Slashdot Mirror


Comcast Rejected by Small Town -- Residents Vote For Municipal Fiber Instead (arstechnica.com)

A small Massachusetts town has rejected an offer from Comcast and instead plans to build a municipal fiber broadband network. From a report: Comcast offered to bring cable Internet to up to 96 percent of households in Charlemont in exchange for the town paying $462,123 plus interest toward infrastructure costs over 15 years. But Charlemont residents rejected the Comcast offer in a vote at a special town meeting Thursday. "The Comcast proposal would have saved the town about $1 million, but it would not be a town-owned broadband network," the Greenfield Recorder reported Friday.

"The defeated measure means that Charlemont will likely go forward with a $1.4 million municipal town network, as was approved by annual town meeting voters in 2015." About 160 residents voted, with 56 percent rejecting the Comcast offer, according to news reports.

3 of 311 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Anyone apologizing for anything Comcast by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Funny

    Comcast may work just fine in some places

    [Citation needed]

  2. Re:Muni ISPs should be based on Distributism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

    Ah yes, Slashdot where alt right useless cunts mod down a simple statement of fact.
    Then they cherry pick Venezuela to whine about. Yawn.

  3. Local governments must not have this power by mi · · Score: 3, Funny

    That a town can legally offer a commercial service of their own is bad enough. That a government is in a position to deny a business a right to operate there is an outrage.

    --
    In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.