
Obama calls for municipal broadband - davmre
http://www.vox.com/2015/1/14/7546865/obama-municipal-broadband-fcc
======
jfb
Really, he's calling for the FCC to prevent rent-seeking by local ISP
monopolies by allowing the option of municipal networks. It's a really good
idea; you can tell because of how stridently Comcast/Verizon/AT&T oppose it.

~~~
ksk
> you can tell because of how stridently Comcast/Verizon/AT&T oppose it.

How so? Whether its good or bad, ISPs would be against it. Most companies do
not want competition. (regardless of what they say)

>by allowing the option of municipal networks.

I personally think its rather unfair to ask a for-profit company to compete
against a tax funded service.

>Really, he's calling for the FCC to prevent rent-seeking

You can prevent rent-seeking by repealing any "sponsored" laws that protect
their monopoly.

~~~
digikata
> I personally think its rather unfair to ask a for-profit company to compete
> against a tax funded service.

But if last-mile links are a natural monopoly (or at least demonstrably low
competition markets), how do we get better broadband than we have now? We have
data points from other nations that seem to indicate that publicly owned or
open-access last-mile links create market conditions that deliver broadband
more efficiently - both in lower cost and higher bandwidth. There is still
competition - it just shifts to different market boundaries.

~~~
ksk
Okay, so you could to break down the ISP vertical into companies that only
supply service and companies that only do the last-mile infrastructure. It
would allow the government to regulate the industry without being involved in
the supply side of things.

One other option is to opt for a consumer ownership model where the each home
pays for the bit of fiber that connects them to the neighborhood hub or w/e.

~~~
jzwinck
> break down the ISP vertical into companies

The UK did this with British Telecom (BT). In a word, it sucks. It creates
confusion for consumers:

* "I get internet from Twinkle but they say they can't repair my line."

* "I signed up for service with Floyd's Internet but a truck showed up at my house that says Ben's Broadband."

* "Decker offered me fast fiber, but when I called to sign up, they said WestLane only has copper to my home and they aren't allowed to run the fiber."

The names have been changed to protect the guilty, but the experiences are
real.

~~~
vidarh
I've never been confused about it.

OpenReach (the BT subsidiary operating the line network) has a clear
(available on their website) policy for how their engineers should interact
with people that includes guidelines for informing ISP-customers about who
they are and who they represent (OpenReach _and_ the end-user ISP) and how to
deal with customers in a way that represents the ISPs well (the customer of
OpenReach is the ISP - they're a service delivery company working on behalf of
the ISP, not the end-user).

A few years ago some of this may have been confusing, as customers used to
have to deal with BT directly, but now "everyone" knows about BT/OpenReach
handling the installation on behalf of a lot (not all) ISPs, and every ISP
I've had in the last decade has explained this to me when I signed up, and
these days customers do _not_ have to deal directly with BT other than
OpenReach engineers. And people are used to outsourced service companies
dealing with utilities. E.g. I get power from Npower, and over the years a
dozen different companies have done meter readings on their behalf where I
live.

As for your "Twinkle" and "Decker" examples, blame your ISPs that have decided
to use this as an excuse for their own problems. In the Twinkle example, the
ISP is a customer of OpenReach, not you, it is their responsibility to deal
with OpenReach, not yours. If they're trying to push OpenReach in front of
them, that's their bad customer service.

As for your "Decker" example, it's Decker's fault they've not checked coverage
prior to making promises they can't keep. And "aren't allowed to run the
fiber" == "we've decided (as most, but not all, UK ISPs) that OpenReach
provides a good enough network for us, so we won't make any investment in
rolling out our own, sorry". Nothing prevents UK ISPs from trying to build
competing networks, other than the capital investments needed, and the low
projected rate of return for most of them outside of the most densely
populated city cores.

The relative lack of competition for OpenReach is a good demonstration that
the market doesn't share your assessment of them. Many are unhappy with them,
but not unhappy enough to pay for anything better.

------
Someone1234
The ultimate solution is for the government (federal and local) to run the
physical side of the internet (e.g. run wires to homes/business, manage the
exchanges, etc) but let private companies actually sell the data access
directly to the public.

As an analogy this is like the Greyhound Bus Line. When you buy a ticket to go
from A to B on Greyhound you pay the bus company money and they provide you
the service (and support as required), but the buses actually run on
government constructed and maintained roads, bridges, and related
infrastructure.

The internet would work the same way, the government does the physical side of
things, and that gets paid for through tax and rental fees from the ISPs. Then
the ISPs upsell the rental fees to cover support, advertising, and so on to
provide end users with the actual service (e.g. they pay $.20/Gps to the
government to maintain the physical bits, but charge $.40/Gps to the public).

This is how BT is kind of run in the UK. BT does the physical side of things,
but then five or six different ISPs (including BT themselves) all resell
internet using that physical infrastructure. Those ISPs then pay BT for the
pleasure (and BT pays itself).

This would be one use of eminent domain that I would happily support.

