Honestly Municipal Broadband should be built out as an Open Access Network[0].
They're currently facing a lot of lobbying from the existing broadband monopolies because they're building direct competition to them, this is an unnecessary fight. Particularly when their ultimate goal is just to get fast high quality internet.
Build it as an OAN instead and let CenturyLink, Comcast, Charter, etc, lease it. But also let new smaller players lease it too. Instead of fighting the big guys, get them onboard with this plan.
The big guys won't LOVE it because they still lose their monopolistic stranglehold, but at least you aren't using public revenue to push them out of the market. You're using public revenue to create a road that any business can use for an equal fee.
In any regard your local citizens get: Faster internet, more choice of ISPs, and perhaps lower prices due to more competition. Let citizens be the "king maker" by choosing their own ISP.
> The big guys won't LOVE it because they still lose their monopolistic stranglehold, but at least you aren't using public revenue to push them out of the market. You're using public revenue to create a road that any business can use for an equal fee.
I really can't imagine the response from larger incumbents being any different if this sort of format were being proposed. Why accept any competition at all when you can have none or almost none?
My understanding is that in Utah they did that with Utopia and the lobbyists put some pretty big roadblock in it (and refused to use it). So I don't think it's that simple.
I'm not super knowledgeable in the field, but it's also my understanding that it's much, much harder to do TV + Internet, while just Internet is significantly easier. A lot of the shady deals with municipalities and regulations involve the TV part of things.
I'd personally be happy with just one hassle-free, super fast pipe just for the internet, relying on Netflix, Youtube, Hulu, Amazon, Twitch, Crunchyroll, etc for all of my TV needs (that's what I do right now already). But it seems that the majority is not willing to give up cable TV entirely, and that limits the target audience.
Why not just let citizens use it for a standard fee, just like a regular road? (In the case of roads, the fee is gas taxes, registration fees, and sometimes car property tax in addition to the general fund.)
Why should the businesses get preferable treatment to individuals or citizens?
That was discussed as one model. I suspect the city is not "against" such a model, but doesn't want to tie the success of the rollout to private providers. Fort Collins already got burned by Axia backing out of talks about a contracted model.
Once you assume the city is both building the fiber and providing services over the fiber, I'm not sure if also making it an OAN makes sense anymore?
Why would you let them in? The point is to fight so you won't have to deal with them in any shape or form and any profit that will come of this endeavour will all go to the municipal coffers.
That sounds kind of like how it works in Washington. Public utility districts can "construct, purchase, acquire, develop, finance, lease, license, handle, provide, add to, contract for, interconnect, alter, improve, repair, operate, and maintain any telecommunications facilities within or without the district's limits", but only for their own telecommunications needs or for "the provision of wholesale telecommunications services within the district and by contract with another public utility district".
Except that nationalization is part of the plan, under the guise of "affordable municipal broadband". A government owned near-monopoly replacing a private one.
Longmont, CO also has municipal (gigabit) broadband. At the first attempt, telecoms spent $200,000 to stifle the measure. In 2011 it was tried again, and despite $400,000 in spending by telecoms the measure passed. [0]
Now in Fort Collins, the cable lobby outspent the city $900,000 to $15,000 on campaigning and still lost. [TFA]
I wonder if anti-municipal campaign spending by the telecoms will continue to increase, and just how far they will go before cutting their losses and trying to defeat these plans some other way.
I'm reading this as a side-effect of just how absolutely hated broadband companies like Comcast and Verizon are. They've spent decades ignoring consumers, doing exactly what they don't want, providing shoddy service, providing shoddy support, doing absolutely fuck all other than continuously raking in money.
Now they want us to help them by stomping out government competition? Fat chance. They'll just have to do what they did with net neutrality: spend years and years planting people in agencies and political positions to push their self-interests. I hope they do and I hope it backfires.
I doubt they can blow a million on lobbying in every city that starts talking about municipal broadband, so I'm guessing if this trend continues they're going to switch focus to attempting to outlaw it entirely. Certainly possible, but it seems like a harder target than dismantling net neutrality.
