Study: 40.2% of Consumers Would Consider Switching to Municipal Broadband

I assume the percentage would be higher if it just showed an actual comparison of upload/download speeds, bandwidth caps, and price. This poll may be just showing whether the consumers even know what "municipal broadband" means.

Probably also colored with people's perceptions of how sticky "bundles" they already have for TV and phone are, how they would get their cable channels, etc.

How in the world can someone "prefer their current provider" without something to compare against? I think in any kind of survey like this, I would like to see the actual questions that were asked.

What I am interested in: a single entity responsible for trenching/fibre infrastructure, then allowing providers to resell access to it. Requiring each ISP to run their own fibre makes no sense to me. Let ISPs compete on price and quality of service, not on having billions in the bank to roll out the fibre (or take subsidies and not roll it out, like in many places in USA).

Even worse in condos (like in Toronto) where the condo board has signed an agreement with a provider and not allowing occupants any choice.

Huge shoutouts to Beanfield (Toronto) and Sonic (SF) for actually providing symmetric gigabit for cheaper than the incumbents with lower, asymmetric plans. If all companies were like them I wouldn't be advocating for municipal broadband.

In Minneapolis there's no municipal broadband, but there is a local company that offers FTTH. I use it and it's clearly superior to any cable company I've ever had (more speed for the price, more reliable, when you call customer service an actual person picks up the phone instead of an automated system, etc). Even so, my perception is that Xfinity is more popular because people either aren't aware that there are other options or because they want to bundle it with their TV package, particularly sports. I would think municipal broadband anywhere wouldn't take over for similar reasons, and a government service would have even less ability to win at marketing unless they booted out the cable company.

Given that cable companies are often monopolies in the region they operate and that they have a history of shady practices, I’m not sure why people are so hesitant to accept local governments from offering broadband instead. If they did then at least there would be public input on the implementation instead of just corporate interests deciding who is eligible and what they want to install (and when…)

Different country (Switzerland), have been using municipality broadband since we moved to this place. I'm happy with the service part - techs are knowledgeable, support is fast. Less happy with the price and speed - it's more expensive (about double) than places that have competition (e.g. Zurich, which is nearby) and while Zurich had 1Gb+ for years, ours was only enabled last year. They do fulfill what they promise - I pay for 600Mbit and that's what I get. No "up to" nonsense.

That’s fairly amazing to me considering the billions of dollars that corporate monopolies have invested in advertising and PR, compared to zero in towns that haven’t done any promotion of the idea of municipal broadband.

Allegedly Chattanooga has 10Gb municipal broadband. Anyone use it? How's the service?

I suspect the major considerations for choosing a service provider are price, availability, and service quality. Potential customers are more likely to consider municipal broadband if they are either unhappy with their current service or that service is less than gigabit speed.

I also suspect the incumbents aren't troubled by competition in areas where they provide gigabit service with strong reliability but they will fight to the death to keep municipal broadband out of areas they hope to expand into.

Both of those assumptions, if accurate, would suggest network access is, at least secretly, perceived as a utility by both the providers and customers.

I would consider it, but in light of the way my municipality runs its other services (water, trash, road maintenance, transit, etc.) I'd be hesitant. In other words, they have no demonstrated record of competence to stand upon.

I bet the other 60% would also consider switching after the price hikes to make up for lost revenue from the other 40%.

I'm not necessarily against municipal broadband - I'd probably use it over my current ISP - but it feels like a poor solution to the problem. Municipal broadband doesn't help anyone outside the municipality.

Ideally, broadband ISPs would just compete with eachother. But the infrastructure is expensive, so it seems most of them have unofficially agreed it's just not worth the cost to expand into eachothers' territory and compete for customers.

How did we get around this issue with the telephone grid and what's stopping us from doing the same with ISPs?

The best experience for the price are companies like Sonic, Webpass and Monkeybrains. All small providers doing something WAY better than the huge incumbents, for typically way cheaper.

100% would be off the local cable company if my municipality offered anything similar speed what I have. While I've not had much in the way of bad experiences, it's mostly because they aren't Comcast level huge.

