19 ms·

Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado

789 points by peterjmag 9y ago

peterjmag 9y ago
I'm pretty proud of my hometown for passing this measure! Longmont, a town 30 miles south of Fort Collins, passed something similar a couple years ago, and it sounds like it's been pretty successful so far[1], so I'm excited to see where this goes. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15570559#up_15573817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15570559#up_15573817
- FLUX-YOU 9y ago
  Do you happen to know where they hire people for working on this? Are they city or state employees, or are they using a bunch of contractors? Edit: Hmm, looks like Fort Collins will use contractors for installs and hire 10 to 38 people over five years (p. 39 - Personnel Requirements): https://www.fcgov.com/broadband/pdf/7.27.17%20Broadband%20Business%20Plan.pdf https://www.fcgov.com/broadband/pdf/7.27.17%20Broadband%20Bu... However, this is excluding developers for things like customer portals. Maybe that will get contracted out as well. Seems light to run an ISP, even for FC's size.
  - peterjmag 9y ago
    Good find! I was curious too, and that does seem pretty small. I wonder how many people NextLight employs and contracts out in Longmont?
- _greim_ 9y ago
  Yes, all us front-rangers are envious of you, Longmont :) I'm guessing word-of-mouth helped defeat incumbents' efforts to kill this, as much as anything. It's almost become a standard conversation piece around here: "I'm from Longmont." "Oh, you have decent internet, then? Jealous!"
- nulagrithom 9y ago
  Some counties in Washington state have a Public Utility District which runs the fiber, then sells it through local ISPs. Lots of areas have 1Gb connections available for below $100/mo. What's more interesting to me is the effect on rural access. Plenty of lake-side cabins in the woods with fiber available. One ISP has taken to putting up poles with Ubiquiti airFiber antennas, creating a mesh network that extends beyond the already large fiber coverage. In Chelan and Douglas counties you can get a 35/2 connection nearly anywhere over this extended wireless network, even way up some lonesome canyon. It's amazing what a little competition does to the ISP market...
- thcipriani 9y ago
  it has indeed been quite successful: http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6777148187 http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6777148187 it's like that all the time now. Never been down for longer than 15 minutes and I've never been on hold trying to get assistance. All that for $50/mo :)
programmarchy 9y ago
This passed in Boulder county as well, pretty overwhelmingly.
- mtnsun 9y ago
  The Fort Collins vote was to allow the city the option to take out $150M in municipal bonds for city-wide fiber installation. This was pretty much the last voter hurdle before the city moves forward. Boulder is still in an earlier phase -- the vote was to allow the city to start the planning process. Greeley also voted in favor of something similar.
user-on1 9y ago
how to encourage other cities to do the same? can colorado guide the rest of the cities and states to through similar initiatives?
- zanny 9y ago
  If your town / city is less than 10k people simply going to city council open forum meetings (most places host those monthly or quarterly, some even weekly) and constantly hounding representatives about it being a problem with a straightforward solution (taxpayer funded public telecom operation in the city). Probably the #1 problem is the ignorance of how bad the telecom monopoly is in the US, that there even are alternatives, and that this is the problem domain government needs to approach in the same way they approach electric access or roads.
  - sigstoat 9y ago
    > Probably the #1 problem is the ignorance of how bad the telecom monopoly is in the US, that there even are alternatives, and that this is the problem domain government needs to approach in the same way they approach electric access or roads. amusingly, boulder county, which passed this same thing, tried for years to get out of maintaining my neighborhood's roads. (and our electric service is privately provided.)
- excalibur 9y ago
  It sounds like they're working on it. I like that there are a number of test cases, which will hopefully lead to a little variety in results, and maybe some good ideas regarding which techniques are more effective than others. Like any municipal service, there will be the potential for it to run smoothly and efficiently, and there will be the potential for it to turn into a massive clusterfuck and money pit. Where a particular city's implementation falls on that spectrum will be determined by their own choices.
- kels 9y ago
  I'm in Colorado Springs (2nd largest city in Colorado) and we passed this last year although it didn't get any coverage. Colorado is definitely moving in the right direction.
sizzzzlerz 9y ago
Keep your powder dry, Coloradians. COMCAST is like some non-giving up cable guy who simply won't let citizens determine their own fate when there is oodles of money to be made from them instead. Prepare for them to come back through the rear door, bribing the legislature and congress to enact laws that restrict the practice just approved.
- chungy 9y ago
  Maybe it's just me, but the right thing for Comcast to do is try to provide a better product. Competition is healthy, legislation is illness.
  - bllguo 9y ago
    Did you misinterpret? Obviously it's not just you. No consumer would be happier if Comcast didn't try to provide a better product. The point is that judging by their past actions, Comcast won't do that.
    - dhimes 9y ago
      No, he's agreeing with everybody that Comcast acts shitty when they do this.
      - hoorayimhelping 9y ago
        I think the comment you're replying to understands that. I interpreted it as them calling out the fake bravery of saying "maybe it's just me" before sharing a very common and widely-held opinion.
    - peterjmag 9y ago
      They did in Chattanooga, but not before trying to sue the city four times: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ezpk77/chattanooga-gigabit-fiber-network https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ezpk77/chattanoog... A couple shorter articles on the same topic: https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-comcast-fcc-high-speed-internet-gigabit https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-comcas... https://consumerist.com/2017/04/11/comcast-introduces-gigabit-fiber-to-city-thats-already-had-it-for-7-years/ https://consumerist.com/2017/04/11/comcast-introduces-gigabi...
exhilaration 9y ago
Whenever this happens - and it happens a lot - Comcast & Co just goes up a level to the state legislature and has them outlaw municipal broadband: https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/08/28/15404/how-big-telecom-smothers-city-run-broadband https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/08/28/15404/how-big-tel... Can't they just do the same thing in Colorado?
- peterjmag 9y ago
  Theoretically, yes. In fact, Senate Bill 152, passed in 2005, already outlaws municipal broadband. From the article: Colorado has a state law requiring municipalities to hold referendums before they can provide cable, telecom, or broadband service. Yesterday, voters in Eagle County and Boulder County authorized their local governments to build broadband networks, "bringing the total number of Colorado counties that have rejected the state law to 31—nearly half of the state's 64 counties," Motherboard wrote today. As far as I know, there have been attempts to make it impossible for a community to opt-out, but nothing's been successful yet. In fact, most recently, it looks like the tide has been turning in favor of repealing the ban state-wide (which wouldn't be surprising considering the 31 counties that have already opted out). Here's a bit more info: https://co-wa.org/2017/01/26/senate-bill-152-primer/ https://co-wa.org/2017/01/26/senate-bill-152-primer/
  - gigatexal 9y ago
    What a sad, sad world we live in where a corporation can come in and use legislation to be obviously anti-competitive. What would the world do if comcast or a group of content owners tried to sue netflix out of existence because their business model threatened the incumbents? There'd be pandemonium.
    - Florin_Andrei 9y ago
      It's almost as if money in politics is the death of ethics. Almost.
    - jdavis703 9y ago
      > What a sad, sad world we live in where a corporation can come in and use legislation to be obviously anti-competitive This is always a risk with any government. The problem is voters keep voting for these same people passing these laws (or worse yet, don't even vote claiming "nothing will change anyways."
Bromskloss 9y ago
I hear a lot of people being dissatisfied with Comcast. What is it that makes them so hard to compete with that people have to resort to city-run networks?
- skykooler 9y ago
  They have a lot of lobbying power.
- jclulow 9y ago
