
Comcast has a lot to lose if municipal broadband takes off - rbanffy
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/comcast-has-a-lot-to-lose-if-municipal-broadband-takes-off/
======
ender89
I mean, duh. They basically have a monopoly and a license to print money right
now. they can't make the same profit margins they have been if they have to
compete with local municipal providers who aren't based on a profit model
unless those local providers are so incompetent that they can't deliver
reliable fast internet to their area. Comcast can't do price hikes and data
caps and generally continue treating their customers like abused spouses if
there is an equally attractive alternative which doesn't have an incentive to
nickle and dime you to death. If I could get municipal fiber, why would I pay
comcast more for less? Comcast would need to completely reevaluate their
business model from their abusive "but who are you going to turn to?" monopoly
to a competitive service with a eye towards meeting customer expectations for
reliability and service. In other words, comcast will have to spend a fair
amount of their massive profits on things like service upgrades and customer
relations.

And really, as a monopoly comcast should be busted up.

~~~
erentz
Just as long as they don't bust them up like they did AT&T. Following the same
model used overseas might make more sense. Semi-natural[1] monopolies tend to
form for providing access networks. We see this with power, water, gas
distribution too. Over building multiple networks costs a lot more than having
one good network.

The correct response IMO is:

1\. Don't block municipal broadband or new commercial providers, there should
be no _forced_ monopoly.

2\. Split access providers up into two: the wholesale access network and the
services on top. The wholesale access networks offer the same regulated
(cost+) terms to any ISP/service provider who wants to reach customers on that
network. Now the ISP/TV component of Comcast has to compete on the same terms
as any other ISP/TV provider using that access network.

[1] I say semi-natural because in the US they're not natural but regulated and
there has been a fair amount of overbuilding in cherry-picked areas.

~~~
phil21
I argue going one step further, even at the loss of some theoretical
efficiency.

Split layer 1 from layer 3. I want a fiber pair from my house to the central
office, where I can then patch to any provider who decided to pay the cost-
recovery based co-location connection fee. Basically I should be able to tell
this wireline provider to plug my patch cord into service provider X and they
do it within a reasonable timeframe. I pay this provider for the wire itself.

I then get provider #2 and subscribe to their IP services. Hopefully there
would be enough competition (e.g. dozens) here to not have to regulate
further.

Yes, this does create a middle man agency and relatively inefficient physical
infrastructure (e.g. I'd be pretty anti-GPON or similar tech for this use for
a variety of reasons) so in theory prices would be more. However I think if
you could get back to an environment where ISPs can compete on a wide variety
of merits like in the late 90's dialup ISP days you would see overall price
decreases.

It would also allow for the creation of "boutique" local ISPs that can cater
to certain crowds. The highly technical crowd who is happy to pay more for a
clear channel ping and pipe and no other BS will be able to find a home, just
like grandma who needs a cheap nicely filtered/secured internet to check her
e-mail and use facetime. Basically allow for a bunch of sonic.net style ISPs
to compete in most markets.

Anything short of this I think just devolves into both stagnation and rent-
seeking. Even municipal provided broadband would be subject to this - many
networks will likely be built out and then left to languish long-term if there
is no competitive pressure.

~~~
toomuchtodo
Having helped shepherd municipal broadband initiatives along, I'm sorry to say
that your requirements are a hill too far for almost all consumers. They don't
care about the level of provider selection you want, they simply want The
Internet (Netflix, Youtube, Google Gmail, et al) at the lowest possible cost
(and reliable to boot).

> many networks will likely be built out and then left to languish long-term
> if there is no competitive pressure.

Municipal broadband is accountable to its local citizens or stakeholders,
depending on the model used to develop it (government owned or non-profit
owned). If it languishes, it will only do so because its citizens or users
allow it to.

EDIT: If you're in an area where there are only large corporate internet
providers, please take up the cause for municipal or co-op broadband!

[https://muninetworks.org/](https://muninetworks.org/)

~~~
rayiner
> Municipal broadband is accountable to its local citizens or stakeholders,
> depending on the model used to develop it (government owned or non-profit
> owned). If it languishes, it will only do so because its citizens or users
> allow it to.

