Judge Tosses Telco Suit Over City-Owned Network

tsa sends along news of the city of Monticello, Minnesota, which was sued by their local telco, Bridgewater Telephone Company, because the city chose to build a fiber optics network of their own. The judge dismissed their complaint of competition by a governmental organization. Quoting: "The judge's ruling is noteworthy for two things: (1) the judge's complete dismissal of Bridgewater Telephone Company's complaint and (2) his obvious anger at the underfunding of Minnesota's state courts. Indeed, the longest footnote in the opinion is an extended jeremiad about how much work judges are under and why it took so long to decide this case."

Comments

Costly Waste of Time

[mfh]

IANAL, but the second part is a warning to TDS against trying to waste more court time. The judge is saying that he's busy enough and therefore if TDS tries to revisit this, it would be another costly loss.

TDS lost a lot of money going after the city. They also lost a lot of revenue because they are now going to try and compete with the city (lol). And they lost the support of their community, who knows they sued the city for unwarranted tax dollars, and taxpayers love bailouts.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[electrictroy]

Cry me a river.

They lost money.

Oh well! UPS and FedEx lose money every day competing against the government's postal service, and yet they both seem to be doing quite well. Instead of trying to use government to give Bridgewater Telephone a guaranteed monopoly, maybe they should take a page from UPS/FedEx and learn to compete.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[jgtg32a]

We can't have any competition that may actually lead to adequate service

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[jav1231]

Exactly. Now they're saying, "Well now the town will have 2 networks!" Yeah, you have to COMPETE now Asshat! WTF do these people come from?

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[SneakyMishkin]

You had better take a look at this http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2007/06/13/canadapostups.html. UPS didn't WANT to compete, they wanted to sue. Just like everyone else.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[Probie]

had it to easy for two long!

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[91degrees]

Costly? They got one of their staff legal team to draft a complaint to tie them up in court for a while. TDS never wanted to win. Just to slow the city down.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[jgtg32a]

Only on /. would sarcasm be marked as Insightful

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[JosKarith]

There really needs to be a robust system to punish people/companies that file obvious "nuisance lawsuits". The current system simply doesn't work at all.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[Gewalt]

This was no waste of money.

They didn't "lose" money on the lawsuit. They "made an investment". The whole point of the lawsuit was to give them a head-start in the competition against the city. They just wanted to tie the cities coffers so they could start their fiber roll-out before the city did. They succeeded in this goal, so their "investment" paid off big time for them.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[cHiphead]

There is, but there's essentially nothing you can do about it, its a flaw in the system that can't be fixed short of catapulting lawyers that ignore ethics requirements into outer space.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[FireStormZ]

"This, of course, assumes that the government can do a better job with its limited knowledge, expertise, and equipment."

Its not hard today to throw a rock and hit an able network/systems admin or three and many good ones who live locally might be willing to take a slight pay cut to avoid the commute into MSP or just for the fact a govt job is a much less stressful place than private industry.

"I find it hard to imagine that running fiber around is cheaper, but it must mean that their city buildings are right next door to each other or on the same block."

Cheaper than what? its probably slightly cheaper for them than the teleco's (after all they can way speed up their own permit process). And they seem to be reasonably densely populated (and small) for such a move

Area
  - Total 6.2 sq mi (16.1 km)

Population (2000)
  - Total 11,414
  - Density 1,264.6/sq mi (488.3/km)

Actually its pretty densely populated (and small)

--

"There are few things that I have experienced the government doing better than a competitive private sector."

I generally agree with this but when a government *wants* to do something like this I prefer its a local government and not the state or federal.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

Do you really consider it competition when the government can arbitrarily cripple your business as need be?

And what if I don't like either service. Where's the 3rd company? Oh, that's right, companies aren't allowed to lay their own fiber - government restriction. You call this competition?

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[Altus]

Have they started rolling out fiber?

Because I know if I were a big wig in this city and this company was stopping this project, I would make a point of having their permit applications for fiber installation conveniently "lost" behind various pieces of office furniture.

If this gave the telco an opportunity to get ahead its only because the city didn't play hardball.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[Locklin]

It's called loser-pays. We have it up here in Canada, that and less lawsuits.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[Altus]

Not much different from what the telco is trying to do with the courts. They stopped the government from providing a service to its citizens. A service that, presumably, the citizens want.

