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Just as long as they don't bust them up like they did AT&T. Following the same model used overseas might make more sense. Semi-natural[1] monopolies tend to form for providing access networks. We see this with power, water, gas distribution too. Over building multiple networks costs a lot more than having one good network.

The correct response IMO is:

1. Don't block municipal broadband or new commercial providers, there should be no _forced_ monopoly.

2. Split access providers up into two: the wholesale access network and the services on top. The wholesale access networks offer the same regulated (cost+) terms to any ISP/service provider who wants to reach customers on that network. Now the ISP/TV component of Comcast has to compete on the same terms as any other ISP/TV provider using that access network.

[1] I say semi-natural because in the US they're not natural but regulated and there has been a fair amount of overbuilding in cherry-picked areas.

>Split access providers up into two: the wholesale access network

This should be municipally owned, too. Monopolies almost always function better when answerable to voters rather than taxpayers (the exception being when the privatization playbook is being followed: https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/06/tsa-as-example-of-pr... ).

I would prefer the wholesale network to be owned by the communities or states but I don’t see it being a completely necessary starting point.

For example it would be relatively simple to craft a law that requires this split for all such telecommunications access networks regardless of existing or new builds or cable vs copper vs fiber. Immediately that would level the playing field because Comcast has to sell access on its network to itself at the same price it sells it to another ISP.

We did craft a law: Telecommunications Act of 1996.

The Bush FCC killed the line sharing rules.

The implementation of the unbundling rules was "disastrous" (according to the center-left Brookings Institute: www.pff.org/events/eventpowerpoints/022207BrusselsComm/Crandall.ppt, see slide 3). Unbundling can work, but requires a steady hand in setting rates. The FCC said "screw telcos" and set rates very low, which made telecos basically give up on improving their DSL infrastructure. In contrast, unbundling has worked well in the U.K. There, the government put in place a rate structure that allowed BT OpenReach (the entity that owns all the phone lines) to actually be comparable in profitability to Comcast or TWC.

I argue going one step further, even at the loss of some theoretical efficiency.

Split layer 1 from layer 3. I want a fiber pair from my house to the central office, where I can then patch to any provider who decided to pay the cost-recovery based co-location connection fee. Basically I should be able to tell this wireline provider to plug my patch cord into service provider X and they do it within a reasonable timeframe. I pay this provider for the wire itself.

I then get provider #2 and subscribe to their IP services. Hopefully there would be enough competition (e.g. dozens) here to not have to regulate further.

Yes, this does create a middle man agency and relatively inefficient physical infrastructure (e.g. I'd be pretty anti-GPON or similar tech for this use for a variety of reasons) so in theory prices would be more. However I think if you could get back to an environment where ISPs can compete on a wide variety of merits like in the late 90's dialup ISP days you would see overall price decreases.

It would also allow for the creation of "boutique" local ISPs that can cater to certain crowds. The highly technical crowd who is happy to pay more for a clear channel ping and pipe and no other BS will be able to find a home, just like grandma who needs a cheap nicely filtered/secured internet to check her e-mail and use facetime. Basically allow for a bunch of sonic.net style ISPs to compete in most markets.

Anything short of this I think just devolves into both stagnation and rent-seeking. Even municipal provided broadband would be subject to this - many networks will likely be built out and then left to languish long-term if there is no competitive pressure.

Having helped shepherd municipal broadband initiatives along, I'm sorry to say that your requirements are a hill too far for almost all consumers. They don't care about the level of provider selection you want, they simply want The Internet (Netflix, Youtube, Google Gmail, et al) at the lowest possible cost (and reliable to boot).

> many networks will likely be built out and then left to languish long-term if there is no competitive pressure.

Municipal broadband is accountable to its local citizens or stakeholders, depending on the model used to develop it (government owned or non-profit owned). If it languishes, it will only do so because its citizens or users allow it to.

EDIT: If you're in an area where there are only large corporate internet providers, please take up the cause for municipal or co-op broadband!

https://muninetworks.org/

> Municipal broadband is accountable to its local citizens or stakeholders, depending on the model used to develop it (government owned or non-profit owned). If it languishes, it will only do so because its citizens or users allow it to.

I don't find this comforting. Citizens regularly allow public services to languish, through a combination of a myopic focus on cutting costs/taxes and lack of accountability. When I lived in Wilmington, Delaware, bus drivers would straight up quit 20 minutes early, putting up their "out of service sign" and skipping their last several stops. I drive all the way into work even though there is an Orange-line Metro stop 20 minutes from my house and 5 minutes from my office. The scheduled 36-minute trip is almost never under 40 minutes, and during commuting times approaches 50 minutes. That's without unexpected delays.

One of the things the environmental law clinic at Northwestern does is identify municipal water/sewer systems that are not in compliance with the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act. There are many such systems, and invariably they remain out of compliance because citizens are unwilling to raise water/sewer rates to fix the infrastructure.

