
Colorado communities secure the right to build their own broadband - Libertatea
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/11/05/7-colorado-communities-just-voted-themselves-the-right-to-build-their-own-broadband/
======
skywhopper
I'm glad to see this. Internet service is a necessary utility like
electricity, water, sewer, roads, and police and fire protection. Particularly
at the level of last-mile infrastructure, it's inevitable that there's going
to be a monopoly on high-speed service. So it makes sense for it to be built
out by the municipalities themselves. In fact, the federal government should
be helping this along. Once we have fiber to everyone's house, ISPs who want
to offer something beyond the raw connectivity the city provides can do so,
and make use of that last-mile infrastructure on a resident-initiated opt-in
basis.

~~~
nickff
You have enumerated a list of the worst services available to today's
consumer. In none of those areas has there been any significant improvement in
service level, cost, efficiency, or technology for many years (, though you
could argue 'smart meters' will be a small step forward for electricity).
Governments regularly use all of these utilities as revenue-raising
'businesses', which they consistently strip of any capital that could be used
for infrastructure improvements.

In addition, some of the services have consistently proven unreliable, as they
are run for the benefit of certain special interest groups at the expense of
everyone else. Water is subsidized for farmers and golf courses, and this
often causes everyone else to suffer droughts. Roads are often subsidized for
truckers, which causes everyone else to pay higher gas taxes than they should,
and suffer damaged road surfaces. Police departments are poorly regulated, and
the policemen protect each other, resulting in the consistent and horrific
violation of the rights of many people on a regular basis. Fire departments
are run for the firemen, as can be seen from the fact that the number of paid
firemen has been consistently increasing over the last 50 years, despite the
increase of fire resistance of buildings, and the decrease of blazes.

All of these utilities also have some of the worst customer service available.
On could argue that it is possible to get roads fixed through the city
council, but this is the only one of the utilities mentioned which gives the
consumer a modicum of recourse.

In short, if you are going to argue that ISPs should be a utility, please
describe how it will be different from the existing ones, not how it will be
the same.

~~~
ssmoot
It's like you live in a parallel universe from me.

My water, electricity, etc utilities are _far_ more reliable (probably by an
order of magnitude) than any private service I've experienced. They don't cut
corners in design or safety, and when there is a problem, it's _far_ easier to
get in touch with them (they're usually already aware of it and don't pretend
to act surprised like say your Telco or ISP) and scheduling is more flexible.

Case in point: I was wondering if my home water pressure could be increased at
the meter. I'd gotten conflicting advice from plumbers. I called up one
afternoon. They said they'd send someone out to check. I got a knock on my
door at 8PM that same evening. I told him I measured 42psi at the hose bib,
which was over the zone's minimum of 36. Which was disappointing to me. But
still. The level of service just floored me. I've never experienced anything
close to that from Time Warner, DiSH, AT&T, T-Mobile, you-name-it. I replaced
my 150amp electric meter with a 200amp meter (city provided), it was inspected
for less than most people would bother getting out of bed for and I had a fire
hazard from our "new to us" house replaced with almost no cost from the
utility.

I also feel like I get a lot more for my dollar. _Obviously_ the power grid is
far more complex than Time Warner's cabling. Not to mention it can kill you.
From TWC I get internet access. From the electric company I get 100% Wind
Power generated electricity (for an additional $0.5 I believe), and hundreds
of kilowatts of power each and every month.

I never give a thought to wether my sewer service is going to work. It doesn't
have "off" days where it backs up a bit. My water doesn't decide to stop
flowing every once in awhile so I have to try turning the faucet off and on
until it works. When we moved in a couple years ago, I thought I smelled gas
outside near the meter. Someone came out within 30 minutes. They found a minor
leak (someone in the alley actually ran into the meter!), had it fixed up in
no time flat. No charge.

If an ISP could come close to my Utilities experience I'd be overjoyed
personally. And it'd be the last time I ever saw an Early Termination Fee,
obscene equipment charges for commodity hardware, it'd actually work 99.999%
of the time, and (maybe the biggest issue of all with ISPs) I'd actually get
the service level I'm paying for.

~~~
emcrazyone
seemingly good point but I think you're comparing apples to oranges. Providing
electrical power, sewage lines, etc.. is not very difficult compared to
handling Internet traffic. To make more clear what I mean, I wonder how your
electric company would deal with a set of problems like when a torrent shows
up on one of your customer's computers? Not to mention that IT support is
probably more expensive than having your gas line checked for a leak.

