City-Owned Internet Services Offer Cheaper and More Transparent Pricing, Says Harvard Study (arstechnica.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Municipal broadband networks generally offer cheaper entry-level prices than private Internet providers, and the city-run networks also make it easier for customers to find out the real price of service, a new study from Harvard University researchers found. Researchers collected advertised prices for entry-level broadband plans -- those meeting the federal standard of at least 25Mbps download and 3Mbps upload speeds -- offered by 40 community-owned ISPs and compared them to advertised prices from private competitors. The report by researchers at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard doesn't provide a complete picture of municipal vs. private pricing. But that's largely because data about private ISPs' prices is often more difficult to get than information about municipal network pricing, the report says. In cases where the researchers were able to compare municipal prices to private ISP prices, the city-run networks almost always offered lower prices. This may help explain why the broadband industry has repeatedly fought against the expansion of municipal broadband networks.

Comments

No shit Sherlock!

[youngone]

What the publicly owned ISP's don't offer is campaign contributions, which is why there are state laws against them, which is as it should be.
The American people should just continue to pay for the private infrastructure of the monopoly providers and give up on this pointless dream of cheap, fast internet access.

It sounds positively Socialist shudder.

Re:No shit Sherlock!

[Lunix Nutcase]

Lazy trolling is lazy.

Your bill would be a part of your property taxes

Bullshit. Municipal broadband is floated by bonds and then kept afloat by subscriber fees.

can't drop it, and go to jail if you don't pay it.

Also false.

Oh, and don't like your speeds? Take it up with the Sheriff, mister. Fuck that noise.

Or you just stop subscribing since it's a voluntary service?

Re:No shit Sherlock!

[Anonymous Coward]

The availability of government-provided internet does not preclude the availability of private internet. It adds options; it doesn't take them away.

Those who wish can continue to pay for Verizon/Comcast/whatever. And others can use the city internet. What's important is that now Verizon/Comcast will have to actually earn their subscribers, which means they will have to put a modicum of effort into out-performing the city-provided option.

This can only make things better, you see. Introducing competition has that effect.

And I predict this study

[rsilvergun]

will be buried in a landslide of counter studies by various pro-industry think tanks. A while back Comcast admitted in their SEC filing what it actually cost to provide internet access. It was about $9 bucks. That includes the tech support. Of course, don't you dare suggest we nationalize it. Here in America we privatize the profits and nationalize the losses, so it all balances out.

Oh, and if you're scared of the gov't censoring you when it's nationalized just cast your eyes to China. They don't _need_ to take control of it to censor. The mega-corps are happy to play ball.

Right of way for cables

[Karmashock]

I don't want to hear about any of this NN or Socialized ISP crap until we grant right of way to cables and conduits for third parties.

Its a giant shit show with monopolists of different types arguing for their monopoly.

Every article is "wahhh, monopolies that no one is allowed to compete with are behaving badly" or "waaah, government built ISPs which are even more monopolistic are even better!"...

How about no monopoly?

To which one of you knuckleheads will say "but then there will be too many cables and that will be ugly!"... This discussion is increasingly an argument against democracy if only because people are allowing themselves to be manipulated into taking positions because they're being told to adopt that position.

Think for yourselves or stop presuming to have an opinion.