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Comment by fiftyfifty | Hacker News Reader

The city I live in voted for municipal broadband in 2017. Our local private internet provider Comcast fought it at every turn, Comcast spent millions fighting municipal broadband in a city with about 150,000 residents. We started rolling out our own broadband to residents in 2020. It took a couple of years for the city to hire and build up a department and lay the infrastructure to support it city wide and I finally got the service at the beginning of this year, and it has been awesome. We have gigabit internet up AND DOWN for $59.95/month. What really burns me is the private providers we have, Comcast and CenturyLink, have been here for decades and could have done exactly what our city has done: run fiber to every neighborhood and house. It would have been cheaper for them too, they already had the infrastructure in place. They chose not to make the investment and instead spent millions trying to prevent us from providing better service for ourselves. I hope everyone has the chance to get better/cheaper internet service for themselves and their community, so far it has worked out great for us.

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Just to note: Sanders 2020 "Internet for All" plan would have given municipalities the blueprints to a) fight Comcast and entrenched providers and b) funding to do so, thereby enabling more freedom. Unfortunately he did not prevail in the primary.

More municipal and small internet providers could act as a bulwark against centralization and corporate dominance of the backbone of our communication infrastructure.

Government intervention is what gave providers local monopolies in the first place.

More legislation from the federal and state level is not needed, unless it's literally "All local agreements are now null and void" which isn't even legal.

Government intervention is constantly needed to keep a free market in balance - there certainly is poor spirited legislation that's designed to assist in market capture but there is a lot more legislation out there that's protecting small markets.

Anarcho-libretarianism isn't the solution here and neither is rejecting balanced legislation out of a force of habit.

> Government intervention is constantly needed to keep a free market in balance

"Constant government intervention" is incompatible with the definition (literally) of a free market.

Only the kind of free market that has no rules against fraud and robbery.

This is just daft, is your idea of free markets the drug cartels of columbia? Because thats what you get wuthoit government intervention

Hey, if you don't like free markets, that's fine, I'll respect your opinion.

I'm just saying that:

Oxford defines a free market as: "an economic system in which prices are determined by unrestricted competition between privately owned businesses."

Wikipedia defines it as: "a system in which the prices for goods and services are self-regulated by buyers and sellers negotiating in an open market. In a free market, the laws and forces of supply and demand are free from any intervention by a government or other authority, and from all forms of economic privilege, monopolies and artificial scarcities."

Investopedia defines it as: "an economic system based on supply and demand with little or no government control."

Words have meaning, god damn it.

But that's just folks giving the benefit of the doubt to your earlier statement - the technical definition of a free market is incompatible with our modern society.

Words do have a meaning, so tell me what is "unrestricted competition"? Because columbian cartels think it means murdering your competitor along with his family. Is that too unrestricted for you? Okay, let's leave out murder.

How about paying random people to leave bad reviews for your competitors. Or paying shops so they don't stock competitors products. Or agreeing with banks that your competitor should not get a loan. Or making a deal with railroads where they will only transport your product, and not your competitors? Because all of the above have happened. Is that "unrestricted"?

Anarchical, intervention-less markets are where cartels and monopolies form and destroy competition, and then there stops being anything free about it. By that strict definition of free markets, they are ephemeral, self-defeating things.

Government intervention is only needed to settle disputes. Governments are already constantly intervening by barring isps other than eg Comcast from building. That government intervention has to stop. Government enacted monopolies are what caused the problem in the first place. Yes government has to act to stop it, but probably at the state level.

That's a fun idea, but we're well past that now. In reality, monopolies do exist, and the government needs to step in to resolve the dispute the people in a given area now have with the monopoly for its anticompetitive practices.

Also, infrastructure isn't easy to build and is oftentimes not even profitable. Are you suggesting only places where an ISP can make money should have Internet access?

ISPs are government-granted monopolies. It's so disappointing how many people here don't seem to understand that. Look up regulatory capture and then down vote me...

Yes, but the granting of monopoly status already happened, that part is over. You can't unring that bell, is my point.

You absolutely can "unring that bell". You outlaw government granted monopolies

Sure, and you could murder all of the executives of ISPs to send a message to other ISPs about anti-competitive behavior. Anything is obviously possible, but no, you can't actually "unring" this bell.