  I don't really see why having the city run its own Internet service should be considered a resort. Getting the profit motive as far away from basic utilities like Internet transit as possible seems like a win, because you don't want an undifferentiated bit pipe to have to continue to make more and more money over time.
  - prophesi 9y ago
    My city has a pretty sweet hybrid of this. We have a local company that provides electricity/cable/internet which received grants from the city to get off the ground. But it's now self-sufficient while still remaining cheaper than Comcast, with gigabit speeds.
  - Bromskloss 9y ago
    > I don't really see why having the city run its own Internet service should be considered a resort. It's not about the Internet specifically. It's just that every law or public spending is a shitty thing for those who don't want it, but have to pay for it anyway, or play by some rules they can't opt out of. In every other situation, we would consider such things shitty behaviour, so I think it makes sense to acknowledge that consequence and only do it if we really must.
- sigstoat 9y ago
  it's expensive to lay cable through a whole city. digging / horizontal drilling aren't cheap, and if you're not the city, you've got to deal with the permitting process and accompanying hassle.
BackPropagate 9y ago
Do you really want the Government controlling your communications?
cjsawyer 9y ago
Glad to see that my vote counted!
- zeep 9y ago
  it was really close
dchuk 9y ago
I’m failing to think of a single reason why it would ever be legally acceptable for a government to ban municipal broadband. I understand the whole corporate shill stuff, I’m speaking literally from the arguments FOR the ban...how is it justified at all?
- menacingly 9y ago
  I felt the same way about prison guard unions lobbying against legal recreational weed. Like, what even is a good thing you could pretend this is about?
  - jedberg 9y ago
    Protecting children from harmful drugs. I'm not saying it does that, I'm saying that's the argument to be made.
    - yalph 9y ago
      But it is not harmful.
      - jon_richards 9y ago
        It is harmful, it's just almost certainly less harmful than alcohol.
      - jedberg 9y ago
        I'm a big supporter of legal weed, but even I know better than that. It's less harmful than alcohol, and about on par with caffeine. There are definitely effects from long term use. Both science and my personal anecdata of long time smoking friends tell me that.
- intopieces 9y ago
  Preface: Whether these fears are reasonable I am not saying either way. I am answering your question about how a ban on municipal broadband could be justified. Another way to describe municipal broadband: state-run media pipeline. Allowing the government to control the last mile of the Internet. Port all those fears you have about Comcast violating net neutrality, stifling competition, spying on users.. Now, increase the power from "firm that can put other firms out of business" to "group of people who can put other people in jail."
tooltalk 9y ago
Knowing so little about the situation in Colorado, why can't they just allow more competition in the city, instead of running it themselves?
- sanderjd 9y ago
  (I live in Boulder County, which passed something similar.) As far as I know, competition is allowed, it just doesn't exist. The market has failed to provide us with broadband options. This vote is not actually for the government to run it themselves, it's just to override a state-level ban on municipal broadband. The next step will be for Comcast to lobby against municipalities actually setting up competing broadband offerings. A few steps after that and Comcast might actually start responding as if they are competing in an actual market, for instance by improving their services and/or lowering their prices. If they clean up their act enough, they might even get to keep their monopoly. But their reputation is already so bad that it seems somewhat unlikely at this point.
  - mtnsun 9y ago
    The Boulder vote was to override the ban, but the Fort Collins vote was to allow the city to grab $150M in bonds for fiber deployment. FoCo already voted to override the ban a few years ago.
    - sanderjd 9y ago
      Ah! Sorry, I didn't realize that.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  Few want to compete against such an entity as Comcast. Hell, most of the other large ISPs don't want to.
- wafflesraccoon 9y ago
  There are other ISPs in Fort Collins (CenturyLink/FRII) but it is something like 90%~ of the town is serviced by Comcast. This gives them massive amounts of control when it comes to pricing in the town.
bkeroack 9y ago
What are the odds that the city will run an ISP better than, say, the DMV?
- sliverstorm 9y ago
  Residents are generally happy with the other municipal utilities provided in Fort Collins.
- avdempsey 9y ago
  Pretty good actually. My main gripe with the DMV is the time spent waiting in line. That's hard to scale. To make the line go faster you need to hire more people. Your driver's license is an important security touch point, so it's going to be hard to move away from getting it in person. An ISP is pretty different from that, right?
  - Johnny555 9y ago
    The California DMV has an appointment system that will let you avoid (mostly) waiting, just go at your appointed time and (in my experience) you'll be served within 10 minutes of that time, if not earlier. They also have a online wait-time monitor for offices online, so you can look at neighboring cities for a shorter wait, it could be worth a 15 minutes drive to a more distance office to save 45 minutes of waiting.
  - Symbiote 9y ago
    My first UK passport was applied for using a paper form submitted at a local post office -- this was pre-widespread Internet. The person in the post office could advise that my photo met the technical requirements (size etc), but couldn't verify my identity. The most recent renewal was done with an online system which produced a single page PDF declaration -- the rest of the data was only electronic. I printed it, attached my photos, signed and posted it. The new passport was delivered two days later. You can see the application process: https://www.gov.uk/apply-renew-passport https://www.gov.uk/apply-renew-passport I think the same applies for a driving license, but my first still has some years before expiry.
- 9y ago
alexasmyths 9y ago
Good idea at this stage - but it would also be very dangerous. In Canada, in my youth - the entire telelphone network was socialized - it was a byzantine mess. You had to buy your telephone from the government (i.e. Bell, state owned). In Saskatchewan, it's still the same. Imagine if the networks were run like the DMV. Even worse - with massive, bloated government subsidies and 'guaranteed revenue stream' through taxation - they can make it impossible to compete. Pay workers way above market wages (the 'change collectors' on the Toronto Subway often earn more than $100K a year, even though the jobs should not even exist anymore). So it's probably a good idea right now maybe to force some innovation in the sector ... But is there any evidence that American wireless carriers are operating in an oligarchic manner? Here in Canada - we pay through the roof for wireless service due to very powerfully entrenched entities - we envy the US rates, which are relatively competitive. Anyhow - it's maybe a good move but it needs to be watched both for successful opportunities (if it works well it could be a shake up), but also for creeping and bloated bureaucracy.
- ThrwyAct 9y ago
  I've always been annoyed at this "imagine if X was like the DMV" libertarian argument. Anecdotally, I've never really had this mythical terrible experience at DMVs in the states I've lived in, and (further anecdotally) the experience has always been better in states with higher taxes. The free market is one way of efficiently incorporating user preferences. Responsive democratic government is another. It might be slower to adapt, but it compensates by having less perverse incentives.
  - alexasmyths 9y ago