~~~
ssmoot
To check for that leak they had to have customer service reps, city vehicles,
fleet insurance, technicians qualified to work on a live, potentially leaking
gas line, gasoline for the vehicle, and they arrived at my home in less time
than a phone-call to TWC generally takes. I really doubt some IT staff costs
more.

As for the Torrent: Give the customer what they pay for, and no more. If my
internet issues are because of Torrents, I have to ask: Why does the lack of
competency ISPs have never seem to work in _my_ favor?

edit: Also "not very difficult compared to":

I have an amateur's idea of the utility side (mostly from DIY and having
relatives in the trades) and I think you're sorely underestimating the skill
and care involved in making sure this stuff actually works. Large scale
projects for anyone can be challenging, but it'd be amazing if anything ever
worked at all if utilities put the same (lack of) planning care into their
projects that most tech companies do.

Most people probably don't even know what a P-trap is for. Or ever noticed
that their gutters are actually sloped for drainage. What material their
plumbing is made from. How many receptacles can be placed on a circuit. That
the brick on your house isn't actually load-bearing. What weeping holes are
for.

This stuff has to last _decades_.

------
eklavya
Am I the only one surprised by the fact that "the people" have to secure right
to start a business for the common good in a democracy? I may be misinformed
but in India I can not ever imagine having to need to do this.

p.s. I am not trying to show anyone in a bad light, just wondering if things
like this are possible in a democracy.

~~~
Florin_Andrei
What's funny is that a lot of people are worried about the "government"
limiting their liberty, whereas in cases like this it's the big corporations
that need to be defeated to win back your freedom.

Maybe freedom-above-all folks need to rethink what freedom is all about in
this new reality.

~~~
coryrc
Huh? It's the state government that has the law mostly preventing municipal
broadband. If the government wasn't so powerful, the corporations couldn't use
it as a tool against us.

~~~
DrJosiah
That is some fucked up doublespeak right there.

If corporations weren't so powerful, they wouldn't be able to manipulate the
government into passing laws that restrict choice among citizens.

~~~
sanderjd
You are talking around each other because there isn't one "the government",
but rather a bunch of different levels constantly pushing and pulling against
one another. It's very reasonable to be a small government ideologue while
simultaneously wanting a more powerful city government. Many people who want
"small government" simply want a less powerful _federal_ government. A few
states are playing with this balance (Colorado certainly among them) at all
levels. Should the federal government control the state's drug policy? Should
the state control the county's or municipality's infrastructure or natural
resources? What about schools, who should control those?

These sorts of questions are where you see major differences between lots of
different people who would all identify themselves as "conservatives" and
agreement with many people would would identify themselves as "liberals". It
isn't a simple system!

~~~
Florin_Andrei
I could not agree more with the liberty-above-all folks - in terms of
sentiment. I could not disagree more with them that the greatest threat to
individual liberty is the "government" \- that was true back in the day of
Paul Revere maybe. But times have changed.

Nowadays the greatest threat, and a much more intelligent and subtle threat,
too, is from Big Money. There's a war out there for people's minds, and we-
the-people are currently losing.

Chaining up the bodies is so medieval and inefficient, so why bother, when you
can chain up the minds and then the slaves will passionately defend their own
chains. It's easy, too, just set up some "think tanks", or promote some
newfangled ideologies that seem to promise "liberty" while in fact weaken the
very defenses that support it. Problem solved.

I lived the first 2 decades of my life under communist dictatorship, so I
think I know from first hand experience what freedom, or lack thereof, truly
mean.

~~~
refurb
_I could not disagree more with them that the greatest threat to individual
liberty is the "government" \- that was true back in the day of Paul Revere
maybe. But times have changed._

You've got to be kidding. Most of the violations of human rights that occur in
the world come from governments. What other entity is powerful enough to take
everything you have and thrown you in prison?

~~~
namlem
There's no such thing as a world without governments. A large scale stateless
society is impossible. If you weaken the power of democratic governments, non-
democratic entities will take their place as the de facto government.

~~~
refurb
That didn't answer the question. If the world can't exist without governments,
that doesn't imply that governments won't take away your freedoms.

