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Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Ars' coverage isn't very good on this issue. There is a tremendous amount of context Ars ignores, namely all the franchise agreements between municipalities and cable companies whether these sorts of proposals run afoul of those agreements. Also, consider the Kansas City example, where the city gave a single favored company massive regulatory concessions to install fiber. I know "Google can do no evil," but it isn't good precedent.

Cheering on the municipalities is boneheaded. The municipalities and their franchising agreements are a major part of the reason we're in this mess to begin with: http://www.cato.org/pubs/pas/pa034.html (note the article is from 1984).

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Yeah, I'm a bit torn on these bills. They sound awful, but there are issues that all the tech-sites seem to ignore. I'm all for competition, competition, competition. We need more competition! But when municipalities get into the mix, you have at least the potential for unfair practices. A city could give itself free access to utility right of way, condemn properties in its way and hide the true cost of running a network by lumping some expenses in general utility categories. And you might end up with a very poorly-run network that every single citizen pays for via higher taxes whether they want it or not. Since citizens have to pay the city taxes no matter what, they'll drop the potentially superior commercial Internet offering instead of paying twice. Likely? Maybe. Maybe not. But worth a discussion.

Maybe vertically integrated ISP service doesn't work as an investor-owned enterprise. Maybe all last-mile facilities ought to be owned by the municipality and multiple providers can be chosen for ISP services.

I recall that in the late 90's there was a regulation in place that forced the phone and cable companies to lease their coax or DSL lines to competitors who wanted to offer service as an ISP. I recall getting mailers from various little companies with offers. There was a difficulty in determining what the proper lease rate would be for the little guys. And in the end it apparently didn't work out. I don't know if the law was changed or if the cable and telephone companies were able to set the lease rate so high that nobody else could be profitable.

Problem is, the "retail" ISPs were competing with the owners of the DSL lines. You would have to get the "wholesale" ISP out of the retail business.

I think it is still the law, but like you said, the wholesale prices are set way to high to be competitive.

I agree. I'd rather look to how deregulated electricity markets work. The last-mile infrastructure is owned by either a municipality or a regulated utility, billed at fixed utility rates, and the generation/service portion is floated on the open market.

ISPs aren't identical, but I don't see a strong reason a competitive ISP market couldn't follow the deregulated market that states like Texas use for electricity. Have the last-mile infrastructure owned by some boring regulated entity, and then let ISPs compete to provide connectivity over the pipe, like generators compete to provide electricity over the wires.

That's how my countries new network is set up. Makes sense to me, tbh.

It seems many face the practical choice of lack of competition for a for-profit company with little recourse for shitty service, or a distorted market due to the government's presence. At least the latter puts gives the people some control.

This is a great quote and I can hardly believe it's from 30 year ago: As Cablevision's Charles Dolan warns, "As an industry, it is really bad for us to have an articulated view that cable can operate successfully only...in a monopoly environment. That view is an invitation to a regulatory response that would set us up as common carriers,"[7] just like telephone and utility companies.

Side note: I bet splashing out sketchy comparisons to Orwell's 1984 was a lot more fun back when it was actually 1984. On balance it was a good piece but the whole first section can be safely skipped.

They offered those same deals to any ISP that wanted to offer the same services, guess how many offered?

Google has admitted that they're just doing deployments like Kansas City to push other ISP's into offering higher speed services, which benefits their bottom line as a content provider. If the opportunity was really worthwhile on its own merits, Google would pursue Google Fiber as an actual business. So essentially, Kansas City made a sweetheart deal with the only company that agreed to take it, and that company only took it because they had an ulterior motive. That's a recipe for abuse, and if it had been Comcast rather than Google, people would be up in arms.

So both the government and Google left money on the table, so as to benefit the consumer?

I can see why everyone is bitching about that.

The major cable companies are also content companies, too. Comcast/NBC, Time Warner/Time Warner. Nobody has clean hands. So I say it's worth giving a new player a shot at doing better, rather than conceding the market to the existing monopolies.

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