~~~
davidgerard
Yes. This works _really well_ in the UK.

OpenReach, the bit of BT that operates the infrastructure, is part of a
private company, but operates like part of the civil service. They are
completely impartial. It is _so_ illegal for OpenReach to offer BT anything
they don't offer anyone else, that both BT Broadband and OpenReach staff
cringe at the very concept.

 __tl;dr __public wires that many ISPs can supply service over.

~~~
bainsfather
I've read that twice, and I'm still not sure if you are being sarcastic.

For me, those 'public wires' are old and slow - all 3 places I have lived
recently. The government have gifted lots of money to BT to roll out fiber,
and BT have taken the cash and sat on their hands. It is an awful situation -
allowing BT to sabotage our nation's competitiveness whilst stealing taxpayer
money [0].

So having competition on the common infrastructure is indeed good, but the
overall system definitely does _not_ work "really well".

[0] A House of Commons Select Committee slammed the whole setup - e.g. here:
[http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-
a-z/...](http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-
select/public-accounts-committee/news/rural-broadband-report/)

~~~
davidgerard
I was not being in the least sarcastic. It works better than the US does,
however.

------
ayuvar
Municipal broadband is a great idea. A town near me, Olds, just rolled out
gigabit fiber to the curb for $57/mo.

Considering most of the other nearby municipalities have to live with dialup
or (agonizingly slow) satellite internet, it's been a big draw to the area. I
think it absolutely makes a ton of sense for rural areas; if I had a remote
job it would be very tempting to head out there and get an acreage.

I feel like splitting it up and having municipalities responsible for their
own infrastructure makes it easier for the common man to get involved, too.
You can show up at city council and express an opinion or volunteering for a
committee a lot easier than walking into a federal building and doing the
same.

[http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/small-alberta-town-gets-
ma...](http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/small-alberta-town-gets-
massive-1-000-mbps-broadband-boost-1.1382428)

~~~
debacle
> to the curb for $57/mo.

What's the setup fee to run fiber 100 feet and into your house to set up the
box? Because Verizon did it for free.

I still think private competition is better here. Verizon only did it for free
because they're trying to tread on Time Warner, which is the way it should be.

~~~
lukeschlather
Comparable Verizon service appears to cost between $200-$400 a month (though
it's available almost nowhere.) At that price you can bet they'll waive a $100
installation fee.

~~~
acdha
You're talking about Verizon, though – the dslreports.com forums are full of
people talking about being charged installation fees even when they've moved
into a place which was already wired by the previous occupant.

In my neighborhood they ran promos (we have 3 competing high-speed ISPs) but
even then some people reported having to call to actually get the correct
bill.

~~~
FireBeyond
That wouldn't surprise me. CenturyLink here did a door to door campaign
advertising their Gigabit service.

Wouldn't be anything unusual, except for the fact that the nearest address to
these doorsteps that could get this service were 55 miles away in Seattle.

------
nostromo
Municipal governments are a big part of the problem. They make it nearly
impossible for companies to build new ISPs.

Municipal governments: the cause of, and solution to, your ISP woes.

It reminds me of housing. 1) Governments restrict new housing. 2) Housing
becomes unaffordable. 3) Government builds public housing because "the free
market has failed."

~~~
discardorama
> Municipal governments are a big part of the problem. They make it nearly
> impossible for companies to build new ISPs.

And whose fault is that? Yep, that's right, the ISPs.

The ISPs love to play this game of "shut the door after I've gone through it".
They get the municipal governments to sign exclusivity clauses and various
other laws to keep competition out.

I mean, think about it: nothing gets done in the government unless someone
wants it and is willing to bribe the right people for it. Why the heck would
the government go out of its way to set up roadblocks for ISPs if no one
wanted it?

~~~
rhino369
Exclusivity deals have been illegal for over 20 years.

Munis really just want to take a pound of flesh from everyone who enters the
market.