I don't find this comforting. Citizens regularly allow public services to
languish, through a combination of a myopic focus on cutting costs/taxes and
lack of accountability. When I lived in Wilmington, Delaware, bus drivers
would straight up quit 20 minutes early, putting up their "out of service
sign" and skipping their last several stops. I drive all the way into work
even though there is an Orange-line Metro stop 20 minutes from my house and 5
minutes from my office. The scheduled 36-minute trip is almost never under 40
minutes, and during commuting times approaches 50 minutes. That's _without_
unexpected delays.

One of the things the environmental law clinic at Northwestern does is
identify municipal water/sewer systems that are not in compliance with the
Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act. There are many such systems, and
invariably they remain out of compliance because citizens are unwilling to
raise water/sewer rates to fix the infrastructure.

~~~
toomuchtodo
As someone who has worked in the telcom regulation space, what would your
suggestion be? I find my options more palatable than a duopoly (if you're
lucky!) that exists to squeeze consumers for as many dollars as possible. It
all boils down to accountability and the tools at your disposal to enforce
that accountability. Unless the FCC is going to turn the screws on major
internet providers (unlikely under the current administration), local
governance is one of the few options left available.

> One of the things the environmental law clinic at Northwestern does is
> identify municipal water/sewer systems that are not in compliance with the
> Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act. There are many such systems,
> and invariably they remain out of compliance because citizens are unwilling
> to raise water/sewer rates to fix the infrastructure.

I agree this is a problem that takes a lot of effort on the part of elected
officials to be honest with citizens about why money must be spent to maintain
infrastructure, while ensuring that collected tax revenue is spent in a
transparent and effective manner. Letting infrastructure go is simply robbing
from the future; the bills come due eventually.

~~~
rayiner
Don't get the wrong idea: I'm not opposed to municipal broadband. I was just
pointing out that citizen accountability often doesn't do anything to prevent
poor service quality. (As we speak, I'm getting a stream of MARC
delay/cancellation text messages.)

If we were starting from scratch, I'd advocate for the Stockholm model:
[https://www.stokab.se/Documents/Stockholms%20Stokab%20-%20A%...](https://www.stokab.se/Documents/Stockholms%20Stokab%20-%20A%20Blueprint%20for%20Ubiquitous%20Fiber%20Connectivity%20FINAL%20VERSION.pdf).
A public entity to build dark fiber that isn't taxpayer supported and builds
out based on demand and profitability rather than mandates. That ship has
sailed, however.

I do think the FCC should preempt all state-and-local franchising laws, and
also state-and-local restrictions on municipal broadband. Private providers
can compete in areas and neighborhoods that support competition (my
neighborhood has two providers for gigabit fiber, for example), and
municipalities can address areas that are overlooked by the private sector.

~~~
toomuchtodo
I appreciate the reply!

> I do think the FCC should preempt all state-and-local franchising laws, and
> also state-and-local restrictions on municipal broadband. Private providers
> can compete in areas and neighborhoods that support competition (my
> neighborhood has two providers for gigabit fiber, for example), and
> municipalities can address areas that are overlooked by the private sector.

My concern with this is if you don't mandate covering all neighborhoods,
private providers will cherrypick the most profitable areas, leaving less well
off areas underserved or not served at all. A great example is the US Postal
Service: you can't compete against them, and in return, they service
absolutely every address in the United States.

~~~
rayiner
> My concern with this is if you don't mandate covering all neighborhoods,
> private providers will cherrypick the most profitable areas, leaving less
> well off areas underserved or not served at all.

That's fine. It's the government's job to step in and provide the safety net.
Look at what Sweden did with fiber in rural areas. Instead of forcing
companies to serve rural customers in return for the right to serve urban
ones, the government simply gave a tax credit to rural residents to defray the
costs of building fiber.

With the emergence of 5G wireless, it becomes much more practical for the
government to be "the ISP of last resort."

------
linsomniac
Comcast and CenturyLink: You've shown you do not want to invest in fiber to
the home, so you don't have any right to stop the city from doing it.

I don't hate Comcast as much as others, but I'm really looking forward to Fort
Collins starting the process of doing municipal fiber.

Comcast and CenturyLink have neglected upgrading infrastructure for decades,
and so if they aren't going to do it I don't see why the city shouldn't.
Comcast at least has a reasonable service, CenturyLink tops out at 40Mbps at
my home.