Its the Telco that is clearly in the wrong here.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[the_B0fh]

*sigh* YOU just made me lose some mod points. But nevermind. Since 1970s, Memphis Light Gas and Water has been running power cables with FIBER inside. In other words, the entire city is full of dark fiber. How much extra did it cost to run the fiber? Not that much, just the incremental cost over what it cost to have power lines that were empty in the middle, instead of being filled with fiber.

What is to stop this city from doing the same thing? It probably already did that, and that is why it feels that it can provide fiber to the house.

Just because *YOU* don't have experience does not mean that your experience is right. People working in government agencies do not start their day thinking how they can be inefficient for you.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[mullens101]

This from someone who probably has decent internet service. I live at the end of a DSL run, cannot get cable, cannot get WiMax ... 512K DSL is the fastest I can get. I've called many communications providers and always get "Sorry, we have no intentions of improving/offering services in your area". No competition = no incentive to do anything better. I'm typically against gov't competition but in areas where there is a one provider monopoly (this covers ALOT of rural america), the consumer is screwed by this policy.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[mweather]

People working in government agencies do not start their day thinking how they can be inefficient for you.

Some things come naturally.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[mweather]

If the government got out of the business of providing a poor, unprofitable service, businesses with an interest in profit could take over and make them profitable, more efficient, and more reliable.

More likely private industry would take over the profitable routes dropping all the unprofitable ones, making the service much worse than it already is.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[mullens101]

OK, I'll bite here ...

If the demand is high enough

Dude, America has one hell of a lot of rural areas where demand does not meet financial justification. This is exactly why the gov't passed a bill a few years ago to provide something like $200 million in incentives to have telecos service rural areas. The gov't recognized the criticality of decent internet service for US competition in world markets and therefore provided great financial benefits for telecos to run broadband to rural areas. The telecos took the cash and ran. Why is it OK for the telecos to take cash dedicated to a specific cause and screw the taxpayers but it's evil for the government to say "if you don't do it, we will"? There are some cases (and in this case, MANY very compelling cases) where the government is completely justified in offering services to force competition where none exists today and none is likely in the foreseeable future. If this teleco was the only decent game in town, they might wake up and realize that they are not immune from competition.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[Capt James McCarthy]

And what if I don't like either service. Where's the 3rd company? Oh, that's right, companies aren't allowed to lay their own fiber - government restriction. You call this competition?

I wouldn't say the government can prevent usage of easements for cabling. But they sure can make it a pain in the ass for the company. However, should they prevent usage of the easements, that could be fought in court. So to use easements, you should have some cash in the bank.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[gsgriffin]

Now I think we're heading down a whole new road. This expands the question as to how much you want the government doing for us. Do you want them to provide internet, and then phone, and then cable, and then power, and then the newspaper, and then what? Just because they used tax dollars to put in an infrastructure? Shouldn't we then get he service for free or next to free (just cost of maintenance? That would make them too competitive over the free market which would have to go out-of-pocket to build infrastructure. I guess I'm of the other political view that says government should only govern and not provide everything for a community.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[geekoid]

Why would the government arbitrarily cripple a business? Besides the fact that if they did, they would be sued.

COmpanies lay their own fiber all the time. Yes there are government rule regaurding this, but considering they need to rip up roaads, dig through property, and use the underground infrastruture that makes sense.

BTW, the 'Government' needs permission to do this as well.

I mean, really. How do you think the first company got fiber in the first place?

Yes, this is competition. And no one has to guarantee you a service the meets some standard you want...except government agencies.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[geekoid]

Most government agencies are not inefficient at all, and have less waste then private industries.

A bureaucracy is very good at getting complex things done well.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[geekoid]

Yes, and the cost to send mail would go through the roof.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[jahudabudy]

Why should I, or any company, be allowed to stick fiber optic cable in the ground on property that isn't mine? You seem to be saying that communities, as represented (ideally) by their government, shouldn't be allowed to provide themselves broadband service, but rather are obligated to allow private companies to use the community's property to provide that service. That was the model in many places, and communities are discovering they aren't getting good value for the privileges they allowed these private companies.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[Emperor Zombie]

two long what?