If it was just cable companies owning the munis then the cable companies would
have gotten a sweet deal.

>Why the heck would the government go out of its way to set up roadblocks for
ISPs if no one wanted it?

People hate direct taxes on themselves and don't notice indirect taxes they
pay. The guy who proposes a 50 cent increase per 1000 dollars of house gets
kicked out of office. The guy who builds a new school because he gouged
comcast is popular, even if its the same money.

~~~
swatow
>People hate direct taxes on themselves and don't notice indirect taxes they
pay.

I think this is the key. And any restriction can be an indirect tax, e.g. the
requirement to serve the whole city, not just the areas that the ISP chooses.

------
mholt
I live in Provo, which has Google Fiber. As the article says, Google took over
their failed public fiber project. (Google purchased the infrastructure for
$1.)

Provo is a very unique city. It's a big city, but most of its residents are
college students or young, newly married recent graduates. It's also a
technology hotspot. Comparing the success of its fiber project to predict the
success in other cities is hardly fair. For the record, Google Fiber has
really lit up this town. Internet service here is unbearable unless you have
Google Fiber (or deep pockets to dish out for Comcast). My building only has
CenturyLink, and service just came back up an hour ago after suffering 80%
packet loss for the last day. And this is our regular experience.

Competition for ISPs, especially around here, is good (Veracity has been
grappling to upgrade their network, and Comcast, well, everyone still hates
them). On the other hand, the behavior and quality of service from American
ISPs in the last 10 years is inexcusable. While I do think that private
companies will do better "in the long run", time is running out for them to
prove themselves.

~~~
ScottBurson
So with Provo having so many young people and being a technology hotspot, why
do you think the public fiber project failed? (In general I'm in favor of
municipal broadband, so I'm curious why it didn't work as well as hoped in
this case.)

~~~
mholt
I actually don't know, since I wasn't here during the "iProvo" days. One guess
is that so much of the housing are rental units. Since residents don't own the
properties they live in, the landlords have to approve the installation of a
fiber link, but that costs money (even if it's cheap), and they can justify
not spending it since there's an existing DSL or cable connection.

Google Fiber faces the same problem, and this, I suspect, is precisely why my
building's management company decided to forgo Google Fiber for DSL. Yuck.
Fortunately, Google Fiber generated enough hype and made the installation fee
so low that it appealed to lots of landlords.

------
duncan_bayne
From the perspective of a non-American, it's sad to see you taking _another_
step away from laissez-faire capitalism. In what world is it reasonable to
take money from people by force and use it to compete with private business?

If people want municipal broadband, let them form non-profits to provide it
through voluntary donations. That should be legal, and if it's not, that'd be
something to fix.

~~~
orthecreedence
Wow, so much wrong with your statement.

Obama isn't trying to rally all the states to create broadband that competes
with the big telecoms, he's proposing we strike down laws that _telecoms
lobbied for_ that forces people _not_ to form their own local broadband. So
what we have currently is citizens being forced NOT to exercise the democratic
process thanks to the efforts of large companies. That _is_ laissez-faire
capitalism at work, my friend, in it's most common form.

Secondly, I can't imagine anybody in the world (US citizen or not) thinking
the US needs to move more _towards_ laissez-faire capitalism. It's about as
brutally capitalist/monopolistic/imperialist as anyone could ever want, and
the citizens' collective voice has never been so drowned out as it has right
now. Any time anyone even talks about some kind of social service or public
good (including local broadband), everyone comes out of the woodwork screaming
"COMMUNISM!!!"

What we need is to strangle our corporate culture back into complete
submission of the American people. No more spending _our tax dollars_ invading
countries or setting up puppet dictators so the corporate good ol' boys can
steal from the locals. No more politicians entirely in the pocket of a bunch
of greedy fucks, fighting for legislation they don't even understand. No more
US banks destroying the world economy and having _zero repercussions
whatsoever_.