The ISPs got into a monopoly position due to government intervention, yes. That was a mistake. Unfortunately, now that we're in this position, it's too late, we're stuck, and we need the government to get us back out - "activation energy", so to speak, to get us over the energy barrier from our current high-energy position (ISP monopolies) to a low-energy position (competitive market).

Ideally, at that point, the government would then step back and merely enact rules to keep the market fair and competitive.

Whether that actually happens is another matter. My prediction is that the past trend of the government never letting go of power that it has acquired will continue.

I'm not sure it is too late. I believe we should strive to find a path to the best state of being, and maybe (probably) we have to do dinner less than ideal things on the way, but we should still try to do the most effective things at some point. So in short, in the long term Theres no need to settle for something less than ideal

You need to tear up roads to lay cable, meaning you likely want to limit it down to preferably one per neighborhood, as all other infrastructure is.

Not doing that would give you this: https://media.istockphoto.com/photos/cables-above-street-kat...

So sure, ISPs per one phrasing is "government-granted monopolies", but the only problem was giving it to one private actor, not that government was involved.

It's not that you're technically wrong, but that it's an incomplete and unfair portrayal.

Wouldn't it be better to set a cost to tearing up the road rather than limit it to one road tearer upper?

No, it would mean any entrant into the ISP market has a cost moat for each neighborhood that inevitably has to be paid by the end user, for no gain other than ISPs owning their own connection, which has no user benefit, and thus, only benefits ISPs in a consumer-hostile way.

Instead of just treating infrastructure like infrastructure.

I’m not shitting on your comment, but are you saying “we need government involvement (regulatory oversight) to solve problems made from previous government involvement (poor spirited legislation)?”

I don’t think anyone is suggesting no laws at all, but perhaps we can have some foresight and not legislate ourselves into oversight which will only make more legislation which will only make more...

I’m happy to see municipal internet IF the service quality and price is competitive. While we’re dealing with the Verizon’s and Comcast’s of the world, this is usually working, what do we do when we’ve destroyed the market and the local service sucks?

Actually government intervention is the only way to solve it.

The problem is that in a city there's limited space to run the wires to each home.

Also if you want to have 10 competitors is really silly to expect having 10 fiber optic cables going to every home when majority of people wouldn't use more than one ISP at the time. Then 9 fibers will be then unused and degrading.

When Internet was reclassified to Title II, Wheeler specifically excluded Title II's provision that required existing ISPs to lease their infrastructure to competitors. Back in late 90s, early 2000s we had tons of ISPs to chose from, exactly because of that provision.

This needs to change if we want to get competition back.

Or we would need cities to build such infrastructure which is even harder and more expensive thing to do.

Either way it requires government intervention.

Limited space? For wires? You know how small wires are right?

They probably won't share conduits, and probably just in case want more than one pair... So it does add up.

For wires that need too run out in the elements around a quarter inch or higher, plus you need conduit, and backup wires. So about an inch or more with just naive napkin estimation. I'm probably underestimating it actually.

Take away the government intervention and you take away the property easements that allow utilities to put up poles and run wires through yards, etc, to get to all the houses.

Good luck with your "let everyone run their tiny wires wherever without the government being involved" plan. You've heard of NIMBYism, right? How many times do you think you'll be allowed to rip up the street?

In countries that are very light on regulation there (I think I recall Brazil having this) you'll see messes of Ethernet hanging around, with dead cables still present. Unsurprisingly, they do provide a lot of bandwidth for a small price, comparitively.

That's also how Romania is (or at least was) one of countries with fast and cheap internet.

It started with the government telco not being interested in Internet. So people started running Ethernet cables, first to neighbors, then to other buildings. It started as having local networks to share files. Eventually those network got connected to Internet. If the price or quality of service provided is not satisfactory they can switch to another ISP. The bad part as you said is the huge number of ugly looking wires[1]

[1] https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-many-internet-cables-on-la...

I've been surprised there's been nobody acquiring legacy telcos just for their easements.

The existing POTS and similar infrastructure are probably worth less now as a going business than if you were to just rip out all the copper and sell it for scrap.

On the other hand, they still have pre-negotiated entry into every house and business in town, and the conduit already sunk. It would probably be cheaper, and certainly faster, to buy a firm like Frontier than to negotiate a comparable footprint from scratch.

I suspect there's some significant legal continuity-of-service obligations that poison the proposal.