CenturyLink is particularly culpable because they received $2B in taxes to
roll out fiber to the home by the year 2000, and did little if anything for
that money. I've never even known anyone who has QWest/CenturyLink FTTH.

They are just sitting on a bunch of copper twisted pair, hoping to get as much
money as they can without any investment in new technology.

Even back in the last '90s they had that attitude. They refused to deploy DSL
concentrators in neighborhoods, because that would open the pedestals to CLECs
to put gear into. So instead they required all DSL runs to go to one of the
two Fort Collins Central Offices. A huge amount of the city was un-served
because they were more than 18K feet from a CO.

~~~
blacksmith_tb
I am a recovering Comcast customer of 10+ years, and while CentiryLink is
nearly as incompetent on the customer service front, they pulled fiber down my
block a year ago and my gigabit connection is a glorious thing (it's 2/3rds
the monthly cost of Comcast, for 5X the speed, symmetrical).

~~~
kaslai
I just had to take the opposite jump. I was very happy with my uncapped
gigabit symmetrical connection from Centurylink, but my new address is only
serviced by Comcast. I'm paying less, but once the promo expires it won't be
by much, for a 1TB capped 200/10 connection.

I want my Centurylink fiber back :(

------
stilldavid
Best phone call I've made in the past few years was canceling my ~$100 Comcast
internet plan in favor of my municipality's $50 gigabit plan. A year in and
haven't had so much as a hiccup in service.

~~~
seanp2k2
Same. I’d rather pay $300/month for municipal if it supports efforts to also
make it available to my other neighbors, makes the program more successful
(and thus more likely to continue) and I’d set up my own equipment volunteer
to help them install.

Actually, I’m going right now to see if there are any municipal broadband
efforts in my area that I could throw money at / help out with. Is there some
good place to find out more about efforts in _____ area? Sadly, like many in
the Bay Area, I live in an apartment with a Comcast community manager, so we’d
likely be the very last to get off of Comcast unless some great wireless tech
becomes viable (and even then, we’re not allowed to have any external antennas
mounted outside of our units).

~~~
oaelchr342nt
Someone else in the comments here mentioned this site:

[https://muninetworks.org](https://muninetworks.org)

------
otakucode
And our society has much to gain. Comcast was a media distribution company.
The Internet is a primary competitor. Permitting them to have such control is
insane. If it were a regulated public utility with cost tied directly to cost
of providing the service with universal access requirements like phone
service, the benefit to society would be gigantic. Day 1 we could save
billions by closing tons of government offices and having the workers work
from home. Small businesses could host their own stuff. Connections would be
synchronous and charged on use, making access dirt cheap for everybody.

I researched it awhile back, whether the social benefit would outweigh the
social harm by eliminating "competition" is the criteria used to decide if
something should be a utility and with Internet it's a no brainer.

------
southphillyman
Maybe I'm being dramatic but I think Comcast's value would tank if accessible
broadband alternatives existed in markets they dominate. They are one of the
most hated companies that I know of. When I heard corporations were funding
opposition to Philly's compensation history law I correctly assumed Comcast
was leading it. They are just unlikable on so many levels.

------
klttunets
Good. Internet access is more and more a utility like water and electricity.
Municipal broadband in my town works great and is more than 100x the speed of
comcast at a cheaper price.

As another poster said, would you want Comcast providing water to your
neighborhood?

~~~
eldavido
I think people misunderstand Comcast. They're arguably more in the business of
retailing/financial services than anything having to do with TCP/IP or DOCSIS.

Americans as a whole are horrible at managing money. They don't pay their
bills on time, have tons of credit card debt, etc. This isn't my opinion, it's
cold hard reality: look at the subprime crisis, debt burden, charge-
offs/delinquencies, etc. Frankly, the crowd reading this website is just way
out of touch with the reality of the situation.

For municipalities where people are responsible and there's a real sense of
community, sure, do municipal broadband. I'm sure it works sometimes, but for
my money, I'd rather pay the extra $5-10/month and not have to be a bill
collector to my neighbor. I pay $40/month for 50Mbps Comcast and I'm fine with
it.

