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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.
"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.
Comcast would have been a bad deal.
No one simply rejects comcast.
Every small town and city should be like this.
Personally, I believe that the best approach would be for the city to create and own its own municipal network and then to allow multiple companies to sell services on it to the citizens. That's the surest way to make sure that your citizens get the best possible value. If a private company wants to build its own network to compete against the city, that's their business and I don't see why they should be prevented from doing so, but I suspect that most wouldn't.
It's ultimately competition that drives down prices and results in better services.
You need better local government. While my local muni can't seem to keep their website up for crap, they are exceedingly efficient at providing water/sewage/trash pickup, and at a cheaper price than the private county competitors. If you don't like the way your munis are running, go to a city council meeting and get the ball rolling on fixing them. You are your muni's shareholder, use your power.
Also note that Comcast proposed to serve only 96% of the households. The municipal broadband will reach 100%.
Those 4% would have been screwed under the Comcast proposal.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
You think Comcast will send a guy out at midnight to fix your line? That's hilarious.
Municipal water and sewage systems are in fact quite complicated. Systems don't have to be comprised of racks of components with blinking lights to be complex.
We are talking about maintaining network infrastructure, wiring, fiber, power plus managing accounts and billing for service, customer equipment, shutting off those who don't pay and setting up new service for customers as they move in.
I work for a government institution that does all of that. It's not that hard. Yes, you have to hire some competent people. Beats getting bent over by Comcast.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
The difference is that pizzerias aren't a natural monopoly the same ways that ISPs tend to be in small towns.
If you have to chose between a corporate monopoly and a government monopoly, you are better off with the government monopoly since there is less of a motive for them to squeeze their customers for more money than they need to. plus you can vote out the people in charge if they get abusive. When dealing with a corporate monopoly, you have no choice but to keep paying whatever they ask.
No True Socialism.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Venezuela is an example of corrupt populism (pitting the people against each other), especially the corruption part.
For this thread, a good example of socialism would be co-ops running the local infrastructure. Can't get much more socialist then a co-op..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
You left out Ireland for per capita GDP. Anyways a better measure is happiness, something that lots of money does not produce, but rather enough to not worry and have some spare. According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... the US ranks 18th with many of the higher scoring countries being ones that Americans call socialist.
Personally, I'd rather live with slightly less per capita GDP, but not worrying about healthcare, having a longer life expectancy, easier social mobility, some rights in the workplace including being able to take a vacation.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Thus a good chunk of that "median income" is in the hands of very high income people.
I see that you have absolutely no idea what "median" means.
Try reading this: Median.