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Research the rural electrification project and ATT's subsidies for universal service. Then look at the bitching over Greyhound dropping routes that are both unprofitable and the only ones touching some small towns.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[skulgnome]

Well, that's the market for you. The government represents the people. The people should be an equal actor in the marketplace, on the same line as a huge ugly telco.

I don't see anything wrong with that. It's called democracy and a free market (long as the telco isn't charged, you know, customs fees).

Or would you rather have a stagnant one-pony market, where the best available Internet connection is something like a 128 kbit/s ISDN that you pay per-minute _and_ per-megabyte charges for? Because that's what you get in a regional monopoly. Competition from the local government is still competition, and oftentimes it works quite well. Of course the telcos will scream red menace, but then again who wouldn't -- no incumbent likes having to do better and bilk their customers less for better service.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[the_arrow]

I ask, like the grand parent, why would the government do this? What would make them the most money: run this all by themselves (uncluding ISP services); Or rent out the bandwidth in the fibers to whatever company wants to use it? The second alternative have been used here in Sweden with great success.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[quacking duck]

Hardly the first time American interests have abused NAFTA to the detriment of Canadians.

Other examples: softwood lumber, taking water from the Great Lakes, crippling our attempts to enforce environmental standards, and my current favourite... American private health providers arguing our public health system violates NAFTA.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[timothy]

"Why would the government arbitrarily cripple a business?"
Why not ask this guy? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysander_Spooner (Well, besides that he's dead, I mean.)

The government arbitrarily cripples all kinds of businesses -- medical marijuana comes to mind. So does prostitution.

Of course, they wouldn't call it "arbitrary" -- always, there's a really good *reason* (from the point of view of the government) why they do the crippling. So perhaps we've arrived at the No True Scotsman impasse :)

Fiber is not the mail, I realize, but there's no way to have a govt-run / subdidized / protectulated* industry without impinging on the freedom of others to engage in a free and fair marketplace, because the ideas of free and fair are suddenly out the window. (Ask an American home schooling parent how he enjoys subsidizing the government schools of this country.)

"Besides the fact that if they did, they would be sued."
You can sue government entities only under certain circumstances, and even then it's a big pain.

timothy

* Correct, that is not a real word.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[Skye16]

Sweet, time to get that new "community swimming pool", which I will create by razing my neighbor's house, building it on his property, and then charge admittance to.

This is going to be awesome. I never liked his house anyway, and chicks in bikinis > fat man in sweats any day.

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[socz]

I think you got a lot of flac for several reasons. This isn't an easy topic to figure out.

On one side we want any company to be able to lay down their own line as to help competition and bring prices down for the consumer.

While possible, there are many governing bodies there to protect other's line and the government's property as well as your well being. Something no one is going to object to.

While I worked testing fiber lines in Los Angeles, it was a real treat to learn about the actual infrastructure and laws of the land. The lines I worked on were from huntington park to Down Town Level 3 (head terminals). Some parts of fiber had to be replaced so I was present when some of that work was done.

The sewers here aren't like the one's the ninja turtles use. They have man hole covers for access and vary in size and depth. Although deep and used for many purposes, telco cables are run high to protect from water or other possible damage.

So while other companies adding their cable to the existing infrastructure may sound easy, it's actually pretty difficult. You need to drill new "tunnels" from point to point while taking care not to damage existing tunnels or cables (in my case fiber trunks).

The city on the other hand would have the best and easiest access to all that is necessary. As my company was a 3rd or 4th generation hand me down receiver of the contract. It's REALLY scary if you ask me, that the van we worked out of had 3 magnetic signs that you slap on the side depending on what job you're doing!

Another thing to take into consideration are the terminals. Where do you put them? One was located in an unusable storage area. It was pretty big inside, but getting inside was very difficult because the door was small and you had to turn to the left immediately. I don't know how they got the racks in there (had to be in pieces). And in an area such as LA there isn't a whole lot of free space.

So any company who is willing to pay for all of this and become approved to do so has to find more space for their terminals.

Ideally, it is best to have several companies providing similar services because we benefit and technologies and approaches to problems are figured out much faster. But it can't be at break neck speed nor completely controlled by the gov't either.

