Municipal broadband vs. data efficiency

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tepples
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Municipal broadband vs. data efficiency

Post by tepples »

With the deprecation of Flash Player, tokumaru recommended rendering an animation to a video for presentation to the public rather than presenting it using Flash, Canvas, or other client-rendered vector animation formats. Back when StepMania was at its peak popularity (around 2004 or so), I tried this with "We Drink Ritalin", a fan-created music video for "Hot Limit" by John Desire that was responsible for introducing me to Dance Dance Revolution in the first place. It ended up inflating the file size by a factor of ten. That's not quite as bad as rendering an NSF to an MP3, but roughly the same as rendering MOD, S3M, XM, or IT tracker music to MP3.

Formats that are less space-efficient are less attractive to viewers behind an Internet connection with a monthly data transfer quota of 10 GB or less, such as satellite and cellular. This includes a lot of users in the United States and elsewhere who live outside the service area of cable or DSL, mostly in rural areas, and can't afford a second home in a covered area. Even on DSL, some providers in less dense areas are adopting such small quotas, such as the East Buchanan (Iowa) Telephone Cooperative in 2014.

Then calima recommended running for local government to fix the Internet problem, on the theory that it's easier to get elected to county council in a race with fewer constituents. Apart from the fact that not everybody has the right personality for public office, even if you do get elected, you're likely to end up running into state laws banning municipal broadband that the urban majority of the state have imposed on your small city or unincorporated county. In the United States, the FCC tried to break these bans, but North Carolina and Tennessee successfully sued the FCC to keep the bans in place.

As a workaround for Internet data caps, is lobbying for repeal of municipal broadband bans really that much easier than using a more efficient data format?
zzo38
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Re: Municipal broadband vs. data efficiency

Post by zzo38 »

MP3 is not a good format and don't use it (and I don't have MP3 software in my computer). Just keep the files in their original format (possibly in addition to providing converted versions), and the user can download whichever file they can use. For example, you can provide a music file in formats NSF, MP3, Vorbis, FLAC, and you can download whichever one you want to download.
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M_Tee
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Re: Municipal broadband vs. data efficiency

Post by M_Tee »

After reading that Consumerist article, forgive me response and thoughts, which may only be tangentially related to the direct question proposed:

Although not government-provided, living in a country that has, generally 3+ data providers competing in any one area has proven beneficial. Data caps are not something I've heard anyone mention and I pay less than $15 USD a month, with options having existed within the last few years of half that. Likely, the population density helps keep costs of infrastructure down as well.

Major data usage for phone providers is a huge competing focus, as video chat, previously some type of broadcast television being received on phones, and now full video streaming is fairly commonplace over data networks. Costs are still competitive there, but not so much as on home internet. Oddly enough, phone contracts are heavily data-focused here and, where I've been told that they are more affordable than the US and UK, frequently provide very few minutes and SMS messages. I'm currently paying a little less than $25 USD, but for a very small amount of minutes, no SMS, and a limited amount of high speed data. However, about a fifth of my total amount is for unlimited low speed data (which has proven fast enough to stream Youtube videos, but makes using map software a hassle (though I suspect it's due to inefficient programming of the software). Moreover, people only pay fees for outgoing messages and calls, and paying for incoming is a completely foreign concept to those I've talked to. Also, surprise bills are nearly unheard of as there are usually no high fees for going over, just the stopping of service for the biling time. (On the same note, banking overdraft fees don't exist (just transactions are declined), and I'm not sure if these two, similar situations are due to laws restricting these arguably unethical practices, or the result of providers having to stay competitive with one another.) For example, in the past, on a standard cell phone contract, once "out of minutes", I could still receive incoming calls and would simply use my phone like some type of pager, sending "call me" texts.

So, how does it relate? Although I'm not deeply familiar with the laws, and their being influenced by corporate interests over private ones, there are a few laws I've become privy to that seem to shine some light on them. For example, service providers are restricted from offering to pay customers to switch provider (although many get around it by offering gift cards instead, I've received $75 gift cards twice for doing so), seemingly in an attempt to prevent companies with deeper pockets from being able to buy more of a customer base. This thought process is also shown in a controversial law which had started by requiring major supermarkets to close 2 days a week, IIRC, to allow smaller businesses more ability for growth (realizing the impossibility of mom and pop stores to compete price-wise with major national chains). Corporate interests pushed back hard on those, so now the major supermarkets are only required to close two days a month (at a regular schedule).

Despite my rambling, I guess I'm saying that laws preventing or hindering competitive services are bad whereas those encouraging competitive practices are good. Moreover, if a government can provide any service to its citizens better than the private businesses are doing, it should be unrestricted from doing so.

EDIT: Typos galore; I apparently shouldn't post walls of text from my phone.
calima
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Re: Municipal broadband vs. data efficiency

Post by calima »

The thing is, as someone with a slow capped connection and little alternatives, you are in the minority. When previous eastern bloc countries like Ukraine and Romania have better internet by a thousandfold, something is badly off.

a) Convince every producer everywhere to keep moving to the most efficient formats, when a tiny minority of their userbase would need such.
b) Fix your local laws that prevent competition, since it is indeed your local problem.

To me, it's clear what is the easier path.
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Dwedit
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Re: Municipal broadband vs. data efficiency

Post by Dwedit »

calima wrote:The thing is, as someone with a slow capped connection and little alternatives, you are in the minority. When previous eastern bloc countries like Ukraine and Romania have better internet by a thousandfold, something is badly off.

a) Convince every producer everywhere to keep moving to the most efficient formats, when a tiny minority of their userbase would need such.
b) Fix your local laws that prevent competition, since it is indeed your local problem.

To me, it's clear what is the easier path.
You mean "A"?
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calima
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Re: Municipal broadband vs. data efficiency

Post by calima »

There's always C too, Canada.
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