    It's not a mythical argument, and it's not libertarian, it's just a reality. It's also rather obvious how byzantine most operational aspects of government are: Ex: The DMV is the entity that would not send me an email or SMS to inform me about specific events at least when I lived in Cali. Even though every other company on planet earth can do that. Ex: The Government of Ontario issues three different kinds of ID. The 'Health Care' ID cannot be used as valid ID anywhere else, only within health. There are huge bureaucracies dedicated to each form of ID. Why not issue one ID, and all of the agencies can use that? Answer: unions and job protectionism. I personally know the former CEO of 'Services Ontario' - he has no interest in increasing quality of service - there is absolutely zero incentive for him. Moreover - the Unions would make it quite impossible. Why would he even consider automating tasks when it reduces headcount? The union will put up a stink and it could get him fired. Moreover, he loses budget and power. So the incentives are completely upside down for most government agencies. Ex: The TTC (Toronto Public Transit) pays many of it's staff quite a lot. Toronto really needs Subway extensions, which are massively expensive to the point we can't afford them = yet we are still paying people to collect change - as I mentioned above, some of them earn over $100K. Ex: try visiting stats Canada right now: https://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/start https://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/start try making sense of that mess - there's tons and tons of data, most of it poorly organized, de-facto unsearchable. Very poorly presented when it is. Moreover - it's 2017 and up until a month ago NONE of the data was available via API (!!!). Just one month ago, they made some of it available. Of course, most of the data is not useful, they're not collecting some of the most relevant information that we need - specifically demographic information by postal code etc.. Can you imagine if Google quality engineers were responsible for the search and presentation of that data? Ex: the Ontario Police (OPP) made a deal with the government such that they had to be the 'highest paid police' in the Province. So a local village, called 'Shelburne' Ontario, with 2 cops, for some reason of local dispute, decide to pay their 2 guys massively over the regular wage for a cop. Guess what: OPP unions take the government to task for insanely high wages. Meanwhile, there are budget cuts everywhere. Ex: The Toronto Community housing rakes in $200-400 million dollars a year from city taxpayers - and almost 50% of that is spent on overhead and administration! So $100-100M just on staffing and other things. You do realize if this were a charity, it would be considered 'corrupt'? Moreover, the idea that governments should be building homes? Why are they doing that? If we are interested in having low income people live in specific area (one might ask the question why?) - then why wouldn't we just literally subsidize housing for them? Let them live where they please in that area and they will pay landlords/developer just as any other person. Government managers who so inefficiently spend 50% of their charitable budgets on overhead are somehow going to be able to hire contracts and manage building more efficiently than the private sector? No. Ex: Parole officers in corrections Canada us FAX MACHINES when individuals need to request their various forms of leave. Why? 'Paper Trail'. So they say (And its not due to signatures). But they can't grasp using email, or some kind of portal for this. Because why should they? What reason do these agencies have to change? Regular voters cannot really vote on these specific things - mostly we don't know they are happening. If there is no reason for a system to change - or system incentives are set up to create more workers and less efficiency - well - that's what will happen. It's all just bureaucracy absurdism. Governments are needed for regulation, and they might need to operate specific things (i.e. roads, the power lines but not power plants, wireless spectrum, military) and of course Health is always a special case. Teaching is one of those areas public schools can do well - because it's almost impossible to screw up: put a well educated, decent person in a room in front of a class with teaching plans and books and you have a school. It's not like the school can go 500% over budget. And there aren't really many ways to improve on it, as I don't believe that competitive bonuses actually improve teaching quality that much. But otherwise, no. It's mostly just a massive form of distribution of surpluses.
jamesaepp 9y ago
Wow they exchanged one monopoly for another monopoly that can use force. Genius voter population over there.
- sounds 9y ago
  State-enforced law to prevent city fiber builds was exchanged for city-led coop. Said state-enforced law bought and paid for by Comcast, deceptive ad campaign bought and paid for by Comcast, and the city still won. Sounds like a classic underdog win to me.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  You'll have to point out where they exchanged monopolies, rather than simply set up a competitor to keep the existing monopoly in check.
- hexane360 9y ago
  >another monopoly Comcast won't cease to exist. Other ISPs can form. >that can use force When was the last time your water/electric/gas company "used force" against public interest?
  - conanbatt 9y ago
    > When was the last time your water/electric/gas company "used force" against public interest? Everyday. Think of it this way, people that don't want to use the service can't opt out for the tax loss incurred by the state running it.
    - hexane360 9y ago
      I don't know about your local utilities, but mine are only government regulated, not subsidized.
      - conanbatt 9y ago
        Utilities have a considerable tax participation in municipal and state level governments. The infrastructure was definitely built with taxation, and there is a virtual monopoly of it. Im not making an opinion about it being the best system or not, because i haven't looked at this topic at all, but its delusional to think there is no force in this application. Just googling shows that for example, Florida has a mandate to be on the grid.
jjuel 9y ago
I lived in a city with muni owned cable and broadband. It was amazing. Great service and reasonably priced. Even offering gig internet. I miss those days now where Spectrum is one of my only options.
evadne 9y ago
See also: Kushnick, B., $300 Billion Broadband Scandal [2009] http://www.teletruth.org/docs/broadbandscandalfree.pdf http://www.teletruth.org/docs/broadbandscandalfree.pdf
matt_wulfeck 9y ago
I love to see cities exert their power. In some ways we’ve acquiesced to a powerful central government, whether it be federal or state, but its local governments that should be powerful. After all, they have the best handle on the needs and desires of their citizens.
- Tasboo 9y ago
  So if some city wants to enact Jim Crow laws, it should be allowed to do that without interference from the state or federal level?
  - conanbatt 9y ago
    Yes.
  - matt_wulfeck 9y ago
    Yes, but more specifically if our federal government wants to enact "jim-crow" type laws, our state and local governments should have the power to say "go fly a kite".
- white-flame 9y ago
  I think the better way to state it is flipped around: Citizens have a more direct effect on local governments than they do state or federal.
cletus 9y ago
So I'm all for this effort but there are a lot of opinions in this thread that are (IMHO) too simplistic and ignore history. 1. Building more than one version of given infrastructure is often called an "overbuild" and it tends to be bad. Like you don't have two different electric, gas or water companies running a whole set of wires, poles, pipes or whatever to your house. The capex cost of any such network is massive so paying that cost 2, 3 or 4 times for the same number of customers is clearly going to more costly for consumers overall. 2. Utilities, which aren't duplicated, are heavily regulated to avoid monopolistic behaviour as this is the only rational choice. I believe in the US this is Title II for telecommunications at least (which covers landline service). The FCC under the Obama administration did follow through with a promise to apply Title II to ISPs as well, something Comcat, TWC and the like were deadset against as it would obviously impact profits. The real problem here is that Internet at this point is really the fourth utility and it should be legislated and regulated as such but Comcat et al don't just want to be "dumb pipes". This factors into the whole net neutrality argument too. Imagine PG&E said that you could only use electricity for Whirlpool branded washers and dryers or if you used anything else the electricity would cost you more. Well, that kind of discrimination is what US ISPs want to be able to do (sadly) and we've already seen this with, say, Verizon throttling Netflix traffic. 3. ISPs have unfortunately been much better at framing these public debates than the other side. For example, in the aforementioned net neutrality debates, ISPs framed this as the likes of Netflix pushing data onto their network for free and they argued they should get paid for that. The reality is of course that Netflix doesn't push anything. Consumers are pulling data from Netflix. ISPs are getting paid for this too... by the consumers. The ISPs are simply trying to double-dip and get paid at both ends. What's more, stiffling services like Netflix has nothing to do with any notion of fairness. It's just a backhanded way of cable companies propping up their declining TV businesses. 