Hacker News Reader

> In the US there are usually limits on who can get on a pole to run cables to homes to provide cable based broadband. Utilities, cable TV companies, ...

I wonder if we'll ever see anyone trying to technically sidestep this requirement. "We're a TV company, you can go to this url to see our 'clear sky 24/7' channel. Also we provide internet access."

To GP's point, the poles are privately owned. The Cable TV company put them there, or the telephone, or other utility. If you want to use space on their poles, you have to rent it, or install your own poles. Both happen. On the road I live on, there are power lines on one side of the road which also carry telephone lines. Cable TV (Comcast) has poles on the other side of the road.

It's more complicated than that.

- Many poles are owned by power companies, or telephone companies. You can absolutely get a JPA (joint pole attach) agreement with most of these companies in theory.

- In practice, your first problem is that most poles are horribly maintained. And if you are a new attachee, you will often find yourself having to share in the cost to make an already non-compliant pole compliant and with enough room for you to attach.

- If you are dealing with, say, Verizon poles and are trying to attach for a competing cell service, your make ready costs are oddly inflated, and they may go as far as expect you to split the cost 50/50 for a pole that is already out of spec.

- In many municipalities, the kickbacks of 'franchise agreements' cause a lot of inertia. This is mostly the case with CATV, the industry of 'how can we be minmax our monopoly'. Essentially, the cable provider pays the city X dollars per subscriber, gives them a couple public access channels, and in return gets exclusivity.

I used to do HFC design for Xfinity Fraudband, as well as fiber design/permitting for other CATV providers and cell carriers. Its a corrupt and abusive industry, the entire contractor/subcontractor system is made to shield the companies both from overall liability as well as prevent unionization.

Also, any of the SV folks speaking up about social injustice would have a heart attack in a week or two. Being in that climate for so long made me numb to a lot of injustice, and it took years to recover.

Seem like the municipality needs to own and control it's own poles more than anything.

Your first point is important. Governments have protected citizen's quality of life by restricting the number of wires going around on poles and/or digging up of the streets. This is why local governments created regulated telephone and cable monopolies in the first place. Unfortunately the regulated telephone and cable infrastructure later become much more valuable due to the emergence of broadband internet. The companies that owned this infra then loaded up on debt based on the skyrocketing value of this infrastructure and we are forced to pay for this debt.

>I'm not sure about this. If it's at cost or close to it than I'd be curious to see the case.

One of the bad examples that is often brought up is iProvo municipal internet. The city raised 40 million in bonds, ran up another 10 million in operating deficit, placed monthly internet bills on all residents even if they weren't connected. The city ultimately gave up and sold the infrastructure to google for $1.

https://reason.org/news-release/think-tank-iprovos-losses-at...

The fix for the first point would be local loop unbundling. Statutory rates for leasing access preserves the incentive to continue investing in infrastructure. This allows for competition without requiring a duplication of last mile infrastructure requiring huge costs. And without giving a significant advantage to a government endorsed group over private companies