A Municipal ISP are mostly non/low profit, they have no share holders to pay out. No one looking for their 'investment' back as capital, just people looking for stable internet. The Muni ISP answers to the customers.
A better idea is to have the municipality just manage the "last mile" physical cable from the home to the exchange, then have various ISPs operate a backhaul from the exchange outwards, along with customer support, billing, etc.
That way the customer has choice of ISPs (real choice) and you aren't running five cables or more from the exchange to a home.
Note that I actually agree that this is a good and maybe the best solution and is actually what I have at home (10 GB fiber on a last mile access network with multiple ISP options! In the U.S., even!) Just pointing out a risk.
Why is the website down when it's up for other people? Why is my BitTorrent being disconnected? Why is the video stuttering? Where is this lagg coming from? Why is Netflix look like crap?
Yea, those are not last mile problems.
Literally all of these things are very commonly last mile problems. (but again, not always.) Consider what happens when a connection on the last mile network starts to get congested and/or underperform due to a physical problem (like an old/degraded copper line.) The provider can either upgrade/fix the network (expensive, time consuming, not profitable in the short term) or they can implement traffic control on that segment. The traffic control could be a high burstable rate with a much lower committed rate. In that situation browsing will feel snappy and speed tests will be good, but downloads and video streams will be slow and buffer. Problem solved from the provider's end - they can point to the speed test as evidence that they're providing what you're paying for and blame the streaming provider for the buffering, and they don't need to spend anything to solve the over-congestion problem! And they're not even breaking net neutrality! But experience for the customer is bad.
It's the part of the network that's not shared. In cable networks it stops at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_drop. It may in fact exist entirely inside an large apartment complex.
From a networking standpoint all networks look the same at that point as it's before any form of routing. In no way can you get "Why is the website down when it's up for other people?" from a last mile segment you can see everything or nothing.
PS: HD Streaming video also qualifies as low bandwith now days. Even 4K is not bad, you can run 40+ of them on a 1Gbit connection.
Also, fwiw it certainly is possible for a problem at the last mile even in your definition to cause a site to be inaccessible for you and not others. A bad route or a frame size problem for example can cause exactly that. Consider for example the recent problems with AT&T and 1.1.1.1 - AT&T customers couldn't use that site while others could and it was all because of a last-mile problem.
That network is effectively a full ISP excluding billing as it's connecting to 1000's of homes and then connecting to a few networks from that point.
I understand it seems like a reasonable alternative, but think of something closer to this. Connecting to every single one of those pedestal's would take ~1-3% of the wire as going to every home. If say 10 networks did it then that's not all that much overhead compared to 2 separate last mile networks.
The other approach would be to have say 2-5 networks that went to every box and then each ISP would have a device in those locations which would connect on one or more of those networks.
In either of those 2 cases the ISP's would have full control over how their customers see the internet, without nearly the wiring of having N full networks.
We have tens of companies that use their network for the last mile and then take over transit at 27 POPs over the country (unless they want to pay BT for transit as well).
And the best bit? We have an equivalent of the FCC (OFCOM) who regulate the price that BT is able to charge for access to this network, and to spur investment into faster solutions (g.fast and FTTP) they have recently reduced the amount BT can charge.
We also have the AltNets snipping at BT's heels, GigaClear, Hyperoptic, B4RN, TrueSpeed, who are rolling out full fibre networks in different parts of the country.
And all of this means prices are generally lower too - Vodafone offer 76 down 20 up using BT's national FTTC infrastructure for $34 a month for totally unlimited use, and that also includes telephone line rental.
If they're bad elect folks to government for whom fixing the ISP is a high priority...
> Same as dealing with Comcast.
Not exactly. If you're not happy with your municipal ISP you have some recourse to get people in there who align with your ideals. Yeah it's not an overnight solution, but it's an option you don't have as a single customer being serviced by a nationwide ISP like Comcast.
That hasn't been my experience with American democracy. For one thing, outside of Maine, the US uses first past the poll style elections which invariably lead to elections with only 2 viable candidates. That means the issue of ISP management will be wrapped up with all kinds of other things.
For example, let's say I have an opinion on intervention in Syria and the one of the two available parties supports that view. Well, that's great, unless of course I have an opinion on anything else. Excepting that there just so happens to be a candidate that perfectly represents my views on Syria, free trade, the environment, abortion, education, infrastructure investment, military spending, the debt, and everything else, then I will be making compromises.
