Big Telecoms Strangling Municipal Broadband, FCC Intervention May Provide Relief

MojoKid writes: With limited choice and often dismal upstream speeds, it's no wonder many people are excited to hear that newcomers like Google Fiber are expanding super-fast gigabit internet across the country. But some Americans also have access to other high-speed fiber internet options that compete with the big guys like Comcast and Time Warner Cable: municipal internet. In the case of the small town of Wilson, NC, town officials first approached Time Warner Cable and Embarq, requesting faster Internet access for their residents and businesses. Both companies, likely not seeing a need to "waste" resources on a town of just 47,000 residents, rebuffed their demands. So what did Wilson do? It spent $28 million dollars to build its own high-speed Internet network, Greenlight, for its residents, offering faster speeds and lower prices than what the big guys could offer. And wouldn't you know it; that finally got the big telecoms to respond.

However, the response wasn't to build-out infrastructure in Wilson or compete on price; it was to try and kill municipal broadband efforts altogether in NC, citing unfair competition. NC's governor at the time, Bev Perdue, had the opportunity to veto the House bill that was introduced, but instead allowed it to become law. However, a new report indicates that the FCC is prepared to side with these smaller towns that ran into roadblocks deploying and maintaining their own high-speed Internet networks. The two towns in question include aforementioned Wilson, and Chattanooga, TN. Action by the FCC would effectively strike down the laws — like those that strangle Greenlight in Wilson — which prevent cities from undercutting established players on price. The FCC is also expected to propose regulating internet service as a utility later this week.

Comments

YESSSS

[sneakyimp]

It's not just the small towns that get rebuffed. Bob Blumenfield's famous RFP for a broadband plan for Los Angeles was met with deafening silence.

We the Government

[ignavus]

We the Government of the corporations, by the corporations, for the corporations, will not allow the democratic process to interfere with the rights of business to dictate monopolistic and oligopolistic solutions to citize ... erh, customers.

In particular, you have no right to competition nor to form any "more perfect union" that reeks of socialism or even just consumers rights.

Business must be allowed perfect freedom. All other freedoms are coincidental.

Signed.

Your governor.

Re:We the Government

[Cyberax]

This is a local council. The decision was made by majority of representatives on the council, so it's the _will_ _of_ _the_ _people_. If you don't like then feel free to relocate or lobby your council.

Besides, it's the only reasonable way to do a municipal-scale project where initial construction costs overwhelm the incremental costs of adding new subscribers. So if I decline to pay now and then wait 5 years until the infrastructure is built and paid for by the first subscribers then should I pay the whole share or just the connection fee?

Re:We the Government

[crunchygranola]

Business must be allowed perfect freedom.

Yes, just like the rest of us.

All other freedoms are coincidental.

No one's freedom is impeded by the prohibition for governments to compete with private interests. What we are talking about is not a bunch of people getting together to run cables. No — the talk is of coercing — at gun point (as all taxes are collected) — all of the town's residents (whether they want it or not) to pay for some Common Good[TM]. And that shall not be allowed to stand — not in a country, that calls itself free.

Oh I see, government itself is the enemy of freedom! If there were no government and no taxes we would all be perfectly free! Just look at, where is it now that has no functioning government? Someplace in Africa maybe? Boy are those people ever free!

Re:We the Government

[mi]

The decision was made by majority of representatives on the council, so it's the _will_ _of_ _the_ _people_

So, what else will you meekly accept as the majority's will? 100% taxation for anybody, whose Slashdot username begins with "Cyber"? People of certain skin color not allowed to own a computer? See, certain things aren't — nor should be — up to the majority...

But, hey, why look for "extreme" and artificial examples — how about the decision to ban town governments from competing with businesses — just made by the State's government, itself a democratically elected body? If you don't like then feel free to relocate or lobby your State's Assembly.

So if I decline to pay now and then wait 5 years until the infrastructure is built and paid for by the first subscribers then should I pay the whole share or just the connection fee?

I don't see, how this question — and the possible answers — depend on who built the network in the first place.

Re:We the Government

[Obfuscant]

Oh I see, government itself is the enemy of freedom!

Since the government hires the people to ... monitor cellphone calls, use radars to search people's homes, put people in prison, etc, ... I'd say you already know the answer.

If there were no government and no taxes we would all be perfectly free!

Artificial dichotomy. Too much water, you die. Too little water you die. Just the right amount of water -- you die from something else. Too much government, you lose freedoms. Too little government, you have the ultimate freedom to protect your own freedom. Just the right amount of government -- they don't take away freedoms arbitrarily and don't let others do so, either.

Government that competes using taxpayer dollars with existing corporations just because some people don't like the customer service they're getting is the wrong level of government. If there are so many people wanting another provider, another company would show up and eat the existing one's lunch. That doesn't happen. Hmmmm.

Re: We the Government

[Anonymous Coward]

If you don't like then feel free to relocate or lobby your State's Assembly.

They did. They relocated the focus of their efforts to the FCC.

Which seems to be working out for them.

Re:We the Government

[Obfuscant]

So if I decline to pay now and then wait 5 years until the infrastructure is built and paid for by the first subscribers then should I pay the whole share or just the connection fee?

If you aren't getting the service, you shouldn't have to pay to build the system. Period. That means you shouldn't be forced to pay taxes for a municipal service that you aren't using. And the government shouldn't be allowed to use your taxpayer dollars to cover the costs of a system that isn't self-funding, especially when you may be paying the competition for service, too. I.e., the government is taking your money to become a competitor to the company you chose to do business with and perhaps forcing them out of business or into higher rates to cover the fixed costs and fewer subs.

When you eventually get service, you will pay THE SAME RATES EVERYONE ELSE DOES. (Yeah, barring special promotions to lure you to subscribe, which last a year or less.) So, you will pay a rate based on the costs AND a connection fee. Just like everyone else. IN FACT, you very well may wind up paying a lot MORE for your service because the first subscribers may be on a grandfathered plan that you can't get as a new sub.

If you think that cable companies drop rates after a few years because they've paid off the initial buildout costs, you're naive and uninformed.

Re:We the Government

[Cyberax]

I don't use my gas stove, yet I have to pay a connection fee (multi-apartment building). I don't roads much, yet I pay for their upkeep.

Sorry, but "pay for what you get" doesn't work with lots of essential stuff.

When you eventually get service, you will pay THE SAME RATES EVERYONE ELSE DOES

No. You don't get it. The cost of fiber optics is basically a $lotsofmoney to dig trenches and lay the backbone fiber. Then it's a couple hundreds of bucks to connect your apartment/home to the nearest point of presence. That's why most of the subscriber fee will go towards repayment of the initial $lotsofmoney lump. Once it's repaid the subscriber fee can go down a lot. Should the newcomers pay the low fee?

Re:We the Government

[Obfuscant]

I don't use my gas stove, yet I have to pay a connection fee (multi-apartment building).

If you have a connection for a gas stove, you are paying for the connection and the ability to use it. If I traveled for a month I'd not be using my water connection, but it is still connected and it is still available for use with the turn of a tap.

If you aren't connected to the municipal internet service, you have no ability to use it and should not be forced to pay for it.

Sorry, but "pay for what you get" doesn't work with lots of essential stuff.

You get something when you have the connection. Just like my wireline phone which I almost never get calls on and never make any.

No. You don't get it. The cost of fiber optics is basically a $lotsofmoney to dig trenches and lay the backbone fiber.

I get it fine. It's you who doesn't understand. Those costs are built into the monthly fee for service. You pay them when you get service. Until you have service, you shouldn't have to pay them. For Comcast, until you get service you pay them zero. Zip. Nada. For a municipal system, your taxes pay for it even if you never connect.

Once it's repaid the subscriber fee can go down a lot.

You are naive. Remarkably so. I've gone through two system rebuilds in this city. Not once has the price of service dropped after the system was paid for. Not once.

Oh, but a government service would. Sure. Ten years ago our city put a fee on our water bill to pay for fixing a specific major street that the contractor screwed up. I thought "the contractor should pay", but no, we got a fee on the water bill. It took four years before the street was fixed, and then the fee went away, right? Nope. It's gone up.

Should the newcomers pay the low fee?

If you think the fees will go down, you're naive. Since your argument depends on an impossibility, your argument fails.

But just for the sake of argument, let's assume a miracle happens, a green unicorn runs the city and the fees go down. Should newcomers pay the lower fee? OF COURSE. Two reasons. First, their tax dollars paid for the initial build, too. Their tax dollars will go to cover any operating losses or upgrades. And second, if the costs are actually covered by the lower fee, then that's what they should pay. The city should not be in the for-profit internet business.

That's the problem with municipal competition with private enterprise. The taxpayer covers the losses and pays to create the competition that will ultimately lower competition, and may wind up paying twice for the same service (once to Comcast for the service he actually uses, once to the city to cover the losses for the service he doesn't want and can't use.)

If you have a gas stove and no gas connection then you should pay nothing. I know I wouldn't pay a dime for gas service if I bought a gas stove (or the house had one when I bought it) and I never call the gas company for a hookup. If you have a connection and can get flame when you turn the stove on, then you need to pay for that service, even if you never pay a penny for a ccf of gas. If you think a municipal internet service you aren't connected to is just like having a gas stove connected to the gas lines but never turned on, you're woefully wrong.

Re:We the Government

[bitingduck]

What we are talking about is not a bunch of people getting together to run cables. No — the talk is of coercing — at gun point (as all taxes are collected) — all of the town's residents (whether they want it or not) to pay for some Common Good[TM]. And that shall not be allowed to stand — not in a country, that calls itself free.

Like for police, fire, roads, water, trash pickup, sewer, and any of a number of other municipal services? Try moving to Somalia or Detroit.

Re:We the Government

[Cyberax]

If you have a connection for a gas stove, you are paying for the connection and the ability to use it. If I traveled for a month I'd not be using my water connection, but it is still connected and it is still available for use with the turn of a tap.

And how is that different from the fast Internet connection?

You want another example? I have lots! Last month my council decided to fund a new park. By your standard it should be a commercial park with fee paid each time you step inside. You see, not everyone will use this new park!

If you think the fees will go down, you're naive. Since your argument depends on an impossibility, your argument fails.

Not true. My new housing development paid quite a bit of money to connect to the electric grid. Once the connection fee was paid (about 4 years) the monthly electricity bill went down. So yes, it happens a lot. So your argument fails.

But just for the sake of argument, let's assume a miracle happens, a green unicorn runs the city and the fees go down. Should newcomers pay the lower fee? OF COURSE. Two reasons. First, their tax dollars paid for the initial build, too.

Certainly. IF the buildout was financed from taxes then everyone is entitled to the same low fee. However, what if it was financed only by the initial subscribers? What should be done in this case?

Re:We the Government

[bitingduck]

If you have a gas stove and no gas connection then you should pay nothing. I know I wouldn't pay a dime for gas service if I bought a gas stove (or the house had one when I bought it) and I never call the gas company for a hookup.

So for the years when I had no car and couldn't use freeways I should have paid nothing to support them? Can I file for a rebate for that? And don't try to claim that roads are paid for by gas taxes-- that hasn't been true for quite a long time. A substantial portion of funding for roads comes from general taxes. We should just make all roads toll roads then, and let private companies build and maintain them and charge whatever they want for them, and every time you cross from one companies territory to another you get to pay.

Re:We the Government

[bitingduck]

So you'd rather be forced to fund services you may not need or want?

That's pretty much the price of living in a civilized society. If you don't like it, try someplace like Somalia.

Re:We the Government

[drinkypoo]

This is a local council. The decision was made by majority of representatives on the council, so it's the _will_ _of_ _the_ _people_.

Uh, what? No, and also no. That's the same argument made to make people believe that the USA is a democracy when it's actually an oligarchy. Representatives ignore the will of their constituents all the time. Sometimes they successfully lie to them and make them believe that this is not what is happening, and thus retain their support, for example claiming that they have selected the lesser of evils — presenting a false dichotomy.

Besides, it's the only reasonable way to do a municipal-scale project where initial construction costs overwhelm the incremental costs of adding new subscribers.

Nope. It should be run with the efficiency of any business, meaning that it should be based on a loan if the capital is not available, and not on taxation.

Re:We the Government

[Anonymous Coward]

Except in the cases above they begged the telecoms to come in and wire the town and were refused. It was after they built their own that the telecoms cried foul for them wanting and procuring a service that was refused them.

