Did the government dig those tunnels? No they hired a contractor who sold them on one price and then sent them a bill for a much higher price. So much for private enterprise saving the taxpayer money.
> why not just have the public own the 'last mile', and then let private companies plug into the grid?
This is how most municipal broadband works right now. You, the ISP, rent the fiber from them. They can't make a profit so municipalities can only charge you what it costs to install and maintain. Most govt don't want to be in the ISP business but they are given the choice of doing it or letting the free market continue to ignore them they'll do it.
OT: if everyone can do that, what's preventing everyone from bidding $1 on multibillion dollar contracts? surely there must be a way to uphold them to the amount they bid for.
For example, take toll road highways. Not a single one exists in the USA that lasted the length of their contract without going bankrupt and ripping off everyone.
>Beginning with the contracting stage, the evidence suggests toll operating public private partnerships are transportation shell companies for international financiers and contractors who blueprint future bankruptcies. Because Uncle Sam generally guarantees the bonds – by far the largest chunk of “private” money – if and when the private toll road or tunnel partner goes bankrupt, taxpayers are forced to pay off the bonds while absorbing all loans the state and federal governments gave the private shell company and any accumulated depreciation. Yet the shell company’s parent firms get to keep years of actual toll income, on top of millions in design-build cost overruns….
>Of course, no executive comes forward and says, “We’re planning to go bankrupt,” but an analysis of the data is shocking. There do not appear to be any American private toll firms still in operation under the same management 15 years after construction closed. The original toll firms seem consistently to have gone bankrupt or “zeroed their assets” and walked away, leaving taxpayers a highway now needing repair and having to pay off the bonds and absorb the loans and the depreciation.
>The list of bankrupt firms is staggering, from Virginia’s Pocahontas Parkway to Presidio Parkway in San Francisco to Canada’s “Sea to Sky Highway” to Orange County’s Riverside Freeway to Detroit’s Windsor Tunnel to Brisbane, Australia’s Airport Link to South Carolina’s Connector 2000 to San Diego’s South Bay Expressway to Austin’s Cintra SH 130 to a couple dozen other toll facilities.
>We cannot find any American private toll companies, furthermore, meeting their pre-construction traffic projections. Even those shell companies not in bankruptcy court usually produce half the income they projected to bondholders and federal and state officials prior to construction.
Thinking Highways by Randy Salzman https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/05/calpers-invests-in-t...
Where is this being done? The cities I've seen that are doing municipal broadband like Chatanooga are actually in the ISP business. (as far as I understood)
This was the plan for Australia's NBN (National Broadband Network). FTTH for the country, with ISPs hooking in at the head ends.
Of course, that wasn't business friendly so the Liberal Party (who are actually conservative, synonymous with Republican) torpedoed it into a sad shell of the promise it offered.
>If you consider broadband a basic need (I do) then it makes sense
I don't think having such a simple gating mechanism for prescribing government policy makes much sense. I also consider food to be a basic need, but I don't want a government cheeseburger.
Like I said, I'm all for the public owning the last mile and then the private players compete.
I don't personally eat red meat or dairy. So people like me are basically paying for everyone else to go to McDonald's with my taxes.
(1) - http://usmfreepress.org/2013/04/29/meat-subsidies-strip-othe...
I suppose then you also take personal responsibility for the bombs dropped in Syria?
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