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 pe

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.