Re:We the Government

[Anonymous Coward]

Your argument that because no other company is showing up to eat the existing one's lunch doesn't stand up in the face of the fact that government is the gatekeeper regarding which companies compete in an area when it comes to cable and telephone service and, thus, largely internet service, as well. Now, if any other company were free to just show up and start building, that'd be something else. That isn't what happens and so *your* argument fails - again.

Re: We the Government

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

People may not want to hear it, but it is unfair competition -- no cable company can spend on behalf of everyone, not just their customers, with the legal power to tax.

Had they approached government, oh how those supporting this city council would have howled.

How long would it take a company to get that kind of money back out of its customers?

Re:We the Government

[Anonymous Coward]

You also pay school taxes, irregardless of whether you have children or not that will utilize the public school system.

There are a lot of examples of where we pay for things we may or may not even utilize.

Re:We the Government

[jeffmeden]

Oh I see, government itself is the enemy of freedom!

Since the government hires the people to ... monitor cellphone calls, use radars to search people's homes, put people in prison, etc, ... I'd say you already know the answer.

If there were no government and no taxes we would all be perfectly free!

Artificial dichotomy. Too much water, you die. Too little water you die. Just the right amount of water -- you die from something else. Too much government, you lose freedoms. Too little government, you have the ultimate freedom to protect your own freedom. Just the right amount of government -- they don't take away freedoms arbitrarily and don't let others do so, either.

Government that competes using taxpayer dollars with existing corporations just because some people don't like the customer service they're getting is the wrong level of government. If there are so many people wanting another provider, another company would show up and eat the existing one's lunch. That doesn't happen. Hmmmm.

Maybe if you use the word freedom a few dozen more times it will all work itself out? You have arrived at the point where your awareness of the situation ends. "Another company" can't show up since many municipalities have incumbent agreements that specifically *forbid* anyone from competing with the cable or phone company that first installed infrastructure. Who thought of those laws? It wasn't the will of the people, not by a last mile, but I will give you one guess as to who did. There is such a terrifying patchwork of local laws surrounding utility construction and availability that no company large enough to pull it off would ever want that kind of risk (until Google showed up, but at their current buildout rate they are still about 1400 years from offering service to a substantial portion of the US).

Re:We the Government

[jeffmeden]

Business must be allowed perfect freedom.

Yes, just like the rest of us.

All other freedoms are coincidental.

No one's freedom is impeded by the prohibition for governments to compete with private interests. What we are talking about is not a bunch of people getting together to run cables. No — the talk is of coercing — at gun point (as all taxes are collected) — all of the town's residents (whether they want it or not) to pay for some Common Good[TM]. And that shall not be allowed to stand — not in a country, that calls itself free.

You are completely right that governments (big or small) shouldn't be in the business of indiscriminately creating arms that provide services at or near the level of existing commercial interests. However, if the US isn't a good example of freedom at work when we have bulk taxation for education, all manner of safety services, roads, waste removal, parks, etc after citizens all agreed that it was indeed a common good, then I want no part of what you do think a good example of freedom is. You might be interested in relocating to Freedom-rich Libya. Now with fewer taxes, and you can't even tell the government is there at all!

Re:We the Government

[Cyberax]

So, what else will you meekly accept as the majority's will? 100% taxation for anybody, whose Slashdot username begins with "Cyber"? People of certain skin color not allowed to own a computer? See, certain things aren't — nor should be — up to the majority...

That's an argument from absurdity. You see, we have a framework of mutually agreed obligations (we call the "laws") and a process to change them. They are not perfect but they are much better than nothing.

And the framework that you propose quite demonstratably leads to a fucking mess. Yet you persist on forcing it upon everyone. Why? Are you a communist or something?

Re:We the Government

[crtreece]

If there are so many people wanting another provider, another company would show up and eat the existing one's lunch.

If I get together with a group of like minded individual with the goal of creating a local fibre ISP, we will fail for the simple lack of access. In most areas, governments have given a local monopoly to an incumbent cable and/or telephone company, and they have exclusive access to the infrastructure needed to run new cables.

Even if it was physically possible, do we really want 47 different sets of cables run up and down every street?This sounds like a huge waste of resources, and a logistical nightmare to me.

I'm no fan of big government. I do think that government should work to manage community resources that are considered essential, electricity, water, roads; in the past, phone service. Does government get it right, and efficient, every time? No. Is government regulation better than the pure free market approach? I expect yes, but since we don't have a truly free market, we may never know.. What is considered essential changes over time. Either we are now, or will soon be, at the point where internet service is essential.

Re:We the Government

[Obfuscant]

And how is that different from the fast Internet connection?

If you are have a fast internet connection, it isn't. The question was about paying for the construction of an internet you aren't connected to. If you aren't connected, you pay nothing and you SHOULD pay nothing. You cannot use an internet connection that you don't have. Municipal internet makes everyone pay, even those who don't want a connection.

Last month my council decided to fund a new park. By your standard it should be a commercial park with fee paid each time you step inside.

No, not by my standard. You're making it up. You have access to a park any time you show up. There is no service call necessary to connect to a park. You walk in, you're using it. UNLIKE an internet connection you don't have that you can't just start using.

Not true. My new housing development paid quite a bit of money to connect to the electric grid. Once the connection fee was paid (about 4 years) the monthly electricity bill went down.

Your bill went down but your electric rates did not. You were paying off the connection and developer's fees on a monthly schedule, NOT paying for the intial build of the electric grid you connected to. That is no different than if Comcast or your municipal internet allowed you to pay off the connection fee over 48 months. You aren't paying for the system buildout, only your connection to it. It doesn't matter if you subscribe from day one or day ten thousand one, you still pay the connection fee for the actual connection. The fee for ongoing SERVICE is something else. You are claiming that fee -- the rate for service -- will go down. That doesn't happen.

Yeah, they have developer's fees in our city too. They pay for the connections into the existing infrastructure, not the initial building of that infrastructure. What bill they get added to to pass them onto the new home owner is irrelevant, they aren't part of the rate for service.

Certainly. IF the buildout was financed from taxes then everyone is entitled to the same low fee. However, what if it was financed only by the initial subscribers?

There are no subscribers until there is a buildout. The money has to come from somewhere. Those people are called "taxpayers". If the money is borrowed from someone, then the people who are backing the bonds and paying the interest are called "taxpayers". Once there are subs then they'll pay, but since it is a municipal system the taxpayers are still backing it. The taxpayers get to cover the losses when there aren't enough subscribers to cover the costs. Trying to claim that taxpayers aren't involved is silly.

What should be done in this case?

1. People who aren't connected to the system should pay zero for the system. I have no connection to Comcast, I pay nothing to Comcast. I have no connection to the municipal internet, I should pay nothing for the municipal internet, not even through taxes.

2. People who connect to the system should pay the rate in effect when they connect. If that rate is lower now, then they pay the lower rate.

3. Any rate should be based on actual costs and not be a profit center for a government.

Pretty simple. 1 is violated by using tax money. If new subs pay a higher rate than existing subs for the same service, and the price for existing subs is based on costs, then new subs are being asked to pay above-cost rates -- a profit center for the city. New subs will still pay a fee to connect, but that's for their connection, not for the entire buildout.

Re:We the Government

[Darinbob]

So even water and sewer systems should be built on loans and not taxes? That's a somewhat extreme viewpoint and certainly different from most of the history of US infrastructure.

The US founding fathers were never anti-tax, they were anti tax-without-representation. If the voters in the town approved the taxes then it's not the damn business of outside libertarian agitators to try and block it.

Re:We the Government

[Darinbob]

Compare to corporations where the relative price never goes down after the infrastructure is paid for.

Re:We the Government

[Darinbob]

Governments are enacting the will of the people to counter a monopolistic corporation. No other corporation can effectively come in, and the existin monopoly is abusing the citizens of that town with unjustified high prices. Sounds like what we want governments to do.

What if a corporation built some toll roads, would the local government be exceeding its authority by building its own roads using tax money?

Would it be better for you if the local government just utterly outlaws Time Warner and Comcast as an enemy of the people and then waits for competition to arrive?

Re:We the Government

[Darinbob]

I agree. The US has never been an anti-tax country, not even from the founding fathers. What we were against was taxation without representation. That is, the local citizens must have a say in the process, which we do. We've had taxes in the US from the start.

It is true that the value of benefits we get from the government(s) for each dollar spent in taxes goes up and down, and we may be at a relatively low point by many arguments. But the argument to abolish taxes for everything is just ridiculously stupid and not very American.

Re:We the Government

[Obfuscant]

Maybe if you use the word freedom a few dozen more times it will all work itself out?

I didn't bring up the issue of freedom. I didn't use the word a dozen times, I used it exactly four times. Your hyperbole doesn't respond to the issue.

You have arrived at the point where your awareness of the situation ends. "Another company" can't show up since many municipalities have incumbent agreements that specifically *forbid* anyone from competing with the cable or phone company that first installed infrastructure.

Phone companies are almost always handled on a state regulatory basis. Cable companies are handled locally. I know of exactly zero exclusive franchises in any of the cities I've lived in. You call them "incumbent agreements", but that's not what they are.

Who thought of those laws? It wasn't the will of the people, not by a last mile

And now you are even more wrong. Whatever exclusive franchises are in place were approved by the municipal government. The same "voice of the people" that is being used to justify municipal governments who want to compete with the same companies they've granted franchises to. You can't claim that one voice that issues a franchise is bad while the same voice that tries to compete is good.

Even if some stupidity led to an exclusive franchise somewhere, how is it not a breach of contract for the city that said "you have exclusive rights to operate here" to suddenly decide THEY will compete with that company, using taxpayer money to back the costs of building the competition so the city can operate at below cost and still survive?

There is such a terrifying patchwork of local laws surrounding utility construction and availability that no company large enough to pull it off would ever want that kind of risk

And THAT, sir, is the real reason why competition doesn't take place. It's not the mythical dejure monopoly, it's the economics.

And now that we agree that it is the economics that stops competition, then we shouldn't be too far from agreeing that an abuse of the economic system that a local government can bring to the table would be a worse solution. You admit that it is scary for anyone but the largest companies to be in the business because of the risk, so why should a local government that has no risk be allowed to compete and undercut the people who are taking the risk?

Re:We the Government

[Obfuscant]

If I get together with a group of like minded individual with the goal of creating a local fibre ISP, we will fail for the simple lack of access. In most areas, governments have given a local monopoly to an incumbent cable and/or telephone company, and they have exclusive access to the infrastructure needed to run new cables.

Except that isn't correct. A franchise is not an exclusive grant, it is a non-exclusive. I know of exactly zero exclusive franchises in all of the cities I've been involved with cable in. Nobody has ever pointed me to one.

Even if it was physically possible, do we really want 47 different sets of cables run up and down every street?

And now you have to resort to hyperbole to make your case. Why would two cable companies need 47 different sets of cables? That's simply ridiculous. Why would even THREE companies need 47 sets of cables? They wouldn't.

Yes, there is a limit to the number of cables an existing pole can carry. It's much higher than "one". It's not the number of sets of cables that's limiting competition because "three" is hardly unreasonable, nor "four".

It's not the franchise agreement that stops competition. A competitor who agrees to the same terms the existing company did can get a franchise. They would have to, because otherwise the franchise and the enacting resolutions would be bills of attainder.

So what does stop competition if not the franchise or capacity of the poles? The inability to get a return on investment.

Is government regulation better than the pure free market approach? I expect yes,

And yet it is this alleged government regulation that you blame for the lack of competition. In truth, it is economic reality, but were it government regulation then it would be "the voice of the people" since it is regulation by the local municipality.

Re:We the Government

[drinkypoo]

So even water and sewer systems should be built on loans and not taxes?

Ideally.

The US founding fathers were never anti-tax, they were anti tax-without-representation.

So like our federal government. At least you get to vote for the local stuff.

Re:We the Government

[Obfuscant]

So for the years when I had no car and couldn't use freeways I should have paid nothing to support them?

You paid zero in gas tax. People who came to visit you could use them. You could have used the freeways except you didn't pay for your own equipment to do so. That would be equivalent to having the internet connection to your house but you don't own a computer. You'd pay for the connection. Just as were I to have a connection to the gas lines but not own a gas appliance. I'd pay for the connection because I could use it. All I'd need to do is buy a stove. That's different than not having a connection at all.

We should just make all roads toll roads then,

A fascinating idea, but not based on anything I've said.

