if you are a person existing in society
watching this video then you know that
the internet is super handy and also
basically a human right at this point to
function in a modern society we've built
an entire civilization on the internet
and yet somehow many North Americans are
still dealing with overpriced Credit
Service if they have internet at all so
what the hell is going on
today's video is brought to you by
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now I will admit that this video topic
was a little personal for me I just
spent the last year circumnavigating
North America in a Prius while
maintaining multiple YouTube channels
and coordinating with a remote team from
around the world to say that I'm
dependent on the internet would be a
understatement a good Wi-Fi connection
can honestly make or break my day
after that experience I decided that I
wanted to know why the hell the internet
in this part of the world sucks so much
ass and so instead of Googling the
question myself and getting the answer I
test our writing team to do a deep dive
so I can make the super passive
aggressive video note on the industry
and release it to the internet as a
whole naturally the first question that
we have to ask is what is the internet I
was hoping that it would be an easier
answer than this but it turns out that
the internet is a little complicated but
our writing team did distill it into a
few key points that even I can
understand so let's get into it
basically we're talking about a system
of interconnected computers these
computers are traditionally connected
via cables perhaps copper or more
recently glass in the form of fiber
optics and these relay messages back and
forth between the computers there is of
course a wireless-ish side of this whole
thing too but basically in order for you
to transmit your carefully crafted and
witty troll comment from say Mongolia to
me here in Vancouver you're relying on a
ton of wires these wires are like
spanning the entire Links of countries
and Oceans by one estimate there is
enough underwater wires to circle the
Earth more than 200 times over which
sounds wrong but is apparently right
this is basically like a massively
scaled up version of the telephone lines
that you see in Mexico City or that
Rat's Nest underneath your desk as you
can imagine this kind of infrastructure
takes a massive amount of time work and
expertise to set up and this is where
all of the problems start Apparently one
of the most common complaints that we've
found regarding American internet
specifically is that there simply Aren't
Enough options a 2020 study showed that
at least 83.3 million Americans could
only access Internet through one service
provider and many others are forced to
choose between a shitty option and
another shitty option and this seems to
have all started with cable companies
technicality does a more in-depth look
on how this oligopoly formed if you're
interested in that but here are the
cliff notes when cable companies started
flourishing they began making deals with
municipalities basically they were like
hey we'll set up your little city with
some cable for everyone and all we're
asking is that in return you give us
some Monopoly for the rest of time I'm a
Cat dealer how about you you you
make that deal I make that deal I don't
blame you damn good deal eventually
these kinds of deals got banned but by
then cable companies had already had a
Stranglehold on the market they each
carved out their own little mini
monopolies and competition became
virtually impossible because see here's
the thing about cable and now the
internet it forms what is called a
natural monopoly where the barriers for
entry are so high that it is simply not
worth it for competitors to enter the
market in this case an interested
competitor would have to require all of
the right permits dig their own trenches
lay down their own wires before even
making a penny on this to gain customers
and recoup costs they'd have to offer
something better than what's already
available but how are you supposed to do
that when the local bigwig can just
lower their prices and choke you out to
add insult to injury these cable
companies started merging like crazy
even further reducing the competition in
just a couple of decades the four
biggest cable companies accounted for
nearly 40 mergers and Acquisitions and
then because that wasn't enough those
left standing made handshake deals to
stay out of each other's territories by
the time the cable Lines supplanted
telephone lines is the way to access
internet cable companies that already
created such a tight knit oligopoly that
they dominated the internet scene as
well God it's like when you're the only
child you know and you're getting all of
the love and attention Mission from your
family that you should have gotten but
then on top of that you get all their
money when they're dead too that was
dark
oh and my battery's done so look I don't
want to give away the whole video in a
sentence but basically without
competition these service providers have
basically no incentive to do anything
right for the customer which is you and
because of the infrastructure is so
massive nobody's going to swoop in and
offer lower prices or better service so
they can do pretty well whatever the
they want and we're just stuck with
what they have to offer aside from being
very frustrating and expensive this has
some real world implications too for
example service providers aren't all
that incentivized to expand to rural
communities specifically to get some
internet out to obscure towns in the
mountains say they would have to lay
down miles and miles of wires just to
get to the town then they'd have to
connect each individual household which
is a lot more work in a spread out area
rather than in an apartment for example
Wireless can help here but unfortunately
the quality tends to be less reliable
overall wiring in a rural community is a
heck of a lot of work for not that many
customers my parents live out in the
sticks and just last year got internet
for the first time like there was no
option you could not get internet at
their house and now that they do have it
it's pretty expensive now of course this
video would not be complete with us
mentioning Elon Musk starlink but we're
going to be getting to that a little bit
later because you have to understand how
important the internet really is today
remember this is not just about watching
your favorite YouTuber online you know
you pesky little future-proof subscriber
but increasingly the internet can be the
difference between having a job or not
having a job getting an education or not
or maintaining your social life I'm
extremely grateful and lucky that I
don't really experience Internet outages
that often but I have in the past and it
was really hard to live a normal life
now that the internet is so interwoven
to everything that we do even before
lockdowns access to broadband internet
had been correlated with increased wages
and higher education of course
correlation does not mean causation but
there's a growing conversation about
just how internet access can improve
economic outcomes from many communities
we could probably all pretty much agree
