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Aren't most if not all of Large ISPs public companies? They answer to the shareholders... Their business model revolves around making their shareholders the mos
by vuln 8y ago
Aren't most if not all of Large ISPs public companies? They answer to the shareholders... Their business model revolves around making their shareholders the most amount of money possible. The company answers to the shareholders.
A Municipal ISP are mostly non/low profit, they have no share holders to pay out. No one looking for their 'investment' back as capital, just people looking for stable internet. The Muni ISP answers to the customers.
- knieveltech 8y agoFun Fact: In many parts of the US it is "illegal" for municipalities to run an ISP.
- mgkimsal 8y agoThere's little 'fun' about that 'fact', especially for some of us folks in more rural areas... :/
- knieveltech 8y agoI appreciate your situation. I verbally chewed on every staffer Bev Purdue could cajole into answering the phones during the run-up to HB 129 passing in North Carolina. Alas, in these parts rednecks vincit omnia.
- gowld 8y agoSlurs are not acceptable on HN.
- knieveltech 8y agoYou claim a slur has been used? Please point it out.
- patricius 8y agoThe money has got to come from somewhere. If you want the municipality to run an ISP, then you either have to tax the citizens for the services or take funds from somewhere else. Either way, can we be sure that good intentions from democratically elected local politicians will be enough to somehow make Internet service cheaper than what the private sector is able to provide?
- arthur_pryor 8y ago> The money has got to come from somewhere sure, but the total operating cost can be lower, because they don't have to rake in profit. said another way, the profit-making imperative is operating overhead that a municipal ISP doesn't have. since their total cost of operation is lower, and since their incentives are more aligned with the desires of their customers, they can provide a better experience for said customers, while using less resources overall. the only people who lose are shareholders of for-profit ISPs. i find that trade-off acceptable.
- patricius 8y agoShareholders are also people. Some shareholders are large and rich. Some are small. Some are pension funds that want their members to receive dividends and returns. And maybe I am a pessimist, but I haven't seen that many examples of government run enterprises that can be said to be well-run. And how are we ever able to know whether they are run well when they are tax financed?
- rectang 8y ago> Shareholders are also people. Shareholders are also miles away from any negative impact that their companies have on the communities in which they operate -- unlike small business owners who interact directly with their customers. Public corporations are thus more inclined to behave solely according to profit motives, making them less like people and more like undomesticated wildlife, indifferent to humanity.
- 8y ago
- MrFantastic 8y agoElected Local Government Officials answer to their lobbyists.
- briandear 8y agoMuni ISPs answer to the politicians and agencies that run it. The IRS answers to the “customers” as well, but they are far more painful to deal with than any private company. ISPs answer to the shareholders and shareholder value comes from making a product people want to buy. The answer is more competition, less regulation, fewer “exclusive” deals negotiated by municipalities.
- Someone1234 8y ago> but they are far more painful to deal with than any private company. They are? They've always been super responsive and polite when I've had to deal with them.
- jounker 8y agoMy interactions with the IRS have been uniformly good. I’d rate their customer service among the best I’ve ever experienced.
- briandear 8y agoYou’ve never lived outside the US then.
- wbl 8y agoI made a mistake and paid them too much. They sent back a letter and a check and fixed the problem for me.
- 49bc 8y agoThe stable solution is almost always a partnership, with tax dollars being used to built and maintain infrastructure and private dollars being used to maintain service. The infrastructure is the hard and expensive part.
- fgonzag 8y agoIn my opinion, the simplest (and fairest) solution would be for municipalities to lay down the fiber itself, including last mile connectivity (paid for by whoever develops the land), and the city simply Rents out the fiber to any company interested in servicing the area (all companies would pay the exact same rate). They would simply have to come in with their networking equipment and peering agreements. This would greatly increase competition, in a sense it'd be as free market as possible.
- Max_aaa 8y agoLook at how the internet is done in New Zealand. We have a handful is big companies that own the fiber, and copper networks and a lot of ISPs that essentially rent the last mile. Chorus, is one of the biggest infrastructure providers: https://www.chorus.co.nz/tools-support/broadband-tools/broadband-providers https://www.chorus.co.nz/tools-support/broadband-tools/broad...
- ryandrake 8y agoThe headline is, by definition, true for all businesses with shareholders. There is no such thing as enough money. $N+1 in earnings is always better than $N, therefore there does not exist a business in the world that "makes enough money".