I was involved in a local government committee to investigate local broadband for my town. The incumbents were understandably lazy at improving service quality, so we struck out on our own to look at alternatives, including a municipally run service or wholesale backbone.
What actually happened is someone in government called up a friend at a municipal fiber specialist company, who agreed to start making rumblings that they were going to pull fiber to our town.
Within two weeks, one of the large incumbents announced their own project for a $6M upgrade, which involved running submarine cables and totally rewiring the town’s network to enable gigabit service.
I’m saddened that the town never got a chance to build and own its own infrastructure, which would have been so much better, because it would have put locals in charge of this essential infrastructure - much as they already control water, roads, and sewage.
But, ultimately, I now have gigabit service at a reasonably competitive price, in a small town that arguably never “deserved” it.
The incumbent ISP would have eventually had to upgrade to gigabit anyway. Maybe they were waiting until the same upgrade would cost $2M instead of $6M.
Clearly, they revised their schedule because decades of revenue streams, even from a small town, can be worth more than the relative expense of upgrading now rather than later.
Did the rates increase for customers who chose the new gigabit service? Often the new service offering doesn't make sense to a monopoly provider in terms of revenue increases in the short term, so competition or threat of public options are an important tool that can work even better than public utility boards.
Finally, it's worth noting that with changing political climates priorities changes, especially when it comes to infrastructure. The Flint water system was publicly managed, and it isn't even the worst one in the country. Thousands of publicly managed bridges are at risk of collapse due to underfunded maintenance.
Cold War fears about existential threats motivated great federal projects that focused on resiliency and creating the foundations for productivity. Without those same threats, legislation mandates intentional vulnerabilities like backdoors, fails to fund national standards that could limit cyber-extortion, and new internet-related initiatives are regularly more intent on erecting barriers to entry and toll booths than they are on nurturing any new or disruptive industries.
> Maybe they were waiting until the same upgrade would cost $2M instead of $6M.
Most of the cost is the actual digging/laying new fiber. The price of that does not really go down over time (instead the cost of labor goes up over time usually). The actual fiber and equipment is a very small part of the cost.
This happened at my parents town. They were looking at setting up their own municipal ISP and after some research/quotes it ended up costing X which was too much. They tried again a decade later and the cost for roughly the same system was 1.5X so even more out of their budget.
The other case is the fiber already existing and the ISP refuses to upgrade to enable higher speeds then that is just pure greed.
The trick is to seize on when existing infra projects are being done (major roadwork or perhaps replacing water, sewer, or buried power) and throw the conduit and fiber down at the same time, as the incremental cost is trivial. This is referred to as Dig Once policy.
Same, my parents still can't upgrade beyond 8down/1.5up mbit DSL, and they live in the neighborhood area where people would pay twice or even three times as much for anything better. Unfortunately cable is so deteriorated in the area that it barely scrapes above 20down/2up, but is reliably unreliable. Until a competitor shows up, they'll probably never fix the degrading lines or upgrade the service. Basically, if you don't like it, go f-yourself. It's not like the neighborhood is the hood or the sticks either, it's in a mostly richer/upper middle class area. If you're familiar with Century Link in the SouthWest, you shouldn't be surprised by the garbage service they offer, out there they're riding off POTS laid by BELL, and network infrastructure installed by QWEST in early 2000's, and haven't maintained, upgraded, or touched a damn thing since.
I suspect the incumbents also want to minimize the number of precedent-setting municipalities that control their own broadband. Each one could potentially become a good example of the benefits of publicly owned infrastructure - and then inspire other cities to do the same.
That’s some good negotiating. It’s probably for the best because the town doesn’t have to take the financial risk? If something goes wrong you want there to be some shareholders to take the loss. (In return, they profit if nothing goes wrong.)
A lot of towns have a huge bill coming up when they have to replace outdated sewer systems.
