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Comment by IMSAI8080 | Hacker News Reader

I think the best approach would be publicly owned infrastructure with a mandate to reach all addresses. Run a basic no-frills public ISP service over it at a fair price but the private sector can also operate added value services over the public infrastructure if they want for a nominal maintenance fee.

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> but the private sector can also operate added value services over the public infrastructure if they want for a nominal maintenance fee.

Added services like what? I want internet. Give me internet.

As long as the "no-frills" version is available to consumers, I suppose it's fine to provide options. However, I feel like these public-private partnerships often merely allow rent-seeking corporations to insert themselves as middlemen and skim off the top of public services. Especially once those middlemen also start lobbying to cripple the government-run version.

Definitely not a rent-seeking opportunity. Just to clarify, I'd see the public ISP service as providing a vanilla "wires only" type broadband offering at a reasonable competitive speed at a reasonable price. A value-add service might be e.g. a private sector competitor offers a broadband + sports streaming bundle or something like that which it makes less sense for the public sector to get involved in. The public sector broadband service effectively puts a ceiling on what can be charged for plain broadband, so the private sector offering has to be better in some way and they can't rent-seek.

Exactly. High speed internet is no longer a novelty. It is necessary for most people who use the Internet/stream video. A municipal, “no frills” package that is just a slow DSL connection would be inadequate.

No-one said slow. I was thinking FTTP. However a public sector initiative would come with limits. It has to come with limits because people demand low taxes. Let's say the public sector does the math and says 500Mbit is what they can guarantee for equitable distribution to all addresses. That should be plenty for most people. But there will always be one person who demands their god given right to 10 gigabit. In which case you direct them to the private sector and tell them to pay for it on their own.

Wouldn't the private ISP offering 10 gigabits have to lay their own pipes anyway, to support that speed?

Not necessarily. If you lay down FTTP for 500Mbit it'll work at 10 gig no problem. You need to change the equipment at either end. In fact it'll work well beyond that speed if someone wants to pay for the equipment. But if the private sector wants to lay down their own cable in parallel to the public sector then who is stopping them?

Streaming video is not a necessity.

This is exactly the approach SF[1] was taking but unfortunately our main political champion, the Mayor, passed away unexpectedly. We were estimating $25-30/mo for 1Gb symmetrical as a utility tax for all households (subsidized for low income).

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/07/12/america...

I'm pretty conservatively politically but even I have come to the conclusion that a government owned monopoly on telecoms might be the only solution, especially given the criticality of internet access in the modern world.

To some extent it's a natural extension of the postal service.

I'm not sure why more politicians don't run on this platform.

That's a pretty good point (and argument), actually: "What's the fundamental difference between the post office and internet access?" I don't see one.

That's what I have: fiber infra as a public utility, with a choice of ISPs on top of that.

Funny fact, the ISP I chose is $10/month for 1G down/up. Want to add a phone line (which runs digitally over fiber)? That'll be an extra $26/month. It's as if they know the only people who want a phone line are willing to pay a lot for it.

I would love to be able to pay your price for internet and phone for just half of that internet speed.

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