In what world is it reasonable to want _more_ of these things?

~~~
duncan_bayne
You're wrong. The laws Obama is planning to strike down are entirely
reasonable; they prevent people from being _compelled_ to fund municipal
broadband. That is, there is a difference between:

a) some people setting up a non-profit to offer broadband, provided by
voluntary donations, sponsorship, whatever

and

b) local Government taxing people to offer same

The former is as I understand it entirely legal, and entirely compatible with
a free market.

------
tzs
It's not clear that the FCC can preempt state laws that prohibit municipal
broadband. From the Wikipedia article on municipal broadband [1]:

    
    
        In 2000, the Federal Communications Commission
        endorsed municipal broadband as a "best practice"
        for bringing broadband to under served communities.
        The FCC also addressed the question of whether a
        municipality was an "entity" under the
        Telecommunications Act which mandates that "No State
        or local statute or regulation, or other State or
        local legal requirement, may prohibit or have the
        effect of prohibiting the ability of any entity to
        provide any interstate or intrastate
        telecommunications service." 47 USC 253(a). The
        legal question revolved around whether a state could
        prevent a municipality, as its subordinate
        government body, from entering the telecommunication
        market. In the case of Missouri Municipal League v.
        Nixon, the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that a
        municipality was not an entity under the
        Telecommunications Act and that a state could
        determine what authority its own subordinate
        jurisdictions had.
    

I have not yet had a chance to look at Missouri Municipal League v. Nixon to
see if the above is correct.

It's also possible that the FCC is considering using some different regulatory
authority to preempt state laws this time.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_broadband](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Municipal_broadband)

~~~
warfangle
Yeah, looks like the courts agreed that municipalities, as a subsection of the
state, are not considered an entity:
[http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2003/2003_02_1238](http://www.oyez.org/cases/2000-2009/2003/2003_02_1238)

------
vlunkr
I can understand the Republican point of view here: the government doesn't
care about customer satisfaction or uptime because they can't go out of
business. However, american ISPs have proven over and over they are unfair and
incompetent. It's 2015 and I can barely get speeds over ~1mbps (I live in
Idaho, but still). Maybe they would try a little harder if they had government
competition.

------
bcheung
Aren't we trading one monopoly for another? Not sure that is any better.
Especially considering the track record of the post office or public
education. There would need to be some way to allow competition so there is
incentive to provide quality service.

~~~
dj2stein9
You don't typically call publicly owned infrastructure a monopoly. Public
utility companies are created to prevent exactly what's going in broadband
internet service.

If the city owned the lines, it would put all ISP's on a level playing field
and enable broadband competition for the first time. They wouldn't be able
overcharge you 10,000% mark up for the price of bandwidth anymore, and they'd
have to compete based on the quality of their service.

~~~
bcheung
Typically, no. But it meets the literal definition of one.

My concern is that government often does not have any incentive to innovate
and often operates extremely inefficient due to bureaucracy.

As far as opening up for competing ISPs I'm all in favor of that.

However, I would be much more in favor of a building tenant being the owner of
the last mile line and contracting out work to a 3rd party company. That way
the tenant has the option to lease or purchase outright. Let the tenant decide
the level of quality and the price they are willing to pay.

With taxes and the gov't providing it you take away choice and force people to
pay for things they may not need. Or if they want to pay more for higher
quality, they don't really have that option either.

------
drawkbox
I hope his next step is setting a goal for 1-5Gbps internet access to everyone
in this country within 5-6 years based on this. Reward companies for building
it to allow expansion and to non economical areas, which could become more
economical with it.

Let's build this internet cornerstone for commerce like Eisenhower's
interstate system. Everyone can build on a platform that puts us back in
competition for internet bandwidth/throughput with the surpassing world. We do
not want to be behind in the bandwidth race, maybe if we make it a bandwidth
race or war we can make it happen.

~~~
FireBeyond
"Reward companies for building it to allow expansion"

It needs to be done this way. By all means, pay companies for their investment
in infrastructure, after the fact - not before, like has already happened,
where these companies were given billions to expand rollouts and we got, well,
very little.

------
randyrand
Municipal broadband has a serious problem. Namely, those that don't want it
are still forced to pay for it. If you don't see how this is unfair
competition well... I don't know what to tell you.

~~~
zdw
<sarcasm> Ah, like the military, and any number of other similarly wasteful
government projects? </sarcasm>

There will always be things the government buys that you won't particularly
want or feel are necessary.

------
Arnor
> Last year, the Republican-controlled House passed language banning the FCC
> from banning states from banning cities from building municipal networks.

