
Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado - peterjmag
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/11/voters-reject-cable-lobby-misinformation-campaign-against-muni-broadband/
======
exhilaration
Whenever this happens - and it happens a lot - Comcast & Co just goes up a
level to the state legislature and has them outlaw municipal broadband:

[https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/08/28/15404/how-big-
tel...](https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/08/28/15404/how-big-telecom-
smothers-city-run-broadband)

Can't they just do the same thing in Colorado?

~~~
peterjmag
Theoretically, yes. In fact, Senate Bill 152, passed in 2005, already outlaws
municipal broadband. From the article:

 _Colorado has a state law requiring municipalities to hold referendums before
they can provide cable, telecom, or broadband service. Yesterday, voters in
Eagle County and Boulder County authorized their local governments to build
broadband networks, "bringing the total number of Colorado counties that have
rejected the state law to 31—nearly half of the state's 64 counties,"
Motherboard wrote today._

As far as I know, there have been attempts to make it impossible for a
community to opt-out, but nothing's been successful yet. In fact, most
recently, it looks like the tide has been turning in favor of repealing the
ban state-wide (which wouldn't be surprising considering the 31 counties that
have already opted out). Here's a bit more info:

[https://co-wa.org/2017/01/26/senate-bill-152-primer/](https://co-
wa.org/2017/01/26/senate-bill-152-primer/)

~~~
gigatexal
What a sad, sad world we live in where a corporation can come in and use
legislation to be obviously anti-competitive. What would the world do if
comcast or a group of content owners tried to sue netflix out of existence
because their business model threatened the incumbents? There'd be
pandemonium.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> What a sad, sad world we live in where a corporation can come in and use
> legislation to be obviously anti-competitive.

If we actually had reasonable competition among local broadband (e.g. everyone
in the country had a choice of at least 2-3 reasonable options, and DSL does
not count as "reasonable" anymore), then I'd actually call the introduction of
a government-backed option "anti-competitive", because how can any private ISP
compete with that? A government-run ISP gives itself inherent anti-competitive
boosts that it doesn't give anyone else.

However, in the world we have, where many people don't have enough reasonable
choices to allow for actual competition among ISPs, municipal broadband seems
like a perfectly reasonable response. In which case, rather than attempting to
quash it, I'd rather see communities lay the fiber and then allow private ISPs
to be the ones to light it up and provide bandwidth from the nearest meet-me
room.

~~~
krisdol
You can't simultaneously advocate for superior free-market solutions and then
complain when the government outcompetes the private sector.

~~~
JoshTriplett
I can when the government gives itself advantages that it doesn't give the
private sector, like subsidies, taxes (paid whether you use the service or
not), and regulatory exceptions.

~~~
pgeorgi
> subsidies, […] regulatory exceptions

Amazon just had a big contest on subsidies and the only exceptional thing
about it was how brazen they were about it. Regulatory exceptions often are
part of such deals.

> taxes (paid whether you use the service or not)

Monopolists call that "bundling". For example co-financing internet service by
requiring you also pay for phone service.

The main difference is that a public service doesn't need to have profit
maximizing as its primary goal.

~~~
icebraining
_Monopolists call that "bundling". For example co-financing internet service
by requiring you also pay for phone service._

No. Bundling means the product I want becomes more expensive, and therefore
less competitive. Taxes means I have to pay for the product in any case,
removing any competitive pressure.

 _The main difference is that a public service doesn 't need to have profit
maximizing as its primary goal._

Neither does a company, that's a myth. Plus, non-profits and coops exist.

------
sizzzzlerz
Keep your powder dry, Coloradians. COMCAST is like some non-giving up cable
guy who simply won't let citizens determine their own fate when there is
oodles of money to be made from them instead. Prepare for them to come back
through the rear door, bribing the legislature and congress to enact laws that
restrict the practice just approved.

~~~
chungy
Maybe it's just me, but the right thing for Comcast to do is try to provide a
better product. Competition is healthy, legislation is illness.

