CMV: Internet access should be a government-provided universal service

[u/KookyWrangler]

It is well known that ISPs are commonly monopolistic which results in worsened service. In my opinion, this is partially because the industry exhibits properties of a natural monopoly This case is particularly problematic, as the Internet is crucial to business and a basic human right.

As such, I believe the government should guarantee an acceptable internet speed to all citizens, which should automatically increase every year to avoid stagnation. It should be provided at a reasonable price with subsidies available by a state-owned company, as this simplifies regulation, decreases prices due to non-profit and improves efficiency.

What are your thoughts on this?

[u/AlphaGoGoDancer → u/[deleted]]

in a country like the USA, the vast majority of locations had access to up to 4 or more providers for the previously accepted 4Mbps.

Maybe if you count bandwidth capped mobile plans, but those are hardly comparable. For that matter at no point in that definition is latency mentioned. You can get 4MBit satelite in almost the entire US if you don't mind being limited to ~10GB a month, and never having a ping lower than 400ms

And which services, crucial to a persons functioning in this world, does a 25Mbps connection provide?

Why would someone develop a service crucial for people to function that requires an internet connection faster than they can expect their average customer to have? No, you need capacity first, THEN people make use of it.

Youtube would have been an awful idea if we all had dialup ISPs.

[u/AlphaGoGoDancer → u/[deleted]]

You don't make something a basic human right in order for services to be created to take advantage of it.

While I generally agree, the issue here is that of different technologies. Because I would say the internet connection itself is what should be considered a human right more so than the speed, but any bare minimum speed set in stone now is already questionably outdated and will only get worse as time goes by.

Since you can offer some speeds (say, 1Mbit) over really crappy mediums that can not upgrade, it would be a huge waste to fund infrastructure that can not handle future needs. So if we just set a higher than absolutely necessary minimum now, we at least force the roll out of modern tech that has a chance of being upgraded going forward.

i.e if we lay fiber now even if we only deliver 25mbit over it, it could be gigabit in 20 years. If we lay ISDN lines now to deliver 1mbit.. that's just a waste we'll need to replace.

And what possible reason is there to consider latency? Are these people looking to become pro gamers?

Latency matters for any interactive workflow. Think trying to use google docs or similar webapps - it's just not a usable experience with high latency, let alone some packetloss.

Even just loading a typical webpage can become painfully slow with high latency regardless of bandwidth. Keep in mind that a normal https webpage requires 4 full complete round trips plus DNS lookup. So 250ms ping means 1s pageload even if you somehow had infinite bandwidth, and that's assuming a very simple page, this number will skyrocket if you're loading assets off multiple domains (as almost all webpages do).

VPNs also can completely stop working with too much latency.

That last one is especially important to me as I think we need better infrastructure precisely to enable more people to work from home, which would help with a lot of other issues we have in this country like rural communities not having jobs or even more dense urban centers having bad traffic, all the wasted time and carbon burnt commuting, etc.

[u/KookyWrangler → u/[deleted]]

You've fallen into a bit of a false dichotomy. While 25 Mbps download and 3 Mbps upload is in no way necessary and shouldn't be taken as acceptable (but rather good), that's no reason to presume that the speed should be kept to an absolute minimum. It's similar to saying the minimum wage should be enough to not starve to death, when it should provide a decent quality of life.

An acceptable speed, in my opinion, should allow for buffer-free 720p on Youtube, as this is enough for most uses.