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Comment by pdonis | Hacker News Reader

> Other countries fix this by having the shared physical infrastructure controlled by a government entity that rents access to any company that wants to sell service as an ISP.

Yes, and the problem in the US has been that every time a local municipality tries this, they get sued by the ISPs, and since the ISPs have much deeper pockets, the suits never get to the point where they could drive meaningful change with a ruling against the ISPs. That's a big reason why net neutrality has been pushed in the US: because it's the best that can be done given that a better fix has failed.

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I’m surprised none of the good states, like maybe NY or one of the New England states, hasn’t decided to help out in this sort of situation. Couldn’t the state say “we’ll step in to do the defense, for our municipalities.”

There aren't really any states in the US that are pro public-ownership at the expense of private profit.

The so-called big govt states subcontract to private companies and let them make large profits.

> every time a local municipality tries this, they get sued by the ISP

It's a problem that needs to be dealt with at the state, or ideally federal level. It needs significant regulatory change and a large investment.

> It's a problem that needs to be dealt with at the state, or ideally federal level.

You mean the levels that produced all the sweetheart deals the ISPs currently have? The ISP monopolies are products of state and federal (mostly state) intervention in the name of supposedly necessary things like "enabling internet access".

All the more reason the issue needs to be fixed at the level.

Using power to tax to directly compete with private investments is a slippery slope and rightly deserves a day in court.

You say that like it's unprecedented. That's basically any government spending program that isn't cash payments.

No, the municipality agreed to terms with internet provider which included no tax financed competition. Then some politician needs to get elected and sells the public on a not possible idea of muni internet.

Sort of like Biden canceling student debt by executive order when the constitution says congress has the power of the purse. You can assign the blame to Biden, Republican AGs, the Supreme Court, or the authors of the constitution. Doesn’t make much difference, so long as the issue is correctly understood. A day in court makes sense.

> No, the municipality agreed to terms with internet provider which included no tax financed competition.

There was a contract between every municipality and ISP with an explicit term that the municipality couldn't finance a competitor? That seems unlikely.

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