that it would be amazing if everybody
had access to Affordable high-speed
internet and the question is how the
hell would we get there now this is the
part of the story that is sadly not
going to be great if it wasn't already
depressing enough already because we're
going to talk about government
intervention in theory the government
could just regulate this industry to
provide enough incentives for
competition to naturally grow there has
been a lot of discussion about price
capping or even turning the internet
into a public utility like water but
most of the time they just end up
chucking money at the problem now so far
the first two have not been tried
thoroughly and the third typically
doesn't produce the desired effects that
we're looking for new administrations
come into power with big promises and
then they throw a couple billion dollars
into internet infrastructure and attempt
to reach rural communities for example
and the results are slow moving to say
the least like we're talking like two
megabyte uploads speed slow
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us just for an example Canada my home
country has been investing billions of
dollars into this for like a decade and
as of 2022 only 45 of people living in
rural areas have access to high-speed
internet one of the problems here is
that the governments and private
corporations are just a little too
friendly with each other if you know
what I mean being from Canada so they
throw billions of dollars at this
internet problem and the money that they
throw at it just goes to the billion
dollar companies that we're already
creating the problem in the first place
I have done nothing wrong
ever
in my life I know this
and I love you I love you too daddy
mommy please my money there is not a lot
of oversight there's not a ton of
accountability and so the money just
seems to disappear and people don't get
much in return there is a lot more
complexity to the situation of course
but the bottom line is the internet
still sucks so clearly throwing money at
the problem isn't working but here is
one circumstance in which the government
the municipal government has actually
fixed this issue Chattanooga Tennessee
is kind of like The Golden Child of
Municipal internet back in 2009 the city
decided that they had enough of their
current service providers and built
their own they got sued four times by
the cable companies of course because
they're but they persevered and
won themselves some of the fastest
internet speeds in the country for below
average prices next thing you know young
people are flocking there the economy is
bustling and the municipality earned its
money back there is a concern turn of
course the giving municipalities the
power to build their own Internet is
just switching from one Monopoly to
another but the thing is Chattanooga
didn't Outlaw other service providers it
merely competed with them pushing a t
and Comcast to upgrade their own
services or lower their prices which
sounds super promising and wonderful
right boom there's our solution build
the internet at the municipal level and
every everything's fine who better knows
the needs of their Community than the
community itself except that this is
restricted in 15 states legally internet
providers spend massive amounts of money
lobbying the government which might just
have something to do with why it's so
hard to get anything real done so maybe
at this point if you have an economics
degree or don't you're wondering hey
isn't this what the free economy is
supposed to fix you know like just let
the competition feed itself right the
only way to beat one giant internet
providing Godzilla is to provide some
equally scary large corporate monster
that it can fight in the ocean for some
reason we are seeing other tech
companies start to develop their own
internet services but sadly it's even
worse Facebook started offering free
internet in developing countries with
plans to expand to the United States
while Google Fiber has been encroaching
on the American Market as the fastest
internet provider in the country look
it's not the hero that we want but if
there is a company that can out compete
the internet oligopoly it's Google and
even they have had their struggles at
the same time call me paranoid but it's
a little hard to fully trust these
people's motivations now the whole
Facebook internet thing is really
dystopian free Basics has been accused
of digital colonialism and was even
banned in India over concerns over net
neutrality nice job team net neutrality
ensures that people are able to freely
access the internet without their
service providers prioritizing sub
websites over others but free Basics
just gives you a few websites of their
choosing given how much the internet can
shape the way that we think about the
world around us and pretty much
everything else you can see why it might
be problematic to only see what a giant
Corporation wants you to see which is
one of the reasons why net neutrality
has been such a raging debate in the US
for years now like if you go on Facebook
in these countries where Facebook is is
one of the only internet providers and
all you see is Facebook for those people
they think that the internet is Facebook
and we know the Facebook's like
notoriously bad at helping humans make
good decisions but of course now we are
coming to Elon musk's starlink which
probably deserves its own video at some
point apparently Elon musk's goal is to
cover the entire world with accessible
internet by launching 42 000 satellites
into orbit which is 15 times more than
what we had as of 2021. now if you're
feeling that this has some similarities
to the whole cable and internet provider
story that we shared at the beginning of
this video you're not wrong because
Amazon has also joined the race with no
real regulations in place to stop this
satellite race to space we could see
tens of thousands hundreds of thousands
of satellites encasing the Earth in the
next decade now I'm not an astronomer or
an astrologer because I don't care what
my star sign is and I don't stare at the
stars too often I'm a Scorpio if you're
wondering but I know that there have
been concerns about what this might mean
for our ability to see space let alone
research it and who knows the potential
consequences of launching a bunch of
really sharp pieces of metal into the
atmosphere could be but maybe our you
know Sky of meshed satellites does have
a positive side because it may solve the
rural internet problem starlink has
started offering Services across the U.S
and bringing internet to a lot of people
who otherwise wouldn't have it the
technology is evolving quickly but sadly
in a predictable way as we have seen
from the past so perhaps in the next 10
years you'll be picking your internet
provider between Amazon and Elon Musk
hopefully that is not the case because
we need some better options down here on
Earth if there's something about this
story that you think we've missed and
you want to share your perspective
please leave them down in the comments
below if you like the video literally
like it if you want to see more
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week
okay boom
foreign
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