> The EPA reckons water and sewer systems will need $743 billion of upgrades through 2035
As a consumer, I am not terribly displeased. Value-wise, I would have preferred that the municipality ended up owning the base fiber infrastructure and leasing it out to commercial operators. But that fantasy has passed.
Mississippi did this in 2019, and used a portion of the first round of Coronavirus stimulus money to offer block grants to get the ball rolling, to great success.
>They used a portion of the funds to supercharge the rollout of high-speed broadband to the most underserved areas of the state in an effort to close the digital divide.
They went to rural electric co-ops -- private, independent electric utilities owned by the members they serve -- many of which were left gobsmacked by the offer, according to David O'Bryan, general manager of Delta Electric Power Association, which now serves Carroll and Grenada counties with broadband. Many of these co-ops had been preparing to deploy networks but lacked the cash to begin a major project, especially in the most remote and sparsely populated parts of their territories.
The result has been an acceleration in broadband deployment that could make Mississippi one of the most connected states in the nation within the next five to six years. That's a huge leap for the state, which last year ranked 42 out of 50 in BroadbandNow's 2020 connectivity rankings.
That's....uh... remarkably progressive for Mississippi - and the first bill (HB 366 from 2019) passed nearly unanimously [1] https://legiscan.com/MS/votes/HB366/2019
Props to MS legislators for seeing the value in municipal broadband.
- 18 states have restrictive legislation in place that make establishing community broadband prohibitively difficult.
- Five additional states (Iowa, Arkansas, Colorado, Oregon, and Wyoming) have other types of roadblocks in place that make establishing networks more difficult than it needs to be.
- A further five states (Arkansas, Idaho, Tennessee, Washington, and Montana) have introduced bills to remove municipal broadband restrictions so far this year. Montana’s bill has failed, while Arkansas’ passed in February.
With regards to legislation repealing restrictions and enabling muni networks, it’s like marijuana legalization. You keep throwing it on the ballot each election cycle until it sticks from cohort turnover. Some states turn over faster than others.
Does 'prohibitively difficult' mean that towns aren't allowed to put in networks? or simply that it's hard to get funding from some higher level of government?
It's hard to imagine some state law that prohibits a town (or neighborhood for that matter) from building out some kind of internet access.
If a city can force everyone to pitch in for a library (cough homeless center), I'd think that running some wires and hooking up some gear would be a no-brainer.
I have few objections to Cox, Comcast, and so forth being reduced to a CLEC-alike for DOCSIS connections, especially if the municipalities sign contracts that require the CLEC-alike to spend x% of revenue paid them by the city on infrastructure buildout first, performance upgrades only if no unserved areas remain.
There have been tons of threads about municipal broadband of course, but a lot of them are in the key of repetitive/indignant. But this one is also recent and also pretty good:
I've been helping some cities recently to price out the cost of broadband projects. Cities often have some assets (property, access to fiber, sometimes access to wireless spectrum) that can make building a broadband network feasible. I'd love to chat with anyone interested in doing this in their city - email in my profile.
In this case, also the Washington State Legislature.
As I understand it, under WA law, public utility districts have a specific set of things they are authorized to do. Prior to 2000, this didn't include telecommunications at all. In 2000, the legislature passed a law [1] that authorized public utility districts to build/acquire/operate telecommunications networks, but only for: 1) internal use by the district or other public entities, or 2) to resell on wholesale terms to other providers. It specifically said "Nothing in this subsection shall be construed to authorize public utility districts to provide telecommunications services to end users". This new law amends the 2000 language to allow providing direct service to end users as well.
That's not a blanket policy or typical law. Commercial broadband providers lobbied to have state laws passed specifically prohibiting or restricting municipal broadband projects.
It is never the case that they can compete without making a loss, as that would effectively make them a private company. The Post Office, for example, is supposed to have its own P&L, yet we keep giving them billions every time they run out of money. So you get the worst of all worlds, the lack of accountability of a private company but the taxpayers are on the hook.
