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Re:Countries With Zero Rating Have More Expensive Wireless by rayiner on Thursday February 07, 2019 @02:00PM (#19107493)
That’s not great either. It leads to a lowest common denominator approach, because government is over senisitive to affordability. That’s what happens with our water and sewage systems. Rates are about half of what they need to be in order to adequately maintain and upgrade that infrastructure. The result is kids being poisoned with lead and raw sewage being dumped into rivers. But nobody in an elected position wants to raise water rates on grandma with her fixed income.
Re:Countries With Zero Rating Have More Expensive Wireless by WrtCdEvrydy on Thursday February 07, 2019 @03:45PM (#19108423)
That's the thing, the government isn't charging people directly, they just manage the hardware, individual companies can charge their own rates on top of that hardware.
Re:Countries With Zero Rating Have More Expensive Wireless by rayiner on Thursday February 07, 2019 @04:50PM (#19108935)
But the government has to build the hardware. And that costs money, and a massive amount of evidence shows that the government will underinvest in that hardware.

When I travel to Japan or Germany, it makes me cry to come back to American public roads and trains. But not privatized American broadband. We’re doing something wrong and that isn’t giving government insufficient involvement in the construction of infrastructure.

Re:Countries With Zero Rating Have More Expensive Wireless by raxxorrax on Friday February 08, 2019 @06:22AM (#19113222)
In Germany we had a state owned train infrastructure for the longest time and the process of privatization isn't completed yet. The problem with a privatization is that unprofitable regional areas are not going to get any investments and will get basically excluded.

While there were some improvements, customers in general do not get better condition today. I think overall using a train got more expensive. To a degree that you should think about using a plane.

Infrastructure investments were low before and are low right now.