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Comment by mikkupikku | Hacker News Reader

Municipalities don't know anything about the job and few have the resources and personnel to become sufficiently experienced. I know every other poster on HN has a story where they personally stepped in and saw their local government through the process for incredibly cheap, hey that's great, but how is some random municipality without an elder tech god living with them supposed to get "municipal" internet without contracting with an ISP who actually knows how to get that work done?

We're talking rural broadband. These municipality don't have great human capital for this kind of stuff. Hell, they struggle to just fill potholes.

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That is not how it works here. Municipality owned fiber is common here in Sweden (called stadsnät). Often several smaller municipalities join together and co-own the venture.

A common variation is that they just provide the physical infrastructure and you can then select which ISP to use on top of the fiber, from a list of about 15 or so usually. This seems to work fine in rural Sweden, so I don't see why it wouldn't work elsewhere.

As to potholes, that is not a big problem? It is usually a larger problem in the cities than out in the countryside.

i was only using fiber as just one example. but in the case of fiber, there are plenty of non rural areas that still can’t get it and are stuck with terrible options.

even so, even in rural areas, nothing at all stops them from hiring people the same way they hire a weatherman or a police man or a fireman or a city accountant. there are educated intelligent people in rural areas…

I guess we have different versions of HN cause the one I read has headlines on the front page pretty regularly about people (collectives, not individuals) doing their own broadband successfully. There's a reason right-wingers and lobbyists are against this and try to pass laws preventing it. It's because it works and undermines their position as rent-seekers who don't invest in their infrastructure.

> There's a reason right-wingers and lobbyists are against this and try to pass laws preventing it.

There’s a reason POLITICIANS are against this and try to pass laws preventing it.

There, fixed it for you.

Let’s not pretend this is a red or blue problem. It’s a big boot hovering over your head problem. It’s a politician problem.

It doesn’t matter if their colour underwear matches yours. This is about people in power doing what they can to stay in power while guaranteeing their easy money.

The only "right wingers" that are backing things like this are the ones that get paid by the ISP lobbies.

lol he thinks big ISPs upgrade their infra or care.

Did I say that? No, you made it up. Why you chose to make that up, I can only imagine (or should I make things up too?)

Also everybody else responding to me is ignoring the point that most rural municipalities can barely afford keep their roads marginally flat, let alone tear up the roads, lay fiber, then repair those roads. Municipal fiber is a pipe dream in most scenarios, but workable in reasonably high density regions that have a tax base to work with.

Road infrastructure is extremely expensive compared to a little bit of glass fiber.

You also usually don't need to tear up the road. Maybe the pavement, but not the road.

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