This should be a case study in every civics class...

~~~
hawkice
A less pathological phrasing: Congress says states can boss around cities and
force them not to build municipal networks, and the FCC can't do anything
about that.

------
lnkmails
I am from India and one of the major broadband providers is BSNL. It used to
be core part of the government (Department of Telecom) but was made a
corporate in 2000 (but still owned by Govt. of India which is confusing).
Anyways, BSNL is the reason a lot of remote villages in India get mobile &
broadband connections. If it were left to private companies, they would never
expand the infrastructure beyond urban centers where they could cover a lot of
people per square area. BSNL also has a lot of fiber optic deployments that
private companies rent in suburban areas to provide service. They get it at a
cheaper price and don't have the problem of maintaining them. So I can see how
municipal internet can help people. OTOH, there is a huge cost load on the
government and people in remote villages don't use Internet much. I wonder if
private companies were regulated to mandatorily have presence in all areas and
are allowed to borrow government/municipal owned infrastructure at competitive
rates, would the situation be better? This way there is both competition and
better connectivity.

------
lettergram
Yeah, I definitely want my government running my internet. Not only do they
get to monitor all of my traffic (more/easier than they do now), but they also
will be in charge of delivery.

I can already imagine it! My tax dollars paying for Comcast level quality
service, at the same time I'll be receiving internet in the most "fair" way
possible ("fair" being in quotes because who knows what legislation will be
placed on it).

Yeah, I'm just looking forward to the day they enforce the whole Google-
Verizon frequency band agreement. Or perhaps when they don't sell exclusive
rights for fiber connections.

In all honesty, I'll take Comcast over the government any day of the week. At
least Comcast has an incentive to make money (hopefully reducing corporate
waste). The government will have far more bureaucratic bloat and either fund
it with tax dollars or end up charging the same amount. I really loved how the
healthcare system has been improved.

------
ochoseis
> As a result, households there can now get 1 gigabit (1,000 Mbps) service for
> just $70 per month.

> The Obama administration is also planning to offer subsidies to promote
> investments in local broadband.

While $70 doesn't seem like an outrageously great deal (it is good), it brings
up an interesting point my dad had the other day. Is the true cost of that
gigabit internet $100/mo, and tax dollars subsidize $30 while you cover the
other $70 as stated? If municipalities truly can provide faster cheaper
internet I'm all for it; however, I would hate to have another reason to bump
taxes, nor a reason to crowd out competition and remove the incentive for
innovation.

~~~
nemothekid
Most likely the true cost to you in _densely populated area X_ is more like
$30/mo and the cost to someone out in _sparesly populated area Y_ is $170/mo.
Considering most plans cost the same regardless where you live, you all pay
the "true" $100/mo.

------
jMyles
Absent from the conversation is the actual obvious generational shift: final-
mile mesh networks in every sufficiently large and dense community.

~~~
metaphorm
not a mature technology. how would the mesh be established? run ethernet
cables between people's homes? have everyone open a port on their wifi router?
this is beyond the technical capability of the vast majority of people. it
would require a company to coordinate this, and at that point you've got just
got an ISP running the last mile anyway.

~~~
walterbell
Some work on these issues is being done by the Free Network Foundation,
[https://thefnf.org/](https://thefnf.org/)

Edit: There's also Guifi.net in Spain,
[http://guifi.net/en](http://guifi.net/en)

~~~
metaphorm
cool! thanks for the link.

------
walterbell
From a decentralization point of view, it's usually not good when a larger
construct (federal) wants to impose regulation on a smaller construct (state).
But in this case, the proposed federal regulation would encourage _more
decentralization_ , as it would empower an even smaller construct
(municipality).

------
metaphorm
I wish we had seen this more progressive, pro-active Obama 6 years ago.

Squandered his political capital on a shitty health care reform bill, got
shell shocked by Republican opposition and crawled up his own ass for a couple
of years. Now that he doesn't give a shit about elections anymore he's
actually doing something.

~~~
cubano
_I wish we had seen this more progressive, pro-active Obama 6 years ago._

More progressive and pro-active then basically socializing 1/7th of the US
economy with the ACA?

Wow.

[edit] I used the wrong term "socializing" when I meant "intervening in"

~~~
metaphorm
are you serious? you can't be serious. i usually assume that hacker news has a
bit more sophistication than this. i would actively celebrate a legitimate
socialized health care system in the U.S. but that's not what we got. ACA is
basically a huge middle class tax with the proceeds paid almost entirely to
health insurance companies. its a massive expansion of a deeply entrenched
private industry.

~~~
cubano
I, personally, would not celebrate that outcome.

I believe in the power in markets and price signaling, ala Hayek, and there is
nothing unsophisticated about that.

