>Let it be a monopoly but let it be nothing else. Some entity (the government, a nonprofit, Comcast) owns the fibre in the ground but they do nothing else. They

>Let it be a monopoly but let it be nothing else. Some entity (the government, a nonprofit, Comcast) owns the fibre in the ground but they do nothing else. They don't offer retail internet service, they don't offer TV service, their only job is to maintain the physical infrastructure and lease wholesale capacity to third party providers at uniform rates. This is a good idea and is precisely what Australia is doing. It's called the NBN. The problem is, it was fibre to the home from 2009 - 2013, then a conservative government got in and now they're deliberately running it into the ground, by spending more money to do it with copper phone lines instead. Just for the sake of partisan politics and not keeping Telstra/Foxtel happy. Instead of a gigabit-fibre-to-the-home network, they're going to still be installing new 25Mbit/s connections in 2020 (yes, really), that have no potential for upgrades. They also changed the "uniform rates" part, so that the big companies get a big discount and small ISPs just straight up get charged more for the same thing. It was a great plan, 10% of homes got fibre! It just got screwed up by an actively malicious government gaining power. Luckily if you had Telstra cable before, or in your street, you can keep it. (Not if you had Optus cable though, then you're bumped down to VDSL). And there's those few areas with fibre, and new apartment buildings still get fibre. So as a young person who hasn't settled into a long term house, I have the luxury of making sure I at least get cable. Sucks for the 60% of the population that are stuck with horrible old unreliable copper lines that can't be upgraded tho. Here is a previous thread on the matter: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13613308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13613308 That being said, I'd still prefer this to the mess the US has, and the concept of having a publicly owned utility own fibre everywhere and providing access to ISPs is a great one. Just do it with fibre, not ancient technology. Look to New Zealand's UFB for an actually good example, with gigabit fibre just about everywhere.