Re:We the Government

[Reziac]

Maybe that initial $lotsofmoney lump should be prorated on a per-user basis per-month, so if you had benefit from the beginning, you pay from the beginning of service. And if someone leaves and another user takes their slot, why should they pay what the previous person already paid, when they didn't get benefit of it til they arrived.

This is basically how road improvement taxes work (at least here) -- the cost is apportioned among all parcels served (ie. all users) and continues for N-many years per parcel (per user slot) regardless of who owns each parcel.

Re:We the Government

[Reziac]

My former fixed-wireless provider (which was a one-man band) bought bandwidth bulk direct from AT&T, and resold it however he liked. Why can't a fiber co-op do the same?

(Seriously, if there's a reason, enlighten me.)

Re:We the Government

[crtreece]

Access? Infrastructure costs? Wireless only requires the operator to have enough towers to cover their area, and get the signal back to wherever their connection to ATT was located. Currently, fiber requires you run a line to every location you will be providing service because any incumbant isn't going to lease their lines to a third party, or the lines aren't there in the first place.

What you are suggesting sounds like the essence of most of the municipal broadband plans I have seen. The city runs cables from homes to a central location(s). A company/co-op/ambitious guy buys upstream bandwidth from the central location to the internet, and uses it to service the customers they have recruited and have access to via the city owned cable plant. Some will bundle additional service on top of that, such as email, a website, a news portal, etc. Others can provide IP connectivity and get out of the way.

For a while, DSL worked like this (I did it from 98-05 or so, IIRC). I paid the ILEC for a "naked" DSL line, but they provided no IP service on the line. I then paid the ISP of MY choice for internet services. If you only wanted IP connectivity, not any bundled VOIP, streaming video, etc, you found an ISP that provided the service you wanted, at the price you were willing to pay and signed up. The ILEC also ran ISP services with all the "value added" crap, so they weren't especially interested in making it widely known that you could use someone else, but it could be done.

I moved out to the country, where no one could spell DSL, then somewhere along the line, the requirement for the ILEC to provide third party access to their copper lines was removed.

Re:We the Government

[Reziac]

One problem with fixed wireless is that a mere 1.5Mbit is more costly than midrange DSL, and 5.7Mbit is downright upscale. Seems to me that market could use more competition, as I've yet to see more than one provider covering a given area. (Here I have a choice of one, and it's $70/mo. for 4Mbit. Or I can have DSL at barely-1.5Mbit for $30/mo.) How far can fixed wireless speed be improved? Cuz it certainly avoids that 'last mile investment' problem.

Tho seems to me that if co-ops can handle electric service (in fact locally most electric service comes from a co-op), they could just as well handle the much-less-costly fixed wireless internet service... when they finally get done fighting over who pays what. But if you're just renting space on an existing cell tower (which was what my old provider did), how is that so terribly expensive??

Incidentally, he told me the bandwidth he bought from AT&T cost him zilch for downloads, and 5 cents per GB for uploads.

Re:We the Government

[Anonymous Coward]

Being forced to fund a service you don't want, because certain authority has decided that is better for the common good, is part of a civilized society.

Being forced fund a service you don't want, because it's better for a private interest, is extortion. Being forced to do so by certain authority is corruption.

better than in Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

Here in Australia, the NBN (National Broadband Network) project has a monopoly on providing fibre to the home. The monopoly is part of the legislation which created the NBN. This has stifled innovation for many years, leading to a very aging ISP infrastructure. How do I know this? Well, at a previous job I purchased a fibre internet connection and had to sign documents stating that we were a business and not a home user. It cost a lot to get that connection put on as the fibre provider could only use that piece of fibre to sell to other businesses.

Re:better than in Australia

[marka63]

The act is "Broadband Network Companies Act 2011" so you can't really blame it for the ageing infrastructure. If you want to blame anyone for the ageing infrastructure blame the ISP's that failed to invest in new technologies.

This two decade old paper shows Telstra's plans for FTTH in 1994 INT94b.PDF. Telstra failed to act on this for two decades. The introduction of the NBN is a reaction to that failure to act and a recognition that the costs are such that you needed a longer term outlook than next quarter's earnings. The NBN also got caught up in partisan politics which hasn't helped.

Re:better than in Australia

[Anonymous Coward]

Set up a small business in your home and get the business service. Make it a small services business such as web design or something, then just never post a profit and get your service.

Couldn't they have spent that money better?

[wyattstorch516]

I'm all for high speed Internet but this town spent $1500 per household for gigabit Internet. This town has a mean income of 36K and one out of four residents lives below the poverty line. The service has only achieved a 33% penetration rate in the town.

People think that ultra high speed Internet is a magic elixir for all of economic problems of an area but that isn't true. It is no different when they rushed to put computers in every school to bridge the so-called "digital divide". Computers are just tools that allow good students to do better the same as can be said for a faster Internet connection. They can also be used to waste classroom time and distract weaker students from concentrating on their studies.

Given the cheap high speed Internet the town now offers you would expect employers to flock to this area, wouldn't you? Isn't that one of the selling points behind this? Have any new technology companies moved in? No, because they understand that having great tools is meaningless if you don't have the people who can use them to great advantage.

Re:Couldn't they have spent that money better?

[maharvey]

It was their money to spend. It's none of our business what they used it for.

Re:Couldn't they have spent that money better?

[wyattstorch516]

I highly doubt that they had 28 million dollars lying around waiting to be spent. What most likely happened is that they issued municipal bonds to pay for this with the expectation that it would generate enough new tax revenue from new business in the area to cover its costs. There is no evidence of any economic benefit from this project so the town is likely to be stuck with this cost.

Seeing how this is a relatively low income area it is almost certain they are going to ask the state for some kind of bailout or wind up defaulting on the bonds. If this happens the other citizens of the state get stuck with this bill or they can default and drag down the credit rating of the surrounding communities in the process. This is why states are trying to prevent cities and towns from going into the broadband business. Its like somebody asking to borrow $10,000 dollars from you to play the lottery. If they win they will pay you back but if they don't you won't be able to collect.

Re:Couldn't they have spent that money better?

[frup]

Installation fees of broadband cost $200 in my location, given the choice to actually choose how fast the speed was, $1500 would be great. The article mentions that the cost is cheaper, this means that lets say at reasonable discounts of $5 per week, after 6 years, the cost is nil and the overall burden to the town and its residents has gone. This of course does not account for maintenance and upgrades to the service.

Given that it is a local project, it improves the local economy, more jobs in the IT sector, more chances to actually improve that local median salary of $36,000 per year. The 5 dollars per week possibly given in discounts to the monthly broadband fee (a complete estimation but based on a statement by OP) will also likely go into the local economy, because that kind of amount will get spent on things like food and drink by most people.

You can argue it's a waste of money, but you can also argue this will greatly benefit the town. To say it's like borrowing $10,000 to play the lottery is a bit of a hyperbole however. Personally I believe internet access should be considered infrastructure, and the exact purpose of a municipal government is to make this infrastructure function as best as possible, otherwise there is no point in having governments at all.

Re:Couldn't they have spent that money better?

[crbowman]

If they borrowed money in the form of municipal bonds to get this done and it doesn't pay off and they default or declare bankruptcy why should the state bail them out? The creditors who bought the bonds should take a haircut for making a bad investment. Why should the state bail out those investors? Isn't that how municipal bond markets are suppose to work? Isn't that why they're private, won't private investors look at what the bonds are for and make a judgement if it's a good investment of their money or not? Who are you to tell the bond holders how to invest their money?

Re:Couldn't they have spent that money better?

[wyattstorch516]

If the service is not profitable then it does not benefit the local economy, it is just shifting money from the taxpayers to employees that may or may not reside in that town. If the people who currently live in that town do not have sufficient technical skills then the town cannot hire them for these jobs because the system would fail and they would lose more subscribers and revenue.

The purpose of a government is not to make the best infrastructure possible it is to provide sufficient infrastructure to provide for the needs of the community without wasting taxpayer dollars. Should the town build and maintain an eight lane highway when four lanes are more than sufficient? No, that is spending money just to benefit a few well connected people.

Where is the evidence that this money will produce any kind of return much less 28 million dollars worth? I fail to see it. This will turn out to be an enormous white elephant.

Re:Couldn't they have spent that money better?

[mi]

It was their money to spend.

Define "their"... The decision to spend was made by the town's government — which collects money at gunpoint from the residents. The money, of course, was the residents'.

Yes, residents elect the government to do things, which nobody else can do: policing and justice. Maybe, maintaining roads. Expanding that mandate into Internet-service provision ought to be illegal.

Re:Couldn't they have spent that money better?

[wyattstorch516]

In an ideal world they would not get bailed out. Detroit should not have been bailed out of the mess they created but the reality is that bailouts happen for numerous reasons. First of all if the town was completely insolvent then the retired civil workers would lose most if not all of their pensions. Crime would spike in the town and this would spill over into the surrounding areas. Let's not forget the racial undercurrents of allowing a majority African American town to simply die off. Bottom line is that the bondholders know they will get paid back by somebody even if it is not this town.

Re:Couldn't they have spent that money better?

[frup]

I can't locate where you have got the information you base your on assumptions on.

I guess with the attitude you have to this, a rational course of discussion is to ponder, if they have chosen to spend this money on this project, where else could this money have been spent instead?

Perhaps they could have wasted it on painting street lamps and planting new shrubs in a public area, it really doesn't concern me, I don't live there. If the people of this place wanted this, it is perfectly acceptable.

But I suppose you believe they should be slaves to the will of the megacorps who showed no interest in the town. There is nothing they can do to save themselves. They will always be "poor" and it's there fault and they aren't allowed to do anything to try change this. Screw them for wanting what other people have. Let them eat cake.

And you are right, if the employees don't live there, it doesn't have as great a benefit for the town, but all an economy is, is the measurement of how much money is being shifted.

Re:Couldn't they have spent that money better?

[Headw1nd]

Give this "AT GUNPOINT!" thing a rest. Yes we know that if you do not pay your taxes you will face sanctions (though it is highly unlikely guns will be drawn unless you draw first) This is entirely different from the government going door to door extorting the helpless residents. If you don't want the local government spending money on anything except cops then find a locale where the other residents share your view and you can all exercise your civil rights to elect a local government that will do only that. What you cannot do is ignore the government that your neighbors democratically elected because you don't like it.

Re:Couldn't they have spent that money better?

[drinkypoo]

Yes we know that if you do not pay your taxes you will face sanctions (though it is highly unlikely guns will be drawn unless you draw first

You don't follow the news, do you? Even peripherally?

Re:Couldn't they have spent that money better?

[fodder69]

almost certain they are going to ask the state for some kind of bailout

Um, no it really isn't almost certain the state will bail them out since that doesn't really happen. And if they default on their bonds, why would that affect surrounding communities?

And I am curious when "investing" became a guaranteed profit and no chance of losing your money? Isn't it supposed to carry some risk?

Re:Couldn't they have spent that money better?

[crbowman]

Yes and this is important. We need bad examples to teach people that bad things can happen and you want to do the right thing to avoid them. For instance you don't want civil servents to collude with politicians to jack up their retirement benefits to unsustainable levels so that they can get a benefit in collective bargaining agreements with politicians who will be out of office when the benefits are due. Too big to fail is likewise a problem with wall street. The fear of a city failing is what ought to keep retires from taking an "I don't care" attitude to city management. If civil workers and retires know that their failure to encourage a responsible path for their government will mean possible loss of their retirement they will be quite effective advocates. Besides their already was a safety net for retires who loose their pension. They'd still get social security. True that's not great but it is meant to keep them from starving and the undesirable outcome is necessary for the feedback system to work. I find it problematic to advocate that we need to prevent people from investing so we can protect them from bad outcomes because we lack the resolve to let them fail. Failure is an important part of many systems and our failure aversion doesn't benefit us as a society. If we're going to eliminate the down side to market based systems should we really be surprised when they don't work? Bondholders should have lost money and lots of it. After all they were investing where there is always a risk of loss of investment.

$28 million is a lot!

[Okian Warrior]

The $28 million was the original estimate. The cost at the moment is about $38 million.

There are about 5,400 subscribers of the broadband service giving a debt of about $6,300 per subscriber.

Wow! $6,300 per subscriber is a lot!

That's... let's see here... $525 per subscriber per month.

Yikes! That's Huuuuuuge!

That's... let's see here... $52.50 per month for 10 years.

That's... not unreasonable.

Okay, internet access is more than the build-out cost, let's suppose it's equally distributed 50% amortization and 50% ongoing costs (bandwidth, maintenance, power, &c).