We agree on more then you may be aware...the HI industry is a giant problem,
and must be fundamentally altered for the market-based solutions I prefer to
do their magic.

~~~
metaphorm
so if you really do read a lot of Austrian economics and really do have a
sophisticated view of political economy then why did you label ACA as
"socialist"? at best that's ignorant, and at worst it's an actively deceptive
slander of both ACA and real socialism.

~~~
djrogers
People often (mistakenly) use the term socialism as shorthand for 'massive
wealth redistribution', which is what he appears to be doing here. You are
correct, this does seem to contraindicate the claims of a sophisticated view
of economics.

------
mtrpcic
A lot of people seem dismayed that there isn't a bigger push for a federal
run, country-wide internet provider, which I think is crazy. Taking the
municipal approach means there isn't a huge cost for nationwide
infrastructure, and small towns can develop the network that's right for them,
rather than being stuck with what they're told they need from higher up.
Additionally, with all the worry and fear about the NSA looking behind the
scenes, putting the entire network backbone in the hands of the federal
government is basically handing them exactly what they want. I'm all for
municipally run internet, and hope this helps move towards that.

~~~
anigbrowl
_small towns can develop the network that 's right for them_

What does that even mean? Do people in Smallville use the internet differently
or not like to their video to buffer too fast? A mishmash of half-assed local
standards was how the road network used to be, until Dwight Eisenhower came to
power and argued that the US deserved something better than the miserably
inefficient network it had, and championed the development of the Federal
Highway System.

I'm not being sarcastic here: I really want to know what you mean by 'the
network that's right for them.' Are inferior networks right for poorer towns?
Should there be different network standards in different states? I presume you
like the way that telephone service is uniform across the whole US, so that
making a call is procedurally identical whether you're in Alaska or the
Florida panhandle. What positive advantage do you see in having internet
accessibility be inconsistent? I recognize that you regard the capital cost of
a national network as a _dis_ advantage, but I don't see a clear benefit to
your proposal. If you're all for municipally run internet, does that mean you
do favor national regulation forbidding local monopolies or strategic
litigation designed to prevent municipalities from setting up their own
networks, as proposed in some states?

~~~
kstrauser
A big difference between roads and network links is that I don't have to send
packets through Mayberry on their way from SF to DC. Interstate highways were
amazing because they specified a minimum level of quality that you could then
expect everywhere, in every state, as you were transporting goods through
them. While it would suck for Mayberry's residence if their digital "road" is
two tin cans and a string, your data traffic doesn't have to be routed through
it.

And yes, there should absolutely be different standards in different places.
The most obvious relevant variable is population density: there are a lot
fewer feet of fiber between residents in Manhattan than residents in rural
Montana. Something that makes perfect economic sense in San Francisco's
Financial District might be ruinously expensive to deploy in a small town in
Oklahoma.

The Internet isn't a special snowflake here. No one builds skyscrapers in
farming villages because it would be hideously costly and the local tax base
couldn't support it. Same with gigabit fiber: 10,000 homes might be able to
afford having better access brought in than could a hamlet of 50 people.

~~~
gnaritas
> The Internet isn't a special snowflake here.

That's where the majority of the world disagrees with you; [1] the Internet is
a special snowflake to the point of most agreeing it should be a basic human
right.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Internet_access](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_Internet_access)

------
crudbug
A better solution would be: municipalities building infrastructure and private
ISPs running on top of it. This will encourage more competition and better
service for customers. Similar to other Utilities.

~~~
bcheung
One more bureaucracy to add to the pile.

ISP: "It's not our fault, it's your demarc". Demarc: "It's not our fault, it's
the city". City: "It's not our fault, it's the ISP."

A better solution would be for the building owner to provide for the last line
and contract the work out to 3rd parties. This gives them control over price,
timing, quality, and maintenance. It also creates a market for last mile line
installers and competition.

With a government run last mile you have none of those choices. If you aren't
satisfied with the level of service you have no options. If you don't want to
subsidize someone else's Internet, you have no options. If you want to upgrade
you line, you have no options.

------
meesterdude
I think its simple. Municipalities should at this point feel responsible for
ensuring their residents have good internet access. Its also good for the tax
payers, because its money going back into the government, and not into the
coffers of some mega-corp who's just going to hoard it.