Same at the local level. I will have to weigh any candidates ideas on reforming a badly performing municipal ISP against their ideas on recycling, NIMBY/YIMBYism, and so on.
And the above situation is actually the good case. The bad (and much more likely case) case is that both parties, realizing that promising improved performance for a municipal ISP is a difficult endeavor, will not campaign on the issue at all. Instead both parties will focus on easy partisan issues, which are more likely to draw in voters than a nuanced governance issue.
A business has to covers its cost with the fees charged to its customers.
A municipal ISP has to cover its cost with the combination fees charged to its customers and subsidies from local government (which are charged to all citizens through taxes, whether or not they use the municipal ISP).
Not exactly an enticing business proposition to compete against a company that gets to charge your customers money whether or not they use the competitors service.
So unless the municipal ISP is so horribly inefficient that a private entity can compete with them on pricing despite the lack of subsidies, presence of a municipal ISP will lead to a municipal monopoly.
I suppose there is also the case of a municipal ISP that receives no government funding, in which case what is the point of the government here? Also, I have never heard of such an arrangement in practice so when people refer municipal ISPs, they are likely referring to government subsidized ISPs.
Did you not read the article? EPB is a government owned company and operates at a profit. They seem to be doing a much better job providing high speed coverage to their customers than large publicly traded companies like Comcast.
I'm not against municipal ISPs, but I think government backed businesses are generally going to turn into monopolies, contrary to the parent's comment.
A grant is not (technically) a subsidy and I would suspect that the majority of ISPs building infrastructure have received federal grants in some form or another. The difference is that EPB actually provided gigabit speeds instead of taking the money and making excuses.
> I think government backed businesses are generally going to turn into monopolies, contrary to the parent's comment.
That may be true, but I think they are less likely to become monopolies when they are government owned than when then are owned by a mega-corp.
Sure, if you already have several small, privately-owned networks in your area offering gigabit speeds then introducing a municipal competitor may increase your odds becoming a monopoly dominated area. Communities like that are the outliers though and not a valid reason for state legislatures to prohibit municipality owned broadband.
The less enticing it is to be comcast the better.
The government can play a valuable role being a "competitor of last resort" in stagnant markets.
I remember when I lived in Singapore (where the government builds a large quantity of social housing at a reasonable quality), the average quality of private housing would be considered stellar elsewhere - simply because the government had set the bar so high.
No it's not. All they have to do is provide better service for a good price. Same as any other competitor.
"A business has to covers its cost with the fees charged to its customers."
Most municipal ISPs are the same.
This ends up operating very similarly to the way CLECs have allowed 3rd party ISPs to provide DSL service. The end user has a modem that attached to the CLEC's ATM network, then a PPPoE connection transits the ATM network to the user's ISP.
With a municipal NSP, you effectively acknowledge the municipal cable plant and switching fabric as a natural monopoly, while allowing competing ISPs to provide internet transit.
USPS is a government agency, and even has a legally protected monopoly on first-class mail pricing, and still gets plenty of competition.
What's the point of non-subsidies municipal utilities? Accountability. It uses the structure of government to facilitate cooperative ownership.
sure, but the total operating cost can be lower, because they don't have to rake in profit. said another way, the profit-making imperative is operating overhead that a municipal ISP doesn't have.
since their total cost of operation is lower, and since their incentives are more aligned with the desires of their customers, they can provide a better experience for said customers, while using less resources overall. the only people who lose are shareholders of for-profit ISPs. i find that trade-off acceptable.
Of course the above can happen to anyone. It is very common for new small business to be so low in price that they can't afford maintenance and they go out of business.
And maybe I am a pessimist, but I haven't seen that many examples of government run enterprises that can be said to be well-run. And how are we ever able to know whether they are run well when they are tax financed?
Shareholders are also miles away from any negative impact that their companies have on the communities in which they operate -- unlike small business owners who interact directly with their customers.
Public corporations are thus more inclined to behave solely according to profit motives, making them less like people and more like undomesticated wildlife, indifferent to humanity.
If you own 1 share of a company you are a share holder. Employees are also given stock as bonuses and have the ability to buy stock at a lower cost. These are shareholders and I am sure these people are in the local economy.
I'd be willing to bet a large portion of the american public is actually invested in these ISPs whether they know it or not (Most people do not know how or what their pension / retirement funds are invested in) and depend on these companies to do well so they can have a nice retirement.
So I don't exactly disagree with what you are saying, although I don't interpret profits negatively.
Where I imagine we part ways is on how much power corporations should exercise within society, relative to individual citizens.