That's... let's see here... roughly $100 per month for 10 years.

How long is the system expected to last? Amortization is usually over a 20 year period.

That's... let's see here... roughly $50 per month for 20 years.

That's... not unreasonable.

And doing this will bring employment for a couple of people in the town, and having fast internet access might bring a business or two to the town to generate more tax revenue.

[...] giving a debt of about $6,300 per subscriber.

I love emotionally framed arguments. It forces me to stop and analyze the real situation.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Anonymous Coward]

It forces me to stop and analyze the real situation.

Really? That's just despicable of you. For shame.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[mc6809e]

You're missing a few things:

First, spending this borrowed money might employ a few people in town, but it also means less money is available to employ other people in the town (demand is reduced for some jobs while increased for others).

Second, the article shows that operating costs are over $11 million per year and that revenues aren't enough to cover those costs.

That puts revenues at nearly $170/month/subscriber and still money must be taken from the general fund to help pay for the system.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Enry]

But it makes the town a better place to live, so more people (and businesses) move there, increasing the number of subscribers and lowering the cost for everyone. Hey, it could happen.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[jythie]

That almost looks like long term investment! This is america damn it!

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[epyT-R]

It sounds reasonable except where it forces the taxpayer to pay whether they need or want service. Households can either just pay the bill for their private services on top of the taxes that fund the public one, or they can cancel their private service and live with the public. I'd rather choose from competing private entities, or if I cannot afford it, opt out and save the money for more important things. The power of controlling where your own money is important, and it matters to the poor a lot more simply because they have fewer dollars to spend. Obviously, private providers are against state competition as its participation along with its power to regulate create a conflict of interest.

Now, if there's a lack of competition then the state should encourage that instead of discouraging it with lobbied monopolies.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Enry]

Yes, it would be preferable for a company to do the buildout - they're probably doing it for other towns and might be able to do it cheaper and with better expertise than a town trying to do it by themselves. Then again, they have to make a profit and thus it might not be profitable for them to go into an area (as is the case here apparently).

I'd argue that a taxpayer would have more of a say than a customer - a taxpayer is a voter and can make enough noise with neighbors to actually get something to happen. Believe me, it's happened in my town and not in a good way(IMO), but voters have a tremendous power that customers just do not have. A group of 20 people complaining during a town meeting will be far more effective than the same 20 people at Verizon's shareholder meeting. All politics is local.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Cyberax]

"Competing private entities"? Do you mean Comcast or AT&T? LOL!

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Okian Warrior]

You're missing a few things:[...]

Second, the article shows that operating costs are over $11 million per year and that revenues aren't enough to cover those costs.

That puts revenues at nearly $170/month/subscriber and still money must be taken from the general fund to help pay for the system.

I've been over the article front-to-back and could not find anything about the operating costs.

The article *does* mention the projected prices and tiers:

Greenlight provides Internet-only service ranging from 40 Mbps for $39.95 per month to 1 Gbps for $104.95 per month. There are also package bundles available that add TV and phone service.

In short, you're lying. The article says no such thing.

First, spending this borrowed money might employ a few people in town, but it also means less money is available to employ other people in the town (demand is reduced for some jobs while increased for others).

Secondly, your objection is the "broken window fallacy" and it doesn't apply to this situation.

Ask yourself: does your argument also apply to road and bridge maintenance? By foregoing the buildout and repair of roads, and by avoiding maintenance for bridges one could employ other people doing other town duties such as the fire station and police.

If your argument is valid for internet service then it's valid for roads and bridges, yes?

Also, you're relying on an emotional frame by referring to the money as "borrowed money". Borrowing and being in debt is baaaad! (But let's ignore the fact that all municipal projects of any stripe are built using borrowed money.)

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Anonymous Coward]

Amortization is usually over a 20 year period.

Anyone who thinks a modern high-technology information system will last twenty years is the same kind of person who thought that two digits was enough to encode the year when they wrote their code in 1995. I.e., an idiot.

I wish /. would stop screwing with production systems. For this discussion /. knows who I am enough to let me post using my account, but it has forgotten who I am otherwise so I get all the ads I've opted out of and none of the messaging options and style that makes reading this forum manageable. And it wants me to "login" in the top banner.

If this is "beta", it really really sucks.

Re: $28 million is a lot!

[Anonymous Coward]

It probably will be a private company doing the work, governments do know when to contract a service out, and this would be one where they can find a number of options. Then all they need is a smaller unit to do maintenance and residual expansion.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[guruevi]

Spending money to build infrastructure isn't deficit spending. It's an investment in the local economy. If it brings a few businesses to town or even better, creates them, it is essentially free

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[epyT-R]

A taxpayer has more say than a customer?? are you kidding? Sure, a taxpayer can vote...once every two years or so, and whatever he wants will be compromised out of the equation long before it's time to vote, and he still has to pay for it. A customer can look at what's on offer and say 'no thanks.' There is no more powerful vote than that of the wallet.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[epyT-R]

Exactly..and what entity enables their duopoly?

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[marka63]

I just replaced a cable modem that was 10+ years old. I've got other equipment that is still going strong after 15 years. The only thing that was done, other than the occasional clean out of dust, was to replace a single fan. So yes, 20 years should be possible and if not the replacement costs of the powered equipment is a lot less than the full cost of installation. Replacing a CPE device will be less than $100 and will most probably support a faster connection speed. Replacing a line card will be similar on a per port basis. The fibre will last 20 years without a worry. The major problems with fibre will be back hoes and if the plastic sheath attracts animals.

Re: $28 million is a lot!

[postbigbang]

The revenue per subscriber is way off, too. Consider a base charge, Spotify, NetFlix, Apple/Microsoft/Google/Amazon TV, SmartHome/Alarms, and all the other value-add/combo services. Revenues 2x that price aren't out of the questions. Say-- $110/mo.

Add in the fact that the citizens, and the local govs have the rights-of-way, easements, and knowledge of the underground infrastructure. High-density installations benefit first, but whole suburbs can be serviced without huge capital outlays.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Enry]

You aren't active in your local government, are you? Your loss.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Obfuscant]

You aren't active in your local government, are you? Your loss.

I've been active in my local government, and the OPs comment is spot on. For each issue I've taken an active stand in, about twenty vocal fuzzy-warm feel-good liberal nitwits captivated the imagination of the small minded city council members who thought their actions would be world-changing events. In each issue, the council has wound up having NO effect on anything but micromanaging the lives of the citizens or in one case having a negative impact on the world events they were coopting the voices of the local citizens over.

In other words, the only loss I saw for me was a complete waste of my time and energy, and the next time such an issue came up I lost nothing by not being an active participant in the dog and pony show the council was being put through. Were I one of the warm-fuzzy feel-good nitwits, I'd have gotten a great deal of warm-fuzzy feel-good goose bumps all over and feel so happy -- while actually accomplishing nothing.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Obfuscant]

Spending money to build infrastructure isn't deficit spending.

If you have to borrow the money to build the infrastructure, yes, it is deficit spending. You're spending more money than you take in.

If it brings a few businesses to town or even better, creates them, it is essentially free

Borrowing money is never free, and the biggest lie is that taxpayer funded ANYTHING is "free".

What about the companies that leave town -- like the ones that the competition from the local government kill or keep from coming in to compete with the existing services? It's already bad enough that a second company won't come compete because the return on investment would be low; imagine how many would come if the competition from the taxpayer-funded system made that ROI negative? (Answer: none).

But there would be competition! Until the ROI for the existing services goes negative and they pull out, which leaves you with ONE true government monopoly and no competition at all.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Enry]

Soo.....you proved my point.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Obfuscant]

Soo.....you proved my point.

Ahh, no. Exactly the opposite. But if it makes you feel warm and fuzzy and think you won because you didn't quite understand what I said, that's fine. It would be my loss to participate further, just as I said earlier.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[bitingduck]

What about the companies that leave town -- like the ones that the competition from the local government kill or keep from coming in to compete with the existing services? It's already bad enough that a second company won't come compete because the return on investment would be low; imagine how many would come if the competition from the taxpayer-funded system made that ROI negative? (Answer: none).

Like Comcast? They're not going to bring money to or keep money in your local town-- they're going to pay as little as possible to people to ignore you on the phone for support, put an office staffed at minimum wage and located as far from you as possible, and give you as little service as possible while charging you exorbitant rates for bad service (with the money going to line someone's pockets far from your town). And if they can't make enough profit in your town, they'll get legislation to prevent you from building the service yourself. And with few exceptions, broadband providers don't bother competing directly for the same subscribers, so there is no second company coming to compete, anyway.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Crashmarik]

You're arguing with someone that named themselves Obfuscant.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Crashmarik]

LOL, In this case yeah. It would probably cut down on the ulcer's I get every time I talk to Comcast.
Who knows maybe the town will actually try and provide good service instead of the BS the typical monopoly does.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been active in my local government, and the OPs comment is spot on. For each issue I've taken an active stand in, about twenty vocal self-victimizing fist-waving conservative ignoramuses captivated the imagination of the small minded city council members who thought their actions would just effect the people they want them to effect, basically everyone except them. In each issue, the council has wound up having LOTS of effects on everything, including overbudgeting by almost 1000%, in order to line their own pockets with 800% of the budget, and then DOCUMENT it on paper and change laws to make it ok after the fact, or blowing up hilariously in predictable ways that the public raised concerns with over 1,000 times before the project started or in many cases having a negative impact on the ridiculously overexaggerated events they were attempting to silence, often through threat of personal violence or family abduction, the voices of the local citizens.

In other words, the only loss I saw for me was a complete waste of my time and energy, and the next time such an issue came up I moved the fuck away and won't look back until that place is Lord of the Flies in 5 more years.

Your story was so eerily fitting to my experience, I just edited out the key components to fit an extremely typical political setting anywhere from Idaho all the way down to Florida. Hope you enjoy my anecdote.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[thaylin]

Soo.....you proved my point.

Ahh, no. Exactly the opposite. But if it makes you feel warm and fuzzy and think you won because you didn't quite understand what I said, that's fine. It would be my loss to participate further, just as I said earlier.

and the next time such an issue came up I lost nothing by not being an active participant in the dog and pony show the council was being put through. Were I one of the warm-fuzzy feel-good nitwits, I'd have gotten a great deal of warm-fuzzy feel-good goose bumps all over and feel so happy -- while actually accomplishing nothing.

Actually, he is correct. You just showed you are not currently active. He did not say you were never active, but that you are not currently active.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Enry]

I said:

I'd argue that a taxpayer would have more of a say than a customer - a taxpayer is a voter and can make enough noise with neighbors to actually get something to happen. Believe me, it's happened in my town and not in a good way(IMO), but voters have a tremendous power that customers just do not have. A group of 20 people complaining during a town meeting will be far more effective than the same 20 people at Verizon's shareholder meeting. All politics is local.

You said:

For each issue I've taken an active stand in, about twenty vocal fuzzy-warm feel-good liberal nitwits captivated the imagination of the small minded city council members who thought their actions would be world-changing events.

You proved my point.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[drinkypoo]

You aren't active in your local government, are you? Your loss.

My local government is actively corrupt, with the cops in cahoots with the local meth gangs — they refused to bust them for ages, we got a new Sheriff who did something about it, and they literally showed up in force to interfere, they've since drummed him out of office because he was cleaning up too many meth labs. The same old boys' network has run this place for ages and it will never change until they die. The only way I lose is if I actually go involve myself with that stuff and go rapidly prematurely gray just like our now-former Sheriff.

These old fuckers have all the money and all the influence and we have an absolute shitload of cops here who work for them. Kind of makes me wonder if that supposed 911 call that sent the cops to my land was intentional, and not just someone who didn't know where they were. I do talk a lot.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[thaylin]

That is not what is happening at all. They borrowed the money, and the paid service is paying the borrowed money back. The townsfolk themselves are not paying for it. If it did not work you would have an argument, but thus far it has worked, and therefore they are not.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Bengie]

It wouldn't be so bad if their debt per customer wasn't 2x-3x more than the average. According to several case studies, $1.8k-$2.5k per customer is the norm for the entire cost of last mile fiber infrastructure. This does not include purchasing a datacenter or a trunk line to the Internet, only the last mile infrastructure, equipment, and installation.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Bengie]

Sounds like you should be reporting this to the Federal level.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[drinkypoo]

Sounds like you should be reporting this to the Federal level.