~~~
rayiner
You can’t “compete” with a municipal service. How many competing options do
you have for your water or sewer or trash pickup? It’s a reasonable argument
that broadband should be provided municipally. But cloaking it in the guise of
“competition” is disingenuous.

~~~
com2kid
> You can’t “compete” with a municipal service.

Sure you can.

The inherent costs to provide services is similar, but Comcast can amortize
costs over a larger customer base. If Comcast is at all competent (a huge if!)
then they should have overall lower costs, even taking (probably reduced)
profits into account.

Customer service needs to be provided, a mailing center to send out hardware,
a billing system, technicians and installers need to be trained and
dispatched, payroll for all said employees, and all the other costs of running
a business that should, in theory, scale to Comcast's advantage.

And of course Comcast can offer quicker upgrades in service. By bringing
resources to bear, they should be able to iterate on technology faster than a
municipal provider can.

Comcast also has the advantages of bundling services, another way to recoup
costs and compete vs the municipal provided service.

A well ran national company with should be able to put up one heck of a good
free market fight going up against a municipality. The real question becomes,
is Comcast able to put up that fight?

~~~
marcoperaza
Municipal services usually don’t have to turn a profit, since they can make up
the shortfall with tax revenue. You’re missing that crucial point. You can’t
effectively compete against someone who can operate at a loss in perpetuity.

I don’t know what the specifics are in this case, but if they allow the
municipal service to be funded by tax revenue, then it’s incredibly unfair.

~~~
com2kid
> Municipal services usually don’t have to turn a profit, since they can make
> up the shortfall with tax revenue. You’re missing that crucial point. You
> can’t effectively compete against someone who can operate at a loss in
> perpetuity.

This is more of a problem of how things look like they are funded.

Customers still pay the same price, but instead of $60 for Internet service,
it may be $50 for Internet and $10 somewhere else. Or of course the city can
tax the heck out of one subgroup of people and redistribute the funds.

I'd actually be OK-ish with a law saying that municipal broadband has to be
self funded after initial rollout, I imagine that would maintain sufficient
competition.

~~~
marcoperaza
> _Customers still pay the same price, but instead of $60 for Internet
> service, it may be $50 for Internet and $10 somewhere else. Or of course the
> city can tax the heck out of one subgroup of people and redistribute the
> funds._

No, in your scenario, customers pay $50, and EVERYONE pays $10, including
those who use a private competitor.

The customers of a private competitor that also gets $60 of revenue per
customer, would actually be paying $70. $60 for their own service, and $10 to
subsidize the municipal service.

And even if you have some magic source of tax revenue that is not the citizens
(or heavily tax some subgroup as you suggest), the municipal service is still
charging $10 less to get the same revenue as the private service.

~~~
com2kid
> No, in your scenario, customers pay $50, and EVERYONE pays $10, including
> those who use a private competitor.

That is why I proposed the municipal broadband system be self funding,
preventing any market distortion.

I admit I wasn't clear about it, and you are correct that in a scenario of
anything other than 100% of the population switching over to the municipal
provider, a subsidy effect does occur.

------
dchuk
I’m failing to think of a single reason why it would ever be legally
acceptable for a government to ban municipal broadband. I understand the whole
corporate shill stuff, I’m speaking literally from the arguments FOR the
ban...how is it justified at all?

~~~
jdavis703
I'm playing Devil's advocate here, but if you believe in a strong free-market
with a minimal state then you could argue that the government should not be
providing a service that private individuals could provide. Now I think most
people are more pragmatic and say "whatever get's the job done," but that's
the reason why some people are against many municipal services, including
broadband.

~~~
kevindqc
As someone else pointed out in the comments, then why not have the city put
the fiber in the ground, but let private ISPs run the network devices and ISP
stuff (ie: a bit similar to TekSavvy in Canada which uses other ISP's
infrastructure - I assume they use more than just the fiber though)

~~~
sliverstorm
The real free market maniacs, don't want the government involved _at all_ , in
anything, in any way whatsoever. Private streets, private pipes, private
prisons, private judiciary system, private police...

While I think pipes owned by the people and leased to private ISPs is a very
interesting solution, I don't think it would fly with the zero-government
crowd.

~~~
Barrin92
>I don't think it would fly with the zero-government crow

what I don't understand about these people is that they must recognise that
comcast essentially functions the same way the dreaded government does. They
are just as large, they are just as organised and powerful. But in contrast to
the government there is not even a democratic check and balance, and an
explicit profit motive.

I would assume someone who likes the 'market' part in 'free market' recognises
that a single giant corporate entity is not very market like at all

~~~
sliverstorm
They basically believe the single-giant-corporate-entity exists _only_ because
of government. If government disappeared, all markets would become
competitive, single-giants would vanish completely, there would always be
choice.