As someone who has worked in the telcom regulation space, what would your suggestion be? I find my options more palatable than a duopoly (if you're lucky!) that exists to squeeze consumers for as many dollars as possible. It all boils down to accountability and the tools at your disposal to enforce that accountability. Unless the FCC is going to turn the screws on major internet providers (unlikely under the current administration), local governance is one of the few options left available.

> One of the things the environmental law clinic at Northwestern does is identify municipal water/sewer systems that are not in compliance with the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act. There are many such systems, and invariably they remain out of compliance because citizens are unwilling to raise water/sewer rates to fix the infrastructure.

I agree this is a problem that takes a lot of effort on the part of elected officials to be honest with citizens about why money must be spent to maintain infrastructure, while ensuring that collected tax revenue is spent in a transparent and effective manner. Letting infrastructure go is simply robbing from the future; the bills come due eventually.

Don't get the wrong idea: I'm not opposed to municipal broadband. I was just pointing out that citizen accountability often doesn't do anything to prevent poor service quality. (As we speak, I'm getting a stream of MARC delay/cancellation text messages.)

If we were starting from scratch, I'd advocate for the Stockholm model: https://www.stokab.se/Documents/Stockholms%20Stokab%20-%20A%.... A public entity to build dark fiber that isn't taxpayer supported and builds out based on demand and profitability rather than mandates. That ship has sailed, however.

I do think the FCC should preempt all state-and-local franchising laws, and also state-and-local restrictions on municipal broadband. Private providers can compete in areas and neighborhoods that support competition (my neighborhood has two providers for gigabit fiber, for example), and municipalities can address areas that are overlooked by the private sector.

I appreciate the reply!

> I do think the FCC should preempt all state-and-local franchising laws, and also state-and-local restrictions on municipal broadband. Private providers can compete in areas and neighborhoods that support competition (my neighborhood has two providers for gigabit fiber, for example), and municipalities can address areas that are overlooked by the private sector.

My concern with this is if you don't mandate covering all neighborhoods, private providers will cherrypick the most profitable areas, leaving less well off areas underserved or not served at all. A great example is the US Postal Service: you can't compete against them, and in return, they service absolutely every address in the United States.

> My concern with this is if you don't mandate covering all neighborhoods, private providers will cherrypick the most profitable areas, leaving less well off areas underserved or not served at all.

That's fine. It's the government's job to step in and provide the safety net. Look at what Sweden did with fiber in rural areas. Instead of forcing companies to serve rural customers in return for the right to serve urban ones, the government simply gave a tax credit to rural residents to defray the costs of building fiber.

With the emergence of 5G wireless, it becomes much more practical for the government to be "the ISP of last resort."

"One of the things the environmental law clinic at Northwestern does is identify municipal water/sewer systems that are not in compliance with the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act. There are many such systems, and invariably they remain out of compliance because citizens are unwilling to raise water/sewer rates to fix the infrastructure."

Well, why should they have to? The main purpose of the water/sewer company is to provide service in compliance with that act. If costs have risen due to the natural order of things, that's one thing. But in many cases, it seems like the maintenance has been neglected on purpose, in order to benefit shareholders. And now you want me to pay more to do what you should have been doing in the first damn place?

You're right that a lot of the cost increases is due to maintenance that has been neglected over the years. You're wrong in blaming shareholders--almost all U.S. water/sewer systems are run by municipal utilities. Taxpayers are shortsighted too, perhaps even more so than shareholders. Because water/sewer rates are subject to public regulation, there is a huge push to keep rates low. Consequently, needed upgrades (e.g. replacing lead water pipes) and general maintenance fall by the wayside.

> One of the things the environmental law clinic at Northwestern does is identify municipal water/sewer systems that are not in compliance with the Clean Water Act and Safe Drinking Water Act. There are many such systems, and invariably they remain out of compliance because citizens are unwilling to raise water/sewer rates to fix the infrastructure.

Err. That just seems like it’s the fault of the regulators refusing to do their jobs these days. (And also because the regulators have been declawed and coopted by industry.)

If you have a regulation that says “water must be clean” and then the regulator doesn’t test or fine or force the municipality to fix it then that’s where the problem lays. The idea that somehow a private water company would be better is absurd in this example, why because the citizen who you’re blaming for not upgrading the water supply would somehow chose to go with another water supply provider who was cleaner?

These are municipal water utilities. The EPA can't force municipalities to raise water rates. And imposing fines on already cash-strapped entities would result in political disaster if anything bad happened.

"Having helped shepherd municipal broadband initiatives along, I'm sorry to say that your requirements are a hill too far for almost all consumers. They don't care about the level of provider selection you want, they simply want The Internet (Netflix, Youtube, Google Gmail, et al) at the lowest possible cost (and reliable to boot)."

I feel this is really only because there's been no real competition in this space at all. There's been one phone company, one cable company, and that was it. Compared to other markets where there is some semblance of competition, and you see the comparison shopping behavior. I don't really see why it couldn't translate to internet access, given time.

I understand that most consumers don't understand, or don't care or whatever, but it's so frustrating.

The internet is not a dumb pipe -- making the right routing decisions and connections in the right places makes things better. On the other hand, the last mile is actually a place where things can be pretty dumb (fair allocation of shared mediums not withstanding).

