Competition doesn't work so well for infrastructure because it's both essential and it has a high physical barrier to entry. Private corporations exist to increase profit, and that means paying employees less and lowering consumer value. Municipal broadband is making citizens happier than Comcast, Time Warner, etc.
90% of people do not want better quality internet? I think even in our technophobic culture, people want to be able to watch videos of cats with greater speed and reliability.
Are you dissatisfied with the municipal monopolies that provide you electricity, water and sewage? Does water and power flow 24x7 (subject to occasional blips)? Is your garbage picked up regularly? Are you being charged obscene rates relative to cost for them?
This is just completely ignorant. Private entities provide electricity and garbage cleanups and many other essential services. They're contracted by the government in the same manner that Comcast wins contracts from the local government.
Just a note, but not all areas in the country have monopoly utilities. There are in fact quite a few with required competition, much like the throttled pipe for internet argument.
Ex: In Georgia if you have a gas line to your house you can purchase gas from any gas provider in the state. This style of legislation is probably more inline with what the constituents want than the municipally owned solution or the single provider solution.
Utilities such as electricity, sewage, and water are natural monopolies; mainly due to the significant capital costs involved with each, a sole competitor represents the most efficient long-run production costs. Though the capital costs are lower compared to the others you listed, most economists would also consider garbage collection to be a natural monopoly.
In each case, additional competitors would increase average total costs for services by lowering economies of scale. But there's a far more significant characteristic: there's no differentiation between services. Combined with their being natural monopolies, you have the primary reasons for their status as government-granted monopolies.
Broadband services, on the other hand, have seen an explosion in product differentiation. We're using one word, but what we're actually referring to are a variety of separate services with significant differences (speed, quality, manner of delivery, etc.) that offer different degrees of utility relative to each other. Whether a municipality grants exclusive or even just preferential rights to a provider, the end result is that the service provided is isolated from competitive forces outside the service region.
Even if Google Fiber is in the next town over and offering an indisputably better quality service (such as endless speed and a free magical Genie with every install, wishes included), it has no consequence on the service available in your town.
That's one of the sticking points when you're dealing with coercive monopolies. When you're talking about other utilities, the negative consequences of that coercion (in an economic sense and not the pejorative) pale by comparison to the efficiencies stemming from lower production costs. The analysis for broadband, however, isn't nearly as static.
Municipal broadband certainly isn't a silver-bullet. Some have knocked their rollouts out of the park; others have bungled them. But dx4100 is missing the point by comparing municipal broadband to private firms. The status quo doesn't consist of competitive markets; it's a collection of non-contestable markets. When entry to the field is effectively closed with no competitive forces, municipal broadband and other alternative ideas represent some of the only real options available to us.
In other words, what a sad little fucked up situation we have on our hands.
What's important is that this fiber infrastructure will compete directly against Comcast, and Comcast is working hard to eliminate or at least hamper that potential competition in order to maintain the status quo of their oligopoly.
It is an incredibly bad thing for the City for Comcast to be doing this, because it's not in the Public's interest. Increased competition, however, is in the Public's interest.
Considering it doesn't exist yet, you cannot really call it a monopoly. Thanks for confirming that you consider Comcast one though.
> even though time and time again government does a piss-poor job when given control.
You are correct there, the government's control over internet service has enabled a few mammoth carriers to become monopoly's of their realm. Be it for 'national security' interests like AT&T or be it piles of lobbyist money from Comcast.
The end result is no competition amongst peers. The only thing coming close would be companies that lease off of Comcast trying to sell packages at a lower cost. This of course doesn't last long since AT&T Comcast and others worked out exactly how to kill leased operators at will subsidizing rates in areas leasers operate to remove any profit potential from the competition that was forced to buy from Comcast anyways.
But complain about an operator that doesn't exist yet like it is a monopoly. Blame them for things they have not done yet. Try to push forward the fantasy that Comcast has a quality of service beyond destroying other quality services.