It's not clear to me from that USA Today article... what the cable lobbies spending that money on? Advertising aimed at residents? What do those ads look like? Or is it just "lobbying" (bribing) the local officials?
So here in Maryland, the state and county governments are building a fiber network to plug gaps in the state's coverage (most populated areas of the state have competition between fiber and high-speed cable). It's a great idea. That said, requirements like these make me nervous:
> > The city intends to provide gigabit service for $70 a month or less and a cheaper Internet tier. Underground wiring for improved reliability and "universal coverage" are two of the key goals listed in the measure.
> Building a citywide network is a lengthy process—the city says its goal is to be done in "less than five years."
Contrast with how Stockholm built its network: https://www.stokab.se/Documents/Stockholms%20Stokab%20-%20A%.... A company was created by the city to own the dark fiber. The company was not given any build-out directive, and it took 18 years to cover 90% of the city, building out in a demand-driven fashion. The upside is that the approach is sustainable. Stockholm's utility has never received public money, isn't subsidized by a utility monopoly, and operates at a profit. It doesn't depend on changing political moods or public priorities.
Freedom from the municipal government is a big advantage. Look at what's happening right now with DC's and New York's subway systems. Once very good, they've been overcome by public-sector mismanagement, and are facing enormous maintenance and upgrade backlogs. The fact that this is run by the power company isn't all that comforting. Municipal governments have enormous influence over local power companies, and our electrical grid is in pretty poor shape too.
My grandmother's rural Minnesota town laid fiber as part of the process of replacing the roads in the town. This greatly reduced the installation costs since they were able to basically sneak in halfway through the road repair to install the conduits.
It seemed pretty smart and it got her some cheap high speed Internet/TV/Phone through a third party ISP. The only weirdness is that the company doesn't appear to have a website, so she can order gigabit internet but has to call them up on the phone to get it.
If NYC subway was privately owned by a (natural) monopoly, and profitable because the population critically depends on it and pays their fare, why would a private company upgrade it?
> The company was not given any build-out directive, and it took 18 years to cover 90% of the city, building out in a demand-driven fashion.
A local telco here was wanting to take this approach to provide fiber internet, proposed when the city was wanting to start a municipal broadband project. Their plan was to build out high demand areas first, then expand from there to lower income/more sparse areas. They were raked over the coals as "picking and choosing" who would get internet service.
Isn't the Stockholm fiber company you mentioned an inherent monopoly, then? Assuming that they're the ISP as well? Or can independent ISPs run their service on the fiber owned by this company?
The important question: How much money was it worth to Comcast?
They have a population of ~136k, comprising 60,503 households. If each currently pays $100/mo for a cable bundle and all abandon them for fiber (a gross over-estimate), that is $72.6 million per year of lost revenue to Comcast.
It is, however, $72.6 million of returned value, or something more than about 10% of the $620M/year total city budget. If my town voted to net-reduce its total burden to me by 10% or so, that would be very appealing. If they only returned half of that, it would still be substantial.
If they dispensed with the "evil" of the regular garbage "fees" and price hikes that modern cable monopolies love, it would be worth 100% of the price.
Each subscriber is worth $1000-$1500 by traditional accounting methods. The number of active accounts could be substantially less than 60k though. Alameda CA is a similar sized city and they had ~15k subscribers when they sold the municipal cable and internet to Comcast for $17 million.
These municipalities are the unsung heroes fighting the good fight. True Champions. I hope it is the catalytic butterfly that ends the telecoms' monopoly and abuse.
I'm really glad to see a public option. I still want companies to have the option to compete, but a public option, IMO, is the best bet against the monopolies.
I'm from Burlington, Vermont. We had municipal fiber. Great speed and prices and amazing customer service.
Unfortunately, due to mismanagement and some shady borrowing from the city, the utility was sold last month as mandated in the settlement of a suit by Citibank, marking the end of our experiment with municipal broadband.
Fort Collins is 4x the size of Burlington. Hopefully the larger customer base means they'll be able to avoid some of the financial struggles that we faced.
