Lamenting the death of municipal franchising shows a basic failure to understand the economics of telecom. Municipal franchising is the worst of both worlds: all the downsides of creating local monopolies with none of the upsides of having a government-owned network.

If we want to build broadband to poor neighborhoods, we should just tax people and have to government build it. The municipal franchising model is an awful way of accomplishing that goal. In return for building broadband to poor neighborhoods (where most people can't afford it anyway), you basically kill competition. Nobody but the incumbent can make enough money in an environment where they have to build everywhere in order to receive permission to build anywhere. And it basically bans "MVP" models of deployment, where a provider starts in a focused area with demonstrated demand and expands gradually.