~~~
asdfaefasdf
I have literally no idea how you could have reached the idea that you would be
an indentured servant/bill collector. Is this some sort of post-truth
propaganda?

~~~
jancsika
I understand why people are greying out that comment. On the other hand, the
idea that municipal services lead residents to literally collect payment from
their neighbors is such a novel complaint that I'd love to hear more details.

eldavido- can you give some more information about any news stories that cover
this happening?

~~~
eldavido
I'm not saying anyone is collecting bills from their neighbors. I think people
are reading my comment a lot more literally than I intended.

What I'm saying is that, we have large-scale utilities like power and water
companies that are able to provide individual, metered service to households
over a geographically distributed area. In order to to this, there is a large
amount of unpleasant, schleppy work required that most analyses of smaller-
scale alternatives conveniently sweep under the rug.

Either we assume (a) another large-scale operator will provide broadband,
which will probably be something like Comcast (maybe not), or (b) it will be
done at a smaller scale, say, a company for 1000 residences. Does (b) actually
exist?

~~~
jancsika
Why assume anything?

Chattanooga's municipal broadband exists and delivers speeds as fast as any in
the U.S. Salisbury, NC has a municipal broadband service that was
grandfathered in before the state law banning municipal broadband.

As far as b: I live in a small town that started a municipal wireless service
after Wheeler's FCC tried to override the state law banning it. Fast,
affordable, symmetric. I didn't attend the meeting but am certain a clear and
detailed cost-benefit analysis was presented and voted on (as well as being
made available to the public per state law).

~~~
eldavido
Interesting. Care to tell me a little more? How many people live in your town?
Is it a socially cohesive place? What would people qualified enough to run the
ISP do if not work at the ISP?

I always think of that last point (what else would people do) when people
mention how "the Soviet Union had such great math teachers OMG WHAT IS WRONG
WITH THE US". The US has SILICON VALLEY, hedge funds, world-class
universities, etc. - US primary/secondary ed has to compete with these places
for talent and frankly, they often lose.

I have a hard time believing that a small operator could offer anything that
stacks up against Comcast product-, service- and price-wise, but I'm willing
to be shown I'm wrong about this. Maybe I shouldn't be so cynical ;)

------
bpicolo
Good. Municipal broadband is only a thing because Comcast services are
terribly below par

~~~
pavel_lishin
Just about every internet provider has shitty service. Time Warner Cable - the
only option in many parts of New York City - is the bane of our existence.

Literally, _literally_ every time we move, we've tried to cancel the internet
at our old apartment and set it up at our new apartment - and had them end up
canceling the internet at the new place. (What happens with the old internet
is different every time; either it gets cancelled as well, or it remains an
active account that we get billed for, or some other egregious customer
service failure.)

~~~
corey_moncure
Do you then have to pay the "installation fee" of $50 so a guy in a truck and
a polo shirt can come out to your house and enter the numbers from the back of
your modem into a cellphone?

~~~
pavel_lishin
Nah, we paid the _self_ installation fee, so that guy doesn't track dirt all
over our apartment and try to drill a hole through a wall because he doesn't
notice the coax cable we already plugged into the modem.

------
mmanfrin
I would gladly pay double what I'm paying to Comcast for the same speed with
almost any other company, but I have literally zero options above 25mbps.

And I live in the _original home of the internet_ , Berkeley (which had one of
the first 4 'IMPS').

~~~
adventured
What has kept Berkeley from forming its own municipal Internet access service?
I would have expected Berkeley, due to its culture, to be _aggressively_ in
favor of doing that and booting Comcast.

------
matt_wulfeck
There’s room for both. I’m a fan of a the government providing the fiber and
support for the infrastructure and opening up the “isp” part to private
companies. This allows competition without putting a bureaucracy in a position
of power.

I’d like to see a community funded ISP on top of a city-maintained fiber
network. That way the government can be told to fly a kite if they want to put
their hands on anything of value.

------
JBlue42
My colleague argues that it's ok for Time Warner Spectrum/Comcast to control
specific areas and districts because they laid the pipe and own the last mile
(when they've decided to). I try and argue that it's anti-competitive and that
I shouldn't be held to ransom by 'Rectum for $60/mo (their minimum) if I want
reliable internet.

