Hacker News Reader

Comment by mindcrime | Hacker News Reader

Flagged due to misleading, flamebait title. The bill in question does not ban community fiber, it just sets some constraints on it, to ensure that a taxpayer subsidized service doesn't compete with - and undercut - a private business. This is a Good Thing.

Also note that there is a specific exclusion to even these constraints, when it comes to serving a currently unserved geographical area.

http://www.ncga.state.nc.us/Sessions/2011/Bills/House/HTML/H...

View on HN

It sets a lot of constraints. Any city considering building a fiber system must request proposals from every licensed communications service provider in its own or adjacent counties, giving 60 days notice; attempt to negotiate a contract with the company offering the best proposal for 60 days, then attempt to negotiate a contract with the company offering the second-best proposal for 60 days; then it can move to consider constructing its own service by holding at least 2 public hearings, with at least 45 days' notice each to potential commercial competitors; then get permission from a state commission to proceed (based on financial projections and various other criteria such as technological progress), and then hold a special election on whether to issue a bond that will pay for the construction - they're not allowed to use any existing revenue streams, or take advantage of any potential cost savings from other departments (like laying the fiber at the same time as scheduled work on other infrastructure), and the costs of any city provided service must be calculated as if they include all the revenue and property taxes at local, state, and federal level that a competitor would (hypothetically) pay. There is a provision for waiving some of these requirements in unserved areas, but it's very easy for private firms to challenge such a determination without making any commit to provide the service that they say they are making available.

That's 7 stages of procedural review which would take almost an entire year, which seems pretty onerous to me. Also, I can't help noticing that while it requires any city-owned network provide open access to other services (in a common carrier fashion), there is no such requirement imposed on the provision of network services by the private sector - in other words, commercial monopolies seem to be fine.

I'd like to agree with your basic idea, but this bill seems overly ideological - especially given that in almost every US market prices for broadband remain high and speeds slow by international standards, suggesting that the market is failing to clear properly.

Unfortunately the constraints it sets make community fiber projects much less attractive. Should communities be forbidden from building out water mains or roads, because they might compete with the private version?

It's not clear to me that I'd want fiber to be government owned and operated in general. But neither is it obvious that cheap government fiber is bad. Aren't local communities the perfect place to experiment?

The telecom companies are already themselves subsidized.

Yes, and that's a separate problem that needs to be addressed, no doubt. There are a lot of places where the relationship between the telecomms and the State is corrupt and needs to be fixed.

It sounds pretty close to a ban to me. Certainly close enough than "banning" rather "severely restricting" is not flamebait.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com