WODC: This House Believes That Provisions of Internet Services Should be a Public Utility

Framework The resolution can be interpreted as meaning that the Internet should be treated be policy makers as a public utility. We further assume, to keep the debate on track and for the convenience of both me and Lannan, that this debate presupposes the United States as a setting, since we're both from the United States. What considering provisions (Internet providers) a utility for the purposes of policy makers does is allow the public to regulate them and put quality control measures in place that are benefit for society as whole. The benefits of which, shall be discussed shortly. Internet Providers are a Public Utility According to the legal dictionary offered by thefreedictionary.com; "Typically a public utility has a Monopoly on the service it provides. It is more economically efficient to have only one business provide the service because the infrastructure required to produce and deliver a product such as electricity or water is very expensive to build and maintain. A consequence of this monopoly is that federal, state, and local governments regulate public utilities to ensure that they provide a reasonable level of service at a fair price." The definition is descriptive and goes into more detail, but the case can be made that ISPs are certainly a natural monopoly. They have no real threat of competition, and it's why in a semi-free market they are able to provide inferior service at more expensive prices. It is also a telecommunications service that is clearly needed this day in age. Appliances, cars, our places of employment, schooling all are necessities that require the Internet. There was a time you could walk into a place and be fine without the Internet, but now you go into any business and if the Internet goes down, they might as well close. The credit card machines go down, their inventory tracking goes down, customers can't buy stuff, they can't track their product, the registers usually go down. The Internet is no longer a fancy new toy that we can reasonably go without. It's so hard to become an Internet provider for a variety of reasons. The upfront costs for starting an ISP are staggering, it costs millions. You don't see a profit for years, if you see one at all. You have all kinds of costs that go into permits and licenses from several different municipalities. One tactic used by companies that hold a monopoly in an area is to throw tons of frivolous lawsuits at up and coming service providers. These lawsuits cost tons of money in legal fees and work as an effective delaying process. A company could lose 20 lawsuits against an up and comer in the industry and still come out ahead, because all of the delay and legal costs make the venture a losing proposition. Many investors will pull out, if the venture hasn't already went bankrupt from the lawsuits. It takes so long to see a profit, even if it weren't for the ridiculous lawsuits, most of these startups can't survive without some help from the government. According to one expert; "I have never seen an independent" start up without having to fight the incumbent legally," ......"The incumbents are notorious for frivolous delay lawsuits. They know perfectly well they're frivolous, but it's a delay tactic. They have an army of lawyers and a budget to support lawsuits the size of Godzilla. That's one of their tactics, it always has been. It probably will continue to be so for many years yet to come." These companies also get into a recurring cycle where they need to get more customers to increase broadband, but need more broadband to get customers. It's a death loop. The bigger companies who hold monopolies all over the country are well positioned to do this, but the small ones suffer. It should be clear by now that the barrier to entry for ISPs is incredibly large, and in fact is why America basically only has 4 companies running the show. http://arstechnica.com... These ISP providers have such a strong strangle hold on the market they can do whatever the hell they feel like. Comcast's customer service is so bad that they're frequently ranked the worst company in the world. If you're having a hard time understanding how a horrible company can keep from going out of business, it's because they own a monopoly. http://consumerist.com... Comcast is still trying to merger with Time Warner which will give them control over 40% of the market with virtually no rivals. http://www.theverge.com... About 70% of Americans face this problem, most having one option for the Internet, but at most 2 options. The company is so big it doesn't even know what competition is. That's not rhetoric either. They honestly can't identify their competition. http://www.theverge.com... What We Stand to Gain We're missing out on a lot, when these companies aren't treated as public utilities. In America, there isn't competition to keep these companies in check, so they provide a good service at the best possible price, nor is there enough regulation to do that sort of thing. Classifying these companies as utilities (and let's face it, that's what they are), could gain us a lot. According to an article in "The Verge", which uses several different studies for citations; Americans pay more money for less service as far as Internet providers are concerned. Countries with more regulation or competition offer more for less than the outdated American system. "US carriers, on average, offered disappointing 13.2 megabit per second (Mbps) download speeds on LTE over the course of 2013, carriers in countries like Australia, Canada, and the UK delivered speeds nearly two to three times faster. In fact, out of the 40 countries and territories with the most LTE tests in 2013, the US offered slower speeds than all of them" And " On average, Verizon charged roughly $4.05 per Mbps of LTE download speed in 2013, compared to just $2.25 for UK ..... AT&T comes to $3.93, while Sprint " with its nascent and slow LTE network " averages to a whopping $7.50 per Mbps." http://www.theverge.com... This is what we lose out on and also what we stand to gain from creating some oversight that allows consumers to do exactly what was done with electricity and home telephones, which is to make it affordable and available to even the poorest people. Right now 45% of Americans use their mobile phone as their primary Internet source, and am in fact typing this argument on my cellphone. I have no doubt that doing it on a cellphone certainly influences the quality as well. We shouldn't banish poor people to the ghetto Internet. We should unleash the true collaborative and innovative power of the Internet by making it available to everyone. http://www.theverge.com... Conclusion The FCC is unable to stop this madness. FCC chairman are culled from former bigwigs in the telecommunications industry, while lobbyists are taken from former FCC chairman position. It's a revolving door between the FCC and these companies with no real oversight. It's time to realize that Internet providers are utility companies. It's time to acknowledge that the Internet is just as much a part of our daily lives as our electricity, telephones and running water. With the lack of competition, the lack of oversight, with companies running wild, taking advantage of customers and black mailing other companies, it's time make some corrections. Provisions for Internet services are a utility.