Without hard evidence in-hand, I'd just be telling them things they already know, that they can read from the news. And even then, odds are good the evidence just disappears. You don't seem to get that corruption is endemic to the USA too, it's not just for the third world. It's everywhere. We've just written most of ours into the law, so that it's legal, or quasi-legal.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Bengie]

The fiber itself has a projected life time of 50-100 years. The actual electronics have simple upgrade paths that are drop in replacements and backwards compatible. Want to go from 2.5Gb to 40Gb, simple line card upgrade, no changes at the customer's house. Want to go from 40Gb to 320Gb, linecard change, you do need to replace the ONT at the customer's house, but it's backwards compatible and you can upgrade one customer at a time. 40Gb is already out, that's 1.25Gb/s per customer with a 32 way split and its what Google Fiber uses. the 320Gb is 10Gb per customer and just started real world testing in the USA and is scheduled to be ratified in 1-2 years.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[cptdondo]

I think by using phrases like "fuzzy-warm feel-good liberal nitwits" you pretty much sideline yourself. Politics is all about compromise and finding a common solution, something that is obviously missing from your world view. No wonder you feel that your efforts have come to naught. No one wants to be called a nitwit.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[bitingduck]

I know. I was bored...

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Anonymous Coward]

The rate that bandwidth demands are increasing as of late will pretty much ensure whatever tech you have today, will be paperweights 5-10 years from now. We should see a plateau eventually, but who knows where that will top out. Personally, I would be thrilled with 100mbit symmetrical, but then I don't stream any videos or movies. ( Those who do may require a bit more especially as the video formats keep changing )

If you had your cable modem for 10+ years, then it's likely you were not running the higher speed tiers as I don't think a modem of that age would handle it. ( Docis 1-2 vs 3 )

I had to replace my Cisco 881w on my home network because it couldn't handle much more than ~40mbit/sec.

Re: $28 million is a lot!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't bother arguing with the kind of conservative who has to throw the word "liberal" around like it's a slur. You cannot reason with that particular kind of diseased mentality.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[TemporalBeing]

A taxpayer has more say than a customer?? are you kidding? Sure, a taxpayer can vote...once every two years or so, and whatever he wants will be compromised out of the equation long before it's time to vote, and he still has to pay for it. A customer can look at what's on offer and say 'no thanks.' There is no more powerful vote than that of the wallet.

Except in this case where the "voting with your wallet" essentially means sell your home (if you have one) and move elsewhere if you don't like the one or two options available to you; but the problem is no matter where you go you basically will only have those same kind of one or two options (with possibly the same or different entities being your options).

Typically the choice is: Cable Internet (Comcast, Cox, TWC/RoadRunner, Charter, WindStream, and may be a couple smaller players) and either DSL (AT&T, Verizon, and numerous resellers due to Title II status of copper lines over which DLS runs) or Fibre (AT&T uVerse, Verizon FiOS). And all the players mentioned try to keep community broadband services - which run either Ethernet, Fibre, or Coax to your residence themselves - from being an option by claiming "unfair competition" and "contracted rights".

So yes, in this case you actually have a bigger impact by voting in elections - municipal, county, state - than you will ever have with your wallet.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Obfuscant]

And I'm arguing with someone who has the "name" bitingduck. What's your point? Are you really judging content on the /. username and not what is said?

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Obfuscant]

Actually, he is correct. You just showed you are not currently active.

The comment wasn't about whether someone was currently active, it was a statement that it was "your loss" because they weren't active. I showed that, when comparing "active" and "not active" wrt local government, it is more of a loss to be active. The correct statement would be: "you aren't active in local government. Your gain."

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Obfuscant]

I said:

You said:

You aren't active in your local government, are you? Your loss.

That was the ENTIRE comment I replied to. Two sentences. You may have made some other point in some other place, but what I replied to, and what I quoted while doing so, was that. And no, by showing that it was more of a loss to participate, I did not prove your point. Exactly the opposite, in fact.

Re:$28 million is a lot!

[Enry]

I'm terribly sorry you're unable to read.

or $2,000 per household, owed by non-subscribers

[raymorris]

>. The $28 million was the original estimate. The cost at the moment is about $38 million.

>. There are about 5,400 subscribers of the broadband service giving a debt of about $6,300 per subscriber.

It should perhaps be noted that the debt is payable not by the subscribers, but by the all households in the city, so they owe just over $2,000 per household.

I can see why the companies who were asked to put up the $38 million themselves didn't think that was a good idea. I wonder why the city council thought they were so much better qualified to make these projections than the people who run ISPs for a living.

It is unfair competition

[mi]

"Don't fight city hall," — goes the ancient wisdom. It is pretty bad already — with local governments protecting the huge incumbents in exchange for perks and kickbacks.

Once the towns have their own direct financial interest in the game, dislodging that monopoly will be even harder. Plain and simple, the government can only be allowed to do, what nobody else can. For local governments that translates to policing and dispensing justice. Nothing else.

Re:It is unfair competition

[sconeu]

Dude, at least RTFS.

That's what Wilson NC did. They asked the inumbents to build out and give a quote.

The big boys told them to go to hell. At which point, they decided to build out their own.

Re:It is unfair competition

[Enry]

Wait, towns that protect incumbents, then want to throw those incumbents out to run their own service...huh?

How about this: government is the provider of last resort (it kinda works this way already for a bunch of other services). If the local telcos or ISPs thought it was profitable, then they would have already done it. But they didn't. So it's up to the local government to step in and work to improve their community. One of the reasons we're in the house (and town) we're in now was because back in 1998 there was Cable Internet service available. These days I'm fairly certain that a house without access to high speed Internet service will sell for far less than a house that does have access to it. Higher house prices equals higher taxes. It's in their interest to make the tax base as wide and high as possible.

Re:It is unfair competition

[Fire_Wraith]

I know that if and when I move next, one of my primary considerations will be "What kind of internet access is available here, and who is the provider". When I last did in 2008, that was a major consideration in buying in the current town (Cox/Fios both available) as opposed to the next county (Comcast only).

Re:It is unfair competition

[Anonymous Coward]

What is even more sick about this whole thing is how both parties basically made sure it happened.

The D's originally wrote the bill that passed in 2011 (they proposed it in 2009). The republicans were like 'oh noes you will break the internet'. Then they took power and picked up the bill written by TW changed a little bit and suddenly the story flipped to the D's going 'oh noes you will break the internet'. At no less than 3 points in time TW representatives were in the office 'of the author' fielding questions.

SAME BILL. Proposed 2 times. Total cost to TW? About 6 grand and a 3 day weekend at a 3 star hotel in Ashville.

Re:It is unfair competition

[jonwil]

Look at the comparison between people in the US who have electricity provided by a commercial for-profit entity and those who have it provided by a co-op/municipal entity. All the evidence I can find suggests that the municipal systems are better for the community than the commercial operators.

I cant find any suggestions that people living in areas where the electricity is provided by a municipal monopoly are unhappy with the service or wish they had a commercial operator running things.

And there is nothing to suggest that municipal broadband is going to be anywhere near as crap as the current offerings. Its likely to be high speed fiber links (so already it will be faster in the real world than the crappy speeds most cable and DSL operators currently give you) and there is no real reason for the municipality to try and pull tricks to protect TV revenues (since the municipalities generally dont have skin in the TV game in the way the current monopolies do)

Re:It is unfair competition

[mi]

All the evidence I can find suggests that the municipal systems are better for the community than the commercial operators.

For somebody making such a claim, you offer surprisingly few citations. Zero to be precise.

I cant find any suggestions that people living in areas where the electricity is provided by a municipal monopoly are unhappy

I certainly am unhappy with our electricity-provider — our wires hang on the poles, which makes them vulnerable to even light snow and wind. We routinely lose power for a few minutes here, which is just insane — back in USSR (for all its other faults) I don't remember such nonsense like ever. Cables must be buried underground, but, facing no competition the local utility is not in any hurry to do that.

And there is nothing to suggest that municipal broadband is going to be anywhere near as crap as the current offerings.

You really want to go into particulars, huh? Ok, first question is, how long after the first mommy makes a complaint, will the municipal network allow access to porno-sites and bomb-making material — and just who will be maintaining the black list of disallowed sites? Second question: how much will the maintenance cost? Third question: will the technical support be any better than those professionals working for Comcasts et al. — what do the good folks in that know, that Comcast does not about troubleshooting Internet connectivity? Fourth question: how will the network deal with hijacked computers connected to it? Should I go on?

Re:It is unfair competition

[Anonymous Coward]

Third question: will the technical support be any better than those professionals working for Comcasts et al

They'd have to work pretty hard for it to be any worse.

Re:It is unfair competition

[bitingduck]

All the evidence I can find suggests that the municipal systems are better for the community than the commercial operators.

For somebody making such a claim, you offer surprisingly few citations. Zero to be precise.

During the Enron Induced Electricity Crisis in southern California I lived in the City of Pasadena. Pasadena has its own municipal water and power service, and did a very good job of managing costs so that I didn't see rate increases at all, while customers of SoCal Edison were paying enormous amounts of money for power when they had it, and had plenty of brownouts/rolling blackouts while I had stable service. The City of Los Angeles did even better - DWP had done a very good job of planning and prepurchasing power and had excess available that they could sell at a profit, lowering the cost for their own municipal subscribers. Most municipal systems did similarly well during the summer of Enron, while private electricity was a disaster.

I now live in unincorporated LA county and am served by SoCal Edison. When we had a huge windstorm that took out power for about 1 million households across multiple power providers, Pasadena had nearly everybody back up in a day (they've spent a great deal of effort moving a lot of the supply underground and on reliability in general). I was driving across LA during the first full day after the storm and every hour or so the radio would report that another 100,000 of LA DWP customers were back up, but no change in SCE. Nearly all of about 400K City of LA customers were back up in 2 days, while SCE took as long as a week for many customers (they had something like 500K customers out), and was essentially incapable of even estimating how much they had to fix or when they could do it. SCE has had absolutely terrible service for most of the time that I've been in their service area, and I would gladly pay Pasadena prices for their reliability.

Re:It is unfair competition

[sribe]

Cables must be buried underground, but, facing no competition the local utility is not in any hurry to do that.

Fine. Then vote to spend 10x - 100x (depending on terrain) as much to run the cables, and raise the rates to pay for the ***HUGE*** bond issue required to implement it.

Re: It is unfair competition

[Anonymous Coward]

That mommy can be told to install the handy webfilter from some company or other that the ISP pays for the service.

Re:It is unfair competition

[Macdude]

If the local telcos or ISPs thought it was profitable, then they would have already done it.

This is a common fallacy, if the ISPs thought they could make a higher return on their investment providing crappy service (particularly if they have no competition) then there is no incentive for them to provide good service (particularly if it means they will have competition).

The town (presumably) would not be profit focused and therefore be more concerned with the quality of the service than the return on investment. There are some things socialism does better than capitalism, and vice-versa.

Re:It is unfair competition

[houghi]

I am appalled that taxes are used for the people to be used for faster bandwidth. What they should do is give money to the ISPs who then in turn will provide faster internet.

Why has nobody done that in the past? What? Oh! (I only see a submit button, not a cancel button. Darn. Too late.)

Re:It is unfair competition

[Anonymous Coward]

You know, when electric service to homes was first becoming common, Westinghouse, Edison, and others were building out their own infrastructure. Now, electricity is largely a municipal service because it became something everyone needed.

Re:It is unfair competition

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't incumbent on anyone to provide citations to a raving lunatic "I'm threatened by guns" libertarian. Rate payers all over the country are generally far more satisfied with municiple and co-op utilities compared to investor owned utilities. It is a self evident fact. If you can not recognize that on average, organizations comprised of their customers will serve their members better than a corporation designed to extract revenue and incur low expenses in the name of a foreign, third party shareholder, you're a fucking idiot.

Re:It is unfair competition

[FreelanceWizard]

As much as people complain about its occasionally byzantine bureaucracy and its sometimes lapses into small-time corruption (such as giving open terms to the politically powerful), Memphis Light, Gas, and Water (MLGW) serves over 400k subscribers, rapidly fixes outages in a major metropolitan area prone to thunderstorm damage, repeatedly wins awards for reliability of service and water quality, and has a AA bond rating. It offers extremely favorable terms and payment programs for low-income subscribers. Oh, yeah, and it also has .

But hey, municipal utilities can't do anything right, right?

The problem isn't municipal utilities. The problem is poor process and intentional handicapping. When you have neither of these -- for instance, because your municipal utility is run as an independent organization with elected oversight that has actual skin in the game (after all, if you live in the city and use the utility, you have a good reason to not have it suck) -- the results are positive, and there's some great examples of how this works.