Verizon has been getting a lot of crap over them not replacing or upgrading worn out copper systems. In rural areas where the cost is much more than they'll recover in fees they just ignore customers.

Hopefully wireless will become the reality and provide sufficient bandwitdh for inet AND VoIP. Then you could possibly have much much more competition!

P.S. I think i wrote too much :P

Re:Costly Waste of Time

[davester666]

"What prompted this city to provide a network?"

This is the part that is missing from the summary.

YEARS AGO, the city asked Bridgewater to provide internet access to it's citizens. Bridgewater SAID NO. (most likely because it did a financial analysis and felt it wouldn't make enough money ).

AFTER Bridgewater declined to provide this service, the city then looked at other options for it's citizens to get access to the internet.

The city studied the problem, and came to the conclusion that it could install the infrastructure and provide really fast access to the internet at a reasonable monthly rate itself.
The city held a referendum, and the citizens voted for the plan to proceed.
It took out a bond to pay for installing the infrastructure.

It was only when the city was about to break ground, that Bridgewater did a 180, by suing the city to delay the installation, rushing it's trucks there to start install their own Fibre, and saying that the city would unfairly compete with them.

This lawsuit is for two reasons:
-to try to keep small rural cities from providing internet access themselves, so Bridgewater can eventually expand to those cities, if Bridgewater ever decides to
-to prevent the foothold of a small rural city providing internet access at a reasonable rate, so other small cities, where Bridgewater is gouging for crappy internet access, don't get the idea of doing it themselves.

While the economy fails, we still have grammar

[Dystopian Rebel]

A jeremiad is by definition an "extended critique".

May the Grammar Nazis have mercy on you.

Government could have fought back

[MobyDisk]

I imagine that the telco must have had to get permits to lay their own fiber. The government could have blocked those requests until the result of the case was decided, thus cancelling-out the telco's attempt to delay the government and get a head start. I wonder why this didn't happen?

Re:Government could have fought back

[Anonymous Coward]

Because blocking legitimate requests for development is generally not allowed. I know California has strict time limits for certain actions, and if no action is taken within a given period, there is the possibility for legal repercussions.

In other words, a jurisdiction can't just say "we don't like it, go away" or "wait until we have what we want." There have to be actual grounds to put something on hold, or even more to deny a project all-together.

Re:Government could have fought back

[hey!]

Which would actually support the plaintiff's assertion that the government is abusing its regulatory powers to secure an unfair competitive advantage.

Re:Government could have fought back

[michrech]

Probably because there was no reason to deny them the permits they needed. To do so would have been a corrupt, let alone shitty, thing to do.

I don't know about the rest of the world, however, if I were a city entity involved in a lawsuit with a telco company, I'm going to do everything in my power to be seen as treating people (especially those suing me) as fairly as possible. You don't want to get a pissed off judge any ammunition to use in his/her making an example of you. That, and it's just the right thing to do, and I wish more people felt that way.

Re:Government could have fought back

[afidel]

Here's justification for you: The soliciting party is engaged in a lawsuit against the city over a similar plan by the city, until the lawsuit is concluded the city is unsure of how they will move forward with their deployment and if the soliciting parties proposal will interfere with the cities plans. Once the lawsuit is concluded the city will finalize their plans and evaluate the soliciting parties request for permission to dig, the city will provide a detailed plan to the soliciting party no later than 90 days after the conclusion of the lawsuit.

Re:Government could have fought back

[Fishead]

How's it working out for you having your government take a "hands off" approach to your banks? (assuming you are an American).

Ted Rogers was on CBC the other day, and made a comment about how when he was sitting on a board of a bank, there was one bank regulator (govt official) for every member of the bank at all the bank meetings. He said he didn't understand the need for the government oversight until now.

My personal belief is that the government (the people, remember) should own ALL the infrastructure and license it to private service providers. I know it isn't perfect, but I feel it is the best. Businesses have one goal, making a profit. Governments have (or should have) one goal, providing a service to the constituents.

That's what I like about Canada. Now if we can only just elect a majourity government so we can get something done instead of just arguing...