Individually? Sure.

They add up, though. https://www.ecmweb.com/safety/media-gallery/20902083/crazy-w...

In Canada the network owners are also required to lease the infrastructure to other operators but the situation is similar (although IIUC not quite as bad).

It seems to me that city-owned is actually the best option in this case. If it is optimal to have one set of infrastructure than it makes sense to have that infrastructure owned by the city which operates for the common good. As much as I am hesitant to trust the government to run the network I have no issues with my water or electricity utilities and the prices seem quite fair.

Owning 'infrastructure' is a different than being service provider.

I actually would strongly support municipalities owning the last mile as part of their services, but I'm less interested in them actually providing service.

The problem is the monopoly still exists. My father lives in a small town ironically with a tiny little ISP not owned by one of the majors. But the water - they pay $200 a month for water (!), because they are making major expansions to the water stations to support new building. The town council was pushed to do this by the builders with a lot of wining and dining. So the local, fairly poor townspeople are paying ridiculous rates. Since amalgamation, the town does not have it's own mayor, they do 'regional' groupings, so the individual town can't punt the program.

Due to monopoly situation in the town, the townspoeple are stuck paying massive rates to subsidize a rich builders exploits.

These things are common and guaranteed to happen.

The idea is to have some degree of socialization where absolutely necessary, and then to try to provide real competition on that infrastructure. If the construction and maintenance of the infrastructure can be competitive (like roads) then great. For electricity transport, it can become a problem, as the semi-private agencies that manage the electrical grid are often very inefficient.

Every town should take control of the 'last mile gear' but I suggest your ISP actually should be one of many private players. Definitely more than the physically limited Choice of Comcast + 1 other.

> I actually would strongly support municipalities owning the last mile as part of their services, but I'm less interested in them actually providing service.

Exactly. Municipalities should run fiber to the nearest meet-me room, and license at a defined rate to anyone who wants to light up that fiber.

Biden's infrastructure plan includes similar verbiage.[1]

> support for broadband networks owned, operated by, or affiliated with local governments, non-profits, and co-operatives

Anyone know if it would work? Note that this is the bill getting criticized as not being about "real infrastructure" due to daring to have non-transportation infrastructure, like this.

[1] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...

The reasonable scale for a municipal fiber deployment is, as the name says, at the municipal level. There is already a reasonably competitive Tier 1 provider market, because it isn't a natural monopoly, and there is no need for the government to enter a market segment which is already working.

Which means the biggest thing you need from the feds (and for that matter the state governments) is to get out of the way and stop actively interfering with cities that want to do this. Which doesn't seem like much to ask, but the incumbents have spent the last hundred years capturing every level of government in the US, and then we got the likes of Ajit Pai running the FCC, which was an impediment.

The other thing to watch out for is the classic regulatory capture move where the government is about to spend money on municipal infrastructure to compete with the incumbents and the incumbents lobby instead to give the money to them. In this context here you're looking for money that goes to "5G" instead of fiber. Because "5G" means incumbents who own wireless spectrum and/or want to "buy" it from the taxpayer using tax money and then sit on it to exclude any other competitors from having it. Or have the taxpayer pay for their privately-owned infrastructure, providing a permanent cost advantage so that no one else can ever competitively enter the market in the future.

First rule of the game is never give tax money to the incumbents. History has shown that it's a black hole that produces no results, and anybody who doesn't understand this is either captured or not paying attention.

If most of society can work from home and conduct business via the internet, I'd argue the internet is clearly infrastructure. There weren't traffic jams and cars all over the highways last year, we were cruising the internet superhighway.

Would love it for dinosaurs in politics to get with it and understand the implications of technological investment (or lack thereof).

Comcast makes me sick. I spent months getting off of them and it was worth every bit of it by switching to Ziply fiber in the Seattle area. I went from this to this:

* Comcast 1000/35 Down/up to Ziply 1000/1000 down/up

* Monthly bill cut in half

* Comcast monthly data caps, to no data caps with Ziply

And that's right, Comcast gives 35 Mbps upload, if you are lucky! And data caps.

My best option currently is Wave Broadband, with 940/20 costing 100$/mo. I pay an extra 8$/mo for 940/25. The tech installing my line checked my signal and said that they could support 940/940, but they wont offer it in my area. I am pricing the cost of a fiber run that after install will be 1000/1000 for 60$/mo. I would gladly pay $3k to hook-up.