Re:It is unfair competition

[Terwin]

I cant find any suggestions that people living in areas where the electricity is provided by a municipal monopoly are unhappy with the service or wish they had a commercial operator running things.

Even though I am not within the city limits and cannot vote on city matters, I am still required to use City of Austin electricity.
My last house was also outside the city limits but was not inside the boundaries of the City of Austin electricity.
When I could select my provider, my per-KWH cost of electricity was much lower.
Austin has a very strong green party lobby and a very progressive cost structure for electricity(first 500kwh are less than half the price of the second 500kwh and after that it climbs rapidly, not to mention various fees and such that are tacked on to fund various things I did not get to vote on)

As such I am subsidizing the nearby city of Austin with my power bill and paying for my MUD with my water bill.

I would be more than happy to go back to having a commercial electrical provider were it permitted in my area, my commercial provider was quite happy to adjust my billing cycle to allow me to pay all my bills when I want to, as opposed to City of Austin electric which has refused with some claim about my billing cycle being determined by when the readers are scheduled to be in my area and cannot be adjusted by so much as a single day.

Re:It is unfair competition

[Nethead]

I love my SnoPUD.org. Will not live in a non-PUD power area again.

Re:It is unfair competition

[Darinbob]

Actually I wish real estate agents would start to include internet services available in their listings, along side access to good schools. Similarly local governments doing property assessments should take into account quality of internet (they'll never do that though as it will hurt tax revenue). Then you'll start to see a lot of political pressure to improve the quality of internet as the housing valuations start to drop.

Re:It is unfair competition

[Darinbob]

Local utilities are very often private corporations (with some state level public oversight commission usually). A municipal utility refers to one that's operated by the city itself. Many of these came into effect because the larger utility gave such bad service that the voters decided to dump them.

Of course these are a bit cheaper in that the cities are taking over existing infrastructure rather than building out their own, but they do still need to maintain them. Sometimes it's expensive to improve on the crap that they inherited.

Quite Timely

[Anonymous Coward]

I spent over 90 minutes on the phone with CenturyLink today, the 4th call I had to make to try and get them to just give me the service they sold me for the price we agreed to when I signed. They added extra services and billed me for them and it has been hell to try and get them to just give me the original offer. I easily listened to 60min+ today of 'Your call is important to us... we have the highest customer satisfaction in the industry' all while I am fuming at their inability to do fairly basic things.

I actually had a brief moment of thought about Comcast today. But that quickly vanished. Too bad they are the only other provider in the area.

We need competition BADLY.

Re:Quite Timely

[The Rizz]

I agree - CenturyLink is pure shit. Thankfully we have a smaller regional cable internet company that still gives at least half a shit about its customers (Midcontinent). I live in terror of the day that Comcast / TW / whoever comes in an buys them out.

Re:It's not $28 million

[Anonymous Coward]

Your source, Coalition for the New Economy, is backed by big telecom, so not a very shocking "review".

Re:or $2,000 per household, owed by non-subscriber

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder why the city council thought they were so much better qualified to make these projections than the people who run ISPs for a living.

Their reasons are irrelevant. The decision to employ public funds to this end was made by the people. If the ISPs insist the weight of their opinion must be greater than that of the people those ISPs should be dismantled as they're a threat to democracy.

Re:or $2,000 per household, owed by non-subscriber

[Shadow99_1]

Probably because the people at the ISP's don't give a shit what services the people there need/want?

I briefly tried to take a blog on technology issues into the domain of a youtube channel. However my internet is a 20/1 connection, at 1 mbps it takes me 3-4 hours to upload one ~40 minute segment. While I'm uploading I can't even use the internet for anything else. I need much faster up, but those big companies don't give a rats ass what I need. My best option for internet is what I have now. No business options even exist beyond what I have for residential service (a 3x bill just gets me 24/7 support and a change of name to 'business service').

These companies want to milk existing infrastructure for their own profit with no benefit to their customers. The other big businesses and financial services who own their stock get a good return though.

Re:or $2,000 per household, owed by non-subscriber

[jythie]

Qualification is not the issue, goals are. The city council has a different set of priorities than outside ISPs. It still might have been a bad idea, but looking to the calculations run by people with different objectives in mind is of limited utility.

Re:or $2,000 per household, owed by non-subscriber

[crbowman]

I don't see this as that different from a municipal water system. The town, through it's elected officials, chose to implement this plan. Perhaps the citizens voted for this system knowing that initially it wouldn't break even but think that it was good for the town as a whole. Much as I might vote for a municipal water system even though I get my water from a well and don't want to subscribe to the water system. I realize that it's good for the town and therefore good for me indirectly even if I don't directly take advantage of it. I support bond measures for schools even though I don't have children and don't plan too and so do some who send their children to private schools. Who are we, not part of the town, to question their wisdom and judgement from afar. Perhaps the town made the judgement that as the internet grows and government services migrate to the net, more people will sign up and it will be revenue neutral or even make them money down the road. I support the idea the local government is the best and I see no reason to over turn their judgement here.

Finally

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been wondering how long it would be before internet access began to be regarded as a utility. It has a lot in common with water and electricity in the 21st century - important to everyday life, high capital investment to put in infrastructure, commoditized once that infrastructure is in place. The parallel with electricity is especially close - different providers all use (or in theory can use) the same wires.

Of course, internet access is not as important as electricity and water in a fundamental survival sense, but the key is whether access to it is regarded as a norm of civilized life. 150 years ago access to electricity was rare and not part of day to day life - arguably, electrical infrastructure is not critical for survival or even for civilized living. Yet, today, living without electricity is not something most of us would care to contemplate. I suspect over the next 50 years "information infrastructure" will come to be regarded much the same way - theoretically we could make do without it, but the normal functioning of society and people's interactions with that society will require it.

Whether tha'ts a good thing is of course another question, but to me regulating the internet as a utility is in 2015 a no brainer.

Re:or $2,000 per household, owed by non-subscriber

[Anonymous Coward]

Then go live in Russia commie.

Re:or $2,000 per household, owed by non-subscriber

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you know that a democracy MEANS you lose the vote, you have to do what the majority agreed on.

If you don't like living in a Democracy, then go to Somalia.

Re:or $2,000 per household, owed by non-subscriber

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder why the city council thought they were so much better qualified to make these projections than the people who run ISPs for a living.

ISP: Maximize ROI.
City council: provide service to local residents.
Yep, clearly completely identical priorities.

Didn't work for Philadelphia

[mi]

But it makes the town a better place to live, so more people (and businesses) move there, increasing the number of subscribers and lowering the cost for everyone. Hey, it could happen.

Sure. And a pink elephant could materialize out of thin air. Fortunately, we don't need to guess — the City of Brotherly Love tried municipal WiFi (much cheaper than running actual cables) years ago. By 2008 the system was shut down. Earthlink actually wanted to hand it off to the city's government, but found no interest...

Seattle's municipal WiFi went dark in 2012. Other examples abound.

Yes, not only is government competing with private sector illegal — it is also a bad idea.

Re:Didn't work for Philadelphia

[Enry]

Because free wifi across an entire city is exactly the same as paid high speed internet in small towns.

Re:Didn't work for Philadelphia

[AmiMoJo]

You are comparing municipal broadband over fibre to municipal wifi. One is a fixed, high speed line to your home or business and the other is a low speed shared resource used mostly outside or by people too cheap to get broadband.

The two are quite fundamentally different problems too. Wifi can be installed on an ad-hok basis where a fixed line is available to get coverage. Broadband requires massive amounts of infrastructure to be put in the ground or up poles. Businesses have been unwilling to install broadband infrastructure in many places, especially when there is no competition so everyone is forced to use their shitty 2Mb ADSL anyway.

There is a reason why electricity, gas and water supplies are heavily regulated. You have no choice, there is one one line/pipe going into your home, only one company available to serve you. Broadband isn't considered an important utility in the US so you get screwed, and citizens getting together to set up municipal broadband is a good fix.

Re:Didn't work for Philadelphia

[mi]

Because free wifi across an entire city is exactly the same as paid high speed internet in small towns.

Yes, it is very similar. The exact same things were said on this very /. 10-15 years ago about the "great promise" of municipal WiFi, that the new generation of wide-eyed socialists are saying now: praising the Glorious Collective and denouncing the Greedy Corporations.

Paid or not, it is run by the government for The Greater Good[TM]. So it will become mismanaged very quickly — like all collectively-owned things.

Meanwhile, no competing service could possibly appear — because you can not "fight city hall".

Re:Didn't work for Philadelphia

[thaylin]

Paid or not makes a HUGE difference. Free services are tax supported, paid subscriptions pay for themselves. If you cant raise constant taxes then a free solution will fail, and it is hard to raise reoccurring taxes. So you are really comparing apples and oranges.

Re:Didn't work for Philadelphia

[mi]

Wifi can be installed on an ad-hok basis where a fixed line is available to get coverage. Broadband requires massive amounts of infrastructure to be put in the ground or up poles.

Yep. So WiFi is (or should be) a lot easier to roll out and maintain — and yet, it did not survive.

There is a reason why electricity, gas and water supplies are heavily regulated.

There is, but it is not, what you have in mind. The utilities have become monopolies because of the myth of natural monopoly. A myth very convenient to the government types, but a myth nonetheless.

You have no choice, there is one one line/pipe going into your home, only one company available to serve you.

Yes, and it sucks. And that little town has just ensured (or tried to), their Internet-service provision will be just as sucky for years to come.

Re:Didn't work for Philadelphia

[Enry]

Meanwhile, no competing service could possibly appear — because you can not "fight city hall".

Cell phones aren't competing?

Re:Didn't work for Philadelphia

[mi]

Free services are tax supported, paid subscriptions pay for themselves.

Nothing collectively-owned "pays for itself" in practice — this is why USSR collapsed, why Israel (mostly) abolished the idea of kibbutzes, and why Venezuela is falling apart.

And in theory it was and remains "unfair competition" — because competing with city hall is just as impossible as winning against a team, that has the referee officially playing for it.

Re:Didn't work for Philadelphia

[Bengie]

Yep. So WiFi is (or should be) a lot easier to roll out and maintain — and yet, it did not survive.

There is little demand for a high latency unstable bandwidth connection. Wifi can be better than some poorly maintained fixed line connections, but it's not hard for even DSL to be better because of latency and packet-loss.

Re:Didn't work for Philadelphia

[thaylin]

Having a duopoly is "unfair competition", so get that phrases out. When you have a duopoly and refuse to give the services that the town wants what should the town do, shrug and say OK? It is not like Wilson just woke up and said, you know we should build our own, no, they went to TWC first and TWC said nope, we will not provide these services.

Re:Didn't work for Philadelphia

[thaylin]

Also how many services did the USSR own that collected subscriptions and were not profitable? You are taking it to an absurd level.

Re:Didn't work for Philadelphia

[thaylin]

Because it was free, a free service with no revenue CANNOT survive. Can you really not understand the difference?

Re:Didn't work for Philadelphia

[fodder69]

So it will become mismanaged very quickly — like all collectively-owned things.

Holy Over-Generalization, Batman! Sigh, I could try to argue but guessing "examples" or "facts" from the "real world" aren't really going to convince you.

Re:Didn't work for Philadelphia

[fodder69]

Both of those WiFi services were free, as in supported by tax dollars and really easy to throw on the chopping block when most people pay for a separate internet connection at home and use cell service elsewhere, so no real demand for it.

Re:Didn't work for Philadelphia

[itzly]

Broadband doesn't have to require massive investments. I have 52 Mbps VDSL2 over the same old copper pair that's been in the ground for the better part of a century. At the end of the street, there's a concentrator that takes hundreds of copper pairs and bundles them on a single fiber. So, the investment is quite modest. It did not involve digging trenches in my street.

Re:Didn't work for Philadelphia

[Anonymous Coward]

Heh.

You are dismissing the amount of investment it requires to put said Copper Plant into place and also maintaining it. In fact, it's so expensive to maintain, many Telco's are looking for ways to get rid of it completely.

Re:Didn't work for Philadelphia

[itzly]

The investment to put the copper into place was done years ago for POTS purposes. And maintenance cost have probably gone down, because I used to be connected through ~2 miles of copper pair, and now it's about a quarter mile.

Re: Didn't work for Philadelphia

[Anonymous Coward]

Show me where, ANYWHERE other than in a specific bought and paid for law that it is illegal for a town to do something just because someone else wants to make a buck. (Sound of crickets)

Sorry. You saying it doesn't make it so.