------
peterjmag
I'm pretty proud of my hometown for passing this measure! Longmont, a town 30
miles south of Fort Collins, passed something similar a couple years ago, and
it sounds like it's been pretty successful so far[1], so I'm excited to see
where this goes.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15570559#up_15573817](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15570559#up_15573817)

~~~
FLUX-YOU
Do you happen to know where they hire people for working on this? Are they
city or state employees, or are they using a bunch of contractors?

Edit: Hmm, looks like Fort Collins will use contractors for installs and hire
10 to 38 people over five years (p. 39 - Personnel Requirements):
[https://www.fcgov.com/broadband/pdf/7.27.17%20Broadband%20Bu...](https://www.fcgov.com/broadband/pdf/7.27.17%20Broadband%20Business%20Plan.pdf)

However, this is excluding developers for things like customer portals. Maybe
that will get contracted out as well.

Seems light to run an ISP, even for FC's size.

~~~
peterjmag
Good find! I was curious too, and that does seem pretty small. I wonder how
many people NextLight employs and contracts out in Longmont?

------
matt_wulfeck
I love to see cities exert their power. In some ways we’ve acquiesced to a
powerful central government, whether it be federal or state, but its local
governments that should be powerful. After all, they have the best handle on
the needs and desires of their citizens.

~~~
white-flame
I think the better way to state it is flipped around:

Citizens have a more direct effect on local governments than they do state or
federal.

------
programmarchy
This passed in Boulder county as well, pretty overwhelmingly.

~~~
mtnsun
The Fort Collins vote was to allow the city the option to take out $150M in
municipal bonds for city-wide fiber installation. This was pretty much the
last voter hurdle before the city moves forward.

Boulder is still in an earlier phase -- the vote was to allow the city to
start the planning process. Greeley also voted in favor of something similar.

------
Bromskloss
I hear a lot of people being dissatisfied with Comcast. What is it that makes
them so hard to compete with that people have to resort to city-run networks?

~~~
jclulow
I don't really see why having the city run its own Internet service should be
considered a resort. Getting the profit motive as far away from basic
utilities like Internet transit as possible seems like a win, because you
don't want an undifferentiated bit pipe to have to continue to make more and
more money over time.

~~~
prophesi
My city has a pretty sweet hybrid of this. We have a local company that
provides electricity/cable/internet which received grants from the city to get
off the ground. But it's now self-sufficient while still remaining cheaper
than Comcast, with gigabit speeds.

------
evadne
See also:

Kushnick, B., $300 Billion Broadband Scandal [2009]
[http://www.teletruth.org/docs/broadbandscandalfree.pdf](http://www.teletruth.org/docs/broadbandscandalfree.pdf)

------
jjuel
I lived in a city with muni owned cable and broadband. It was amazing. Great
service and reasonably priced. Even offering gig internet. I miss those days
now where Spectrum is one of my only options.

------
user-on1
how to encourage other cities to do the same? can colorado guide the rest of
the cities and states to through similar initiatives?

~~~
zanny
If your town / city is less than 10k people simply going to city council open
forum meetings (most places host those monthly or quarterly, some even weekly)
and constantly hounding representatives about it being a problem with a
straightforward solution (taxpayer funded public telecom operation in the
city).

Probably the #1 problem is the ignorance of how bad the telecom monopoly is in
the US, that there even are alternatives, and that this is the problem domain
government needs to approach in the same way they approach electric access or
roads.

~~~
sigstoat
> Probably the #1 problem is the ignorance of how bad the telecom monopoly is
> in the US, that there even are alternatives, and that this is the problem
> domain government needs to approach in the same way they approach electric
> access or roads.

amusingly, boulder county, which passed this same thing, tried for years to
get out of maintaining my neighborhood's roads. (and our electric service is
privately provided.)

------
akulbe
Cannot heap enough scorn on Comcast. It just seems _SO WRONG_ that they have
so much influence and continue to kill any competition.

