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And yet, my roads, police and fire services, and municipal maintenance services work very well.

Just as with the private sector, you'll be able to find public initiatives that aren't reaching their goals, or are outright failures. Should they not be permitted to compete against the private sector when the private sector chooses not to serve a certain unprofitable market segment? If you're that good at providing services, why as a private business are you worried about competing with an "incompetent" (as you may argue) public sector initiative?

Full Disclosure: I fully support municipal broadband, and want a stake driven through Comcast's heart.

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> And yet, my roads, police and fire services, and municipal maintenance services work very well.

For varying definitions of 'very well.' Public services are good at delivering a minimum level of service to everyone. Everyone will get water and sewer service. That water might not be particularly clean, and the sewers might dump untreated sewage into the environment, but everyone will get it. The problem for you in this narrative is that you're the yuppie who would be happy to have a higher water bill in order to have cleaner rivers: you're not going to get your way.

Chattanooga was able to piggy-back this on the fiber network put in place for smart grid. What happens in 10 years when that network becomes obsolete? Your neighbors will have to vote to fund upgrades. Will they do that? 60% of people who have access to FiOS do not subscribe. When those same people vote on whether to raise their utility bill to fund upgrades, do you think you'll be happy with the result?

You sound unhappy with Comcast, but the fact is that they pump enormous amounts of capital into their network, while municipalities are famous for letting their infrastructure rot.[1]

I'm not opposed to public services. The question is: will municipal internet be more like NYC's transit system, or more like the ones everywhere else?

[1] The U.S. Society for Civil Engineers estimates we're $3.6 trillion behind on infrastructure maintenance. http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org

> The question is: will municipal internet be more like NYC's transit system, or more like the ones everywhere else?

It's funny that you use this as a point of comparison. The NYC subway system began as three competing private companies.

Long story short: They went broke, and were acquired by the city in 1940 (and then later by the state, which now has authority over the MTA).

While they were originally constructed as private subway systems, I firmly believe that it would be impossible for NYC to function the way it does now if its public transit system were privately run.

That's not to say I'm a fan of the way the MTA is regulated. I follow this issue closely and have a lot of opinions on the matter. There are a number of ways in which the state government cripples it. But it's still significantly better than it would be if the Interborough Rapid Transit were still running the numbered lines.

> Long story short: They went broke, and were acquired by the city in 1940

Not quite as simple as that, the city had been deeply involved for decades prior to them finally taken over completely, and the city effort was itself deeply indebted.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure the GP emphasized the MTA as a (rare) example of public infrastructure that's actually run to the high standard we'd want our internet infrastructure to be run at.

That's not quite accurate. There are three NYC subway systems: the IRT, the BRT, and the IND. Some of the BRT was built privately. Most was designed and built by the city and leased to the BRT for operation. All of the IRT was built and operated that way. The IND was built and operated by the city. See: http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_New_York_City_...

> You sound unhappy with Comcast, but the fact is that they pump enormous amounts of capital into their network, while municipalities are famous for letting their infrastructure rot.[1]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Comcast's profitability is over $1 billion a year.

Should my electric company be able to profit at that level? Because they're much more reliable than Comcast, and they're a regulated monopoly that needs to report to the PUC (Public Utilities Commission).

Have we determined yet if Internet access is a utility such as phone service, electricity, water, and natural gas service? If it is, isn't it time last-mile delivery is regulated as such? (Which leaves Comcast in a precarious position as a last-mile provider)

Also, I'm not unhappy with Comcast because of my service. I'm unhappy because of their efforts to prevent municipal broadband. They are the Koch Brothers of the Internet, and are attempting to squeeze whomever they can for access only they provide in a great deal of markets to a tool that is the foundation of the 21st century.

TL;DR Regulate last mile delivery as a utility, politely ask rent-seekers like Comcast to leave.

Excelon, the power company in Illinois, has profits of $2.5 billion on $18 billion of revenue. Comcast, which covers a much larger footprint, has profits of $6.8 billion on $64 billion in revenue. Excelon's profit margin is larger.

I don't think the "internet = electricity" analogies are very good. The regulated part of the electric monopoly (e.g. ComEd in Illinois) just has to maintain wires built decades ago. If internet infrastructure were the sort of thing we could bury in the ground for 50 years and forget about, that might work. But stuff that was state of the art in the 1990's is obsolete now. There is no public infrastructure that turns over that fast.

You didn't respond to my point about politicizing investment decisions. Utility investment decisions are intensely political, and voters don't care about better technology, they just want cheap rates. Its a huge battle for most utilities to raise the money they need to upgrade the network, or even just maintain it properly. If you think Comcast is slow to upgrade its network, what do you make of utility companies that are operating coal plants that are literally a century old? The fact that public utility regulation has left us $3.6 trillion underfunded is totally ignored by proponents of municipal internet service.