4. Various other models have been tried around the world to solve the overbuild problem. In Australia, for example, the government has tried a strategy where a single entity would own the wires and ISPs could rent those lines to provide services to consumers. To make this work, the entity owning the wires has to charge the same price to everyone, no matter how big or small. Unfortunately, for a bunch of complicated reasons to NBN (so-called "next generation" broadband network) is going to end up only guaranteeing 12Mbps to each household... in 2017 for probably A$60-70B for a country of ~24M. 5. Building any sort of netowrk like this is what I like to call a national hyperlocal business and the entrenched players are very good at it. To give some examples: - Getting access to poles varies from city to city and can be hugely complicated; - Digging trenches can be just as complicated and you might have to deal with a bunch of different stuff in the ground (eg one area has a ton of limestone in the soil). - Existing buildings once had single-vendor agreements that prohibited new players from providing service there. At one point these were ruled illegal. They've since been replaced by exclusive marketing agreements where, say, a condo building will only ever tell you about one provider. - Once you've built past a lot of houses it still requires a lot of efforts to connect a new house (we're talking hours). There is a huge manpower component in this. To be already connected to an existing provider is a huge advantage to that existing provider. 6. No discussion of cable companies in the US is complete without touching on the issue of franchise agreements. A franchise agreement is where a cable company agreed to build in a given city and to alleviate the expense they were offered a number of benefits. These could be exclusive rights, ownership of the poles and so on. But to provide TV service, the company usually ended up paying the town. These sums could be significant to the budgets of the towns or counties in which they applied. These fees also discouraged the municipality from being friendly to any newcomer as any such newcomer may mean a budget hit. Disclaimer: I used to work on Google Fiber.
akulbe 9y ago
Cannot heap enough scorn on Comcast. It just seems SO WRONG that they have so much influence and continue to kill any competition.
cavisne 9y ago
Has any city / company tried to build such a network since docsis 3.1 became available? Google seems to have basically given up. This will likely be a disaster for any city that tries, Comcast will just undercut them with higher speeds than any consumer will notice a difference. And taxpayers will be left with a huge bill.
- sounds 9y ago
  DOCSIS 3.1 is impressive, but it's really the HFC infrastructure that even remotely threatens a FTTx build. The comments far and wide (except as Ajit sees fit to hide) show a new carrier could not even be competitive at DOCSIS 3.1 levels, and still win. Comcast has found such impressive execration that the "speed wars" only matter a little bit. It's just that Comcast has neglected their networks for so long that even at the most basic level, i.e. speeds, they regularly fail the previous administration's metric for "high speed internet" at peak times -- you know, the times when people actually use their internet.
sealthedeal 9y ago
Why would you want a city run ISP?
WoodenChair 9y ago
We had this in Burlington, VT and now we're selling it off because the city could not run it effectively (massive debt). Be careful — government is usually not a great runner of a customer-service focused business. Further, do you really want government (municipal) or otherwise being your ISP? Having access to all of your traffic lines?
- Clubber 9y ago
  All of your points are valid, but let me counter argue. Be careful — government is usually not a great runner of a customer-service focused business. Maybe, maybe not, but we know Comcast and TWC aren't a great runner of customer-service focused business. Further, do you really want government (municipal) or otherwise being your ISP? Having access to all of your traffic lines? No, but I'm assuming they already have access without a warrant now.
  - WoodenChair 9y ago
    So, you chose the red herrings of the worst possible ISPs. There are great commercial ISPs too. What's more important is competition, which again is limited by government (government decides who gets access to build-out lines). I agree, federal government does have the resources to spy, and uses them very effectively. Why make it that much easier for our local governments to do that as well.
    - sliverstorm 9y ago
      What's more important is competition Right, and that's a key ingredient that is missing in Fort Collins. Two main providers, who have been operating in typical duopoly fashion. I.e. you get one or the other, not both, and even if you can get both, the other is no better.
    - 15charlimit 9y ago
      > There are great commercial ISPs too. Sure, if you're lucky enough to live in an area with "actual" competition, which is the crux of the entire issue. The vast, vast majority of us are stuck with 1 or 2 (if we're lucky) options, both relatively shitty, with one being markedly inferior, and both absurdly overpriced for the connection you get.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
brainbrane 9y ago
Lest we forget iProvo: http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=56288307&itype=CMSID http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=56288307&itype=CMSI...
JBSay 9y ago
Government running commercial enterprises. Now that's a recipe for success! http://munibroadbandfailures.com/ http://munibroadbandfailures.com/
- SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago
  I think we could make a map of “private broadband failures” that funneled hundreds of millions of public dollars to private enterprises to bring broadband infrastructure to millions of Americans and was never delivered.
  - JBSay 9y ago
    As opposed to what? Billion dollars of taxpayer bail out because government have no incentive and have no idea how to run a commercial enterprise efficiently. If a private company fails on its obligation you can sue. If public company fail not only can't you sure but you have to pay more taxes to bail it out. https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2014/09/30/municipal-broadband-a-bad-deal-for-taxpayers/#2911b734125f https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2014/09/30/munic...
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  No contact information, hidden whois info. Surely this is a site to be trusted to be objective and get to the truth regarding the ethics and feasibility of municipal broadband.
- topspin 9y ago
  You should avoid citing that page; it's not credible. A specific instance that I know of is Sebewaing Light and Power in Michigan. They built out a publicly owned fiber network that now has over 500 of 1700 residents as customers as of June and will break even in 2018, earlier than expected, whereas your site claims there are only 150 customers. That site was created by Taxpayers Protection Alliance which a Koch front group.
  - JBSay 9y ago
    "That site was created by Taxpayers Protection Alliance which a Koch front group." So what? Ad hominem fallacy? When the municipal broadbands fail taxpayers are on the hook for million dollars bail outs. https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2014/09/30/municipal-broadband-a-bad-deal-for-taxpayers/#2911b734125f https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2014/09/30/munic...
InTheArena 9y ago
Boulder had much less fanfare, but much greater techie population also passed this. Its at the point where cities that don't provide great internet will start to see people go live in other communities. The boulder vote was something like 3:1 in favor, as Comcast knew better then to go massively negative. Unfortunately, Boulder city has been trying to go municipal with energy as well, which appears to be failing badly, and that's taking most of their time.
xupybd 9y ago
I don't understand why there is no competition. There must be other people wanting to trying their hand at starting a fibre ISP. Yeah it's expensive, but if there is money to be made there should be people willing to invest. Is there something else preventing competition in the US?
- matt4077 9y ago
  There is no money to be made. You won't be able to build a network in more than a few cities at first because anything else would cost astronomical amounts of money. That means that the current monopolist in those cities can afford to lower prices, making your investment unprofitable.
klttunets 9y ago
Good! Internet access is a utility now. No one should have to buy something they depend on from Comcast.
doggydogs94 9y ago
I did not understand why Comcast and the other ISPs oppose these initiatives. After the city loses a ton of money running their own ISP, Comcast (or the ISP of your choice) will always be ready to pick up the pieces.
- amazon_not 9y ago
  Only it doesn't always work out like that. In Chattanooga the local provider displaced Comcast as the largest ISP and they are making good money. Also competition is bad. People might get ideas...
emiliosic 9y ago
It's another evidence that broadband is an utility like telephony or electricity
daveheq 9y ago
Yay maybe people will start learning elsewhere that giant corporations' best interests aren't their customers.
- joshmn 9y ago
  I'm surprised certain groups haven't started labeling/marketing this as socialism.
dba7dba 9y ago
F u comcast. Sorry had to let it out.