Wave Broadband literally doubled my bill out of the blue last November-- not because a trial pricing period ended or anything, but just because they could: I was in an apartment building where they were the only option. It's irrelevant now because shortly after that I moved to a different location, but they're just as bad as Comcast. Private ISPs delenda est.

With comcast in my area the unofficial strategy is to require you to sign up for a new plan every year to slowing tick down your speed and increase costs. If you stick with your old plan the monthly doubles. Right now I'm paying $60 for 60/3.5 with comcast. A few years ago it was $30 for 100/3.5 I have no other real options, it's gross.

I heard threw the grapevine Xfinity (comcast) has given up on trying to compete with streaming services.

Their strategy is just charge more for everything, and make ordering services compliced.

Going on their website to just get basic cable, and low speed internet is very hard.

They push packages--hoping you will never realize when the deal ends.

They rely on senior citizens who just pay the bill, and are not technical enough to even shop around--if they have a choice? Most households don't.

Comcast should be required to have have simple billing, and simple ording of service

That could be taken care of the next time your local government ok's their next franchise agreement. It's not a franchise. It's some agreement government has with them.

Be careful calling Xfinity (comcast) for anything. The calls are routed overseas, and those employees main function is pushing package deals. Don't fall for it. They try to get the customer to agree on voice, so they have evidence.

1. I'm ok with their internet service, except for the price, and lack of competition.

2. The cable tv service is subpar. I have had checkering for ever. I gave up on getting it corrected. After three visits from third party vendors it's still not right. (This third party vendor was working 6 days a week, and was required to lease his service truck for $250/week.).

3. If you do have a lousy connection, it might be partially related to a filter Comcast put on years ago, but never took off. (The new filters are fine, but a certain brand of an older one is bad. I just threw it out so I can't give the part number. If you have voice remote, make sure it's on the right three splitter. I vagly remember it on the outlet with the lowest resistance?

4. I believe Comcast knows they are pushing too much through that coaxial. I believe they preparing for a class action lawsuit, but might not care?

5. I only put up with Comcast because there's no real competition where I reside. Xfinity's agreements with local municipalities needs to be nixed.

6. Comcast promised to not cut off service during the pandemic, but lied.

7. Comcast offers Hotspots. Your router could be the hotspot, and they don't have to tell you. (I don't believe their is any danger to this practice though.)

I would love it that infrastructure bill did away with Xfinity. They provide very few good paying jobs. I would like to see free internet provided to every American, even the wealthy.

My comcast bill is $70 a month for 1000Mbps down / 36Mbps up. Pretty happy actually... and my area has no municipal ISP, and the only other option is AT&T's DSL variant.

Your area has no Broadband Internet competition. You have extremely poor upload and presumably a cap that you can go over by accidentally leaving a video streaming service tab open on.

How are you happy again? It sounds like you're happy to be in an abusive relationship rather than none at all.

I'm happy because it satisfies my needs for a reasonable price. I don't have a use for 1Gbps uploads... mostly nobody does actually... and I stream a lot of 1080p content, which comes nowhere near the "data cap" any month of the year.

Perhaps things would be different if I were streaming 4k, but I'm not - and that would only be an issue with a data cap (I agree, data caps are absurd).

BTW, the limit on the upload is a physical issue with cable lines and the DOCSIS protocol... I don't feel it's realistic to demand fiber to everyone's home when nearly nobody has an actual use-case for symmetrical home connections...

Lastly, getting the government involved in maintaining lines to everyone's homes is a disaster waiting to happen. What infrastructure is the government doing an excellent job maintaining as it is? With salary caps on staffers, and the inability to terminate underperforming employees - municipal-owned lines and/or ISP's will start out great, and over time suffer the same bureaucratic disease the rest of the government already has.

>BTW, the limit on the upload is a physical issue with cable lines and the DOCSIS protocol... I don't feel it's realistic to demand fiber to everyone's home when nearly nobody has an actual use-case for symmetrical home connections...

Nobody had a use case until a family of 4 needs to work and school from home simultaneously or upload video. Somehow, we had a use case for delivering people ad laden garbage tv shows via cable, but something like fiber internet which might actually be used for productivity and creativity is not worthy of public support?