I hope I'm being overly-suspicious, but I always wonder: Who are they going to buy transit from? An ISP they just denied a profitable monopoly? It would be the simplest thing in the world, it seems to me, for the ISPs in the region to refuse to sell bandwidth to the city that just beat them.
I'm not too savvy on this stuff, so correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't they build out to the nearest internet exchange point? I thought those were typically open for anybody to hook up to.
But what can people do in non-compete areas? Places where legislation already exists preventing municipalities from doing just what Ft. Collins has done?
It's surprisingly feasible (in some areas) to start an ISP on your own using wireless equipment. I've been working with companies doing that for about 15 years and recently started writing http://startyourownisp.com to help people interested in getting started.
Move out of Tennessee, Virginia, etc? The municipal broadband bans are mostly in southern states you might want to leave for other reasons. (If you live in Virginia--Maryland is just across the border, and we're better in every conceivable way.)
As a small gesture, you can walk over to your neighbor's place, knock on the door, and offer to split the internet bill in exchange for the Wifi password. Sure, the service will still suck, but it already did, and this way you will pay half as much for it.
Eliminating legislation against municipal broadband is certainly a good thing. But I'm curious why some enterprising residents haven't created a company to do what a Public Open Access Network would do: build out the infrastructure, and lease it to anyone wanting to provide internet service to the covered area.
There's nothing requiring only the municipalities themselves to do that, right?
Municipal broadband only goes so far in terms of protecting citizens from throttling, am i right? If you need to access a website hosted on a server outside your municipal broadband network, will those packets be throttled as they pass through various datacenters controlled by monopoly ISPs?
internet should use the water model. You can get a decent internet speed provided by the state just like tap water and if you need a faster internet, you can pay as you go just like you'd buy bottled water. What's your opinion?
This is a bad bad idea. We have plenty of Latin American examples showing how this ends. A very inefficient company with many employees, a powerful trade union and many customers without service. I know, it feels good to have these services as public, but at the end of the day it is not a better service, and it gets more expensive with time. Good luck though.
[+] [-] Someone1234|8 years ago|reply
They're currently facing a lot of lobbying from the existing broadband monopolies because they're building direct competition to them, this is an unnecessary fight. Particularly when their ultimate goal is just to get fast high quality internet.
Build it as an OAN instead and let CenturyLink, Comcast, Charter, etc, lease it. But also let new smaller players lease it too. Instead of fighting the big guys, get them onboard with this plan.
The big guys won't LOVE it because they still lose their monopolistic stranglehold, but at least you aren't using public revenue to push them out of the market. You're using public revenue to create a road that any business can use for an equal fee.
In any regard your local citizens get: Faster internet, more choice of ISPs, and perhaps lower prices due to more competition. Let citizens be the "king maker" by choosing their own ISP.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-access_network
[+] [-] cdubzzz|8 years ago|reply
I really can't imagine the response from larger incumbents being any different if this sort of format were being proposed. Why accept any competition at all when you can have none or almost none?
[+] [-] shados|8 years ago|reply
I'm not super knowledgeable in the field, but it's also my understanding that it's much, much harder to do TV + Internet, while just Internet is significantly easier. A lot of the shady deals with municipalities and regulations involve the TV part of things.
I'd personally be happy with just one hassle-free, super fast pipe just for the internet, relying on Netflix, Youtube, Hulu, Amazon, Twitch, Crunchyroll, etc for all of my TV needs (that's what I do right now already). But it seems that the majority is not willing to give up cable TV entirely, and that limits the target audience.
[+] [-] Robotbeat|8 years ago|reply
Why should the businesses get preferable treatment to individuals or citizens?
[+] [-] sliverstorm|8 years ago|reply
Once you assume the city is both building the fiber and providing services over the fiber, I'm not sure if also making it an OAN makes sense anymore?
[+] [-] rtkwe|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zouhair|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tzs|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guelo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fortythirteen|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samfriedman|8 years ago|reply
Now in Fort Collins, the cable lobby outspent the city $900,000 to $15,000 on campaigning and still lost. [TFA]
I wonder if anti-municipal campaign spending by the telecoms will continue to increase, and just how far they will go before cutting their losses and trying to defeat these plans some other way.