Re:Didn't work for Philadelphia

[TemporalBeing]

But it makes the town a better place to live, so more people (and businesses) move there, increasing the number of subscribers and lowering the cost for everyone. Hey, it could happen.

Sure. And a pink elephant could materialize out of thin air. Fortunately, we don't need to guess — the City of Brotherly Love tried municipal WiFi (much cheaper than running actual cables) years ago. By 2008 the system was shut down. Earthlink actually wanted to hand it off to the city's government, but found no interest...

Seattle's municipal WiFi went dark in 2012. Other examples abound.

Yes, not only is government competing with private sector illegal — it is also a bad idea.

Except you are not simply talking about government. You are also talking about HOA's and similar communities.

For instance, one of my friend's bought a house in a community 15-20 years back. The CableTV companies didn't want anything to do with the community; so they ran their own lines to everyone's house. It was simply an HOA that did the work and the residents split the costs. Same thing has happened in many communities around the nation only to have the big players (especially the Cable companies) come in and shut it down.

So no, this doesn't necessarily mean goverment run; but it does mean citizen run and organized in some manner - with or without help from their municipal government.

Re:Didn't work for Philadelphia

[Jawnn]

Yes, not only is government competing with private sector illegal — it is also a bad idea.

[citation needed]
While you're trying to find some support for your echo chamber bullshit, consider that a municipality delivering something that the so-called free market can't or won't deliver, is not really competing.

Authorized Content

[Anonymous Coward]

With the government owning the bandwidth, why couldn't they just disallow anything they dont like ? Much like the roads, its a priviledge right ?

Re:or $2,000 per household, owed by non-subscriber

[NicBenjamin]

The decision to employ public funds to this end was made by the people [...] ISPs should be dismantled as they're a threat to democracy.

If the majority can decide to force me at gunpoint to pay for something I did not want, then the "democracy" must be dismantled as not a mere threat, but actual impediment to freedom.

As a white person I have to say only another white boy would say something this ridiculous.

Every government ever has forced people to pay for things they didn't want. Pacifists funded the revolution at the exact same rate as Patriots. You couldn't get out of paying for the war that conquered the Indians of Ohio by claiming you had a principled disagreement with the policy of Indian Removal to West of the Mississippi.

BTW, the policy of Indian Removal probably would not have worked if the Native Americans had real governments that could do things like insist that the Oglala Lakota of what is now South Dakota send 1,500 number of warriors to a rally point in Green Bay to join the Unified Native Resistance Army. Since they didn't we got to fight each nation thirteen-on-one, with some very rare exceptions (i.e.: Tecumseh), and even those exceptions typically didn't have the political power to enforce taxation or military service. Which meant that when they lost a battle they lost the war.

Century Link

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree - CenturyLink is pure shit. Thankfully we have a smaller regional cable internet company that still gives at least half a shit about its customers (Midcontinent). I live in terror of the day that Comcast / TW / whoever comes in an buys them out.

Century Link has always worked great for me. And unlike Comcast and all the other major players Century Link isn't a member of the ISP group that has actively volunteered to go out of their way to tell on you to RIAA and MPAA etc for any questionable downloads. So far they just mind their own business and let you use the connection you are paying for.

They are in an extreme minority in that regard and have earned me as a customer because of it. F' Comcast...

5,400 want it, 47,000 get the bill. Most don't wan

[raymorris]

>. Probably because the people at the ISP's don't give a shit what services the people there need/want?

> Probably because the people at the ISP's don't give a shit what services the people there need/want?

"Town of 47,000 residents ... 5,400 subscribers".
5,400 people want the service, enough to pay $50/ month for it. 47,000 people are being forced to pay for it. It seems to me the city council doesn't care what the overwhelming majority of the people want. If the majority wanted the service, ISPs would provide the service, because it would be profitable. That's what businesses do - provide what people want. If they provide something people don't want, like Windows Phone, they're punished in the marketplace while those who provide what people want win.

Re:5,400 want it, 47,000 get the bill. Most don't

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to me the city council doesn't care what the overwhelming majority of the people want.

How do you know this? Are you a mind reader? Have you read the minds of the city, or just the council? Have you done any consultation with them at all? What qualifications do you have to understand the minds of this city council, or the inhabitants of this city? Is it just your own conjectural reasoning then?

If the majority wanted the service, ISPs would provide the service, because it would be profitable.

Why do you assume that? Do you know the ISP's business plans? Can you see the future then? Have you consulted with any ISPs regarding service to this city? Have you looked at their plans?

Or is this also your own conjectural reasoning?

Honestly, what needs to happen.

[Chas]

There should be procedure in place to allow for a municipal build-out if the municipality can document either a a rebuff from major local providers or total lack of response to multiple requests with a 60 day waiting period between request and assumed "rebuff".

If providers flat out decline to provide for the area, they should have no say in the area providing for itself.

helpful to NSA

[aaronbong]

What are the implications for NSA? Warrantless wiretapping? I'm not sure I want the government to be my ISP, even if it means better, faster internet.

Re:helpful to NSA

[Anonymous Coward]

What are the implications for NSA? Warrantless wiretapping? I'm not sure I want the government to be my ISP, even if it means better, faster internet.

I hope you realize that in this case when they say "government", they mean your local municipal government. Not the Federal government.

Re:helpful to NSA

[mvdwege]

Since corporate-owned Internet was provably no obstacle to government surveillance, your question is irrelevant.

Re:helpful to NSA

[Anonymous Coward]

As opposed to Google, AT&T or Verizon who all actively hand over any data that is demanded of them ?

In some cases, they don't even bother and just run an optical splitter to feed the other agency everything ? ( AT&T )

You already know your data is susceptible to monitoring. Either modify what you do online, or try to use tech that makes their data acquisition more difficult.

It's called arithmetic

[raymorris]

There are 47,000 people in the city (who are on the hook for the bill).
Of those 47,000, only 5,400 have chosen to get the service.
The remaining people, who chose not to get the service, are the overwhelming majority.

You don't have to read minds, you can read TFA. Most citizens have chosen not to get the service.

ISPs, like other companies, seek to make money. You don't have to read their minds to know, that's one of their primary goals. They might also be environmentally conscience, care for their employees, etc., but definitely they want to make a profit. In business, profit is measured by Return On Investment, or ROI. If you spend $10 million and 10 years later you get your $10,000 back, but no profit, that's a return. If you spend $1 million and get $10 million back, that's a 1,000% ROI - very good. Businesses do things that they think will have a high ROI, and don't do things that have a low or negative ROI (with some exceptions like Apple's solar panels).

In this particular business, if you get back your investment in two to three years, then be profiting from it after that, that's a good project - one that makes plenty enough money. If you can spend $30 million, and in the first three years get back $30 million in sales, then in the fourth year have $10 million in profit, and $10 million profit every year thereafter, you do it.

So let's look at the arithmetic cable and phone companies do to make money. They look at this project and estimate the cost to build it (their investment), and the number of likely subscribers multiplied by the price each subscriber will pay - the company's expected return. They'll do the arithmetic for several price points, like these:

Cost to build 100 Mbps service: $30 million / 3 year recup = $10 / million per year.
So if they expect to sell $10 million per year, that's profitable and they'll do it if they can.

10,000 subscribers X $75/month X 12 months = $9,000,000

15,000 subscribers X $60/month X 12 months = $10,800,000

Of 47,000 residents, if 10,000 of them will buy at $75/month, it's reasonably profitable, but not insanely profitable. They might build there, if they don't have somewhere better to build this month.

If 15,000 want to buy the service, the company brings in over $10 million per year on the $30 million investment and that's a winner. You definitely build there.

The actual numbers for this town are that 5,400 were willing to $50:
5400 X $50/month X 12 months = $3,240,000
Not a good deal. It takes ten years just to get your money back, except you've been paying (or foregoing) interest the whole time, so even after ten years you've lost money. Anyone who passed Business Management 101 will avoid this for sure.

Re:It's called arithmetic

[Anonymous Coward]

Your reasoning is assuming that because a person doesn't choose to get the service, they don't want the community to have the service.

That's your conjecture. It may be beyond your comprehension to realize that people can want something for their community, even if they don't intend to subscribe to it themselves, but others need not agree.

Of course, you also neglected to consider the factor of household size, as such services as these are by residence, not individual, and we don't even know what the current coverage area of their network is, so your numbers are pretty bad. But really, the point I'm making is that you think you can read minds of either the city as a whole, or the city council. It's all just your conjectural reasoning.

As for the ISPs, again, you don't realize something, that their business plans are not necessarily compatible with this city getting broadband.. They may not have the resources in place, they may not have a desire to expand in a given area, they may just be so full of themselves that they don't even see the opportunity. Yet you believe that if the profit is there, they will come. That belief may work for phantom ball players, it doesn't necessarily work for businesses. Sometimes they walk away from opportunities for a variety of reasons, including simply being wrong in their analysis.

Sorry, but all you have is your conjectural reasoning, you can't read minds. And your reasoning is faulty in at least two respects just in this post. And you have a bad track record in the past, with your claims about the cost of EPB's service and the total number of customers they had. Really, thinking they only had a single service tier and a few dozen customers? For shame.

Re:It's called arithmetic

[Fembot]

There are 47,000 people in the city (who are on the hook for the bill).
Of those 47,000, only 5,400 have chosen to get the service.
The remaining people, who chose not to get the service, are the overwhelming majority.

You don't have to read minds, you can read TFA. Most citizens have chosen not to get the service.

There's a flaw in your logic here - you are quoting 'people in the city' in one breath and then comparing it to 'households' in the next breath. Exactly how many house holds would you expect to see have more than one subscriber?

I'm not sure exactly what the average household size is to use for this, but assuming that's 4 (2.5 kids and all that) then the uptake is more like 45%. That's a pretty good number even compared to top commercial offerings. (How many are rented and not allowed by landlord or stuck in other contracts?)

Re:It's called arithmetic

[bitingduck]

There are 47,000 people in the city (who are on the hook for the bill).
Of those 47,000, only 5,400 have chosen to get the service.

47K people may be only 9K to 15K households. If all the households have 2 adults and 2.2 kids, 5400 is about half the households in the city. It may very easily be that while there's insufficient profit available for a large providers to come in, it's more than worth it for the residents to have what's become a rather important utility for much or most of the developed world.

Governments are preventing internet, not helping.

[rconaway]

Let's get some reality into this argument since the cause and effect is totally bogus. 1) The reason many companies don't upgrade their infrastructure is the cost of laying new cable is totally ridiculous. The cost of pulling the cable is only part of the problem. The other part of the problem that adds thousands to tens of thousands per customer is the onerous regulations each city has. Many of those regulations are in place to prevent competitors from coming into an area. It's also why Google has cancelled most of their fiber installations. 2) Other technologies such as wireless over unlicensed frequencies instead of licensed frequencies are demonstrating speeds up to 250Mbps today and working on even faster speeds tomorrow, up to 5Gbs. This costs about $200-$250 per household, just pennies compared to fiber or copper. Unfortuntately, the FCC, at the urging of Senators, Congressmen, and the cellular industry, keep auctioning off the frequencies that would allow smaller operators to compete against them. The answer isn't having government run anything. They are rife with corruption, inefficiency, and bureaucracy. Anyone who thinks this is a good idea has never worked with any government agencies.

Re:Governments are preventing internet, not helpin

[Anonymous Coward]

It's also why Google has cancelled most of their fiber installations.

Was that supposed to be sarcasm? If not, what the fuck kinda fantasy world are you living in? Google just announced they were expanding to eighteen more cities across four metro areas.

Any competition is good competition

[zamboni1138]

The ILEC's (Incumbent Local Exchange Carrier) need competition. I work in an area only a few thousand feet from fiber. After Frontier bought that piece of Verizon land (many years ago) they stopped all FiOS deployments. The only landline access available to my main office is T1, currently $650/mo. That's 1.5Mbps up/down to the lowest bidder with Frontier providing the local loop. I was paying $2,600/mo for four T1's to get 6Mbps. The lines went down continuously. Customer service was a joke. I lived in this hell for almost ten years until the neighboring city started providing internet access. We were able to get a point-to-point 5.8GHz solution for less than $1,000 setup and 400/month that provides 30Mbps up/down and has near 100% uptime, better than anything provided by the the local telephone (err, data transport) companies.