I think there is a balance to be had between too much government and not
enough. I think its easy to sway too far one way or another as history has
shown, and neither are particularly good. Corporations will run rampant just
like government will, given the freedom to do so.

~~~
bduerst
It's almost better to think of power as static. For some areas, if you have a
smaller government, it's not a loss of power so much as a void of power, which
will be filled by corporations or other large organizations.

A lot of people look at a smaller government as increasing their personal
liberty, which is true for some issues, but for other areas it only means
swapping out one organization for another (which may not be aligned with your
interests).

------
Alupis
This seems great, but I fear what is may do to the small ISP's (which
generally don't pull any of the shenanigans the BIG5 do and are usually pretty
pleasant to work with).

~~~
justizin
I thought about this when I first started reading about municipal broadband,
and I think if the local gov was required to wholesale out its' capacity the
same way Title II utilities like AT&T have to now, small ISPs would be in a
far better situation. AT&T is relatively hostile to the customers of other DSL
providers, and I think municipal governments may be less likely to.

Datacenters are also a completely reasonable metaphor, you pay the facility to
run most wiring for a cross-connect to an ISP or between cages / floors, but
you can provide your own transit or buy transit from any number of providers,
all of whom are just other customers.

------
bcheung
"Obama calls for municipal broadband"

"White House just endorsed CISPA measures, two years after veto threat"
[http://www.zdnet.com/article/white-house-just-endorsed-
contr...](http://www.zdnet.com/article/white-house-just-endorsed-
controversial-cispa-measures-two-years-after-veto-threat/)

Coincidence?

------
bluedino
What are the implications of this? What would it cost to build out fiber to
even 10 or 15 % of homes and businesses that don't currently have it?

What kind of insane cyberattacks could you get from 10% of the consumer market
having gigabit connections? How much backbone upgrades would there be
required?

------
finid
> Municipal broadband is controversial — especially among Republicans

> But House Republicans don't agree. Last year, the Republican-controlled
> House passed language banning the FCC from banning states from banning
> cities from building municipal networks.

You can always trust those guys to work against consumers.

------
imgabe
> The president is asking the Federal Communications Commission to preempt
> those laws.

Can someone explain this? The FCC is part of the administrative branch right?
Don't they work for the President? Why doesn't he just _tell_ them to preempt
the laws?

~~~
rhino369
FCC is an independent agency. He can't tell them to do anything.

------
finid
In cities with apartment complexes (most of the southern USA have those), ISPs
like Verizon make deals with the apartment complex owners such that only one
ISP is officially allowed to offer service to residents.

Clearly illegal, but who's taking them to task?

~~~
driverdan
Why would you think that's illegal?

------
logfromblammo
I wouldn't care about any of this if I could just lay my own cable between any
two buildings in town without having to hire at least one lawyer and at least
one lobbyist first.

------
mikelbring
If there is anything that can be done to give me a better option at internet
than the local crappy / expensive DSL provider I have to go with now, I am all
for it.

------
tn13
Yeah, lets throw more of taxpayers money in the drain. FCC has one job which
they cant do properly and now they want to create one more problem.

------
LBarret
not to troll and no expert on the topic, but from outside, the US broadband
situation is really puzzling. Many countries have cheap broadband and seems to
have found good systems to make its market work. The installed monopolies
looks like a very wrong decision that cannot be changed without legal
conflict.

------
javert
Because it's better to have broadband be many little tyranies than a few big
tyrannies.

------
bcheung
The government can't even manage its own budget, I don't trust them with the
Internet.

------
3327
ABOUT TIME. Internet is a utility and time to break the verizon atnt monopoly.

------
AaronFriel
Cedar Fallsian here - our broadband service is amazing and unfaltering. The
alternative cable company that serves our area on the other hand has weekly
and monthly outages, and I regret to say, that's not even purely a residential
deployment issue.

In Waterloo, IA, our neighboring town, the city council initially approved
then backed out of working with Cedar Falls to participate in a greater
municipal fiber deployment. Following a storm in 2009 that damaged utility
lines on poles, I believe Cedar Falls moved forward with their plans to deploy
fiber and deployed service to almost all homes over the course of a year and a
half. The transition was seamless, and since then bandwidth has more than
quintupled for the regular tier. I get 50/25 and it's rock solid. The best
internet service I've ever had.

On the other hand, as an IT consultant I have businesses I work with in
Waterloo. Some of them would like to switch to technologies like VOIP to
reduce costs, but their Mediacom cable goes down on a weekly basis. I have one
client for whom I have never seen a whole month of uptime, and they have had
multiple business days without service in the past year. The only alternative
for most of my clients is CenturyLink DSL, which hardly qualifies as broadband
with most of the DSLAMs too widely distributed and over-subscribed for
reliable throughput.