> You didn't respond to my point about politicizing investment decisions. Utility investment decisions are intensely political, and voters don't care about better technology, they just want cheap rates. Its a huge battle for most utilities to raise the money they need to upgrade the network, or even just maintain it properly. If you think Comcast is slow to upgrade its network, what do you make of utility companies that are operating coal plants that are literally a century old? The fact that public utility regulation has left us $3.6 trillion underfunded is totally ignored by proponents of municipal internet service.

Electric utilities cover large areas. You use Excelon as an example, who delivers my power in Northern Illinois. As you say "..[they] just has to maintain wires built decades ago." It's not just wires. Its transmission facilities all the way from 700kVa down to the 120V step down in your neighborhood, even to your service entrance.

Internet access is no different. You trench fiber in the ground, you drop equipment cabinets on the curb, and you pull your plant to your CO for interconnection to your routing/switching gear (although sometimes this gear is distributed across the plant instead of at the CO; depends on size/network topology).

My municipality or coop not upgrading fast enough or providing the service I want? I argue I have more leverage in that case as a share/stakeholder. With Comcast, they're out for the shareholder, not me.

As I've said elsewhere, almost all other utilities have functioned well in a regulatory, profit-restricted environment. Why not last-mile packet delivery?

Yes, but again, those facilities don't have to be upgraded t anywhere near the rate telecom infrastructure does. Look at his long its taking to deploy Smart Grid. Is it practical to run telecom infrastructure in a way where upgrades require a decades long political process? I think you're wrong about having a better shot convincing upgrades as a voter than as a Comcast customer. Comcast at least sees the value in offering certain customers high end service for a high price. There is no such thing in the utility world. Everything is geared to the lowest common denominator, because 51% carries the vote. Your other voters are people like my mom, who wanted to cancel FiOS in favor of cable because she wanted Indian channels.

As for utilities having functioned well: you keep ignoring the $3.6 trillion U.S. Society of Civil Engineers number.

> I think you're wrong about having a better shot convincing upgrades as a voter than as a Comcast customer.

Not only do I believe I have a better shot as a voter, I believe I'll have more control over the service I receive.

http://bgr.com/2014/05/20/comcast-twc-customer-satisfaction-...

"In fact, Comcast and TWC’s Internet service businesses were the only two businesses in the United States to score below a 60 on the ACSI’s 100-point scale. What’s most amazing is that both Comcast and TWC have even lower customer satisfaction ratings than United Airlines, which has a notoriously bad reputation in an industry that, due in part to government security requirements, is known for delivering a miserable experience."

I don't know what that really proves. Nobody polls people for satisfaction with their municipal rate boards.

Again, the proof is in the pudding. We have underinvested in our infrastructure to the tune of $3.6 trillion. Our bridges are crumbling, our transit systems haven't been expanded in decades, our sewer systems are polluting the environment because nobody wants to spend the money to bring them in compliance with environmental laws, and yet you posit that public utilities work "very well" and assert that they should get involved in an area where technology moves 10x as fast as the areas in which they already lag behind. I just don't see how you get from point A to point B here.

Let's not forget the big elephant in the room too. The states haee no money. When Illinois is deciding between defaulting on its debt and giving a haircut to public employee pensions, where do you think spending money keeping up with telecom infrastructure upgrades is going to fall in the list of priorities?

In your comments, you should probably disclose that your previous employer represented/represents Comcast.

Indeed [1]: not only Davis Polk & Wardwell happens to "routinely represent Comcast in antitrust aspects and related investigations" [2]; but also he interned for FCC commissioner Meredith Attwell Baker, who was widely criticized for her blatant pro-Comcast decisions --only to be hired afterwards as a Comcast lobbyist herself) [3].

[1] http://www.linkedin.com/pub/rayiner-hashem/8/1b5/348

[2] http://www.davispolk.com/practices/litigation/antitrust-and-...

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meredith_Attwell_Baker

People keep pointing out "But Google can build gigabit! Why can't Comcast?"

Who he worked for previously doesn't really change the fact that he has pointed out repeatedly that Google Fiber is getting breaks to only build out to rich neighborhoods vs. Comcast having to build out to an entire city, even sections of town which will lose them money.

That is the big danger of municipal broadband. The town I live in frequently votes down budgets that only increase spending on education by just a few hundred thousand dollars. Anyone who thinks those same folks will be voting spend more to make your NetFlix circa 2020 work better have to be incredibly naive.

There's no inherent problem with publicly funded services, but they're only as good as the public body that runs them. If you're in a well-run city/county that's great, if you're in a dysfunctional one then not so much.