789 points by peterjmag 9y ago

I'm pretty proud of my hometown for passing this measure! Longmont, a town 30 miles south of Fort Collins, passed something similar a couple years ago, and it sounds like it's been pretty successful so far[1], so I'm excited to see where this goes. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15570559#up_15573817 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15570559#up_15573817

FLUX-YOU 9y ago
Do you happen to know where they hire people for working on this? Are they city or state employees, or are they using a bunch of contractors? Edit: Hmm, looks like Fort Collins will use contractors for installs and hire 10 to 38 people over five years (p. 39 - Personnel Requirements): https://www.fcgov.com/broadband/pdf/7.27.17%20Broadband%20Business%20Plan.pdf https://www.fcgov.com/broadband/pdf/7.27.17%20Broadband%20Bu... However, this is excluding developers for things like customer portals. Maybe that will get contracted out as well. Seems light to run an ISP, even for FC's size.
- peterjmag 9y ago
  Good find! I was curious too, and that does seem pretty small. I wonder how many people NextLight employs and contracts out in Longmont?
_greim_ 9y ago
Yes, all us front-rangers are envious of you, Longmont :) I'm guessing word-of-mouth helped defeat incumbents' efforts to kill this, as much as anything. It's almost become a standard conversation piece around here: "I'm from Longmont." "Oh, you have decent internet, then? Jealous!"
nulagrithom 9y ago
Some counties in Washington state have a Public Utility District which runs the fiber, then sells it through local ISPs. Lots of areas have 1Gb connections available for below $100/mo. What's more interesting to me is the effect on rural access. Plenty of lake-side cabins in the woods with fiber available. One ISP has taken to putting up poles with Ubiquiti airFiber antennas, creating a mesh network that extends beyond the already large fiber coverage. In Chelan and Douglas counties you can get a 35/2 connection nearly anywhere over this extended wireless network, even way up some lonesome canyon. It's amazing what a little competition does to the ISP market...
thcipriani 9y ago
it has indeed been quite successful: http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6777148187 http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6777148187 it's like that all the time now. Never been down for longer than 15 minutes and I've never been on hold trying to get assistance. All that for $50/mo :)

programmarchy 9y ago

This passed in Boulder county as well, pretty overwhelmingly.

mtnsun 9y ago
The Fort Collins vote was to allow the city the option to take out $150M in municipal bonds for city-wide fiber installation. This was pretty much the last voter hurdle before the city moves forward. Boulder is still in an earlier phase -- the vote was to allow the city to start the planning process. Greeley also voted in favor of something similar.

user-on1 9y ago

how to encourage other cities to do the same? can colorado guide the rest of the cities and states to through similar initiatives?

zanny 9y ago
If your town / city is less than 10k people simply going to city council open forum meetings (most places host those monthly or quarterly, some even weekly) and constantly hounding representatives about it being a problem with a straightforward solution (taxpayer funded public telecom operation in the city). Probably the #1 problem is the ignorance of how bad the telecom monopoly is in the US, that there even are alternatives, and that this is the problem domain government needs to approach in the same way they approach electric access or roads.
- sigstoat 9y ago
  > Probably the #1 problem is the ignorance of how bad the telecom monopoly is in the US, that there even are alternatives, and that this is the problem domain government needs to approach in the same way they approach electric access or roads. amusingly, boulder county, which passed this same thing, tried for years to get out of maintaining my neighborhood's roads. (and our electric service is privately provided.)
excalibur 9y ago
It sounds like they're working on it. I like that there are a number of test cases, which will hopefully lead to a little variety in results, and maybe some good ideas regarding which techniques are more effective than others. Like any municipal service, there will be the potential for it to run smoothly and efficiently, and there will be the potential for it to turn into a massive clusterfuck and money pit. Where a particular city's implementation falls on that spectrum will be determined by their own choices.
kels 9y ago
I'm in Colorado Springs (2nd largest city in Colorado) and we passed this last year although it didn't get any coverage. Colorado is definitely moving in the right direction.

sizzzzlerz 9y ago

Keep your powder dry, Coloradians. COMCAST is like some non-giving up cable guy who simply won't let citizens determine their own fate when there is oodles of money to be made from them instead. Prepare for them to come back through the rear door, bribing the legislature and congress to enact laws that restrict the practice just approved.

chungy 9y ago
Maybe it's just me, but the right thing for Comcast to do is try to provide a better product. Competition is healthy, legislation is illness.
- bllguo 9y ago
  Did you misinterpret? Obviously it's not just you. No consumer would be happier if Comcast didn't try to provide a better product. The point is that judging by their past actions, Comcast won't do that.
  - dhimes 9y ago
    No, he's agreeing with everybody that Comcast acts shitty when they do this.
    - hoorayimhelping 9y ago
      I think the comment you're replying to understands that. I interpreted it as them calling out the fake bravery of saying "maybe it's just me" before sharing a very common and widely-held opinion.
  - peterjmag 9y ago
    They did in Chattanooga, but not before trying to sue the city four times: https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ezpk77/chattanooga-gigabit-fiber-network https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ezpk77/chattanoog... A couple shorter articles on the same topic: https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-comcast-fcc-high-speed-internet-gigabit https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-comcas... https://consumerist.com/2017/04/11/comcast-introduces-gigabit-fiber-to-city-thats-already-had-it-for-7-years/ https://consumerist.com/2017/04/11/comcast-introduces-gigabi...

exhilaration 9y ago

Whenever this happens - and it happens a lot - Comcast & Co just goes up a level to the state legislature and has them outlaw municipal broadband: https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/08/28/15404/how-big-telecom-smothers-city-run-broadband https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/08/28/15404/how-big-tel... Can't they just do the same thing in Colorado?

peterjmag 9y ago
Theoretically, yes. In fact, Senate Bill 152, passed in 2005, already outlaws municipal broadband. From the article: Colorado has a state law requiring municipalities to hold referendums before they can provide cable, telecom, or broadband service. Yesterday, voters in Eagle County and Boulder County authorized their local governments to build broadband networks, "bringing the total number of Colorado counties that have rejected the state law to 31—nearly half of the state's 64 counties," Motherboard wrote today. As far as I know, there have been attempts to make it impossible for a community to opt-out, but nothing's been successful yet. In fact, most recently, it looks like the tide has been turning in favor of repealing the ban state-wide (which wouldn't be surprising considering the 31 counties that have already opted out). Here's a bit more info: https://co-wa.org/2017/01/26/senate-bill-152-primer/ https://co-wa.org/2017/01/26/senate-bill-152-primer/
- gigatexal 9y ago
  What a sad, sad world we live in where a corporation can come in and use legislation to be obviously anti-competitive. What would the world do if comcast or a group of content owners tried to sue netflix out of existence because their business model threatened the incumbents? There'd be pandemonium.
  - Florin_Andrei 9y ago
    It's almost as if money in politics is the death of ethics. Almost.
  - jdavis703 9y ago
    > What a sad, sad world we live in where a corporation can come in and use legislation to be obviously anti-competitive This is always a risk with any government. The problem is voters keep voting for these same people passing these laws (or worse yet, don't even vote claiming "nothing will change anyways."

