Noah Vail
Premium
join:2004-12-10
Lorton, VA
 ·RoadRunner Cable
| Yea But.........
I have questions about the quality and reliability of France's broadband system. My experience is when "That Which Must Be Obeyed" sets up and tightly regulates a system, that system fails in quality. It becomes huge, plentiful.....and of poor quality.
Public Schools and Canada's health care come to mind.
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R4M0N
Brazilian Soccer Ownz Joo
join:2000-10-04
Glen Allen, VA
·Comcast
| I agree with you. We can all complain about how other countries have cheaper broadband, but we also must look at the quality of service AND how the service is paid for. Are they paying higher taxes to subsidize the cheaper broadband?
I'd love to have "free" health care like canadians do, but I'd hate to have the quality of care they have and I'd hate to pay the taxes they have to pay. |
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maartena
Stacked.
Premium
join:2002-05-10
Orange, CA
·RoadRunner Cable
| said by R4M0N  :I agree with you. We can all complain about how other countries have cheaper broadband, but we also must look at the quality of service AND how the service is paid for. Are they paying higher taxes to subsidize the cheaper broadband? I'd love to have "free" health care like canadians do, but I'd hate to have the quality of care they have and I'd hate to pay the taxes they have to pay. The companies that deploy broadband in France, such as France Telecom are partially state owned, that is they are large shareholders. But that only gives them some power in the decission making process, they aren't getting any subsidies from the government, they are a money-making and money-spending cooperation, just like any other company.
In other countries, such as the UK and Netherlands, their major telecom companies haven't been state-run for more then a decade, and they didn't start with broadband services until they had been privatized completely for quite a while.
The reasons why Europeans pay more taxes is because of their social systems, their healthcare systems, and other government entities, not because of broadband.
Besides, Canadians may pay more taxes but their broadband is often more lousy then here in the US. 
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"I'm honored to shake the hand of a brave Iraqi citizen who had his hand cut off by Saddam Hussein." - Bush, May 2004. |
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tuna hp
@covad.net
| reply to R4M0N
On one side, I totally agree that it would be disastrous for the government to be handling ISPs like they do abroad. There needs to be competition. On the other hand, I do agree with Lessig that the physical "lines", ie the copper, cable, or fiber, are definately infrastructure. The property and scale barriers to creating competing information networks means that the government might want to have some part in it.
Don't get me wrong. I used to be a staunch libertarian/laissez-faire capitalist and still believe heavily that the government should stay small and shouldnt do much. But in an industry where the government all but built the phone and cable company's for them, they should be providing an avenue for turning the ISP business from being a monopoly or duopoly into something more commoditized and price competetive.
They could do this by building or even just facilitating the building of an independent network (probably fiber) that wouldnt transport its own services, but only be hired out by ISPs that would all pay a per/megabyte rate to carry data over the network. |
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wtansill
Ncc1701
join:2000-10-10
Falls Church, VA
| reply to Noah Vail
This may at times be the case, but that's not what we're seeing here. When "Ma Bell" was heavily regulated, the United States was widely acknowledged to have the best phone system in the world.
Fast forward a few years:
1) Universal Service is dying (despite the fact that we all pay the fee on our phone bill).
2) Many times the service we pay for is sub-par.
Case in point -- I spent yesterday afternoon at a friend's house helping her untangle some computer-related issues. She has Verizon DSL, advertised at 768k. I ran a speed test here on DSL Reports. She is actually getting 122K down and 133K up -- or just over 15% of her advertised speed (yes, yes -- I know that VZ advertises "up to" 768k). And that's after running some of the tweak tests here and using Dr. TCP to adjust settings. She mentioned that whenever someone has to work on the outside pole, they say it's amazing that her phone works at all, indicating to me that the external infrastructure is falling apart. This BTW is in Northern Virginia, in a close-in suburb of Washington DC.
Please -- remind me again how good deregulation is for us?
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That which does not kill me merely prolongs the agony. |
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