I wouldn't have much confidence if my place of residence (Oakland CA) set up muni broadband, for example, although I'd like to be proved wrong. Large parts of the city government are painfully inefficient.

> There's no inherent problem with publicly funded services, but they're only as good as the public body that runs them.

Agreed. This is solved with complete transparency and independent oversight.

> There's no inherent problem with publicly funded services

The scale of the problem isn't clear, but I would argue that the economic calculation problem is certainly an inherent problem with publicly funded services.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem

That's predicated on the idea of all means production being state sponsored.

I don't think that's the case. The scale of the problem would be proportional to the amount of production being state sponsored.

> And yet, my roads, police and fire services, and municipal maintenance services work very well.

Do they really though? Road infrastructure (especially bridges) is widely recognized to be really bad in the USA. It's hard to say how well police work without comparing it to something else, but just based on the US prison population I would say that police don't work well. Fire and maintenance services might work reasonably well, but I bet both are shockingly expensive.

> Do they really though? Road infrastructure (especially bridges) is widely recognized to be really bad in the USA.

This is due to Republicans in Congress blocking an increase on the gas tax, currently at ~18 cents/gallon of gas since 1993.

> It's hard to say how well police work without comparing it to something else, but just based on the US prison population I would say that police don't work well.

I'm not a huge fan of police myself, but I believe this problem to be with laws enacted by legislative bodies. I believe you'll see less arrests as drug arrests drop due to decriminalization/legalization of recreational drugs across the US.

> Fire and maintenance services might work reasonably well, but I bet both are shockingly extremely expensive.

Citation? My property tax bill for my municipality (~75K people) shows public safety costing ~$48 million/year and highways and streets cost ~$14 million/year. I don't believe those costs to be out of line for the amount of people covered.

Are you not proving the point? Saying that government-run projects are limited because of the decisions of the government doesn't seem to be a great argument for government-run projects.

I thought I was proving that local governance works, whereas federal governance does not as much. Its much easier to effect change at the local level than the federal, hence "municipal broadband" and not "federal broadband".

> This is due to Republicans in Congress blocking an increase on the gas tax, currently at ~18 cents/gallon of gas since 1993.

Maybe so, but that's not the point. I'm just challenging the claim that government (which includes Republicans) effectively performs those tasks.

I'm arguing local government can deliver services effectively to its citizens in almost all but a hand full of cases.

I missed that in your argument. I would still challenge that claim, especially when it comes to roads, which get a ton of funding from higher level governments and are still pretty bad.

> This is due to Republicans in Congress blocking an increase on the gas tax, currently at ~18 cents/gallon of gas since 1993.

Is it, though? Only 60% - 65% of the gas tax is spent on roads and highways [1] [2]. Not to mention (possibly ultimately justified, but still relevant) drivers of extra cost like the Davis-Bacon Act.

[1] http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_ID=20698 [2] http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB1000142405270230381540...

>This is due to Republicans in Congress blocking an increase on the gas tax, currently at ~18 cents/gallon of gas since 1993.

Your demagoguery does not hold up to the fact that Democrats recently held a majority in both houses of congress.

Can you show me Democrats that have voted against the gas tax increasing? I'm going off recent (the last 4-8 years) news.

The idea is that they're now in power and if it were such a good idea, they should have implemented it now that they could get it passed.

If it's not such a good idea then perhaps it was only done as a publicity stunt, and that would explain why it hasn't come up again.

I don't know that I care much one way or the other. But saying "Democrats haven't voted it down" is actually different than "Democrats have made it a priority"

Pointing out that there are hypocrites in the Democratic party too gets downvotes? Really? I'm not saying that I like the Republicans, they're hypocrites also.

But the Dems do get campaign contributions from Oil & Gas companies. Only at 20% of the rate of folks in the GOP but it's not as though it's a 99/1 split.

https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=E01

> Your demagoguery does not hold up to the fact that Democrats recently held a majority in both houses of congress

Your argument fails to take into account that, due to the filibuster, legislation can be blocked by one party (with no support from the other party) so long as the opposing party doesn't have both a majority in the House and a filibuster-proof supermajority in the Senate.

As a fire/medic in Western Washington, fire district rates are capped at $1.50 per $1,000 of assessed property value, and are typically less (changes need to be voted but cannot exceed this, regardless).

A semi-rural department with three fire engines, ambulance, brush trucks, serving an area of 7,000 people and approximately ~1,000 calls a year does so with expenditure of ~$1M for those 7,000 residents.

> A semi-rural department with three fire engines, ambulance, brush trucks, serving an area of 7,000 people and approximately ~1,000 calls a year does so with expenditure of ~$1M for those 7,000 residents.

What's the breakdown of your calls? Car accidents? Health problems?

Per normal for this area, about 85% is medical. In our area, about 10% of the medical is MVAs.

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