------
cletus
So I'm all for this effort but there are a lot of opinions in this thread that
are (IMHO) too simplistic and ignore history.

1\. Building more than one version of given infrastructure is often called an
"overbuild" and it tends to be bad. Like you don't have two different
electric, gas or water companies running a whole set of wires, poles, pipes or
whatever to your house. The capex cost of any such network is massive so
paying that cost 2, 3 or 4 times for the same number of customers is clearly
going to more costly for consumers overall.

2\. Utilities, which aren't duplicated, are heavily regulated to avoid
monopolistic behaviour as this is the only rational choice. I believe in the
US this is Title II for telecommunications at least (which covers landline
service). The FCC under the Obama administration did follow through with a
promise to apply Title II to ISPs as well, something Comcat, TWC and the like
were deadset against as it would obviously impact profits.

The real problem here is that Internet at this point is really the fourth
utility and it should be legislated and regulated as such but Comcat et al
don't just want to be "dumb pipes".

This factors into the whole net neutrality argument too. Imagine PG&E said
that you could only use electricity for Whirlpool branded washers and dryers
or if you used anything else the electricity would cost you more. Well, that
kind of discrimination is what US ISPs want to be able to do (sadly) and we've
already seen this with, say, Verizon throttling Netflix traffic.

3\. ISPs have unfortunately been much better at framing these public debates
than the other side. For example, in the aforementioned net neutrality
debates, ISPs framed this as the likes of Netflix pushing data onto their
network for free and they argued they should get paid for that.

The reality is of course that Netflix doesn't push anything. Consumers are
pulling data from Netflix. ISPs are getting paid for this too... by the
consumers. The ISPs are simply trying to double-dip and get paid at both ends.
What's more, stiffling services like Netflix has nothing to do with any notion
of fairness. It's just a backhanded way of cable companies propping up their
declining TV businesses.

4\. Various other models have been tried around the world to solve the
overbuild problem. In Australia, for example, the government has tried a
strategy where a single entity would own the wires and ISPs could rent those
lines to provide services to consumers. To make this work, the entity owning
the wires has to charge the same price to everyone, no matter how big or
small.

Unfortunately, for a bunch of complicated reasons to NBN (so-called "next
generation" broadband network) is going to end up only guaranteeing 12Mbps to
each household... in 2017 for probably A$60-70B for a country of ~24M.

5\. Building any sort of netowrk like this is what I like to call a national
hyperlocal business and the entrenched players are very good at it. To give
some examples:

\- Getting access to poles varies from city to city and can be hugely
complicated;

\- Digging trenches can be just as complicated and you might have to deal with
a bunch of different stuff in the ground (eg one area has a ton of limestone
in the soil).

\- Existing buildings once had single-vendor agreements that prohibited new
players from providing service there. At one point these were ruled illegal.
They've since been replaced by exclusive marketing agreements where, say, a
condo building will only ever tell you about one provider.

\- Once you've built past a lot of houses it still requires a lot of efforts
to connect a new house (we're talking hours). There is a huge manpower
component in this. To be already connected to an existing provider is a huge
advantage to that existing provider.

6\. No discussion of cable companies in the US is complete without touching on
the issue of franchise agreements. A franchise agreement is where a cable
company agreed to build in a given city and to alleviate the expense they were
offered a number of benefits. These could be exclusive rights, ownership of
the poles and so on. But to provide TV service, the company usually ended up
paying the town. These sums could be significant to the budgets of the towns
or counties in which they applied. These fees also discouraged the
municipality from being friendly to any newcomer as any such newcomer may mean
a budget hit.

Disclaimer: I used to work on Google Fiber.

~~~
tonycoco
Thanks for this. I needed some sanity.

------
cjsawyer
Glad to see that my vote counted!

~~~
zeep
it was really close

------
brainbrane
Lest we forget iProvo:

[http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=56288307&itype=CMSI...](http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=56288307&itype=CMSID)

------
InTheArena
Boulder had much less fanfare, but much greater techie population also passed
this. Its at the point where cities that don't provide great internet will
start to see people go live in other communities. The boulder vote was
something like 3:1 in favor, as Comcast knew better then to go massively
negative.

Unfortunately, Boulder city has been trying to go municipal with energy as
well, which appears to be failing badly, and that's taking most of their time.