Are you so sure the government can run a high tech ISP better than the private sector? That they will employ the best and brightest and pay them market rates or better?

Or will it just turn into yet another jobs program, filled with sub-par employees that can never be fired for poor performance... While the infrastructure rots away?

Say what you want about Comcast... But my internet never goes down, is always fast, is a reasonable price, and support is readily available within a couple minutes if needed.

Can you say the same for any government run program or infrastructure project?

> Say what you want about Comcast... But my internet never goes down, is always fast, is a reasonable price, and support is readily available within a couple minutes if needed.

I’ve dealt with Comcast in 3 states on both coasts, and I can’t share any of those sentiments. The upload is always garbage.

> Can you say the same for any government run program or infrastructure project?

Yes, I’ve never had to call anyone about my electric, gas, sewage, water, roads, parks, or air. Also, FYI, a government org came up with the internet in the first place.

This trope of “all things government bad” is so lazy. We are lucky in the US to live in a relatively trustworthy society, where the FAA/FDA/CDC/etc have done quite a few things to make our lives pleasant. Obviously they’re not perfect, but by and large the civilian agencies have undoubtedly pushed our quality of life up.

Electric - burned down several towns in California 2 years back due to failure to maintain the lines over the last 30 years.

Gas and Sewage rarely require infrastructure upgrades... ie. there's no new home appliance that requires "more" gas than the lines can currently provide (or provided 30 years ago).

Water? What about all the lead in the water issues that were exposed a few years back? Do you think they would have just fixed that if nobody made a big stink about it?

ARPAnet has literally nothing to do with how commercial (or municipal) ISP's operate today... not sure what point you're trying to make.

FAA has been attempting to upgrade ATC services nation-wide for years and years... still hasn't happened. Plus they've outsourced certifications of new aircraft to the manufacturer (because they don't have the staff to do it themselves, because they don't pay as well as private companies) which led to the Boeing 737-MAX thing...

CDC is now a political organization spouting whatever the current president wants (at least under Trump and Biden)

FDA - shills for the beef and corn industries...

None of your examples are good.

> Electric - burned down several towns in California 2 years back due to failure to maintain the lines.

That was a private entity. (The same one that also was on proabtion for felonies for killing people and causing widespread damage with its gas operations not long before.)

Is it though? They can't do so much as paint their trucks without government approval.

I'll admit, utilities are a bizarre hybrid at best - however it was the government's state level utility commission that approved the non-maintenance plans for decades.

I consider utilities as part of government. They private part is just so government officials can use them as a scapegoat. For example, not letting PGE raise prices to do proper maintenance, but then also blaming them when it caused wildfires. Of course, voters will vote for the politician that promises to keep costs down and keeps more money in their pockets.

I do not understand what the purpose of pointing out specific deficiencies is after I already pointed out that there were deficiencies.

I know myself and many other people feel safe traveling via air, buying food at the grocery store, drinking tap water, are not worried about our houses burning down, and trust the vaccines will help protect us.

In NYC, I have exactly one broadband provider. Spectrum (formerly Time Warner). Their highest end package is 500 down / 20 up. I can't get FiOS because, even though Verizon contractually agreed to wire all of NYC up for fiber, they lied and didn't. So, my only other option is Verizon DSL with offers 'up to 7Mbps' down.

T-Mobile is rolling out their home 5g internet now. It doesn't support streaming yet, but it hits around 200+ down and 25 up on my phone, so it may get there.

nyc has sued verizon multiple (?) times for failing to roll out fiber into the city and just keeping the money. Each time verizon does some update, or rolls out a little bit more, and the story repeats. Telecom is a utility, end of story.

NYC needs to get serious

Tell Verizon and the others that if they fail to fulfill their contract, the will get their license pulled, or, at the very least, they will operate their own local municipal broadband.

Of course the incentives are probably for each individual politician such that with enough graft, campaign donations, etc., that they just stick with the status quo, but I'm not familiar with the local situation.

[edit: typo "fulled" => "pulled"]

It sounds like that is what they have been doing.

What they need to do now is tell Verizon that they failed to fulfill their contract, pull their license, and operate their own municipal broadband.

New York City government has been all talk and no walk because they also do not want to pony up the sufficient funds to make it happen.

Yup. Although, while I'm no longer familiar with the local situation, it seems that the action has more been to sue Verizon and pocket the proceeds from the lawsuits into the general fund, while keeping their actual regulatory big gun in the holster.

