utilities exist to serve the majority of the country, high speed internet only exists in the big cities which make up significantly less than 5% of the country.
Really? Something like 85% of the American population lives in or around metropolitan areas.
And let’s be realistic here: people who live out in the boonies don’t exactly have an abundance of utilities either. They have septic tanks and propane tanks. Some don’t even have electricity, although that’s increasingly uncommon.
It is not at all unreasonable to consider internet access a public utility.
I’m not even sure why I’m getting downvoted. It would benefit the entire population if internet access were treated as a utility rather than remaining under the control of three or four major corporations that effectively have a stranglehold on the market.
What’s particularly strange is that we’re supposedly all about socialism, equality, and equity. But the moment I suggest that internet access should be a utility, suddenly everyone has a problem with it.
I swear, the majority of people on Lemmy must be somewhere between 12 and 25 years old. There’s an awful lot of idealism and not nearly enough real-world perspective.
And ever smaller towns have better internet than you’d think. I went to college in a town of ~5k people and the internet was fine, especially if you went with the local co-op internet. They were slightly more expensive but most years you’d get money back so if wasn’t really more expensive and the service was fantastic, sadly they were hard for the college students to use because they only offered yearly contracts unlike the big names.
ISPs should be better. But when you say ‘like utilities’ there’s been way too many for profit companies acting like local monopolies screwing people over too - look at Enron and now Xcel and CenterPoint trying to pass the cost of the Texas freeze to all of their customers all over the country because they lobbied for deregulation and Texas gave it to them. NONE of these companies should exist.
electric companies are also really annoying if you want three phase power at a residential address, I can see a utilityified ISP doing the same for anyone that doesn’t want to be behind CGNAT
utilities exist to serve the majority of the country, high speed internet only exists in the big cities which make up significantly less than 5% of the country.
Really? Something like 85% of the American population lives in or around metropolitan areas.
And let’s be realistic here: people who live out in the boonies don’t exactly have an abundance of utilities either. They have septic tanks and propane tanks. Some don’t even have electricity, although that’s increasingly uncommon.
It is not at all unreasonable to consider internet access a public utility.
I’m not even sure why I’m getting downvoted. It would benefit the entire population if internet access were treated as a utility rather than remaining under the control of three or four major corporations that effectively have a stranglehold on the market.
What’s particularly strange is that we’re supposedly all about socialism, equality, and equity. But the moment I suggest that internet access should be a utility, suddenly everyone has a problem with it.
I swear, the majority of people on Lemmy must be somewhere between 12 and 25 years old. There’s an awful lot of idealism and not nearly enough real-world perspective.
Lemmy really is a strange freaking place.
And ever smaller towns have better internet than you’d think. I went to college in a town of ~5k people and the internet was fine, especially if you went with the local co-op internet. They were slightly more expensive but most years you’d get money back so if wasn’t really more expensive and the service was fantastic, sadly they were hard for the college students to use because they only offered yearly contracts unlike the big names.
ISPs should be better. But when you say ‘like utilities’ there’s been way too many for profit companies acting like local monopolies screwing people over too - look at Enron and now Xcel and CenterPoint trying to pass the cost of the Texas freeze to all of their customers all over the country because they lobbied for deregulation and Texas gave it to them. NONE of these companies should exist.
electric companies are also really annoying if you want three phase power at a residential address, I can see a utilityified ISP doing the same for anyone that doesn’t want to be behind CGNAT