I expect people to only switch if the price of the municipal option is lower. I also expect the corporations to get into a price war with municipalities, which they will win, because they have bigger coffer and economies of scale. I also expect the prices to go slowly but surely back up when the municipal option goes out of business.

Here in Sweden it is kind of the norm. I have 100/100 municipal fiber in my cottage in the middle of the forest. I could have higher speed, but it didn't feel cost effective since I don't use it much.

My guess is that the other 59.8% simply don't know what it is

I don't really care who I get my internet from. If you don't spy on me, are cost competitive, and have good enough speeds I'm in (and relatively low downtime).

Who manages this municipal broadband? Are these the same local governments who are so fond of surveillance? Why would you trust them with your internet access & data?

Could we possibly tag posts like this as something like "US Only" - there are no municipal broadband networks in (for example) the UK. Unless perhaps in Hull?

I don't see any way this could be a meaningful survey, because the implication is that 60% of consumers would "not even consider" switching to a cheaper provider, which is ridiculous.

Of course people would consider it. I'm not even personally convinced it's a great idea (I'm not currently impressed with municipal _anything_ living in Seattle), and I would _consider_ using it instead of Xfinity.

I doubt there are 20% of Americans who would reject cheap municipal broadband out of principle, if it existed and was offered to them cheaply. It doesn't mean they think it's realistic or good policy.

Broadband should be like your city’s water/sewer and as cheap as possible. Most municipalities with their own broadband have better service than Comcast.

The reality is that getting municipal broadband in the US is very challenging.

Even if you get the political good will early on, the fight that big players bring on is significant. One recent effort I was involved in was almost there after years of planning and having just completed a pilot build out, but got derailed by a commercial provider responding to an RFP for service by sending the municipality a non-response notice along the lines of "It's great that you're building out FTTH, but we plan on doing a full FTTH deployment of our own and it will be done within a year, just thought you'd like to know." This in itself was enough to kill any further funding, without any evidence that the company will actually follow through, because nobody has the appetite for the politics of holding the bag. They effectively got to the right people to kill the effort. Now the community is trying to see if that provider will buy a lease on what's been built so it's not a black eye in front of tax payers.

The best solution is not the one that established corporations want to see:

1. The municipality owns and deploys dark fiber using an open access FTTH model in an Active Ethernet design (e.g. every household or building has a dedicated strand, no GPON). The prevents people from being locked in to a specific speed, technology, or provider. If someone needs 100G the fiber will support it just fine. 2. The municipality maintains fiber concentration points and equipment huts or facilities for providers to co-locate equipment and service customers directly (allows choice and competition). 3. An anchor non-profit ISP (established as a 501(c)(3) and managed under a member-owned Credit Union model) is funded via a grant to provide day-1 service, but any commercial provider is free to make use of the fiber to service any location using a fair and published fiber strand fee that is presented to the customer as part of their bill (usually $10 a mo.) 4. The initial build-out is fully funded as a universal service (every property in the community, not just the high margin locations) through low-interest municipal bonds (10 year) and paid for using a modest property tax increase like any other municipal infrastructure effort. Fee collection covers ongoing maintenance and if adoption is good can cut the tax burden down by as much as half.

In other words we need to start thinking of dark fiber as a public utility the same way we think about water or electricity, but we also need to do it in a way where that utility doesn't get in the way of service delivery. The fiber is the road, and the delivery trucks that drive on it are the ISP.

Everything here is easy to do. The problem is you can almost never win the political fight to make any of it happen, at least not at the municipal level when going up against national corporations that bring in more money in one month than your annual budget.

There is no reason cost-driven for people to not have symmetrical gigabit as a baseline level of connectivity. Under the model described above, you can deliver gigabit service for about $50 a mo.

Would a municipality be able to compete regionally outside of their "jurisdiction"?

I could see a major increase in these municipal providers if that could somehow be an additional revenue driver. But I also imagine the existing players already lobbied a law to prevent that.