I do see where he's coming from though but I don't know how to counter those
arguments as I don't know the history of how all the fiber got laid and who
actually "owns" any of it. It seems like the phone lines or water that it's a
public good at this point.

Bringing up that example is countered with what a f up all the Baby Bells
became.

Anyway, curious as to what some folks here that are much older and might have
had a hand in the growth of broadband have to say.

~~~
webkike
Pacific bell laid the cable. The Rockefellers dug the oil they sold for less
than the competition could. The thing is none of these things happened in a
vacuum. Everything has externalities. People enjoy considering other people as
independent creatures but we're all working within the limitations of each
other. We grow up in hives, learn in hives, go to work in hives, and
eventually form hives we die in that we like to call our own. No one owns
anything. If someone claims to, ask them again in one hundred years.

~~~
pathseeker
>No one owns anything. If someone claims to, ask them again in one hundred
years.

That's a pretty useless definition of ownership. Nobody I know of requires
permanence in the definition of ownership.

------
rjzaworski
“Small price to pay for monopoly profits”—that asymmetry sure ain't limited to
Comcast.

------
Johnny555
They already face competition in higher density housing.

I live in an apartment in the Seattle area with WaveG broadband
(www.wavebroadband.com)-- 100mbit (up+down) for $60/month. In some buildings
they offer gigabit speeds for $80/month.

I've been pretty happy with them, reliable service and provisioning is easy --
placed an online order and 2 days later the ethernet jack in my apartment was
turned on. No modem or any type of installation needed.

But they only serve select apartments (looks like they serve a couple hundred
buildings in the Seattle area).

~~~
loeg
They pretty much only serve large apartment buildings in or very near
downtown. CenturyLink's gigabit has a bit broader reach, though it certainly
doesn't cover all of Seattle.

------
Feniks
Guess they're gonna have to up their campaign contributions again.

------
rayiner
I think municipal fiber is great (we're doing it in rural parts of Maryland
right now). That said, throwing around the word "competition" in the context
of municipal broadband is disingenuous. Government-supported services don't
"compete" with private services, they supplant them. Where municipalities
offer water, sewer, or trash pickup, there is almost never any private
"competition" for those services.

~~~
markshead
One of the big difficulties in installing broadband is dealing with the right
of way necessary to get to everyone's house. Municipalities have a very strong
advantage over a private company in their ability to get their wires to
houses.

I wonder if cities could inspire more competition in the ISP market by making
it easier for a new company to wire up a town. Another model would be for the
city to provide fiber to each house as part of standard infrastructure that
any ISP can provide data over. That way ISPs would be competing on price and
service--not on who happens to own the wires running through your
neighborhood.

------
HumbleGamer
I would be willing to pay more, just to be rid of the Comcast monopoly. That
said, I doubt anything comes of this.

------
mark-r
My city had a municipal wireless broadband mesh, but they discontinued it. The
excuse they made was that it was due for an upgrade that they couldn't afford,
but I'm sure it's no coincidence that Comcast is the main provider in our
area.

------
jgalt212
I"ll go so far to say that anything that is bad for Comcast is good for
America.

------
shmerl
Let them lose it. They are one of the worst monopolists ever.

------
Joann121
Comcast needs to update their systems before they even think about doing
anything else. Their customers have been complaining for years.

------
microcolonel
To be honest, I think this is the wrong solution, but the telco industry can't
reingratiate themselves fast enough to keep the market open, and it seems like
they don't want to, because they know they have so much bad blood with the
public.

~~~
vvanders
With internet needing to be classified as a necessary service I have no issue
with local government running it.

------
gigatexal
i hope it does, comcast is evil in so many ways.

------
valuearb
SpaceX is going to crush both of them.

~~~
chadgeidel
I am not a fan of Comcast, but I'm not switching my hard-wired Internet for
satellite Internet which is high-latency and subject to weather conditions.

~~~
dredmorbius
LEO service is low-latency. Light's got a few hundred clicks to go, and much
of that in hard vacuum. About 1-4 milliseconds, call it 2-8 round-trip ping.

Geosync is a whole 'nother ballgame. It's a quarter second outbound, and a
half-second round-trip ping (earth-bird-earth and back).

Radio talks through clouds just fine.