Bromskloss 9y ago

I hear a lot of people being dissatisfied with Comcast. What is it that makes them so hard to compete with that people have to resort to city-run networks?

skykooler 9y ago
They have a lot of lobbying power.
jclulow 9y ago
I don't really see why having the city run its own Internet service should be considered a resort. Getting the profit motive as far away from basic utilities like Internet transit as possible seems like a win, because you don't want an undifferentiated bit pipe to have to continue to make more and more money over time.
- prophesi 9y ago
  My city has a pretty sweet hybrid of this. We have a local company that provides electricity/cable/internet which received grants from the city to get off the ground. But it's now self-sufficient while still remaining cheaper than Comcast, with gigabit speeds.
- Bromskloss 9y ago
  > I don't really see why having the city run its own Internet service should be considered a resort. It's not about the Internet specifically. It's just that every law or public spending is a shitty thing for those who don't want it, but have to pay for it anyway, or play by some rules they can't opt out of. In every other situation, we would consider such things shitty behaviour, so I think it makes sense to acknowledge that consequence and only do it if we really must.
sigstoat 9y ago
it's expensive to lay cable through a whole city. digging / horizontal drilling aren't cheap, and if you're not the city, you've got to deal with the permitting process and accompanying hassle.

BackPropagate 9y ago

Do you really want the Government controlling your communications?

cjsawyer 9y ago

Glad to see that my vote counted!

zeep 9y ago
it was really close

dchuk 9y ago

I’m failing to think of a single reason why it would ever be legally acceptable for a government to ban municipal broadband. I understand the whole corporate shill stuff, I’m speaking literally from the arguments FOR the ban...how is it justified at all?

menacingly 9y ago
I felt the same way about prison guard unions lobbying against legal recreational weed. Like, what even is a good thing you could pretend this is about?
- jedberg 9y ago
  Protecting children from harmful drugs. I'm not saying it does that, I'm saying that's the argument to be made.
  - yalph 9y ago
    But it is not harmful.
    - jon_richards 9y ago
      It is harmful, it's just almost certainly less harmful than alcohol.
    - jedberg 9y ago
      I'm a big supporter of legal weed, but even I know better than that. It's less harmful than alcohol, and about on par with caffeine. There are definitely effects from long term use. Both science and my personal anecdata of long time smoking friends tell me that.
intopieces 9y ago
Preface: Whether these fears are reasonable I am not saying either way. I am answering your question about how a ban on municipal broadband could be justified. Another way to describe municipal broadband: state-run media pipeline. Allowing the government to control the last mile of the Internet. Port all those fears you have about Comcast violating net neutrality, stifling competition, spying on users.. Now, increase the power from "firm that can put other firms out of business" to "group of people who can put other people in jail."

tooltalk 9y ago

Knowing so little about the situation in Colorado, why can't they just allow more competition in the city, instead of running it themselves?

sanderjd 9y ago
(I live in Boulder County, which passed something similar.) As far as I know, competition is allowed, it just doesn't exist. The market has failed to provide us with broadband options. This vote is not actually for the government to run it themselves, it's just to override a state-level ban on municipal broadband. The next step will be for Comcast to lobby against municipalities actually setting up competing broadband offerings. A few steps after that and Comcast might actually start responding as if they are competing in an actual market, for instance by improving their services and/or lowering their prices. If they clean up their act enough, they might even get to keep their monopoly. But their reputation is already so bad that it seems somewhat unlikely at this point.
- mtnsun 9y ago
  The Boulder vote was to override the ban, but the Fort Collins vote was to allow the city to grab $150M in bonds for fiber deployment. FoCo already voted to override the ban a few years ago.
  - sanderjd 9y ago
    Ah! Sorry, I didn't realize that.
s73ver_ 9y ago
Few want to compete against such an entity as Comcast. Hell, most of the other large ISPs don't want to.
wafflesraccoon 9y ago
There are other ISPs in Fort Collins (CenturyLink/FRII) but it is something like 90%~ of the town is serviced by Comcast. This gives them massive amounts of control when it comes to pricing in the town.

bkeroack 9y ago

What are the odds that the city will run an ISP better than, say, the DMV?

sliverstorm 9y ago
Residents are generally happy with the other municipal utilities provided in Fort Collins.
avdempsey 9y ago
Pretty good actually. My main gripe with the DMV is the time spent waiting in line. That's hard to scale. To make the line go faster you need to hire more people. Your driver's license is an important security touch point, so it's going to be hard to move away from getting it in person. An ISP is pretty different from that, right?
- Johnny555 9y ago
  The California DMV has an appointment system that will let you avoid (mostly) waiting, just go at your appointed time and (in my experience) you'll be served within 10 minutes of that time, if not earlier. They also have a online wait-time monitor for offices online, so you can look at neighboring cities for a shorter wait, it could be worth a 15 minutes drive to a more distance office to save 45 minutes of waiting.
- Symbiote 9y ago
  My first UK passport was applied for using a paper form submitted at a local post office -- this was pre-widespread Internet. The person in the post office could advise that my photo met the technical requirements (size etc), but couldn't verify my identity. The most recent renewal was done with an online system which produced a single page PDF declaration -- the rest of the data was only electronic. I printed it, attached my photos, signed and posted it. The new passport was delivered two days later. You can see the application process: https://www.gov.uk/apply-renew-passport https://www.gov.uk/apply-renew-passport I think the same applies for a driving license, but my first still has some years before expiry.
9y ago

alexasmyths 9y ago

Good idea at this stage - but it would also be very dangerous. In Canada, in my youth - the entire telelphone network was socialized - it was a byzantine mess. You had to buy your telephone from the government (i.e. Bell, state owned). In Saskatchewan, it's still the same. Imagine if the networks were run like the DMV. Even worse - with massive, bloated government subsidies and 'guaranteed revenue stream' through taxation - they can make it impossible to compete. Pay workers way above market wages (the 'change collectors' on the Toronto Subway often earn more than $100K a year, even though the jobs should not even exist anymore). So it's probably a good idea right now maybe to force some innovation in the sector ... But is there any evidence that American wireless carriers are operating in an oligarchic manner? Here in Canada - we pay through the roof for wireless service due to very powerfully entrenched entities - we envy the US rates, which are relatively competitive. Anyhow - it's maybe a good move but it needs to be watched both for successful opportunities (if it works well it could be a shake up), but also for creeping and bloated bureaucracy.