Mediacom is the same company that signed a letter to congress decrying
municipal investment, and published a press release today[1] about how
insulting it was that the President chose to support a municipal utility
instead of their investment in Iowa.

If companies like Mediacom and Century Link really cared about providing a
service, they would support Title II and competition. But they don't. The high
barrier to entry suits them just fine, and as a result, internet options are
terrible in Waterloo, and technology businesses have fled to Cedar Falls.
We've even apparently been named the "Digital Capital" by Google (but I have
no idea what that means, I personally think Des Moines has the best access to
the backbone with Microsoft and Facebook both opening up datacenters there).

Sure, our gigabit fiber isn't $70 here, like Google offered, but it's there.
And my internet service has never been more reliable. I know people who have
Mediacom and Centurylink, and they hate it. And unlike their press release
speaks about, the fiber deployment wasn't financially unsustainable or a waste
of taxpayer dollars. As Mediacom says, "there is no reason to invest even more
government dollars in municipally-owned broadband ventures, many of which wind
up in financial difficulty."

Well, I'm curious if Mr. Commisso of Mediacom did any fact checking. CFU is
self-funded. Even better, CFU actually contributes back to the city's general
fund its excess revenue. It's not so much "spending taxpayer money" as it is
saving, at least now that it's up and running.

Edited in addendum: Oh yeah, and for something the network engineers here
might approve of: even when torrenting at 50mbps, my latency to Google and
Microsoft is unchanged (10-13ms) and there appears to be little or no
bufferbloat causing congestion. I've been able to play competitive real-time
games and Skype while streaming, downloading, etc.

[1]
[http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150114006231/en/Medi...](http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20150114006231/en/Mediacom-
Communications-Issues-Statement-President-Obama%E2%80%99s-Visit)

------
sp332
Oh, municipal governments. From the headline, I though he was proposing some
national thing.

~~~
metaphorm
the united states is a federal republic. municipal government is SUPPOSED to
be the level of government where programs like this are implemented.
communities will have varying needs and their local governments are best
equipped to evaluate and meet those needs.

~~~
sp332
Is there really that much variation in basic infrastructure like internet
access though?

~~~
metaphorm
yes. some communities have 10000 people per square mile (Brooklyn, where I
live) while other communities have 6 people per square mile (rural Wyoming),
and we've also got everything in between.

the infrastructure requirements, costs, and issues for these communities are
extremely different.

~~~
sp332
Yes, but that's not that hard to account for. Private companies don't seem to
have much trouble. My question isn't "would municipal government be better
than private companies", but "would federal government be worse"?

~~~
lhc-
Private companies often don't serve (or underserve) those less populated
areas. Their solution to that problem is to not provide service as they aren't
required. Municipal broadband which is provided as a public service/utility,
however, is better suited to serve everyone, as they are often required to do
that rather than only focus on the areas that generate the most profit.

~~~
sp332
Most local franchise agreements require a certain level of internet service to
be offered to a particular percentage of people. It's not regulated at the
national level like the Universal Service Fund does for phones, but a national
internet would certainly have similar targets.

------
whoisthemachine
That title is a little (may I say intentionally?) misleading, by leaving
important context out. He is not proposing _his_ government runs a high-speed
internet project, he is proposing _local_ municipalities be allowed to run
high-speed internet projects, or rather, states be banned from banning them
(confused yet?).

~~~
dang
We changed the title to the more accurate and neutral one suggested by the
article's URL.

~~~
whoisthemachine
Thanks!

------
paulhauggis
I'm fine with it, if there are laws in place that prevent governments from
stifling free speech through Internet controls.

~~~
bmelton
Censorship is on the rise in popularity. The most recent polls indicate that
51% of democrats and 33% of the nation overall is supportive of censorship, so
in the absence of treating the first amendment as absolute, which simply does
not happen, there could be no law put in place now that would not be equally
superseded by the law that repeals it.

As such, there may as well not be any such laws in place, as they would only
serve to supply false confidence.

[http://hotair.com/archives/2014/10/02/poll-51-of-
democrats-s...](http://hotair.com/archives/2014/10/02/poll-51-of-democrats-
support-criminalizing-hate-speech/)

------
gaius
Saves having to wiretap commercial ISPs, is why he's doing it.