Re:Government could have fought back

[mullens101]

Invisible Pink Unicorn ... Get a clue on what rural America is like. Rail all you want against government competition but realize that probably most geographic area of the US has little to no competition in telecom. As of May, we were 17th in the world for Broadband penetration ... this is precisely because there is NO competition in most areas. It was fine for the government to interfere when the interference was to provide hundreds of millions in incentives for servicing rural areas, but holding the providers to actually using the money as intended or forcing competition upon them is a no no? Your arguments would hold up if there actually was competition in all areas. Again ... talk to me about this when you live in a rural area and can only get shitty service from a low speed "high speed" service ... max out at 512K DSL and realize that no other provider has any intention of servicing your area and therefore the current provider has no intention of upgrading you ... then tell me how great no competition at all is.

Re:Government could have fought back

[Danse]

How's it working out for you having your government take a "hands off" approach to your banks? (assuming you are an American).

Clue yourself in. The subprime crisis was caused by government intervention, not by any "hands off" approach. Just because people can co-opt the word "deregulation" for their own purposes doesn't mean any less regulation is occurring. Check out this excellent article written 8 years ago that predicted the whole thing, down to the huge dollar amount:

The Trillion-Dollar Bank Shakedown That Bodes Ill for Cities

Right. A single cause for a multi-trillion dollar meltdown. If only it were that simple. Rather than try to pin the whole thing on the CRA, perhaps you might also want to look into the Commodity Futures Modernization Act as well, which deregulated the type of insurance (credit default swaps) that banks were using to allow themselves to make the insane loans they were making. The CRA may have been misguided and caused some more risky loans to be made, but it certainly didn't, on its own, lead to lenders giving large home loans to people with no evidence at all that they could pay it back. Nor did it allow for the obfuscation of the value of these loans through the creation of these ridiculous securities, which is one of the main causes of all of the problems. Nobody knows the true value of these things. That causes panic.

By deregulating credit default swaps, the government (republicans in this case, and Phil Gramm specifically), allowed companies like AIG to insure these mortgage backed securities, even though they couldn't really know their true value. To make matters worse, they weren't required to disclose any of this, and they were not required to have a capital reserve to cover the insured securities either, so when home values started crashing, they couldn't cover even a fraction of the securities that they insured. The whole house of cards came down.

Banks thought they had it made, and were loaning to anything with a pulse because they figured they were covered either way, either the person pays, or they collect the insurance. AIG thought that they'd just sit back and watch the premiums roll in and that they were facing little risk. They both thought they were getting a good deal. Why they thought home prices would never fall remains a mystery.

I know.

[AltGrendel]

Let's all send the judge $5.00.

Missing the main point...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned this yet...

This gives other community precedence in other lawsuits across the nation.

Once one telco falls, hopefully the other lawsuits will fall also, just like a row of dominos.

Re:Missing the main point...

[Jaysyn]

A group of people exercising a right to do something they've all agreed on? You aren't really that obtuse are you? Are you going to start bitching that we don't have 5 or 6 power companies per city or something now? Or just keep twisting my words around?

What every telco wants...

[snspdaarf]

Because, let's face it, what every telco wants is to provide all communities of 12,000 people with fiber to the house. What a load of crap. TDS was doing their dog-in-the-manger act, and now is only putting in fiber as an act of revenge.

I'm surprised...

[Penguinisto]

Usually a smart telco doesn't sue, they simply bribe the legislature into restricting their municipal competition (bottom of page).

(Basically, Comcast and Qwest bribed the Utah legislature into stopping their multi-muni competitor, UTOPIA, in Utah. The Utah ACLU's letter against such action is here: http://www.acluutah.org/utopia.htm)

Re:I'm surprised...

[InvisblePinkUnicorn]

Let's not be one-sided now. Those companies may have offered the bribe, but the legislature accepted it, and is now enforcing the monopoly. Who's the bigger offender here?

jeremiad ?

[CPNABEND]

Um, my vocabulary includes FORTRAN, COBOL and BASIC. Couldn't you have said "bitch" instead of "jeremiad"?

Re:jeremiad ?

[cHiphead]

your decision to gerrymander on the subject is an aloof attempt to cause disruptive comprehension of the litigous subjects in question.

rawr.

Thank you, Judge!

