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Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

I oppose municipal internet because then the municipality has to hire a staff of network administrators and a staff of people to actually install the service to households and customer service people to manage subscriptions and front-line tech support questions (or pay contractors to do all that). Lots of graft and favoritism will go in on that. Friends will get hired although they are not competent to do those jobs. County government salaries typically aren't market leading so even when those jobs aren't given to friends, they aren't going to get the best people. I have to pay for all of that, so my taxes go up, even if I don't use their service or if I don't have internet service at all.

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Are you sure your taxes are used to fund the municipal Internet? In my locality they issued a bond to fund the initial trenching, and use the subscription fees to pay back that bond and fund the long term operation. No taxes are paying for it, people who are not using the municipal Internet don't pay anything for it.

Do you still oppose municipal Internet in that case?

Maybe your locality is different, but before we got municipal Internet we had basically 3 choices: Xfinity at $180/mo for ~gig down/120M (something in that ballpark) up, CenturyLink with 40Mbps or less DSL (antiquated infrastructure, they actively blocked CLECs from doing anything that could improve it), or terrestrial wireless (fairly sketchy in our environment).

Once we got municipal broadband, we finally got fiber to the house, gigabit symmetric, great customer support, and latency that was 10x lower, AND Xfinity dropped their prices.

As opposed to the private industry, famously meritocratic and never hiring friends, family, and insiders?

> Lots of graft and favoritism will go in on that.

That's so much better than just not having support that works!

My friend had his Comcast line damaged. It required him 2 _months_ to get that fixed, and he was not able to work from home during that time.

Of course, you can always switch ISPs, right? Oh, yep. No, most of the US has only one _wired_ ISP.

Cool, then vote against it in your local elections.

We have this thing called local control where local governments are empowered to create and tailor the services that their residents need most.

In my town we have standard Xfinity for cable and now quantum fiber and Ting Internet laying down fiber. It increased our choice from single ISP to multiple ones.

I have to pay for all of that,

You realize it isn't free and people still subscribe right?

Also do you realize this has already been done and worked incredibly well in lots of places with much faster speeds and cheaper prices? This isn't some wild experiment.

From an econ theory standpoint it's in a weird place: broadband is both rivalrous and excludable, so it's not a "public good" in the traditional sense, but it also relies on geographically-fixed infrastructure, so a private market for it cannot be efficient.

In the US, goods like this are usually provisioned through a metered semipublic utility. The problem is that to work, those need a monopoly.

The problem is that to work, those need a monopoly.

This isn't true and we can see it by the fact that lots of places have multiple wires run to them from ATT and multiple cable companies. Most of the time with cable a neighborhood is wired up but a cable isn't ran to a house until it is needed.

ISPs make so much profit they don't need everyone to sign up. A lot of times there is nothing to dig and it is run off a pole. They aren't giving a metered commodity like electricity, gas or water with their lines. Once a line is run to someone's house it's wildly profitable since the bandwidth per person is so cheap.

You should actually look at the books of these ISP's.

Loaded with debt and other liabilities and grocery store profits/net margins.

Gross margins may be 60% or more but they aren't ending up with the shareholders or C-Levels

You should actually look at the books of these ISP's.

Then link something and show me specifically what you are talking about.

Loaded with debt and other liabilities and grocery store profits/net margins.

I'm not sure exactly what this is supposed to mean, but debt is how things are financed and comcast made a 3 billion dollar profit from 31 billion in revenue.

https://www.google.com/search?q=comcast+profit

What's the debt though? AT&T has more debt than share value.

That profit is 10% What's the spread between that and the loan repayment rate? What's the Fed rate?

People invest in different things but they should be getting value at least equivalent buying Fed bonds.

What's the debt though? AT&T has more debt than share value.

You tell me, you're the one who made the claims.

That profit is 10% What's the spread between that and the loan repayment rate? What's the Fed rate?

Profit is after servicing loans.

the loan repayment rate?

What loan? What are you talking about?

What's the Fed rate? People invest in different things but they should be getting value at least equivalent buying Fed bonds.

It's 5.25%, that took me 4 seconds to google. Did you think it might have been 10%?

Comcast has 94 billion in debt

At&T is 155 billion in debt

That Fed rate spread definitely puts those companies in grocery store rates

It's not a good business to be in unless you're a big investor depending on consistent earnings

They aren't "making it big"

Unless there's collusion, multiple providers means minor amounts of profit.

Bandwidth is ridiculously cheap these days once you're big enough.

The costs are in laying Fiber, power, repair and support. And definitely debt servicing.

Let's say there's a new residential block with 12 homes one mile away from another place with service from your network core

If the ground is alright or there's poles, you deliver at 15 to 20k/mile to the demarc at the building. Spend 5k for a stub or 20k for a regular connection that allows for extensions like the one you just made. Then spend 750/home for connections+CPE. Maybe extra money for IP addresses if you don't do CGNAT.

If you bill 50 a month and have no issues there you spend 7 years recovering your money before you make any profits.

When you see this you'll know why Verizon removed it's CEO after he laid lots of fiber. These numbers are assuming there's full take-up.

A single truck roll can wipe off two months of earnings from a user

There's better shares to buy. Better businesses to invest in

What point are you even trying to make? Do you know or have you lost the plot?

Above someone was trying to say municipal ISPs don't make money. They clearly can, ISPs make plenty of profit and municipal internet has been done many times before. Not only that their speeds are often higher than competing ISPs in the area.

Comcast has a 148.43 billion market cap, which includes their debt. They made over 3 billion in profit which includes servicing their debt.

That Fed rate spread definitely puts those companies in grocery store rates

What are you even talking about, this doesn't mean anything.

They aren't "making it big"

Comcast is a fortune 100 company worth 150 billion dollars. Municipal ISPs just need to work.

Again municipal internet already works all over the place. Chattanooga offers 300 mb internet for $58 USD. They offer 10 gigabit for $300.

Unless there's collusion, multiple providers means minor amounts of profit.

Prove it.

The whole point was that municipal internet works because it can make its money back over time. You making up random hypothetical scenarios has nothing to do with that.

Better businesses to invest in

Except that a municipal internet service can break the ISP monopoly, offer much higher speeds, lower prices and do it all while earning its money back.

150 billion in the cap isn't free cash flow.

The Fed rate spread is the difference between investing in a company and giving it to the Feds. I'm sure you've heard of "the end of easy money" and articles about if your world view was created by ZIRP. Of course another important rate is that between your profits and the inflation rate. i.e are you actually making money or running on a treadmill

Have you heard of Google, Apple, Microsoft, or Exxon, Facebook, Nvidia?

And that profit is almost nothing although the ratio is 1% into okay

Municipal broadband is a good thing. It keeps the money home. It can be successful. It's the sort of thing that's fine with very long term loans and the associated horizons

In fact most of Comcasts issues are TV related

Municipal broadband=okay Overbuilding = very terrible idea for anyone trying to make money.

It's like trying to turn a profit in Ashburn selling carrier services where Transit is cheaper than peering

Again, what point are you trying to make? Your replies are incoherent at this point.

150 billion in the cap isn't free cash flow.

I already posted that they had 31 billion in revenue, did you miss that?

Have you heard of Google, Apple, Microsoft, or Exxon, Facebook, Nvidia?

Nope, never heard of them. Good point of <nothing at all>

Overbuilding = very terrible idea for anyone trying to make money.

Are you hallucinating nonsense that no one every said anything about?

We're done here. Go back to the top.

ISPs make a lot of money and municipal internet works well.

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