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Comment by Robotbeat | Hacker News Reader

Why not just let citizens use it for a standard fee, just like a regular road? (In the case of roads, the fee is gas taxes, registration fees, and sometimes car property tax in addition to the general fund.)

Why should the businesses get preferable treatment to individuals or citizens?

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Because customers need support. They need someone to call when service goes down, they need someone to call when a billing error occurs, they need someone to call when moving properties. I wish Open Access networks applied to more services in the states like telecom, gas/electric, railways etc. Let the government worry about city planning and where to lay pipes, rails or lines, and let the companies do the day to day management of servicing customers.

I don't know much about how ISPs operate, but I do know a bit about gas, electric and water and I can't see how they would work without some sort of central entity managing it. It's hard to see what benefit leasing that infrastructure out would be considering the municipality would still need to load balance, repair, and meter. And frankly, those services don't need that much maintenance on the service end and when they do, private companies do generally supply it. I hope that someday using the internet becomes as easy and natural as using the electrical grid.

Open Loop is pretty common in Europe. I have one electricity line, one gas line, one phone line but I can choose from multiple providers for each service. For gas and electricity whoever I buy from is responsible for putting the correct amount into the network. For the phone line for fiber to the cabinet internet they hook up their network at the exchange and patch my through. In all cases the providers have to pay a fee to the infrastructure owner that's a fixed regulated rate which pays for maintenance on the network.

There is now point running more than 1 fiber optic cable to each house just like there isn't a point running more than one electricity or gas line to each house.

> Because customers need support.

All the more reason not to let Comcast use it.

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