4 ms·

It isn't so easy to build and maintain a utility. Esp when you're the government and have to deal with unions (alongside fair wages, acceptable working conditio

It isn't so easy to build and maintain a utility. Esp when you're the government and have to deal with unions (alongside fair wages, acceptable working conditions), there are ongoing costs that we need to pay somehow. Another commenter complained how it would raise taxes on the middle class. I wanted to disagree but can't because the upper middle class has its tax credits/deductions and the upper class has even better loopholes leaving the rest of the middle class to pick up the tab. Money is a difficult topic. Looking at Kansas City, Kansas and Missouri hand out tax breaks to attract businesses to come to their side of town. Can we put a tax on the national level? Then we need to distribute the money and it gets messy.

csydas 10y ago
Well, yes, maintaining a utility is difficult, but it's also quite doable in many locations around the US where municipal fiber is present and running pretty peachy. I lived in Tacoma, south of Seattle, for a bit, and the municipal broadband there was pretty darn good in all aspects. Set up, config, cost, billing, and discontinuation when I left was incredibly simple, speeds were comparable to Comcast wired households, and honestly, it was just a great experience all around. I never heard a peep from them for anything besides when there were large issues or outages they needed to report. While I dislike Comcast, AT&T, and their contemporaries as much as the next person, I don't really have a horror story of my own with them; I just greatly preferred the service and support for a home-grown ISP instead of having the looming threat of bandwidth caps or other such changes over my head for time to come. Municipal broadband is VERY easily doable and a great solution for many places where the incumbents refuse to meet the needs of the taxpayers that are subsidizing the networks. Having internet as a public utility resulted in some really great service and a fantastic product.

csydas 10y ago

Well, yes, maintaining a utility is difficult, but it's also quite doable in many locations around the US where municipal fiber is present and running pretty peachy. I lived in Tacoma, south of Seattle, for a bit, and the municipal broadband there was pretty darn good in all aspects. Set up, config, cost, billing, and discontinuation when I left was incredibly simple, speeds were comparable to Comcast wired households, and honestly, it was just a great experience all around. I never heard a peep from them for anything besides when there were large issues or outages they needed to report. While I dislike Comcast, AT&T, and their contemporaries as much as the next person, I don't really have a horror story of my own with them; I just greatly preferred the service and support for a home-grown ISP instead of having the looming threat of bandwidth caps or other such changes over my head for time to come. Municipal broadband is VERY easily doable and a great solution for many places where the incumbents refuse to meet the needs of the taxpayers that are subsidizing the networks. Having internet as a public utility resulted in some really great service and a fantastic product.