of promoting safety of life and property through the use of wire and radio communication, and for the purpose of securing a more effective execution of this policy by centralizing authority heretofore granted by law to several agencies and by granting additional authority with respect to interstate and foreign commerce in wire and radio communication, there is hereby created a commission to be known as the Federal Communications Commission, which shall be constituted as hereinafter provided, and which shall execute and enforce the provisions of this Act."

        It is wonderfully broad, referring to "communication by wire" especially. It makes no distinction as to how that communication is accomplished. The Bell Telephone national monopoly was entrenched by then and had been engaging in anti-competitive practices for two decades when the FCC was created to try to leash the beast, to very limited success. Importantly, telegraph still existed and was still conside

        • The only thing that sentence does "hereby created a commission to be known as the Federal Communications Commission, which shall be constituted as hereinafter provided, and which shall execute and enforce the provisions of this Act."

          Lawmakers can yip yap all day about wherefore thenceforth, the great and lofty goals of the act - that doesn't *do* anything. All that sentence actually *does* is create the FCC to enforce the provisions of the act. It doesn't say the FCC shall force ice cream parlors to sell c

  • x = number of low-income households. New ISP tax: x * $200. New ISP tax credit/return: $200 for every low-income household. This is what computers are good for.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jmccue ( 834797 )

      Came here to say the same thing. I would use a different method, but yours will work.

      Also, since a piece of the ACA was declared a tax, the US Supreme Court said they have no jurisdiction to declare it invalid. So NY State can charge any kind of Tax they want on them.

      Sadly the legislature has no balls, the bribers^H^H^H^H^H^H^H lobbyist will always win. Almost make me wonder if these legislatures are just doing theater for the public and doing fundraising for next years election.

    • The federal LifeLine program offers free internet service to low-income families.

      The Emergency BroadBand Benefits program offers $50/month subsidies for low-income families existing broadband service:

      https://www.fcc.gov/broadbandb... [fcc.gov]

      Who is left out of the two previous programs that stands to benefit from Cuomo's $15/mo plan?

  • THEN put requirements to include provisions for low income households. Internet at this point is a requirement to function within our society, it is already a public utility just make it official.

    • Public utility? No. Public benefit, sure.

      It is not a 'requirement', and the federal LifeLine program offers free broadband service Emergency Broadband Benefit offers $50/mo subsidy to reduce the cost of existing service:

      https://www.fcc.gov/broadbandb... [fcc.gov]

      We threw money at ISPs to expand service areas, now we throw money at them to increase subscriber numbers - politicians have learned that while voters like the idea of giving their tax dollars to help poor people get on the internet, the voters also have shor

  • Tax these state authorized monopolies a tax, and use that fund to subsidize the internet for the poor.

  • Years ago, in Poland, it was possible to write off your internet bill on taxes. The total amount per year was capped. Why not just do that? It doesn't make much sense to force private company to offer discounts. If government wants to help the poor, they should use their own money to do it. And if they think the internet prices are unfair and they don't want to give extra money to ISPs the should open up the market. Where I live now every small town has a local internet provider. You can get 1 Gb/s for 30

    • So can we end the LifeLine program, the Emergency Broadband Benefit, and other programs snd instead let taxpayers write-off $50/mo (my number, seems fair) for internet service?

      Great - I need water and electricity, can I deduct those expenses also? And why should the mortgage interest deduction only apply to landowners? I should be able to deduct a portion of my monthly rent from taxes also, it's a required expense, just like electricity, water snd ISP service, right?

    • If government wants to help the poor, they should use their own money to do it.

      Fascinating, where exactly does the "government" get "their own money" from?

    • "their own money" - You do not understand taxes.

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