------
cvet
"unfair competition" is all you really need to hear to understand that these
companies hate the free market. so do the politicians that make laws to secure
oligopolies.

the doublethink on this issue is amazing: the telecom companies are providing
crappy internet, so let's make a law preventing competition, which is the
nominal foundation of our economic system.

~~~
pessimizer
I'm fine with the phrase "unfair competition"; I want the competition between
peers regulated. The horrible part is the assumption that the public is a
peer, rather than the authority under which corporations are allowed to
operate. If the public decides that it will be more efficient to provide some
service itself, why would it grant special status to a project to provide that
service less efficiently?

It's unfair to private corporations that we can do it cheaper without them?

~~~
x0x0
it does tend to cut into giant ceo earnings; it's much harder to be a parasite
when you have to compete with public utilities run at or near cost

it also puts a dent into the size of bribes available to the more venal
politicians...

------
hipsterrific
I wish this would happen in Minneapolis. When ISP's get in bed with
politicians creating laws that subsequently shut out all competitions, the
ones that suffer the most are the consumers. Comcast has been the bane of my
existence: slow speeds, high price, terrible customer service. The CEO has the
audacity to say that people don't like COmcast customer service? Right,
because I enjoy paying $90/month for 50mbps. Allowing
municipals/counties/districts built their own will benefit the consumer
overall, it might even improve neighborhoods to foster businesses to open up
(or local offices, what have you).

~~~
Omniusaspirer
If you're paying $90/month for just the 50mbps (no TV) then I recommend you
call and be utterly furious. When they attempted to bump me to that price it
took a phone call and insisting on escalations through 4 people but here I am-
back at $40/month where I started a few years ago.

The first several people you get on the phone will tell you there's nothing
you can do, just ask to be elevated to "somebody useful". It's rude but it's
the game they force you to play, so go in swinging.

------
mrfusion
Does anyone live in Boulder? It sounds like a nice place, or is it just a
suburb on Denver? I couldn't tell from the map.

~~~
blackaspen
Heh, yes. I live in Boulder. I am not quite sure where others get the 40 miles
to Denver number. To South Denver, sure, but it's about 23 miles to Downtown.

I don't consider (nor do any of my friends) consider Boulder to be a suburb of
Denver. If anything it serves as "the city" to places like Lyons, Longmont,
Lafayette and Louisville.

Of relevancy to this article, Longmont approved municipal fiber a year ago.

~~~
city41
Taking 93 or 36 it might as well be 100 miles away :) The commute between
Denver and Boulder (which I did for 3 years) is brutal no matter how you slice
it.

~~~
blackaspen
Very true. 36 is 101 levels of bad at times. Thankfully for me I walk to work
right now.

------
swasheck
Here's an "interesting" counter-point from an academic who has strong ties to
the cable industry.

[http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_26474974/no-
municipal-b...](http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_26474974/no-municipal-
broadband-is-risky-proposition)

[http://daniels.du.edu/faculty-staff/ronald-
rizzuto/#sthash.X...](http://daniels.du.edu/faculty-staff/ronald-
rizzuto/#sthash.XejKuEyU.dpuf)

This is discouraging to me because, in my idealistic mind, academia should
transcend "lobbying" and produce information for the public to consume. I
don't have a problem with academics earning a livable wage from their research
efforts, but I have an increasing sense of corporate "plants" in the academic
realm that generate the results from research that benefits the corporation.
It seems like things have gotten backwards - research used to be used to make
a better product/service/commodity for which a company can charge a premium.
Now it seems like research is used to justify stagnation tactics.

Anyway, germane to the actual content of the article, this is encouraging, but
as has been noted, many of these are very small communities anyway. There's
not as much of a loss if they are not part of the larger loss of a metro area.
The notable exceptions are Boulder (which is, honestly, considered to do its
own thing) and Cherry Hills Village. CHV is a curiosity for me because that's
where the extravagantly wealthy of the Denver metro area live and is a fairly
"red" area so I wonder if this is becoming enough of an issue that it's
transcending party lines and affiliations. Poor service knows no political
alignment, I guess. Enough rambling.

~~~
jobposter1234
Can you elaborate on this sentence? > There's not as much of a loss if they
are not part of the larger loss of a metro area.

I appreciate you posting the link, it was an interesting counter-point. Yet
your comment doesn't really address anything he writes about, instead going
off-topic with something about lobbying.

Focusing on his article, what is your response to his study of 75 municipal-
operated ISPs/telecoms all costing the region (often significant) money?

Is there a reason you consider his main point wrong? (Specifically, his point
that the discussed regulations only require voter approval before undertaking
a costly ISP infrastructure business.)

------
qwerta
City hall != community. Eventually this will become just another tax on house,
impossible to opt-out. In Germany you MUST pay for privileges such as TV or
rain water disposal.

There are many community networks build by volunteers, for example CZFree had
almost 1M users at its peak.