I draw straight lines connecting the Citizens United decision giving corporations vastly increased power to buy our politicians, to AT&T actually buying our politicians (consider the headlines today), to the FCC ignoring overwhelming public sentiment and rigging the ISP market in favor of the existing players.
That makes sense... if the company is small enough where any dip in customers is significant. When you have something like Comcast, serving tens of millions of people you're losing and gaining thousands of customers a day just from people moving. Additionally your service is so large that people in Cincinnati who are having problems with the service doesn't equate with the whole rest of the nation, as the quality of service isn't uniform. And then in cases where Comcast is a virtual monopoly people might want to ditch them, but what choice do they have? And they'd rather have (crummy) internet than no internet. Comcast's customer base is so large that you're never going to organize a significant percentage of them to meaningful action. It's too many people.
And on top of all that big ISPs/big cable companies are among the most hated companies in the U.S. and have been for 15-20 years... so when are they going to start losing customers and revenue in a meaningful way to be incentivized to clean up their acts?
I mean I understand the formula you're using and the cause an effect you're suggesting. But the reality suggests it's a bit more complicated than that.
Comcast says hi, and thanks for using the same worn-out, disproven trope again.
right. i didn't say i'm happy that shareholders will lose money. just that i found the trade-off acceptable. presumably most of them will get out of for-profit ISP stocks and not totally lose their shirt over it, should things start going downhill. then others will decline to invest in the first place.
if e.g. comcast were to go out of business, then that would suck, because a bunch of people would have to look for other work. i'd hope that competition would just make those sorts of companies into better citizens, and then they could stay in business, and provide a better product at a fairer price.
> And maybe I am a pessimist, but I haven't seen that many examples of government run enterprises that can be said to be well-run.
i've read many articles on arstechnica where people have extolled the quality of their municipal ISP, and bemoaned the ISP-led legislation that banned their municipal ISP.
note that i'm not saying we should outlaw private ISPs. but my strong opinion, based on all the evidence i've read, and my own personal experience, is that national ISPs (comcast, at&t, etc) use their monopoly power to the fullest extent that they can. they have terrible service, they provide a product inferior to what other countries provide municipally for less money, and they do nothing but complain to congress about how they're hurting while bragging to shareholders about how well they're doing. in short, i think they're bad actors, and i'd rather see the thing they provide treated like a public utility, which i firmly believe it is at this point.
> I haven't seen that many examples of government run enterprises that can be said to be well-run
ARPA-E is a fine example of a current government project that is well run and highly lauded. it would also be good to remember that you wouldn't have the internet were it not for "government run enterprise" (it was ARPAnet before it was "the internet").
You're right that there is a potential negative impact for direct or indirect shareholders. However, these have to be weighed against a continued cost on society (everyone and their dog overpaying for internet while getting terrible service). I don't see you taking this other side into account. It also doesn't touch on all the money that gets absorbed by various entities somewhere along the way from "customer being charged" to "small guy shareholder getting their pension".
If we've determined that another system can provide a better solution in the long run, the question needs to be "how do we support people in the old system who are going to get hit by its demise", and then go about implementing the better system, instead of advocating for the rent-seeking monopolist's continued existence. Especially if we're talking about infrastructure.
but again, i find it more likely that comcast and the like would become competitive and less obscenely profitable, as opposed to going out of business entirely.
and if the pension fund knows what they're doing, they'd get out of the ISP stock. municipal ISPs aren't going to ruin anyone's retirement plan. that's absurd.
or as the kids like to say, national ISPs deserve a little disruption. their employees and shareholders will survive, and we'll all be better off.
You also must not have read the article. It clearly discusses EPB, a municipality-owned company that operates profitably and was the first company to offer gigabit speeds in the US. They also have annual financial reports available on their website if you have questions about how well run they are.
But I think that trying ISPs with motivation beyond "what gets the top executives the biggest bonuses at the end of the year" is worth trying.
Aside from your unproven assertion that a private company with a profit motive is able to provide internet cheaply, it does already happen in many places around the country.
The infrastructure is the hard and expensive part.
We have a handful is big companies that own the fiber, and copper networks and a lot of ISPs that essentially rent the last mile.
Chorus, is one of the biggest infrastructure providers:
https://www.chorus.co.nz/tools-support/broadband-tools/broad...
ISPs answer to the shareholders and shareholder value comes from making a product people want to buy.
The answer is more competition, less regulation, fewer “exclusive” deals negotiated by municipalities.
They are? They've always been super responsive and polite when I've had to deal with them.