------
xupybd
I don't understand why there is no competition. There must be other people
wanting to trying their hand at starting a fibre ISP. Yeah it's expensive, but
if there is money to be made there should be people willing to invest. Is
there something else preventing competition in the US?

~~~
matt4077
There is no money to be made.

You won't be able to build a network in more than a few cities at first
because anything else would cost astronomical amounts of money.

That means that the current monopolist in those cities can afford to lower
prices, making your investment unprofitable.

------
alexasmyths
Good idea at this stage - but it would also be very dangerous.

In Canada, in my youth - the entire telelphone network was socialized - it was
a byzantine mess.

 _You had to buy your telephone from the government_ (i.e. Bell, state owned).

In Saskatchewan, it's still the same.

Imagine if the networks were run like the DMV.

Even worse - with massive, bloated government subsidies and 'guaranteed
revenue stream' through taxation - they can make it impossible to compete.

Pay workers way above market wages (the 'change collectors' on the Toronto
Subway often earn more than $100K a year, even though the jobs should not even
exist anymore).

So it's probably a good idea right now maybe to force some innovation in the
sector ...

But is there any evidence that American wireless carriers are operating in an
oligarchic manner?

Here in Canada - we pay through the roof for wireless service due to very
powerfully entrenched entities - we envy the US rates, which are relatively
competitive.

Anyhow - it's maybe a good move but it needs to be watched both for successful
opportunities (if it works well it could be a shake up), but also for creeping
and bloated bureaucracy.

~~~
ThrwyAct
I've always been annoyed at this "imagine if X was like the DMV" libertarian
argument. Anecdotally, I've never really had this mythical terrible experience
at DMVs in the states I've lived in, and (further anecdotally) the experience
has always been better in states with higher taxes.

The free market is one way of efficiently incorporating user preferences.
Responsive democratic government is another. It might be slower to adapt, but
it compensates by having less perverse incentives.

~~~
alexasmyths
It's not a mythical argument, and it's not libertarian, it's just a reality.

It's also rather obvious how byzantine most operational aspects of government
are:

Ex: The DMV is the entity that would not send me an email or SMS to inform me
about specific events at least when I lived in Cali. Even though every other
company on planet earth can do that.

Ex: The Government of Ontario issues three different kinds of ID. The 'Health
Care' ID cannot be used as valid ID anywhere else, only within health. There
are huge bureaucracies dedicated to each form of ID. Why not issue one ID, and
all of the agencies can use that? Answer: unions and job protectionism. I
personally know the former CEO of 'Services Ontario' \- he has no interest in
increasing quality of service - there is absolutely zero incentive for him.
Moreover - the Unions would make it quite impossible. Why would he even
consider automating tasks when it reduces headcount? The union will put up a
stink and it could get him fired. Moreover, he loses budget and power. So the
incentives are completely upside down for most government agencies.

Ex: The TTC (Toronto Public Transit) pays many of it's staff quite a lot.
Toronto really needs Subway extensions, which are massively expensive to the
point we can't afford them = yet we are still paying people to collect change
- as I mentioned above, some of them earn over $100K.

Ex: try visiting stats Canada right now:

[https://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/start](https://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/start)

try making sense of that mess - there's tons and tons of data, most of it
poorly organized, de-facto unsearchable. Very poorly presented when it is.
Moreover - it's 2017 and up until a month ago NONE of the data was available
via API (!!!). Just one month ago, they made _some_ of it available. Of
course, most of the data is not useful, they're not collecting some of the
most relevant information that we need - specifically demographic information
by postal code etc..

Can you imagine if Google quality engineers were responsible for the search
and presentation of that data?

Ex: the Ontario Police (OPP) made a deal with the government such that they
had to be the 'highest paid police' in the Province. So a local village,
called 'Shelburne' Ontario, with 2 cops, for some reason of local dispute,
decide to pay their 2 guys massively over the regular wage for a cop. Guess
what: OPP unions take the government to task for insanely high wages.
Meanwhile, there are budget cuts everywhere.

Ex: The Toronto Community housing rakes in $200-400 million dollars a year
from city taxpayers - and almost 50% of that is spent on _overhead_ and
administration! So $100-100M just on _staffing_ and other things. You do
realize if this were a charity, it would be considered 'corrupt'? Moreover,
the idea that governments should be building homes? Why are they doing that?
If we are interested in having low income people live in specific area (one
might ask the question why?) - then why wouldn't we just literally subsidize
housing for them? Let them live where they please in that area and they will
pay landlords/developer just as any other person. Government managers who so
inefficiently spend 50% of their charitable budgets on overhead are somehow
going to be able to hire contracts and manage building more efficiently than
the private sector? No.

Ex: Parole officers in corrections Canada us FAX MACHINES when individuals
need to request their various forms of leave. Why? 'Paper Trail'. So they say
(And its not due to signatures). But they can't grasp using email, or some
kind of portal for this. Because why should they?

What reason do these agencies have to change? Regular voters cannot really
vote on these specific things - mostly we don't know they are happening.

If there is no reason for a system to change - or system incentives are set up
to create more workers and less efficiency - well - that's what will happen.

It's all just bureaucracy absurdism.

Governments are needed for regulation, and they might need to operate specific
things (i.e. roads, the power lines but not power plants, wireless spectrum,
military) and of course Health is always a special case.

Teaching is one of those areas public schools can do well - because it's
almost impossible to screw up: put a well educated, decent person in a room in
front of a class with teaching plans and books and you have a school. It's not
like the school can go 500% over budget. And there aren't really many ways to
improve on it, as I don't believe that competitive bonuses actually improve
teaching quality that much.

But otherwise, no. It's mostly just a massive form of distribution of
surpluses.

------
doggydogs94
I did not understand why Comcast and the other ISPs oppose these initiatives.
After the city loses a ton of money running their own ISP, Comcast (or the ISP
of your choice) will always be ready to pick up the pieces.

