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Comment by toomuchtodo | Hacker News Reader

I pay for trash pickup, parks, libraries, roads, schools, fire, and police regardless of my usage (all out of property taxes). I can stick 8 kids in my local school system, or none, and I’m charged the same. Even my water and sewer are provided for by local government, with only my electric service being a for profit (yet highly regulated) utility, and yet internet connectivity is put forth as a beacon of capitalism where we expect competition when a natural monopoly exists by way of the last mile.

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.

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Certainly, you can make a case for cities providing broadband just as they provide trash, sewer, parks, libraries, etc.

What you can't do is pretend that private broadband companies would be competing with municipal broadband on equal footing.

Is it a requirement that these common goods and services have private competition that is on equal footing? Private security, trash services, libraries (netflix) all have private competition that seems to be thriving in the spaces that have higher requirements, but the baseline situation appears to be handled for much of the region.

It's not a requirement. Or at least: we commonly accept many such services provided by municipalities.

What is a requirement is acknowledging the unequal footing.

Public and private will always be on unequal footing, due to the difference in the their objectives. It may also be worthwhile to point out that public infra is designed to serve even people who can’t otherwise afford it, as well as limited by their ability to attract talent. (I’m sure there are others.)

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?

The difference in footing is not based on objectives but the means by which funding is obtained. In the case of private companies, the funding can only by obtained by providing services that the market demands. The government obtains its funding by taxing people.

> Public and private will always be on unequal footing, due to the difference in the their objectives.

No they won’t. Public projects can be setup to require that they are revenue neutral or positive.

I'm hoping to accomplish pointing out the silliness of the post I originally responded to, which asserted that there was no reason to think it would be unfair competition.

This is a solved problem.

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.

> when a natural monopoly exists by way of the last mile.

Given how many people actually have multiple options in the last mile, it’s not a natural monopoly.

Only if you have Local Loop Unbundling. For most of the US the completion for the last mine is minuscule or non existent.

The FCC's listing of multiple broadband providers requires you to read between the lines. For my address they list 5 providers. AT&T is on there twice, there's a cable company, and then Viasat and Hughesnet. Given that Viasat and Hughesnet exist for pretty much the entire contiguous US it makes it super easy to say there's at least two providers serving your area, so the whole 99% of people are served by at least two providers is kind of a worthless statement. Given the high latency involved in their flavor of satellite operations, low data caps (or throttling, technically Viasat says its not a cap) they're not really competitive in just about any market with modern wireline services.

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!

Two wired providers is not a natural monopoly.

> A natural monopoly is a monopoly in an industry in which high infrastructural costs and other barriers to entry relative to the size of the market give the largest supplier in an industry, often the first supplier in a market, an overwhelming advantage over potential competitors.

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?

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