Re: or $2,000 per household, owed by non-subscribe

[Anonymous Coward]

Really? Pay for any bridges? Aircraft carriers? F-35s. Airports? Public transportation. Highways?

Why?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't understand why there are arguments about this. Do you all live in one of these towns? If not, why are you analyzing the financial data to determine how these local governments should be allowed to spend their money? The answer is however the voters there want them to. If it doesn't effect you, why are you butting your nose in?

We know these laws only exist because the telcos pushed for them in order to eliminate the competition. For me, that alone is enough to throw them out. Let's not forget that this isn't a choice between letting some local people spend local money on local infrastructure and not letting them. It's a choice between letting them spend $28 million to build a fiber network that might fail, or giving Comcast / Time Warner / Verizon $20 million to build out the infrastructure and then watching them run away giggling with the cash - having built nothing.

Personally, I'd roll the dice on a local project.

free market? my a$$

[l3v1]

"which prevent cities from undercutting established players on price"

Now, how come that the most "free" country in the world has laws for that? Shenanigans. If the "ruling" lobbyists can make laws they want, then it's not a free country and it's not a free market, just state and accept that, and quit whining about how things stand.

Municipal owns the network - everyone can trafic

[Anonymous Coward]

In my home town, Lycksele, Sweden, we have a municipal owned network. Any company interested in delivering internet service, to us end customers, can do so. This I like very much. My town has a population much less than Wilson, NC, it is around 9.000 and yet we have Gigabit up and down depending on the subscription of course. If a company owns the network your screwd, if the municipal owns it, it is much easier to hav a say as a sitizen.

Infrastructure should never be owned by company, only by us the people.

English is not my native language

~27% penetration is pretty damn good for 10 years

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the last census they have 19400 households in town. Some 27% of them are on the municipal fiber service despite inertia, brand loyalty, and the local duopoly fighting tooth and nail to keep customers without upgrading their shit. Sounds like money well spent to me.

Meanwhile in Estonia

[Anonymous Coward]

Internet has been an utility for years.

Re:5,400 want it, 47,000 get the bill. Most don't

[Anonymous Coward]

What nonsense. Try 5.4k subscribers from ~12k households (give or take).

Surely your spouse, children, parents or whoever else lives under your roof don't all have a separate broadband subscription...

Im on AT&T "fiber"

[Anonymous Coward]

Its slower than dialup... And not nearly as reliable.

True story...

[Anonymous Coward]

When I was shopping for an ISP at my new home, Comcast was one of my two options. One of the salesmen actually brought up the fact that Comcast provides service to the FBI TSA & NSA... As if having crooked spies on their network would somehow make their service more attractive to me.

Re:5,400 want it, 47,000 get the bill. Most don't

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't all that long ago that I remember ISP terms and conditions specifying that only a single computer was allowed to use the connection.

I'm sure ISPs would require every resident to get a separate subscription, if they thought they could get away with it.

Free Enterprise

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought that some people were all about Free Enterprise. If a city wants to spend money and make an investment let them. But, wait, if the single entity that's the monopoly now doesn't want the competition, then it's: REGULATE!! REGULATE!! REGULATE!!

For all AT&T internet subscribers:

[Anonymous Coward]

For all AT&T internet subscribers:

        COMPANY DATA:
                COMPANY CONFORMED NAME: AT&T INC.
                CENTRAL INDEX KEY: 0000732717
                STANDARD INDUSTRIAL CLASSIFICATION: TELEPHONE COMMUNICATIONS (NO RADIO TELEPHONE) [4813]
                IRS NUMBER: 431301883
                STATE OF INCORPORATION: DE
                FISCAL YEAR END: 1231

        FILING VALUES:
                FORM TYPE: 424B2
                SEC ACT: 1933 Act
                SEC FILE NUMBER: 333-187350
                FILM NUMBER: 15567275

        BUSINESS ADDRESS:
                STREET 1: 208 S. AKARD ST
                STREET 2: ATTN : JAMES LACY
                CITY: DALLAS
                STATE: TX
                ZIP: 75202
                BUSINESS PHONE: 2108214105

        MAIL ADDRESS:
                STREET 1: 208 S. AKARD ST
                STREET 2: ATTN : JAMES LACY
                CITY: DALLAS
                STATE: TX
                ZIP: 75202

        FORMER COMPANY:
                FORMER CONFORMED NAME: SBC COMMUNICATIONS INC
                DATE OF NAME CHANGE: 19950501

        FORMER COMPANY:
                FORMER CONFORMED NAME: SOUTHWESTERN BELL CORP
                DATE OF NAME CHANGE: 19920703

Re:5,400 want it, 47,000 get the bill. Most don't

[drinkypoo]

That's what businesses do - provide what people want.

No, no they don't. They provide the subset of what people what that they can make the maximum profit on. Occasionally, for the good of the people, we force them to do more. It's still profitable activity overall, but there's less profit than if they did only what they wanted to, and not what we actually want them to do. The obvious example is the penetration of the POTS network. We forced the telcos to connect people that they didn't want to connect, even though they wanted to be connected. We did it for the good of the nation, which we felt would be better and stronger with rapid communications for all of our citizens — at least, those who we could reasonably and feasibly connect. Now the question is being asked whether we want to extend the equivalent modern benefits to all of our citizens, and many of us seem to be saying no.

However, most of those people have been deliberately hoodwinked into making bad decisions by entrenched monopolies who have control of a disproportionate portion of mindshare as a result of their monopoly positions through the use of outright falsehoods, also known as fraud for financial gain. Their ISP and/or their cable company, which as you know are these days typically the same thing, is telling them that if they get world-class internet access (being the first country to have the internet and being sixteenth in internet access is horribly pathetic, and not at all worthy of any nation which would like to call itself the greatest as we so commonly do) that it will actually impede their ability to consume the media that they so love to slurp down. That's right, less choice means more choice! WAR IS PEACE! DOWN WITH UP!

TL;DR: People do want what they will get more of from high-speed internet access than they do from what they're consuming now, and when they realize that it's the best way to get it, they'll come around. Until then, there's lies, damned lies, and cable company lies.

An issue of what's a fair funding model

[Anonymous Coward]

The NC issue was
  should a muni be able to use public funding methods to compete against a private company?

FIrst of all, the fiber, electronics, ducts, electricity, B/W are not going to show up without somebody actually paying for it.
So the muni is going to have to pay for it some how.
Should this funding be limited to revenue directly from service subscriptions?
Or should the muni be allowed to use public funds from other places if the citizens agree?

The telco's convinced the NC legislature that using public funds was unfair.
This is kind of like telling the citizens that they can not spend their own money to make a service for themselves.
It seems particularly gauling given that the telco's seem able to use the public universal access funds for things not in the interest of those paying.

If this is a good, fair rule it seems to me it should apply to other utilities like roads, bridges, electric, water, sewer, fire, police, garbage, etc.
In many places, both public and private coexist.
The existence of one does not bar the other.

So what is special about telco's?
Their best argument seems the franchise agreement.
A long time ago, many cities gave them exclusive rights to provide service in exchange for the telco building the infrastructure to support that service.
If such a bargain is still valid, then it would seem at this point, the telco's are not living up to their end of the bargain, which is why muni broadband is needed in the first place.

In short, the fact that the muni needs to do it is the best argument that they should have the right to do it however they see fit.

it's 2.51 . I could convert bc I looked it up.

[raymorris]

Average household size in North Carolina is 2.51. I had looked it up so I could do the conversion correctly.

Re:it's 2.51 . I could convert bc I looked it up.

[thaylin]

What the average household size is does not really matter, especially if all the households that have it are larger than the average, which you do not know. Even still I see no conversion in your numbers. It also does not take into account buisness

Re:it's 2.51 . I could convert bc I looked it up.

[bitingduck]

Average household size in North Carolina is 2.51. I had looked it up so I could do the conversion correctly.

And yet you managed to present it incorrectly anyway.

18,801 households. Why guess?

[raymorris]

5,400 get service, of the 18,801 households who have to pay for it.

I don't think I'll ever understand why people make wild guesses and post them as though they were facts.

Re: 18,801 households. Why guess?

[Anonymous Coward]

Says the person who only made note of the household issue when called on it, and still hasn't noted the number of under-18 residents, and previously complained about another municipal ISP only having a few dozen customers when the confusion was yours in thinking the top-tier customers were the only ones and misunderstood that ISP stating that they provided Gig service "because they could" as a reason to charge a price rather than the actual reason.

There's a log in thine own eye.

Re:18,801 households. Why guess?

[bitingduck]

something about pots, kettles, and their colors comes to mind...

Re:or $2,000 per household, owed by non-subscriber

[Anonymous Coward]

The fun part to consider is the reason the ISP likely didn't deploy a solution to the area is because they had already done a cost calculation and determined it wouldn't be financially beneficial to the ISP to do so.

I think the city / town / whatever should still have the option to roll it out themselves if the ISP's decide not to, but they should probably give careful consideration as to the why behind the ISP's decision.

no, my first post in the thread computed household

[raymorris]

>. Says the person who only made note of the household issue when called on it,

No, the very first post made in the thread, I said how many households.

you keep guessing instead of reading

[raymorris]

>. 47K people may be only 9K to 15K households. If all the households have 2 adults and 2.2 kids, 5400 is about half the households in the city

If unicorns farted rainbows ...
It is not the case that all households have two adults and 2.2 children. I've told you twice already, the average household size is 2.51, meaning 18,801 households. Next time read the post you're replying to, m'kay?

Re:you keep guessing instead of reading

[bitingduck]

It is not the case that all households have two adults and 2.2 children. I've told you twice already, the average household size is 2.51, meaning 18,801 households.

No, actually you haven't. If you read the post I replied to above you're doing math mixing number of households and residents. 5400 households is about 29% penetration into the market at your numbers.

You said:

There are 47,000 people in the city (who are on the hook for the bill).
Of those 47,000, only 5,400 have chosen to get the service.

which doesn't include your 2.51 people per household.

Next time read the post you're replying to, m'kay

Next time read the post you're writing...

Re:no, my first post in the thread computed househ

[thaylin]

You forgot age distribution. About 1/3 of the people in Wilson are under 19.

About damn time this happens

[neo-mkrey]

It has taken too long already

and guess where kids live?

[raymorris]

Guess where kids live? Hint - there is a reason that there are 47,000 people and 18,801 households.

Re:and guess where kids live?

[thaylin]

Except your claim was :

Of those 47,000, only 5,400 have chosen to get the service.

That does not hold up well when you calculate the number of people per household. In short other than using statistics you are making shiat up. Because you cannot know if those 5400 HOUSEHOLDS have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 people in them.

mea culpa

[raymorris]

My other posts referred to households, or to population; I didn't realize I had mixed the two in that sentence.

Re:mea culpa

[bitingduck]

you mixed them in the whole post...

Re:5,400 want it, 47,000 get the bill. Most don't

[UnderCoverPenguin]

I remember back when my GF and I first got broadband in our house. Some of our friends who had it before we did had gotten in trouble with the cable company for using their own router. The cable company was able to detect this because the modem would report the MAC address of the connected device to the cable company. Our friends were forced to rent and use a supplied router, then charged based on the number of PCs that router reported (or for 2, if the router reported

When our subscription started, after getting the service working using a PC directly connected to the modem, we then set our router's "up stream" MAC address to the same as the PC we used for setup. We still keep that PC for when there is a problem. Just before calling the cable company, we disconnect the router and connect that PC. Otherwise, the person at the cable company will just say "The problem is that you have Windows Firewall turned on. Turn that off and the problem will go away."

Exact same thing happened in Monticello MN in 2009

[chappel]

The same thing happened in Monticello MN in 2009 with TDS, the local ISP. The community requested that TDS upgrade their services to make it more attractive for telecommuters working remotely from Twin Cities business; TDS said that 'wasn't on their road map', so the community went ahead to install their own fiber network. TDS found out, sued the town to halt their install while at the same time rolling out their OWN fiber network, and doubled all their subscribers speeds at no additional cost, then claimed that the original municipal plan was 'flawed' because there was now a 'cheap alternative'.

I'm not fond of government, and doubt a municipal fiber system would be perfect, but it sure couldn't be worse than what we have now.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

Uverse and the Rented VDSL Modem

[Anonymous Coward]

Can't buy one. Have to rent it! Sounds early 1970's all over!

Re:or $2,000 per household, owed by non-subscriber

[garbut]

The municipality can build a network infrastructure without necessarily providing Internet service. You could wind up with a wider choice of ISPs.