~~~
amazon_not
Only it doesn't always work out like that. In Chattanooga the local provider
displaced Comcast as the largest ISP and they are making good money.

Also competition is bad. People might get ideas...

------
JBSay
Government running commercial enterprises. Now that's a recipe for success!
[http://munibroadbandfailures.com/](http://munibroadbandfailures.com/)

~~~
topspin
You should avoid citing that page; it's not credible. A specific instance that
I know of is Sebewaing Light and Power in Michigan. They built out a publicly
owned fiber network that now has over 500 of 1700 residents as customers as of
June and will break even in 2018, earlier than expected, whereas your site
claims there are only 150 customers. That site was created by Taxpayers
Protection Alliance which a Koch front group.

~~~
JBSay
"That site was created by Taxpayers Protection Alliance which a Koch front
group." So what? Ad hominem fallacy?

When the municipal broadbands fail taxpayers are on the hook for million
dollars bail outs.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2014/09/30/munic...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2014/09/30/municipal-
broadband-a-bad-deal-for-taxpayers/#2911b734125f)

------
tooltalk
Knowing so little about the situation in Colorado, why can't they just allow
more competition in the city, instead of running it themselves?

~~~
sanderjd
(I live in Boulder County, which passed something similar.)

As far as I know, competition is allowed, it just doesn't exist. The market
has failed to provide us with broadband options. This vote is not actually for
the government to run it themselves, it's just to override a state-level ban
on municipal broadband. The next step will be for Comcast to lobby against
municipalities actually setting up competing broadband offerings. A few steps
after that and Comcast might actually start responding as if they are
competing in an actual market, for instance by improving their services and/or
lowering their prices. If they clean up their act enough, they might even get
to keep their monopoly. But their reputation is already so bad that it seems
somewhat unlikely at this point.

~~~
mtnsun
The Boulder vote was to override the ban, but the Fort Collins vote was to
allow the city to grab $150M in bonds for fiber deployment. FoCo already voted
to override the ban a few years ago.

~~~
sanderjd
Ah! Sorry, I didn't realize that.

------
daveheq
Yay maybe people will start learning elsewhere that giant corporations' best
interests aren't their customers.

~~~
joshmn
I'm surprised certain groups haven't started labeling/marketing this as
socialism.