ThrwyAct 9y ago
I've always been annoyed at this "imagine if X was like the DMV" libertarian argument. Anecdotally, I've never really had this mythical terrible experience at DMVs in the states I've lived in, and (further anecdotally) the experience has always been better in states with higher taxes. The free market is one way of efficiently incorporating user preferences. Responsive democratic government is another. It might be slower to adapt, but it compensates by having less perverse incentives.
- alexasmyths 9y ago
  It's not a mythical argument, and it's not libertarian, it's just a reality. It's also rather obvious how byzantine most operational aspects of government are: Ex: The DMV is the entity that would not send me an email or SMS to inform me about specific events at least when I lived in Cali. Even though every other company on planet earth can do that. Ex: The Government of Ontario issues three different kinds of ID. The 'Health Care' ID cannot be used as valid ID anywhere else, only within health. There are huge bureaucracies dedicated to each form of ID. Why not issue one ID, and all of the agencies can use that? Answer: unions and job protectionism. I personally know the former CEO of 'Services Ontario' - he has no interest in increasing quality of service - there is absolutely zero incentive for him. Moreover - the Unions would make it quite impossible. Why would he even consider automating tasks when it reduces headcount? The union will put up a stink and it could get him fired. Moreover, he loses budget and power. So the incentives are completely upside down for most government agencies. Ex: The TTC (Toronto Public Transit) pays many of it's staff quite a lot. Toronto really needs Subway extensions, which are massively expensive to the point we can't afford them = yet we are still paying people to collect change - as I mentioned above, some of them earn over $100K. Ex: try visiting stats Canada right now: https://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/start https://www.statcan.gc.ca/eng/start try making sense of that mess - there's tons and tons of data, most of it poorly organized, de-facto unsearchable. Very poorly presented when it is. Moreover - it's 2017 and up until a month ago NONE of the data was available via API (!!!). Just one month ago, they made some of it available. Of course, most of the data is not useful, they're not collecting some of the most relevant information that we need - specifically demographic information by postal code etc.. Can you imagine if Google quality engineers were responsible for the search and presentation of that data? Ex: the Ontario Police (OPP) made a deal with the government such that they had to be the 'highest paid police' in the Province. So a local village, called 'Shelburne' Ontario, with 2 cops, for some reason of local dispute, decide to pay their 2 guys massively over the regular wage for a cop. Guess what: OPP unions take the government to task for insanely high wages. Meanwhile, there are budget cuts everywhere. Ex: The Toronto Community housing rakes in $200-400 million dollars a year from city taxpayers - and almost 50% of that is spent on overhead and administration! So $100-100M just on staffing and other things. You do realize if this were a charity, it would be considered 'corrupt'? Moreover, the idea that governments should be building homes? Why are they doing that? If we are interested in having low income people live in specific area (one might ask the question why?) - then why wouldn't we just literally subsidize housing for them? Let them live where they please in that area and they will pay landlords/developer just as any other person. Government managers who so inefficiently spend 50% of their charitable budgets on overhead are somehow going to be able to hire contracts and manage building more efficiently than the private sector? No. Ex: Parole officers in corrections Canada us FAX MACHINES when individuals need to request their various forms of leave. Why? 'Paper Trail'. So they say (And its not due to signatures). But they can't grasp using email, or some kind of portal for this. Because why should they? What reason do these agencies have to change? Regular voters cannot really vote on these specific things - mostly we don't know they are happening. If there is no reason for a system to change - or system incentives are set up to create more workers and less efficiency - well - that's what will happen. It's all just bureaucracy absurdism. Governments are needed for regulation, and they might need to operate specific things (i.e. roads, the power lines but not power plants, wireless spectrum, military) and of course Health is always a special case. Teaching is one of those areas public schools can do well - because it's almost impossible to screw up: put a well educated, decent person in a room in front of a class with teaching plans and books and you have a school. It's not like the school can go 500% over budget. And there aren't really many ways to improve on it, as I don't believe that competitive bonuses actually improve teaching quality that much. But otherwise, no. It's mostly just a massive form of distribution of surpluses.

jamesaepp 9y ago

Wow they exchanged one monopoly for another monopoly that can use force. Genius voter population over there.

sounds 9y ago
State-enforced law to prevent city fiber builds was exchanged for city-led coop. Said state-enforced law bought and paid for by Comcast, deceptive ad campaign bought and paid for by Comcast, and the city still won. Sounds like a classic underdog win to me.
s73ver_ 9y ago
You'll have to point out where they exchanged monopolies, rather than simply set up a competitor to keep the existing monopoly in check.
hexane360 9y ago
>another monopoly Comcast won't cease to exist. Other ISPs can form. >that can use force When was the last time your water/electric/gas company "used force" against public interest?
- conanbatt 9y ago
  > When was the last time your water/electric/gas company "used force" against public interest? Everyday. Think of it this way, people that don't want to use the service can't opt out for the tax loss incurred by the state running it.
  - hexane360 9y ago
    I don't know about your local utilities, but mine are only government regulated, not subsidized.
    - conanbatt 9y ago
      Utilities have a considerable tax participation in municipal and state level governments. The infrastructure was definitely built with taxation, and there is a virtual monopoly of it. Im not making an opinion about it being the best system or not, because i haven't looked at this topic at all, but its delusional to think there is no force in this application. Just googling shows that for example, Florida has a mandate to be on the grid.

jjuel 9y ago

I lived in a city with muni owned cable and broadband. It was amazing. Great service and reasonably priced. Even offering gig internet. I miss those days now where Spectrum is one of my only options.

evadne 9y ago

See also: Kushnick, B., $300 Billion Broadband Scandal [2009] http://www.teletruth.org/docs/broadbandscandalfree.pdf http://www.teletruth.org/docs/broadbandscandalfree.pdf

matt_wulfeck 9y ago

I love to see cities exert their power. In some ways we’ve acquiesced to a powerful central government, whether it be federal or state, but its local governments that should be powerful. After all, they have the best handle on the needs and desires of their citizens.

Tasboo 9y ago
So if some city wants to enact Jim Crow laws, it should be allowed to do that without interference from the state or federal level?
- conanbatt 9y ago
  Yes.
- matt_wulfeck 9y ago
  Yes, but more specifically if our federal government wants to enact "jim-crow" type laws, our state and local governments should have the power to say "go fly a kite".
white-flame 9y ago
I think the better way to state it is flipped around: Citizens have a more direct effect on local governments than they do state or federal.

cletus 9y ago

So I'm all for this effort but there are a lot of opinions in this thread that are (IMHO) too simplistic and ignore history. 1. Building more than one version of given infrastructure is often called an "overbuild" and it tends to be bad. Like you don't have two different electric, gas or water companies running a whole set of wires, poles, pipes or whatever to your house. The capex cost of any such network is massive so paying that cost 2, 3 or 4 times for the same number of customers is clearly going to more costly for consumers overall. 2. Utilities, which aren't duplicated, are heavily regulated to avoid monopolistic behaviour as this is the only rational choice. I believe in the US this is Title II for telecommunications at least (which covers landline service). The FCC under the Obama administration did follow through with a promise to apply Title II to ISPs as well, something Comcat, TWC and the like were deadset against as it would obviously impact profits. The real problem here is that Internet at this point is really the fourth utility and it should be legislated and regulated as such but Comcat et al don't just want to be "dumb pipes". This factors into the whole net neutrality argument too. Imagine PG&E said that you could only use electricity for Whirlpool branded washers and dryers or if you used anything else the electricity would cost you more. Well, that kind of discrimination is what US ISPs want to be able to do (sadly) and we've already seen this with, say, Verizon throttling Netflix traffic. 3. ISPs have unfortunately been much better at framing these public debates than the other side. For example, in the aforementioned net neutrality debates, ISPs framed this as the likes of Netflix pushing data onto their network for free and they argued they should get paid for that. The reality is of course that Netflix doesn't push anything. Consumers are pulling data from Netflix. ISPs are getting paid for this too... by the consumers. The ISPs are simply trying to double-dip and get paid at both ends. What's more, stiffling services like Netflix has nothing to do with any notion of fairness. It's just a backhanded way of cable companies propping up their declining TV businesses. 4. Various other models have been tried around the world to solve the overbuild problem. In Australia, for example, the government has tried a strategy where a single entity would own the wires and ISPs could rent those lines to provide services to consumers. To make this work, the entity owning the wires has to charge the same price to everyone, no matter how big or small. Unfortunately, for a bunch of complicated reasons to NBN (so-called "next generation" broadband network) is going to end up only guaranteeing 12Mbps to each household... in 2017 for probably A$60-70B for a country of ~24M. 5. Building any sort of netowrk like this is what I like to call a national hyperlocal business and the entrenched players are very good at it. To give some examples: - Getting access to poles varies from city to city and can be hugely complicated; - Digging trenches can be just as complicated and you might have to deal with a bunch of different stuff in the ground (eg one area has a ton of limestone in the soil). - Existing buildings once had single-vendor agreements that prohibited new players from providing service there. At one point these were ruled illegal. They've since been replaced by exclusive marketing agreements where, say, a condo building will only ever tell you about one provider. - Once you've built past a lot of houses it still requires a lot of efforts to connect a new house (we're talking hours). There is a huge manpower component in this. To be already connected to an existing provider is a huge advantage to that existing provider. 6. No discussion of cable companies in the US is complete without touching on the issue of franchise agreements. A franchise agreement is where a cable company agreed to build in a given city and to alleviate the expense they were offered a number of benefits. These could be exclusive rights, ownership of the poles and so on. But to provide TV service, the company usually ended up paying the town. These sums could be significant to the budgets of the towns or counties in which they applied. These fees also discouraged the municipality from being friendly to any newcomer as any such newcomer may mean a budget hit. Disclaimer: I used to work on Google Fiber.