Almost all these pseudo-government projects are funded out of the general budget, and some are off-books but still off-balance sheet liabilities of the government. E.g. a port authority that floats its own bonds, but those bonds are guaranteed by the local government, so if the port authority becomes insolvent the government is on the hook. If you think entity X can make its own profit and loss, then ask yourself: who is on the hook when the bonds sold by X default? It is always going to be a taxpayer for a government project.
A clean separation between things that are supposed to turn a profit and things that should be funded socially is a good separation, and trying to blur those lines is usually a bad idea, as you create these unaccountable subsidized bureaucracies that end up being poorly run sources of graft after a few generations.
Now whether internet access itself should be subsidized or turn a profit is a different matter. It's critical infrastructure, like roads, so you can make a case for subsidies.
Post Office is a bad example as I understand it because from what I've heard it's being run by someone notorious for wanting it dead to clear the way for private sector competitors, and it is the single private organization in the United States required to pre-fund its pension fund.
I would agree with the last sentence, but municipal projects rarely operate on a level playing field. At a minimum, they get access to tax-payer backed bonds to raise capital that private companies can't match.
That should be the way it works, but the [federal] government is allowed to incinerate a nearly infinite amount of cash. Some state governments are becoming that same way unfortunately. Municipalities don't really have this option, so it may not be as big of a deal.
See my other comment about contractors though... what we saw in TN was Comcast "contracting" its services to "build a municipal network", but instead just built their own crap using taxpayer funding.
Realistically, municipal broadband doesn't make sense for every town or city. But what this should hopefully do is open up avenues to create competition for ISPs to create the services they promised, or upgrade existing services.
I'm fairly convinced it's just greed and laziness. It's funny how back when Google fibre was rolling into town, suddenly centurylink upgraded its service...
Props to Chelan County in WA for leading the charge on making this a viable model. The county P.U.D. owns and maintains the fiber infrastructure and sells it wholesale to ISPs. A friend of mine worked on that project and it has netted some concrete economic development wins. Wenatchee has been an ag center but is adding plenty of clean energy jobs and expanding into a Seattle alternative for tech (trying at least).
As someone who is not well versed in this debate - can someone explain to me why it is a...debate? As in what is a (valid) argument against giving municipals the right to provide an internet service? Obviously big companies don't want the competition but how can they legally make an argument against it?
The normal logic is that private industry can't get a foothold against something subsidized by tax revenue, therefore the municipal option amounts to unfair competition.
I've never really bought into that line of reasoning though, especially when upkeep can be bid out to these ISP's.
But this is still a good and necessary first step at removing an asinine prohibition.
There is still no plan or funding for building out municipal broadband services, but it opens the door to having that discussion that was previously off-limits.
Alternatively, it puts pressure on private ISPs to improve service or else potentially face competition from future municipal broadband.
Either a locally run ISP offering gigabit speeds at good prices or it'll scare in incumbent ISPs into doing upgrades to lesser but improved levels for higher prices. That's just going off the pattern I've seen in a lot of places when cities start looking into making their own ISP; local government starts looking into running fiber and suddenly the incumbent ISP comes and runs their own fiber.
Respectfully, I feel this isn’t unrelated or generic. I live in WA and the situation here politically IS really that skewed. If I feel there is a threat to my ability to use the Internet freely and exercise free speech emerging from the state’s political powers, who may soon be entrusted with operating this service, how else can I broach the topic? It is something that has to be discussed and planned for in my opinion.
Any comment that goes "municipal broadband" -> "gender ideology, critical race theory" -> "progressive activism" has almost by definition gone on a generic ideological tangent. That's exactly what we ask people to avoid here. It leads to generic ideological flamewar, which is the sort of thing that will kill this place.
Your account seems to be using HN primarily for ideological battle. Would you please not do that? We've had to ask you about this multiple times before. Regardless of what you're battling for or against, it's repetitive and inflammatory and destructive of the curiosity HN is supposed to exist for.