[CaptainOfSpray]

"jeremiad", now that's what Mark Twain would have called a 10-dollar word. I love it, and now I can dump my 10-cent word "rant".

Re:Boo fricken hoo

[Jesus_666]

There are places with legal prostitution. Are there fewer prostitution cases? I would think so (though maybe there are more of other kinds of cases? Good question).

I don't know why legalizing prostitution would reduce it, but we've had some positive effects since it was legalized here in Germany. Prostitutes now can get proper health insurance and have legal recourse against pimps (as pimping still is illegal). We didn't legalize prostitution to keep people from going to prostitutes; we legalized prostitution to improve the situation of the prostitutes. As far as I know it helped.

As for legalizing hemp: Yup, I agree there. Legalization would reduce most issues: It wouldn't be as much of an entry drug because you wouldn't buy it from dealers anymore. Hemp consumption wouldn't mean automatically providing money to criminals anymore. Legalization would allow regulation, which would lead to quality controls and thus better quality for the consumers*. Long-term studies would be easier. The situation for addicts would improve as there would be less social and legal danger involved in getting professional help.

Of course it's still a War On Something so we can't expect it to ever end.


* Wow, a sentence where I use the word "consumer" without feeling dirty.

Re:Troll? I love it

[Areyoukiddingme]

You're sticking to principles, but unfortunately for you the principle you've chosen isn't applicable. If your belief in free market competition had any bearing on reality, this thread wouldn't even exist, because every single dwelling on the planet with electricity would be served by 7 ultra-broadband Internet connections that the occupant could choose between on a whim. Manifestly this is not the case, so it's reasonable to question your assumptions.

First, is the market in question free? No, it isn't. Wired versions require access to public right-of-way. Wireless versions require access to public airwaves. Both are heavily regulated because they are shared, public resources that must be tightly controlled at a government level to maintain their accessibility and usability by as large a percentage of the population as possible. Wireless isn't really up to the task technologically, so I'll talk mainly about wired options.

At the moment, the accessibility and usability of public rights-of-way in the US are near enough as to be indistinguishable from 100%. Even the poorest non-citizen is allowed to walk along the roads, if nothing else. The vast majority of the population of the country drives on them, or is driven on them by their parents. The conclusion we may reach is that the current government regulation is working, and working extremely well. The fact that it is also a detriment to the free and easy deployment of new networks is a failure of deployment technology and financial vision rather than any inherent fault.

Second, is there competition in the market? No, there isn't. The various players in the broadband market function, in most regions, as a duopoly at best, and as a monopoly at worst (and in this particular case). Even in regions where there are nominally more than two potential providers, you'll find that their service areas interlace but do not overlap very much. All telecommunications providers in the US have been operating in a careful sort of gentleman's agreement not to intrude on each others markets. Whether these agreements are literal or metaphorical is irrelevant. It is fact that it is vanishingly rare for one of the national carriers to intrude on an established market of another carrier. They stake out their little (or large) territories and don't venture outside of them.

Why is this so? Because of a phrase that has been missing from this entire comment thread: "natural monopoly". Broadband communications is a natural monopoly, in the same manner that water and sewer and electrical service are natural monopolies. It's not quite a natural monopoly in the same way that roads are, since there are serious physical limits as to how many roads can reach my house, but it's very much a natural monopoly akin to the other services. There could easily be six or seven different water companies serving my house, in physical terms. There's plenty of room to lay the pipe required. It doesn't make any sense though. The capital outlay required to lay enormously redundant pipe is absurd, especially because, except for the one I'm subscribing to, it is guaranteed to be unused. The technology currently used to deploy broadband networks is expensive and the method for doing so directly interacts with the justifiably touchy regulatory regime of public rights-of-way mentioned above, making the whole proposition even more difficult and more expensive.

In this case, your vaunted capitalist system is working perfectly - private telecommunications companies are making the most efficient use of their capital expenditures, by NOT competing with one another. They can't. They haven't got the money to do it. The more successful competitors there are in a natural monopoly environment, the larger the waste in under-utilized infrastructure. If there are seven evenly matched competitors with 100% customer overlap, 85% of EACH of their cable plants are totally unused. Given the capital-intensive nature of even potentially providing the service, this scenario will never