[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2014/11/19/longmo...
[+] [-] jchw|8 years ago|reply
Now they want us to help them by stomping out government competition? Fat chance. They'll just have to do what they did with net neutrality: spend years and years planting people in agencies and political positions to push their self-interests. I hope they do and I hope it backfires.
I doubt they can blow a million on lobbying in every city that starts talking about municipal broadband, so I'm guessing if this trend continues they're going to switch focus to attempting to outlaw it entirely. Certainly possible, but it seems like a harder target than dismantling net neutrality.
[+] [-] diebir|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] klondike_|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] blakesterz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rayiner|8 years ago|reply
> > The city intends to provide gigabit service for $70 a month or less and a cheaper Internet tier. Underground wiring for improved reliability and "universal coverage" are two of the key goals listed in the measure.
> Building a citywide network is a lengthy process—the city says its goal is to be done in "less than five years."
Contrast with how Stockholm built its network: https://www.stokab.se/Documents/Stockholms%20Stokab%20-%20A%.... A company was created by the city to own the dark fiber. The company was not given any build-out directive, and it took 18 years to cover 90% of the city, building out in a demand-driven fashion. The upside is that the approach is sustainable. Stockholm's utility has never received public money, isn't subsidized by a utility monopoly, and operates at a profit. It doesn't depend on changing political moods or public priorities.
Freedom from the municipal government is a big advantage. Look at what's happening right now with DC's and New York's subway systems. Once very good, they've been overcome by public-sector mismanagement, and are facing enormous maintenance and upgrade backlogs. The fact that this is run by the power company isn't all that comforting. Municipal governments have enormous influence over local power companies, and our electrical grid is in pretty poor shape too.
[+] [-] jandrese|8 years ago|reply
It seemed pretty smart and it got her some cheap high speed Internet/TV/Phone through a third party ISP. The only weirdness is that the company doesn't appear to have a website, so she can order gigabit internet but has to call them up on the phone to get it.
[+] [-] gowld|8 years ago|reply
CA electricity was privatized, and we got Enron.
[+] [-] ams6110|8 years ago|reply
A local telco here was wanting to take this approach to provide fiber internet, proposed when the city was wanting to start a municipal broadband project. Their plan was to build out high demand areas first, then expand from there to lower income/more sparse areas. They were raked over the coals as "picking and choosing" who would get internet service.
[+] [-] shijie|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MechEStudent|8 years ago|reply
They have a population of ~136k, comprising 60,503 households. If each currently pays $100/mo for a cable bundle and all abandon them for fiber (a gross over-estimate), that is $72.6 million per year of lost revenue to Comcast.
It is, however, $72.6 million of returned value, or something more than about 10% of the $620M/year total city budget. If my town voted to net-reduce its total burden to me by 10% or so, that would be very appealing. If they only returned half of that, it would still be substantial.
If they dispensed with the "evil" of the regular garbage "fees" and price hikes that modern cable monopolies love, it would be worth 100% of the price.
[+] [-] gnopgnip|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matt_the_bass|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0xf8|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] danschumann|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mparr4|8 years ago|reply
I'm from Burlington, Vermont. We had municipal fiber. Great speed and prices and amazing customer service.
Unfortunately, due to mismanagement and some shady borrowing from the city, the utility was sold last month as mandated in the settlement of a suit by Citibank, marking the end of our experiment with municipal broadband.
Fort Collins is 4x the size of Burlington. Hopefully the larger customer base means they'll be able to avoid some of the financial struggles that we faced.
[+] [-] rch|8 years ago|reply
https://www-static.bouldercolorado.gov/docs/Study_Session_Bo...
[+] [-] ryannevius|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] burkemw3|8 years ago|reply
[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15926613
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[+] [-] delinka|8 years ago|reply
There's nothing requiring only the municipalities themselves to do that, right?
[+] [-] aaronchall|8 years ago|reply
Is the future of Internet Service Providing going to be a service of local governments?
What about co-ops?
[+] [-] deevolution|8 years ago|reply
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