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Comment by js2 | Hacker News Reader

Cities in NC did this[1]. TWC didn't like it, so they bought the state legislature and had it made illegal[2]. The FCC is trying to pull rank on NC, but NC is fighting back[3].

1. http://www.greenlightnc.com/

2. http://www.wired.com/2011/05/nc-gov-anti-muni-broadband/

3. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/05/north-carolina-su...

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Well TWC had their original monopoly granted by the government, so pretty natural they would look there to defend it.

I don't defend big ISP monopolies. But my concern with municipal broadband is that municipalities generally do a bad job running what should be private sector services. They end up being used for patronage jobs and other political shenanigans among other things. Plus your average elected city councilman doesn't know the first thing about the technical or financial realities of running an ISP. It's more like "hey we can pass a tax levy and take some money from each citizen to build a Cadillac internet service with no concern for profit or cost." It's thinking like this that had my town buying acres of land for a "tech park" that has sat undeveloped for years, and working plans for a waste materials separation facility that no private waste hauler will build because it's a guaranteed money-loser.

I wish I had more choice in ISPs. But I don't think my neighbor should be forced to pay for my internet service.

On the other hand, municipalities generally run water and sewage services without complaints; incompetence and corruption in that department are so rare that they are news.

You can privatize bus or trash service and hand the concession to someone else should the incumbent be too awful at their job, but things like water, sewage and data are natural monopolies, and for these different rules apply.

The sad thing is that we know how regulated utilities ought to be run, but we choose not to. Hence Comcast and the Enron-sponsored electricity shenanigans in CA.

> municipalities generally run water and sewage services without complaints

I'd largely agree with this from my own experience. The caveat here in comparing water & sewage to internet service is that water and sewage service - at least what we experience as end users - hasn't changed much over the years. Municipal governments are good at managing that type of service. I'm happy with the same water and sewage service that I had 15 years ago. Not sure I'd like the same Internet service. And I'm not so sure I'd trust my city to keep such a service up to date.

  I'm not so sure I'd trust my city to 
  keep such a service up to date.

If the private sector is doing a great job at keeping your internet connection up to date, I'm glad for you!

Unfortunately some Americans don't seem very happy with the level of service the market is providing [1] - IMHO if people are attending meetings and voting in favour of municipal broadband, it indicates the private sector isn't doing a very good job of keeping services up to date either!

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/pics/comments/2ei1qj/after_an_inter...

Indeed, imagine if municipalities had needed to increase their sewage "bandwidth" per customer tenfold over the last decade.

There was a fairly heady construction boom in the last decade, let me remind you of that. That said, everyone seems to have a beef with Comcast, while the complaints about the Vermont muni ISPs and the only muni ISP in North Carolina (http://www.greenlightnc.com/) are muted.

Municipalities everywhere have had to deal with increased water usage and yes, sewage. I was just reading a news article from my former hometown about the original choices and changes of water sources and the build-up and upgrading of water towers as the town grew. Back in the early 1900's, water infrastructure WAS high-tech.

Water and sewage have changed a lot over the years. Sure, you maybe can ignore it, but most cities regularly have to expand capacity and change technologies.

The type of waste going down the toilet has changed tremendously during the 20th century. As a couple of examples, pharmaceuticals and tampons frequently go down the toilet now (even if people are told not to flush them).

Additionally, acceptance of dumping raw sewage or overflows into waterways has hugely changed. I know many people who would roll up their windows when driving over the Potomac in DC. In Boston, the Harbor was absolutely atrocious and smelled for decades.

Together, these two factors have led to large amounts of research into sewage treatment, new technologies, and upgrades nationwide. Just because you apparently are ignorant of them doesn't mean they haven't been occurring.

The pace over the last 15 years has probably been slower, but if you look at the 1970's and 1980's following the passage of the Clean Water Act, upgrades of these systems were occurring on as large a scale as ISP upgrades. In fact, they probably were larger in total cost.

> Together, these two factors have led to large amounts of research into sewage treatment, new technologies, and upgrades nationwide. Just because you apparently are ignorant of them doesn't mean they haven't been occurring.

While admittedly ignorant of the specific changes in water and sewage provision, I never suggested they weren't occurring - I said the experience for an end user hasn't really changed much. Even if the water quality has increased tenfold and a city's demand trebled in a decade, we're still pulling water from the tap the same way we were before, and our usage year over year doesn't change that much (on a household basis). My household needs and expectations for water service don't seem any different than 15 years ago, whereas my household needs and expectations for internet service are radically different. Governments do 'big' better than 'fast'.

You don't want the municipality to provide you with Internet service. You want them to provide you with fiber service. Then they let you pick a private actor to provide you with services over that fiber (internet, voip, iptv, etc). That's how the system was where I lived in Sweden and it worked great.

The fiber network was built and maintained by the local municipality-owned power company who knows a thing or two about running grids (and already had conduits running all over the place)

Well I'm sorry, but that sounds altogether far too sensible.

My town fired the city chemist because he wasn't actually doing the water quality tests.

And I view sanitary drinking water as a public health obligation. Internet service isn't even in that ballpark for me. It's a convenience, and one that people should be able to choose to pay for, or not.

The alternative view is that nowadays the internet is part of the infrastructure, and individuals don't get to opt out. Same thing as with the municipal pool.

It started as a luxury, but it's starting to become a requirement, and you can start doing more interesting things in government once you're able to assume that everyone has access to it (just as government was able to do more interesting things once it could assume that the postal system reached everyone).

There were a bunch of folks who died in Ontario, Canada when the water service failed to adequately treat the water. It was a patronage appointment and they (two brothers) knew nothing about water quality.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walkerton_E._coli_outbreak

The American Association of Civil Engineers estimates a multi-trillion backlog in municipal infrastructure investment. Sewage and water systems around the country are more likely to be out of compliance with water quality or environmental standards that not. They have lead pipes and dump raw sewage into rivers when it rains. They have no money to come into compliance because it's politically untenable to raise water and sewer rates.

The existence of bad sewers bears no relevance to the likelihood of having good fiber services.

Massachusetts has a long history of municipal power companies; along with schools, fire, police, water and sewer 41 towns also own and run the electric grid. Their association claims 24% lower distribution costs then investor owned utilities. Here is a map of who supplies power in each Massachusetts town:

http://images.masscec.com/uploads/attachments/ElectricUtilit...

Massachusetts has a real problem with patronage jobs, but it is at the state level, not local.

I'm ok with my neighbor paying for my internet service, as long as I pay for the neighbor on the other side, and so on.

ArsTechnica:

> broadband service in Wilson County, but is unable to expand its broadband network due to the state law

This gives the impression Greenlight covers most of the city. It's never been true: Time-Warner of Wilson doesn't even suffer real competition.

Here's a map:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Wilson,+NC/@35.7378769,-77...

I'm not aware of any place at all on Nash, Ward, 264, Airport, or Forest Hills with Greenlight. If you know someone who has it, I'd love to know where.

"Wilson's muni broadband success story" is a fairy tale kept alive by credulous reporting.

Several cities in northern Utah did it as well [0]. I'm not aware of any legal issues they've had; the main issues they've had have been financial issues and rollout delays.

With each new community that succeeds, that's one more example we can point to in our own communities.

[0] http://www.utopianet.org/faq/

At one point the local DSL and cable monopolies used lawsuits to prevent federal funding from being distributed to UTOPIA, which contributed to the financial issues, IIRC.

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