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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 $1.4 million municipal town network, as was approved by annual town meeting voters in 2015." About 160 residents voted, with 56 percent rejecting the Comcast offer, according to news reports.
Comcast would have been a bad deal.
There are 1266 people in that town as of the last census. This contract was supposed to be for 15 years. Assuming the interest cost for both infrastructures was the same, there was a cost difference of ~940K. Averaging that cost per month over 15 years amongst the 1266 people yields a monthly cost of 4.12$. I find it hard to believe that comcast was going to provide service cheaper than the municipal would. And I find it very easy to believe they can do it for less than 5$ a month cheaper than comcast.
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.
The major cost of broadband is trenching. So an even better solution is for the city to install public conduit, like a 6-inch PVC, and then let any bonded company pull fiber for a nominal fee. That might result in real competition.
Comcast tried to kill Utah's UTOPIA fiber project. They failed and now even a town with less than 1000 people has a 10G fiber option (most go with 1G).
The hell with Comcast.
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Funny, nearly every place that has tried it has had good results. The key, of course, is to do it correctly. First, the city comes in and installs the lines. Then, they contract out service to local ISPs. ISPs compete with each other to provide service over the existing infrastructure, which means that the cost for a new ISP to join the mix is negligible, leading to a highly competitive market even in low-population areas. And the only thing the municipality has to do is maintain the infrastructure, which, it turns out, is something that government does pretty well.
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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.
I'm old enough to remember when we used to make fun of "European socialism", but now that those countries are kicking our asses
They are not "kicking our asses". The only European countries ahead of America on either median income or per capita GPD are Norway, Luxembourg, and Switzerland.
Norway has a small population and plenty of off-shore oil. Luxembourg and Switzerland have tax shelters and international banking.
It should be well known at this point that the higher per median capita income of the U.S. is largely due to a few things.
The most important is the Americans work longer hours than any other advanced economy. This is largely not voluntary, try taking extra time off from your job and see how that goes for you, career-wise.
The other is that the U.S. has an extremely unequal distribution in income, approaching third world kleptocracy levels. Thus a good chunk of that "median income" is in the hands of very high income people.
And finally the EU spends 9.5% of its GDP on health care. The U.S. spends 17.9%, with no better results (in many cases worse). So about 8.4% of the "higher" median income is being sucked down a black hole of corporate inefficiency.
When you take all of these things together it turns out that average American's standard of living is below that of much of the EU, have shorter lifespans, poorer educational outcomes, and less chance of moving up socially and economically.
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