(I understand if you don’t have time to engage on this, but if you have time for one more response I would appreciate understanding this better)
Why is that chain a generic ideological tangent? My argument is that one sided political ideology has come into every level of WA state’s government, and it will therefore find its way to whichever government groups implement municipal broadband. The same political side has shown itself to be intolerant of free speech/differences of opinions on certain matters. So for those who stand on the other side of controversial and current topics like those I listed, they may need to be wary of this development and how it might be used against them, since the Internet is so fundamental to exercising our right to speech today.
From my observation censorship, tracking, surveillance, government control, and so on are regular topics in HN. For example there have been recent articles on FLoC, Tor, privacy issues with WhatsApp, cryptocurrency,
and various decentralized services. To me it seems that these topics involve politics and ideology, which are almost inseparable from the existence of a technology like the Internet. This is why to me my comment feels directly related rather than a derailing tangent. Do you see it differently, and if so what’s the nuance I’m not seeing?
> We've had to ask you about this multiple times before.
I acknowledge you’ve mentioned this to me a couple times before. I thought I had adjusted, and have tried to engage on a number of different topics here. I’m just not sure what I’m supposed to do at this point to not be characterized in this way. It feels like I am being asked to not participate or to artificial skew my participation a certain way (avoid certain topics or not introduce certain opinions). I saw from your search link you previously mentioned a burden of the minority view, and the need for patience. So is this something that I could discuss if the tone were different or if I explained my train of thought in a lengthier, more thoughtful comment?
The problem is that (a) you fired a bunch of hot buttons on a generic ideological theme. I mean what does municipal broadband have to do with critical race theory? That's practically the definition of a generic tangent;
(b) your comment was completely speculative - what specific reason is there to believe that use of municipal broadband might be restricted ideologically? or that alternate ISPs would cease to exist? I don't see any substance here.
(c) flamebait like "one-party state", which is language that has specific historical meaning and is highly inflammatory when adapted to other contexts.
Widening the topic to something vastly broader and divisive, not adding any specific relevant information, plus tossing in flamebait, makes it a generic ideological flamewar comment. It's not going to lead anywhere good, and by the 'expected value of subthread' test, that makes it a bad HN comment.
I live in Washington state and already under a single provider, Comcast, and it sucks, I pay $120 a month for unlimited gigabit which tops out at 400Mpbs if I'm lucky, and often cannot support a zoom call with video. I, for one, am thrilled this law passed. Anything that can force a broken monopoly to be more competitive is a win in my book.
A Zoom video call can be supported on less than 10 Mbps, so it’s hard for me to accept this claim that your gigabit service can’t support a Zoom call. I have Comcast (at a much lower tier) and have never had issues with steaming from multiple devices while video conferencing as well. If you have CenturyLink as an option for gigabit (available in several WA cities), they provide symmetric gigabit service for $70. In many parts of Seattle both providers are an option.
In terms of affordability, I find the current providers to be VERY affordable. Comcast provides 25 Mbps service for $20 a month - more than enough for typical use. CenturyLink has cheaper tiers available as well, depending on location.
As for choice - I would support laws that require sharing of last mile cabling and things like that. But if a public provider has unlimited funds and can run at a loss, that’s going to cause private providers to exit or stop investing at least, leading us back to square one - a single provider, except now it’s a slow bureaucratic government service.
What actually happened is someone in government called up a friend at a municipal fiber specialist company, who agreed to start making rumblings that they were going to pull fiber to our town.
Within two weeks, one of the large incumbents announced their own project for a $6M upgrade, which involved running submarine cables and totally rewiring the town’s network to enable gigabit service.
I’m saddened that the town never got a chance to build and own its own infrastructure, which would have been so much better, because it would have put locals in charge of this essential infrastructure - much as they already control water, roads, and sewage.
But, ultimately, I now have gigabit service at a reasonably competitive price, in a small town that arguably never “deserved” it.