akulbe 9y ago

Cannot heap enough scorn on Comcast. It just seems SO WRONG that they have so much influence and continue to kill any competition.

cavisne 9y ago

Has any city / company tried to build such a network since docsis 3.1 became available? Google seems to have basically given up. This will likely be a disaster for any city that tries, Comcast will just undercut them with higher speeds than any consumer will notice a difference. And taxpayers will be left with a huge bill.

sounds 9y ago
DOCSIS 3.1 is impressive, but it's really the HFC infrastructure that even remotely threatens a FTTx build. The comments far and wide (except as Ajit sees fit to hide) show a new carrier could not even be competitive at DOCSIS 3.1 levels, and still win. Comcast has found such impressive execration that the "speed wars" only matter a little bit. It's just that Comcast has neglected their networks for so long that even at the most basic level, i.e. speeds, they regularly fail the previous administration's metric for "high speed internet" at peak times -- you know, the times when people actually use their internet.

sealthedeal 9y ago

Why would you want a city run ISP?

WoodenChair 9y ago

We had this in Burlington, VT and now we're selling it off because the city could not run it effectively (massive debt). Be careful — government is usually not a great runner of a customer-service focused business. Further, do you really want government (municipal) or otherwise being your ISP? Having access to all of your traffic lines?

Clubber 9y ago
All of your points are valid, but let me counter argue. Be careful — government is usually not a great runner of a customer-service focused business. Maybe, maybe not, but we know Comcast and TWC aren't a great runner of customer-service focused business. Further, do you really want government (municipal) or otherwise being your ISP? Having access to all of your traffic lines? No, but I'm assuming they already have access without a warrant now.
- WoodenChair 9y ago
  So, you chose the red herrings of the worst possible ISPs. There are great commercial ISPs too. What's more important is competition, which again is limited by government (government decides who gets access to build-out lines). I agree, federal government does have the resources to spy, and uses them very effectively. Why make it that much easier for our local governments to do that as well.
  - sliverstorm 9y ago
    What's more important is competition Right, and that's a key ingredient that is missing in Fort Collins. Two main providers, who have been operating in typical duopoly fashion. I.e. you get one or the other, not both, and even if you can get both, the other is no better.
  - 15charlimit 9y ago
    > There are great commercial ISPs too. Sure, if you're lucky enough to live in an area with "actual" competition, which is the crux of the entire issue. The vast, vast majority of us are stuck with 1 or 2 (if we're lucky) options, both relatively shitty, with one being markedly inferior, and both absurdly overpriced for the connection you get.

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brainbrane 9y ago

Lest we forget iProvo: http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=56288307&itype=CMSID http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=56288307&itype=CMSI...

JBSay 9y ago

Government running commercial enterprises. Now that's a recipe for success! http://munibroadbandfailures.com/ http://munibroadbandfailures.com/

SOLAR_FIELDS 9y ago
I think we could make a map of “private broadband failures” that funneled hundreds of millions of public dollars to private enterprises to bring broadband infrastructure to millions of Americans and was never delivered.
- JBSay 9y ago
  As opposed to what? Billion dollars of taxpayer bail out because government have no incentive and have no idea how to run a commercial enterprise efficiently. If a private company fails on its obligation you can sue. If public company fail not only can't you sure but you have to pay more taxes to bail it out. https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2014/09/30/municipal-broadband-a-bad-deal-for-taxpayers/#2911b734125f https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2014/09/30/munic...
toomuchtodo 9y ago
No contact information, hidden whois info. Surely this is a site to be trusted to be objective and get to the truth regarding the ethics and feasibility of municipal broadband.
topspin 9y ago
You should avoid citing that page; it's not credible. A specific instance that I know of is Sebewaing Light and Power in Michigan. They built out a publicly owned fiber network that now has over 500 of 1700 residents as customers as of June and will break even in 2018, earlier than expected, whereas your site claims there are only 150 customers. That site was created by Taxpayers Protection Alliance which a Koch front group.
- JBSay 9y ago
  "That site was created by Taxpayers Protection Alliance which a Koch front group." So what? Ad hominem fallacy? When the municipal broadbands fail taxpayers are on the hook for million dollars bail outs. https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2014/09/30/municipal-broadband-a-bad-deal-for-taxpayers/#2911b734125f https://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickgleason/2014/09/30/munic...

InTheArena 9y ago

Boulder had much less fanfare, but much greater techie population also passed this. Its at the point where cities that don't provide great internet will start to see people go live in other communities. The boulder vote was something like 3:1 in favor, as Comcast knew better then to go massively negative. Unfortunately, Boulder city has been trying to go municipal with energy as well, which appears to be failing badly, and that's taking most of their time.

xupybd 9y ago

I don't understand why there is no competition. There must be other people wanting to trying their hand at starting a fibre ISP. Yeah it's expensive, but if there is money to be made there should be people willing to invest. Is there something else preventing competition in the US?

matt4077 9y ago
There is no money to be made. You won't be able to build a network in more than a few cities at first because anything else would cost astronomical amounts of money. That means that the current monopolist in those cities can afford to lower prices, making your investment unprofitable.

klttunets 9y ago

Good! Internet access is a utility now. No one should have to buy something they depend on from Comcast.

doggydogs94 9y ago

I did not understand why Comcast and the other ISPs oppose these initiatives. After the city loses a ton of money running their own ISP, Comcast (or the ISP of your choice) will always be ready to pick up the pieces.

amazon_not 9y ago
Only it doesn't always work out like that. In Chattanooga the local provider displaced Comcast as the largest ISP and they are making good money. Also competition is bad. People might get ideas...

emiliosic 9y ago

It's another evidence that broadband is an utility like telephony or electricity

daveheq 9y ago

Yay maybe people will start learning elsewhere that giant corporations' best interests aren't their customers.

joshmn 9y ago
I'm surprised certain groups haven't started labeling/marketing this as socialism.

dba7dba 9y ago

F u comcast. Sorry had to let it out.