~~~
MikeKusold
The city government in Boulder is claiming that they intend to lease out the
100+ miles of fiber in the city to interested ISPs so that they can provide
fiber to the citizens. Right now, my understanding is that the majority of the
fiber is dark.

------
maerF0x0
Wolf in sheep's clothing. In a few years a big internet company will bid to be
the "provider" of said broadband. Voila, you now have to buy comast with your
legislated tax dollars.

Freeing the markets would have been the win.

~~~
RaptorJ
I'm not saying this isn't going to happen in Colorado, but it hasn't happened
in Chattanooga, TN. They've had municipal broadband since 2009 [1] which far
outstrips the national averages for speed and price.

[1]
[http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/20/technology/innovation/chatta...](http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/20/technology/innovation/chattanooga-
internet/)

------
drawkbox
Colorado is leading the way to freedom on multiple fronts. Maybe they have
taken the place of California in terms of moving forward with innovative ideas
like municipal broadband and removing wasteful laws.

------
lotharbot
Of the communities listed in the article, Boulder is by far the largest (with
a population just over 100,000.) The rest of the counties and small towns
_combine_ for a population of under 25,000.

These projects are going to have a very different profile in terms of cost and
difficulty compared to the same project in a major metro area.

[Sources: wikipedia. Plus, my great grandparents homesteaded in Wray in the
1890s, and relatives in the area still host family reunions.]

~~~
hovestol
I would like to point out that Longmont had already been doing this, a town of
90,000 near Boulder.

------
iliketolearn
I wish this could happen everywhere. In Weston, FL we had one local provider
(Advanced Cable). The customer service (and product in general) was much
better than that of Comcast/ATT. I guess competition forces better
products/service to be offered to the individual, go figure.

What laws prevent other communities from doing the same? And what justified
their existence?

~~~
nathancahill
Because ISPs sign deals with cities for exclusive rights to provide broadband
in the city. The offer incentives to the government (providing cheaper/faster
service to schools and government buildings) in exchange for exclusivity.

Part of these deals prohibits local governments from becoming ISPs.

The root of the problem is that ISPs are not classified as common carriers.

------
sebnukem2
"[..]states have laws limiting the ability of local governments or their
partners to offer their own broadband services, often passed with the
encouragement of big commercial broadband providers who complain about _unfair
competition_."

Amazing statement considering that the providers in question are likely to be
local monopolies.

------
eiji
Here is a video explaining some developments in the area of community rights
by the Executive Director of the Community Environmental Legal Defense Fund.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmJS6sjBbHg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmJS6sjBbHg)

------
sigstoat
and the nearby city of longmont did the same thing, and it hasn't gotten the
people anything, last i checked. (not that voting for it was a bad idea; i'm
largely ambivalent.)

digging under ground and laying cable is significantly more expensive than
most people realize, and when they get the quote, they're suddenly a lot
happier with 100Mbps.

comcast probably didn't fight it because it doesn't matter. or they figure
they can lease some, and it'll be that much less they've got to bury for their
business customers.

~~~
cookrn
This is not true. Longmont has proceeded with building out a fiber utility for
its citizens [0] called NextLight. As I mentioned in another comment [1], my
understanding is that Boulder city has required private telecom operators to
lay city-owned fiber alongside its own.

[0] [http://longmontcolorado.gov/departments/departments-
e-m/long...](http://longmontcolorado.gov/departments/departments-e-m/longmont-
power-communications/broadband-service) [1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8568436](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8568436)

~~~
sigstoat
ok, so starting 3 days ago, some people are maybe getting something. that's a
lot better than i expected, but let's be clear to folks not clicking the link,
the whole city isn't magically rolling in gigabit, and won't be for some time
yet.