------
WoodenChair
We had this in Burlington, VT and now we're selling it off because the city
could not run it effectively (massive debt). Be careful — government is
usually not a great runner of a customer-service focused business. Further, do
you really want government (municipal) or otherwise being your ISP? Having
access to all of your traffic lines?

~~~
Clubber
All of your points are valid, but let me counter argue.

 _Be careful — government is usually not a great runner of a customer-service
focused business._

Maybe, maybe not, but we _know_ Comcast and TWC aren't a great runner of
customer-service focused business.

 _Further, do you really want government (municipal) or otherwise being your
ISP? Having access to all of your traffic lines?_

No, but I'm assuming they already have access without a warrant now.

~~~
WoodenChair
So, you chose the red herrings of the worst possible ISPs. There are great
commercial ISPs too. What's more important is competition, which again is
limited by government (government decides who gets access to build-out lines).

I agree, federal government does have the resources to spy, and uses them very
effectively. Why make it that much easier for our local governments to do that
as well.

~~~
15charlimit
> There are great commercial ISPs too.

Sure, if you're lucky enough to live in an area with "actual" competition,
which is the crux of the entire issue.

The vast, vast majority of us are stuck with 1 or 2 (if we're lucky) options,
both relatively shitty, with one being markedly inferior, and both absurdly
overpriced for the connection you get.

------
klttunets
Good! Internet access is a utility now.

No one should have to buy something they depend on from Comcast.

------
emiliosic
It's another evidence that broadband is an utility like telephony or
electricity

------
dba7dba
F u comcast.

Sorry had to let it out.

------
jamesaepp
Wow they exchanged one monopoly for another monopoly that can use force.
Genius voter population over there.

~~~
hexane360
>another monopoly

Comcast won't cease to exist. Other ISPs can form.

>that can use force

When was the last time your water/electric/gas company "used force" against
public interest?

~~~
conanbatt
> When was the last time your water/electric/gas company "used force" against
> public interest?

Everyday.

Think of it this way, people that don't want to use the service can't opt out
for the tax loss incurred by the state running it.

~~~
hexane360
I don't know about your local utilities, but mine are only government
regulated, not subsidized.

~~~
conanbatt
Utilities have a considerable tax participation in municipal and state level
governments. The infrastructure was definitely built with taxation, and there
is a virtual monopoly of it.

Im not making an opinion about it being the best system or not, because i
haven't looked at this topic at all, but its delusional to think there is no
force in this application.

Just googling shows that for example, Florida has a mandate to be on the grid.

------
bkeroack
What are the odds that the city will run an ISP better than, say, the DMV?

~~~
H1Supreme
In my observations, problems at the DMV are usually because of the public, not
the DMV. People show up to register a car without a title, have missing
paperwork to get a license plate, and are generally unprepared.

The DMV spells out what you need online, but people show up and need every
little thing explained to them. I'm at the counter for 5 minutes, pay my fees,
and walk out the door.

Why was this other goof-ball at the window for 25 minutes? 99% of the time,
because they did something wrong.

~~~
dfee
No need for heavy stats here, but let's look at popular opinion of the DMV. If
there is broad variance in the amount of time it takes to tackle simple issues
(such as paying a fine), then I'd suggest someone look at the process, the
operations, or both. A "human behavior be damned" perspective isn't going to
help anyone.

~~~
moosey
> let's look at popular opinion of the DMV

Let's look at popular opinion of Comcast!

In all seriousness, we are exiting (I hope) a time of anti-government fervor
where no matter what the government did (unless it's the police and military)
it was by default assumed to be done poorly. I no longer think this is the
case, and there is a ton of stuff that our government does extremely well.

------
cavisne
Has any city / company tried to build such a network since docsis 3.1 became
available? Google seems to have basically given up. This will likely be a
disaster for any city that tries, Comcast will just undercut them with higher
speeds than any consumer will notice a difference. And taxpayers will be left
with a huge bill.

~~~
sounds
DOCSIS 3.1 is impressive, but it's really the HFC infrastructure that even
remotely threatens a FTTx build.

The comments far and wide (except as Ajit sees fit to hide) show a new carrier
could not even be competitive at DOCSIS 3.1 levels, and still win.

Comcast has found such impressive execration that the "speed wars" only matter
a little bit. It's just that Comcast has neglected their networks for so long
that even at the most basic level, i.e. speeds, they regularly fail the
previous administration's metric for "high speed internet" at peak times --
you know, the times when people actually use their internet.