~~~
pathseeker
1000 miles in a vacuum is 5.36 ms. Don't forget that it's up and back two
times so you're looking at just over 21 ms waiting on light. The packet
actually needs to go onto the Internet at that point too.

~~~
dredmorbius
Sure, though 20 ms _getting you to a fat node_ is pretty good, _especially_ if
you're in an underserved area. The net time cost is actually the _difference_
between this and straight-line overland distance, which is both _not_ in
vacuum and hits node latency.

10 ms is roughly datacenter lag (or was a few years back). 100ms is good
cross-country pings, 300-600 is continent-to-continent links.

Figure on edge caching aas well.

~~~
chadgeidel
Having lived in a "remote" (read not _actually_ remote but not served by any
ISP) area nearly anything would have been better than dial-up.

Way back in the day (10-15 years ago) my friend with satellite Internet had
300+ ms pings everywhere and at the time a dial-up modem was still required.
Good to know things have changed.

------
JustSomeNobody
Would any of us want Comcast in charge of our water? If not, then why do we
let them be in charge of our internet?

------
ksk
I dislike Comcast as much as the next guy, but are we really betting on a
government project to stay within budget as well as provide a high quality of
service? Just digging a tunnel in Seattle took us $2 billion dollars! Instead
of setting this up as the "government internet" \- which is going to make it
super political, why not just have the public own the 'last mile', and then
let private companies plug into the grid?

~~~
yardie
> Just digging a tunnel in Seattle took us $2 billion dollars!

Did the government dig those tunnels? No they hired a contractor who sold them
on one price and then sent them a bill for a much higher price. So much for
private enterprise saving the taxpayer money.

> why not just have the public own the 'last mile', and then let private
> companies plug into the grid?

This is how most municipal broadband works right now. You, the ISP, rent the
fiber from them. They can't make a profit so municipalities can only charge
you what it costs to install and maintain. Most govt don't want to be in the
ISP business but they are given the choice of doing it or letting the free
market continue to ignore them they'll do it.

~~~
gruez
>No they hired a contractor who sold them on one price and then sent them a
bill for a much higher price

OT: if everyone can do that, what's preventing everyone from bidding $1 on
multibillion dollar contracts? surely there must be a way to uphold them to
the amount they bid for.

~~~
awakeasleep
Possibly, but public private partnerships have a long and storied history of
ripping off the taxpayers and government.

For example, take toll road highways. Not a single one exists in the USA that
lasted the length of their contract without going bankrupt and ripping off
everyone.

>Beginning with the contracting stage, the evidence suggests toll operating
public private partnerships are transportation shell companies for
international financiers and contractors who blueprint future bankruptcies.
Because Uncle Sam generally guarantees the bonds – by far the largest chunk of
“private” money – if and when the private toll road or tunnel partner goes
bankrupt, taxpayers are forced to pay off the bonds while absorbing all loans
the state and federal governments gave the private shell company and any
accumulated depreciation. Yet the shell company’s parent firms get to keep
years of actual toll income, on top of millions in design-build cost
overruns….

>Of course, no executive comes forward and says, “We’re planning to go
bankrupt,” but an analysis of the data is shocking. There do not appear to be
any American private toll firms still in operation under the same management
15 years after construction closed. The original toll firms seem consistently
to have gone bankrupt or “zeroed their assets” and walked away, leaving
taxpayers a highway now needing repair and having to pay off the bonds and
absorb the loans and the depreciation.

>The list of bankrupt firms is staggering, from Virginia’s Pocahontas Parkway
to Presidio Parkway in San Francisco to Canada’s “Sea to Sky Highway” to
Orange County’s Riverside Freeway to Detroit’s Windsor Tunnel to Brisbane,
Australia’s Airport Link to South Carolina’s Connector 2000 to San Diego’s
South Bay Expressway to Austin’s Cintra SH 130 to a couple dozen other toll
facilities.

>We cannot find any American private toll companies, furthermore, meeting
their pre-construction traffic projections. Even those shell companies not in
bankruptcy court usually produce half the income they projected to bondholders
and federal and state officials prior to construction.

Thinking Highways by Randy Salzman
[https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/05/calpers-invests-
in-t...](https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/05/calpers-invests-in-toll-road-
even-thought-those-deals-never-make-money.html)

