Where it becomes unfair is when municipal broadband is supported by general tax revenues. If the citizens of a city are required to pay for the municipal broadband whether or not they use it, then its going to pretty hard to compete with that.
The “unfairness” is simple. You regulate the entity who runs your muni fiber operation, and if they don’t meet your metrics you’re measuring success by, you replace them (whether that’s internal folks or an org contracted to provide services).
TLDR Ramp muni fiber deployments with rigorous operational oversight as a requirement.
What you can't do is pretend that private broadband companies would be competing with municipal broadband on equal footing.
What is a requirement is acknowledging the unequal footing.
I had assumed we all felt comfortable using “public/private” as a shortcut for all of these differences, but am learning that is not necessarily shared. In terms of moving the discussion forward, what were you hoping to achieve by pointing out some of these facts?
No they won’t. Public projects can be setup to require that they are revenue neutral or positive.
The municipality provides the fiber network. All ISPs rent dark fiber, local loops, wavelengths or bitstream access on equal open access terms.
All on equal footing and equal terms.
Given how many people actually have multiple options in the last mile, it’s not a natural monopoly.
So in reality I have a choice of two wired providers. Imagine how great our food would be if the only restaurants available were either Burger King or McDonalds. What a competitive marketplace!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly
It might not be limited to just one for all markets, but two choices isn't very competitive due to the massive infrastructural costs and other barriers of entry (e.g., rights of way). Also, my current residence is an example where there actually is competition. As pointed out above, just because the FCC says there's 2+ broadband providers they're including two satellite providers. So a lot of those 3 provider places are really single wireline providers.
Once again, is a market where all restaurants are either McDonalds or Burger King an example good competition?
I have a neighbor that refuses to use running water. Should the infrastructure be routed around their property?
Should they be forced to use running water?
They have the money to do it, but prefer refilling the 5 gallon jugs.
If a city provides any service: water, sewer, broadband, from property taxes, its going to be really really hard for any company to compete with that.
So you can make the case for municipal broadband, but don't pretend that private ISPs are going to compete with it.