I would love to pay an ISP for better routing and transit, but I can't afford to pay them for overbuilding in an area already served by a phone company and a cable company. I don't expect a municipality to spend the time and effort to get great routing and transit either; I expect they'll get service from one, maybe two big transit providers, and maybe network appliances from Google and Netflix, and call it a day.

Internet is dumb if you make it so. Like Chinese totalitarianism government did. They even build national firewalls.

If you allow private entities to freely monopolize, then they will make them complicated. Do you forget how ula executive being fires because he admit cost cannot match spacex?

> Split layer 1 from layer 3. I want a fiber pair from my house to the central office, where I can then patch to any provider who decided to pay the cost-recovery based co-location connection fee. Basically I should be able to tell this wireline provider to plug my patch cord into service provider X and they do it within a reasonable timeframe. I pay this provider for the wire itself.

> I then get provider #2 and subscribe to their IP services. Hopefully there would be enough competition (e.g. dozens) here to not have to regulate further.

This is exactly how DSL worked, with ILECs being forced to sell wire access to CLECs. Many places were still not served by a CLEC.

The answer for keeping things competitive and modern is probably both. The physical infrastructure companies should provide dark fiber, which will be demanded if there is high enough population density to independently invest in the gear to light or even for individual businesses with special requirements. They should also provide aggregation through their own edge switches, so that less-dense places can experience provider-competition at regional meet-me centers.

Comcast should have been allowed to vertically integrate the way they have.

It’s hard to imagine what more incompetent than Comcast would look like, the dial is already at 9 or 10 for troubleshooting their own internal technical problems with home internet service, they happily leave you for weeks without service, lose your billing info and not notify you, typo MACs ad tell you to physically visit their office to fix backend typos.

Agree, in most places the cable company has a monopoly or close to it. But why do we think giving the municipality a monopoly is better?

Every municipal service I can think of is overstaffed and inefficient compared to private businesses.

The "nickle and diming" is just moved to tax rates and fees that are under the radar for most people.

Just cancel the franchises and let the market compete for internet service. I think you'd be surprised.

> Just cancel the franchises and let the market compete for internet service. I think you'd be surprised.

We should make franchising requirements illegal at the federal level. There is no need for them, and all they do is artificially limit competition. Even though the franchises are, by law, non-exclusive, the terms for getting a franchise are usually onerous enough that nobody but the incumbent is willing to put up with them.

That's not entirely true. There is a very good reason for some of them: To ensure that lower income areas are serviced. Usually, a municipality will make servicing those areas a requirement of getting the franchise.

Now, if we have municipal broadband, that could ensure lower income areas are serviced instead. But without that fallback, cancelling franchise agreements would likely increase competition in the rich neighborhoods, and lead to things being just as bad or worse than they are now in poor ones.

It's not a good reason. If you force private companies to take on the government's role of providing a safety net, you're basically guaranteeing that only mega-corps will be able to take that deal. It would be better, as you suggest, to let municipalities perform the traditional governmental role of building the safety net.

Considering municipal is not an option in most of the country, franchise agreements are the only other way.

Most states don't have any restrictions on municipal broadband: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qkvn4x/the-21-law.... Even out of the 21 states that do have restrictions, most don't create really major impediments. E.g. in Pennsylvania:

> [C]ities need to approach their current ISP with a detailed broadband plan. The ISP then has 60 days to take that plan and implement it or reject it. If the company agrees to take the plan, it has a year to build it out. If the plan is turned down, the city is free to build its own network.

Out of the 10 most populous states, only three have significant restrictions on municipal broadband and none have an outright ban. I think the FCC should preempt all such restrictions, but it's kind of a cop-out to say that laws like these are why municipal broadband is so rare.

No, I don't think the laws are most of the reason why it's rare. It's probably more that other municipalities have seen the huge fights put up by the incumbents that tie the projects up in legal battles for years that have had a chilling effect on it. Citizens know that it's going to cost a lot for the infrastructure, and then probably a lot more for the legal fights.

Sadly, many of them don't seem to see what a success most of it is.

> Most states don't have any restrictions on municipal broadband:

Well, they don't until municipalities actually try to start a program. Witness Tennesse a couple of years ago: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/tennessee-kills-...

People can vote to change the leadership and direction of the municipality. Not so much the corporation.

Yes I realize this argument wears thinner the more democracy gets weakened... and hey, weird, the ones weakening it are the same few people (Comcast in this case) who stand to profit from weakening it. Just a coincidence I'm sure!

Anyway you're not helping democracy either, by giving up on it and/or buying into the whole "the market will fix everything" idea.

Free markets would be great, but what you find instead is that those who want to exploit a given market, sell everybody on the idea that "the market will fix everything" when they want to enter it. But after that, they do everything in their power to make sure it's NOT a free market. They want to avoid dealing with competitors, so they work to keep them out of the market. But unfortunately competition is the precondition on which most of the "market will fix everything" argument rests.

What's the market incentive to provide service in lower income, inner-city neighborhoods?