Managing lawsuits and paying fines is apparently still cheaper for Verizon than actually installing the fiber.

What I want to know is WHY no regulator or judge has seen fit to actually enforce the requirement sufficiently to change Verizon's behavior.

(Or why they just don't use your suggestion, say they failed, repeatedly, pull the plug, and make their own system. They could pay for a LOT with the profits, even providing better and cheaper service)

Spectrum (TWC) also likes to get exclusive rights to certain buildings too. Making the problem worse.

On the topic of T-Mobile home internet, it does support streaming. Availability is determined by the network in your local area though.

I misread the announcement. They don't support a couple specific services (Hulu Live TV) but everything else streams just great from reviews I've read (Netflix, YouTube, regular Hulu, etc).

If anyone is considering T-Mobile Home 5G Internet, you can dramatically improve your connection speeds by getting the devices to connect on the 5G n41 band, where T-Mobile has much more spectrum. Unfortunately n41 is 2500 MHz, which means it's readily absorbed by building materials. Hooking up external antennas to the hotspot requires a bit of playing with the device [1], but can be a big help.

https://www.waveform.com/a/b/guides/hotspots/t-mobile-5g-gat...

> It doesn't support streaming yet, but it hits around 200+ down and 25 up on my phone, so it may get there.

Does that mean the 5g internet is really slow(DSL speed?) or do they actively block streaming? Is there another reason streaming wouldn't be supported even at a decent speed?

I misread the announcement. They don't support a couple specific services (Hulu Live TV) but everything else streams just great from reviews I've read (Netflix, YouTube, regular Hulu, etc).

Depending on where you live, check and see if you have Natural Wireless[0] available in your building/residence. Recently moved into an apartment that is lucky enough to get their service, and we get gigabit for ~$70 a month.

Have had almost zero issues, and their support has been tremendous.

[0]: https://naturalwireless.com/

I'm in upstate NY. I've lost track of the number of times I've heard folks complain that there is Verizon fiber a few hundred feet away but when you inquire about getting it to your home, Verizon is just like, "mmm, nah." This is where municipal intervention is most necessary - last mile, nay, last quarter mile.

I've found that I almost never get the rates I pay for with Comcast. I'm currently on their 600/35 plan, and I'm lucky to get 200 down and 15 up. So even if Comcast were to roll out "gigabit" everywhere, it would likely be very inferior to municipal fiber.

Have you considered switching to a lower speed plan?

If you are only actually getting 200, you might as well switch to the 200 plan and save $20/month.

> And that's right, Comcast gives 35 Mbps upload, if you are lucky! And data caps.

Before I switched last year, I only got 10Mbps up from Comcast.

Similar situation in Fort Collins, Colorado. Connexion (the city's brand for municipal ISP) is 60/mo for symmetric gigabit fiber, and for 300/mo can get 10Gb/s and near zero outages. Comcast and Century Link keep sending "deals" in the mail that are laughable. I am very happy with municipal ISP.

https://www.fcgov.com/connexion/residential-internet

Can help a lot with the tax bases too. I know my municipal ISP just dumped $17 million into the municipal tax base of a city of just over a 100 thousand. They also pay well. So that's money that is not being taxed.

Yeah, I'm actually in Fort Collins, I was trying to be a little vague for anonymity but ya know. With Longmont Colorado having municipal broadband I think Comcast saw Fort Collins as a hill worth dying on. I've heard that Boulder and Denver are looking at putting municipal broadband on a ballot in the future. Certainly how things turn out in Fort Collins will be considered in other communities around the state. After 4 months on our community broadband I'm still fighting with Comcast over bills and charges.

Yeah I am in FC and I wish Boulder and Denver well, but it will be a hard fight Comcast owns the city of Denver and most of its metro. Through influence and legislature that is all in their favor. As well as being a HUGE employer in the state.

My only gripe is I really wish they would roll the FC Connexion to my neighborhood in midtown now lol

What your city did sounds great, and I hope it will be similarly done in other places as well.

I think ideally the city should allow for other ISPs to lease these lines (of course at price that would cover the cost of maintaining them) and still providing option to be one of those ISPs. This would lower the barrier to enter for other ISPs and perhaps further lower the price.

I only hope that your city won't end up selling the infrastructure to someone in the future, because that will of course kill the whole effort.

I believe the key to solve our ISP problems is unbundling the local loop. The bill that congress wants to pass to fix Internet will be a failure, unless the money is meant for local governments to do the same your city did.

If providers would take the money they'd normally fight municipal broadband with and instead fight for access to the "last mile" they'd come out way ahead - offload a cost center to the municipality, get better access and speed, and be able to differentiate on services.

They would, but so would their competitors. Comcast and Spectrum have currently a great position, because cost to enter the market for anyone else is so high. Not even Google with their "unlimited" amount of money was able to get through it. It's crazy that currently the only way to enter the market is to deploy thousands of satellites (like Starlink) and once Starlink becomes a competitor to current ISPs other competitors won't be able to follow them.

This situation can't be solved without changing laws and local governments.

Counterpoint: a nearby city wanted to provide municipal broadband. Mayor, city council, majority of the public seemed on-board. The city realized they knew nothing about running an ISP, so they hired some consultants, who hooked them up with another contractor to build out and run it. Some time passed, nothing happened, the contractor went bankrupt. Every cent of tax money spent amounted to nothing. The big ISPs (Comcast and ATT) continued to operate and expand their services, which are better than they've ever been (which is not to claim it couldn't be better, but more people have broadband now than they did before).

Gather around, this is good.

How I sued Spectrum California for $1800...

So my internet had rolling outages for weeks and Spectrum wouldnt do anything. So they sent a technician to my house. Three consecutive days, scheduled appointment, no one showed, or called (other than the automated attendant. This is important later). I was furious. I was talking to my father who did a bit of law school and he shared that California has a $600 a day no show penalty for companies with 25 or more employees.

https://legalbeagle.com/7272842-service-noshow-penalty-calif...

So I file small claims for the full 1800. I show up and theyve sent a person who professionally goes to court to fight these things. It also became clear the they use the auto dialer follow up to negate the "no call" portion of the "No show/now call" law. They've got it down to a science.

So dejected by their treachery, I try a last second hail mary by asking the judge if I can speak to the court. I tell him "I am you, you, you (pointing at him and the people sitting in court), this company dosent care about providing the service they promised, theyd rather spend that money hiring henchmen to beat the consumer laws on a technicality. Their largest investment is in extraction, not service. Im just a guy who wanted his internet and to go back to work. If my experience hits home at all please, hold them accountable."

Lonnnnng silence and the little Spectrum rat is visibly smiling. The judge starts to speak "Mr Cereal, I personally empathize with companies not respecting my time. Its so frusteratinfg" The whole court audibly gasps, this judge is gonna stick them. Judge flustered "Wellll, I dont mean Specturm specifically. That said, I find fully in favor of Mr Cereal and order a full judgement."

Ive sold two companies for 9 figures in my life. I have never ever ever seen my jewish father as proud of me as when I called him and told him what happened. I got a check two weeks later.

tldr: ISPs are evil, but you can get them if they dont show. Also, your dad will be proud.

It sounds like a story but I'll give the benefit of the doubt if only because I so want to believe.

What part? Its a law on the books and it all went down at the Stanley Mosk courthouse on the third floor. I was also late to roll call and I had to take a Bird scooter a quarter-mile from Chinatown because parking at the court is like $40/day.

If you sold two companies for 9 figures why are you concerned about paying $40 for parking?

As bizarre as it may seem, there is an overlap between these two sets of people that is non-trivial.

I think the better question is closer to why did I choose to endure building two companies. The answer is closer to having unreasonable principals about random stuff )and being abnormally competitive), which directly answers your question.

You're my hero. I'm not your jewish father, but I'm still proud of you.

This made my day. I don't even care if it's made up, I choose to believe this happened.

I was half expecting the lawyer to no-show as well, but of course they finally show up when it's their money on the line.

It's nuts. I used to live in a major city, 10 minutes from downtown, and the only high speed internet I could get was Spectrum cable internet. I recently moved to a rural, mountain area in the same state and there is a small ISP that provides fiber to the entire county. They even have good pricing.

> It would have been cheaper for them too....

Can some enlighten me, why did they not do it? For those of us outside US, we never quite grasp why US mobile network and ISP are so bad. All while refusing to do any improvement.

Not only are they bad, they are ridiculously expensive. ( and healthcare... but we wont go into that. )

It's more profitable to collect $70 a month and not do upgrades than to do $500 per household Capex expenditures and then collect $70 a month.

Well yes. But I assume they would react once or even before competition like municipal broadband is available . Except from reading this doesn't seems to be the case at all.

Aside from not wanting to have to upgrade everyone, Comcast has a vested interest in keeping television relevant, which means keeping internet worse.

And if they do it in city A, then city B down the road is going to start demanding the same treatment.

At the moment I'm usually fine with my 200Mbps download speeds from Spectrum, but man am I jealous of those upload speeds and that price. I'm looking to move soon, and municipal fiber is definitely on the list of things that could get me to pick one area over another. It's not only a great deal on an essential service, but gives me a bit more confidence in the local government and the citizens that voted for it.

Capitalism is wildly inefficient for infrastructure, and it’s really frustrating how often we have to relearn this as a society. There’s a damn good reason why the city owns the pipes that bring water to and sewage from your house, and why the power lines are owned by a heavily regulated monopoly. The physical infrastructure to run internet to everyone’s homes should be owned by the state and responsive to the citizens it serves and not the shareholders who profit.

What makes cable companies different from, say, a duopoly in mobile phone operating systems?

Land usage, mostly.

Cell companies need space for towers and fiber to those antennas. It turns out that these don’t take up all that much space, so it’s trivially possible for multiple cell phone companies to setup towers covering the same customers.

Cable companies however have to deal with the “last mile” problem, which is both massively more expensive than installing more centralized infrastructure, but also involves installing infrastructure on much more restricted areas.

@amelius asked about phone operating systems. But your comment is a very good point about mobile phones vs home internet.

Isn’t there a spectrum license/conflict issue for mobile network operators?

Absolutely, that’s part of why T-Mobile and Sprint joined together. But there’s enough spectrum available to run a few different cell phone companies, while last mile issues are pretty much permanent for cable companies.

There may be a duopoly, but I can still get what I want with jailbreaking or rooting (although that is getting harder over time). With ISPs, if they both suck, I’m SOL.

This is like saying that you can get away from your ISP monopoly by using your neighbors' WiFi.

The whole concept of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_market requires being able to purchase interchangeable goods on the global market.

Yet, you cannot buy a service like broadband or sewage, put it in a box and sell it to someone living in another continent.

Location-bound services usually become quasi-monopolies, where free market does not apply. The quasi-monopolist is able (and happy) to charge the maximum price that people can pay.

The general response would be that, because of barriers to entry and economies of scale, the optimal number of firms in some industries is 1, and thus that firm should be regulated or run by the government in order to prevent it from exploiting its immense market power.

Even famous libertarians like Hayek agree that infrastructure is a necessary duty of the government. To me, it's the plate on which the free market rests and operates. It is the wiring of the market itself.

Capitalism isn't at fault here; spineless municipal governments are. Since the federal government is also spineless, it's refreshing to see some starting to wake up to the hellscape that is our Internet infrastructure.

It's not even capitalism to begin with. It's corporate socialism. Where you have companies actively using the government to secure their own payday. If a company has millions and utter millions to throw at not having to compete..

That being said, I agree that natural monopolies should be considered an issue for the state.

This is just competition. Nothing anti-market about that

I think regulatory capture is one of the most profitable loopholes in capitalism and I don't think there are adequate checks and balances.

I wish there was a better way to regulate internet service that wasn't subject to these kinds of shenanigans.

I suspect long-term it is competition that ends up fixing this, but think of the drag on the economy when good communication is fouled up like this.

Is it cheaper to run fiber to houses than to hang WiFi off telephone poles? I know WiFi isn't as good as a hard connection, but running cables sounds really expensive and cumbersome.

WiFi is really poor as a last mile technology.

What about as a last 100 meter technology? (I'm sorry, I'm not being glib. I don't know much about networking at that level.)

WiFi is really bad at anything but in home connectivity.

The parent is talking about Fort Collins, which decades ago went to almost entirely underground utilities. Partly for aesthetics, partly because of all of the lovely old trees in the downtown area which kept taking utilities out.

There are some poles around, but most of the city is underground. So in this instance, yes, it was cheaper to run the fiber than to run the fiber AND set up poles. :-)

Is this Fort Collins, CO? :)

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