63
submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago

I'm disputing that they already have money to cover the costs

Federal subsidies to telcos were not intended to provide Internet service for free, but to reduce costs.

You could argue that a subsidy should reduce prices relative to what they should have been, had no subsidy existed.

But you cannot argue that pricing should be decoupled from consumption as a result of that.

[-] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

And I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that it's clear that pricing has been decoupled from consumption, but in the other direction, where the ISP's are setting prices arbitrarily. That's been a choice on their part, and a big reason why people like me are distrustful of any data they claim shows their case. They have been caught lying so many times before. I'm old enough to remember Comcast paying homeless people^1 to stuff a courtroom to make it seem like more people supported them (once again if they don't have money to cover infrastructure costs, why are they instead spending their money on things like this?). There's also issues like when they bundle unnecessary services, essentially consumers paying for nothing, like when the AG of Washington State sued them in 2016.^2 I could go on for pages about shit like this going all the way back to illegally shaping traffic with Sandvine targeting BitTorrent traffic.^3 I honestly don't wish to and maybe you ought to do more research on how much money these companies ream the American consumer for before acting like there is any connection between pricing and consumption here.

EDIT: Further, if that's not enough, here's the Huffing Post with some raw data^4 on how Time Warner was making 97% profit on their internet offerings in 2015. Here's the Wall Street Journal^5 in 2012 discussing how many ISPs had something like 90% profit on their internet offerings:

On the face of it, such offers appear counter-intuitive. Cable executives and analysts say that about 90% of the money cable operators charge for broadband goes straight to gross profits, since there are minimal operational costs for providing Internet service.

Finally, here's a breakdown from the EFF^6 on why building infrastructure is ISP's main cost, and that maintenance and upkeep is a sliver of costs, once infrastructure is rolled out:

Some estimates suggest the cost of deployment can be close to 80 percent of the entire cost portfolio of an ISP. Note that means operations and maintenance of the network (that includes all of the broadband usages of its customers) could be as little as 20% of the ISP’s costs. This is acutely true when it comes to a fiber to the home deployment where the infrastructure (fiber optic cable) is effectively future-proof and can be upgraded cheaply with advances in electronics.

It is worth remembering that our current incumbent telephone and cable companies have made back their initial investment costs because they entered the market as monopolies in the old days and likely enjoyed favorable financing as safe bets (nothing is safer to invest in than a monopoly). Our current incumbents enjoyed a litany of advantages for being the first to deploy. For example, many buildings as they were constructed prospectively required the installation of a telephone and cable line, which in essence gave them virtually a free ride to customers that new entrants will not enjoy.

this post was submitted on 20 Jun 2023
63 points (98.5% liked)

Technology

34442 readers
349 users here now

This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.


Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.


Rules:

1: All Lemmy rules apply

2: Do not post low effort posts

3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff

4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.

5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)

6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist

7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS