9 ms·

The problem with a municipality is the same as the status quo: Too much monopoly. If they're good, then great, if they're bad then too bad -- no other choice. S

The problem with a municipality is the same as the status quo: Too much monopoly. If they're good, then great, if they're bad then too bad -- no other choice. Same as dealing with Comcast. A better idea is to have the municipality just manage the "last mile" physical cable from the home to the exchange, then have various ISPs operate a backhaul from the exchange outwards, along with customer support, billing, etc. That way the customer has choice of ISPs (real choice) and you aren't running five cables or more from the exchange to a home.

mikeash 9y ago
I don’t think a municipal ISP would necessarily have to be a monopoly.
- jaredklewis 9y ago
  Well it’s pretty hard for private businesses to compete against a municipal ISP. A business has to covers its cost with the fees charged to its customers. A municipal ISP has to cover its cost with the combination fees charged to its customers and subsidies from local government (which are charged to all citizens through taxes, whether or not they use the municipal ISP). Not exactly an enticing business proposition to compete against a company that gets to charge your customers money whether or not they use the competitors service. So unless the municipal ISP is so horribly inefficient that a private entity can compete with them on pricing despite the lack of subsidies, presence of a municipal ISP will lead to a municipal monopoly. I suppose there is also the case of a municipal ISP that receives no government funding, in which case what is the point of the government here? Also, I have never heard of such an arrangement in practice so when people refer municipal ISPs, they are likely referring to government subsidized ISPs.
  - subway 9y ago
    Rather than a full on ISP, I think I'd prefer to see municipal NSPs. The municipality should be concerned with passing packets within the municipality. When an end user needs packets routed outside the municipality, they engage with an ISP connected to the municipality's network. This ends up operating very similarly to the way CLECs have allowed 3rd party ISPs to provide DSL service. The end user has a modem that attached to the CLEC's ATM network, then a PPPoE connection transits the ATM network to the user's ISP. With a municipal NSP, you effectively acknowledge the municipal cable plant and switching fabric as a natural monopoly, while allowing competing ISPs to provide internet transit.
  - shkkmo 9y ago
    > Also, I have never heard of such an arrangement in practice so when people refer municipal ISPs, they are likely referring to government subsidized ISPs. Did you not read the article? EPB is a government owned company and operates at a profit. They seem to be doing a much better job providing high speed coverage to their customers than large publicly traded companies like Comcast.
    - jaredklewis 9y ago
      I can read just fine, thanks. I think EBP is great, but it doesn't really contradict anything I said as EBP received more than $100 million in free federal grants to use in building out its initial fiber optic infrastructure. I'm not against municipal ISPs, but I think government backed businesses are generally going to turn into monopolies, contrary to the parent's comment.
      - shkkmo 9y ago
        > EBP received more than $100 million in free federal grants to use in building out its initial fiber optic infrastructure. A grant is not (technically) a subsidy and I would suspect that the majority of ISPs building infrastructure have received federal grants in some form or another. The difference is that EPB actually provided gigabit speeds instead of taking the money and making excuses. > I think government backed businesses are generally going to turn into monopolies, contrary to the parent's comment. That may be true, but I think they are less likely to become monopolies when they are government owned than when then are owned by a mega-corp. Sure, if you already have several small, privately-owned networks in your area offering gigabit speeds then introducing a municipal competitor may increase your odds becoming a monopoly dominated area. Communities like that are the outliers though and not a valid reason for state legislatures to prohibit municipality owned broadband.
  - knieveltech 9y ago
    Case study in brief: Residents of Wilson, NC were unable to purchase quality high-speed internet access at any price. The incumbent near-monopoly private ISP in the state was disinterested in servicing rural communities to any significant degree, citing "cost of infrastructure" as their primary reason to neglect these markets. Eventually the folks in Wilson got tired of ISDN-equivalent internet access and took matters into their own hands. The municipality floated a bond, contracted to lay fiber, and within a couple years had most of the town wired up with some of the fasted connectivity anywhere on the eastern seaboard. Then (and only then) Time Warner steps in and starts pressuring state legislators to do something because "government shouldn't compete with private industry". HB 129 was drafted, passed the GA, and the governor at the time, while refusing to sign the thing, also refused to veto it. Wilson's ISP was forced to halt expansion despite several other local rural communities interest in getting added to the network. Internet access in eastern NC still sucks, with no remedy in sight.
  - crdoconnor 9y ago
    >Not exactly an enticing business proposition to compete against a company that gets to charge your customers money whether or not they use the competitors service. The less enticing it is to be comcast the better. The government can play a valuable role being a "competitor of last resort" in stagnant markets. I remember when I lived in Singapore (where the government builds a large quantity of social housing at a reasonable quality), the average quality of private housing would be considered stellar elsewhere - simply because the government had set the bar so high.
  - jellicle 9y ago
    The much more likely situation is that a municipal ISP can undercut the competitors on price charged to the public and still throw off a healthy profit to the local government (opposite of a subsidy). Which is why Comcast et al. are so vigorously opposed... they like the current low-competition system.
  - s73v3r_ 9y ago
    "Well it’s pretty hard for private businesses to compete against a municipal ISP." No it's not. All they have to do is provide better service for a good price. Same as any other competitor. "A business has to covers its cost with the fees charged to its customers." Most municipal ISPs are the same.
  - gowld 9y ago
    Local utilities (water, trash, gas, electric) are often provided by municipalities, funded by users. There's no reason they must rely on subsidies from non-user-fee tax sources. USPS is a government agency, and even has a legally protected monopoly on first-class mail pricing, and still gets plenty of competition. What's the point of non-subsidies municipal utilities? Accountability. It uses the structure of government to facilitate cooperative ownership.
grahamburger 9y ago
One problem with this is that a lot of the problems people experience with their Internet service (slow speeds, latency) are due to problems (overcrowding, poorly maintained infrastructure) in the last mile. Unless the municipality is well incentived to fix problems this can be even worse for the end user - the ISP blames the Muni and vice versa and nothing gets fixed. Note that I actually agree that this is a good and maybe the best solution and is actually what I have at home (10 GB fiber on a last mile access network with multiple ISP options! In the U.S., even!) Just pointing out a risk.
- Retric 9y ago
  I disagree. Last mile is just bandwidth and a router, what people complain about is mostly between the last mile and the internet. Netflix slow even though your have X0+Mbit connection on a speed test? That's what people want to fix.
  - grahamburger 9y ago
    Respectfully, I've been building these networks for about 15 years. I assure you that the last mile is often (but not always!) the problem.
    - Retric 9y ago
      In the last 10 years I have had last mile issues once if you include a firmware update on a router taking a while. That may be an outlier, but last mile networks should be stable consider the phone system used to just work? On average less than 5 miles of wiring should almost never have issues. Why is the website down when it's up for other people? Why is my BitTorrent being disconnected? Why is the video stuttering? Where is this lagg coming from? Why is Netflix look like crap? Yea, those are not last mile problems.
      - grahamburger 9y ago
        > Why is the website down when it's up for other people? Why is my BitTorrent being disconnected? Why is the video stuttering? Where is this lagg coming from? Why is Netflix look like crap? Literally all of these things are very commonly last mile problems. (but again, not always.) Consider what happens when a connection on the last mile network starts to get congested and/or underperform due to a physical problem (like an old/degraded copper line.) The provider can either upgrade/fix the network (expensive, time consuming, not profitable in the short term) or they can implement traffic control on that segment. The traffic control could be a high burstable rate with a much lower committed rate. In that situation browsing will feel snappy and speed tests will be good, but downloads and video streams will be slow and buffer. Problem solved from the provider's end - they can point to the speed test as evidence that they're providing what you're paying for and blame the streaming provider for the buffering, and they don't need to spend anything to solve the over-congestion problem! And they're not even breaking net neutrality! But experience for the customer is bad.
Brockenstein 9y ago
> If they're good, then great, if they're bad then too bad -- no other choice. If they're bad elect folks to government for whom fixing the ISP is a high priority... > Same as dealing with Comcast. Not exactly. If you're not happy with your municipal ISP you have some recourse to get people in there who align with your ideals. Yeah it's not an overnight solution, but it's an option you don't have as a single customer being serviced by a nationwide ISP like Comcast.
- jaredklewis 9y ago
  > If they're bad elect folks to government for whom fixing the ISP is a high priority... That hasn't been my experience with American democracy. For one thing, outside of Maine, the US uses first past the poll style elections which invariably lead to elections with only 2 viable candidates. That means the issue of ISP management will be wrapped up with all kinds of other things. For example, let's say I have an opinion on intervention in Syria and the one of the two available parties supports that view. Well, that's great, unless of course I have an opinion on anything else. Excepting that there just so happens to be a candidate that perfectly represents my views on Syria, free trade, the environment, abortion, education, infrastructure investment, military spending, the debt, and everything else, then I will be making compromises. Same at the local level. I will have to weigh any candidates ideas on reforming a badly performing municipal ISP against their ideas on recycling, NIMBY/YIMBYism, and so on. And the above situation is actually the good case. The bad (and much more likely case) case is that both parties, realizing that promising improved performance for a municipal ISP is a difficult endeavor, will not campaign on the issue at all. Instead both parties will focus on easy partisan issues, which are more likely to draw in voters than a nuanced governance issue.
philjohn 9y ago
That's essentially the way the UK market operates, albeit with one company (BT OpenReach) owning the last mile. We have tens of companies that use their network for the last mile and then take over transit at 27 POPs over the country (unless they want to pay BT for transit as well). And the best bit? We have an equivalent of the FCC (OFCOM) who regulate the price that BT is able to charge for access to this network, and to spur investment into faster solutions (g.fast and FTTP) they have recently reduced the amount BT can charge. We also have the AltNets snipping at BT's heels, GigaClear, Hyperoptic, B4RN, TrueSpeed, who are rolling out full fibre networks in different parts of the country. And all of this means prices are generally lower too - Vodafone offer 76 down 20 up using BT's national FTTC infrastructure for $34 a month for totally unlimited use, and that also includes telephone line rental.

mikeash 9y ago

I don’t think a municipal ISP would necessarily have to be a monopoly.

jaredklewis 9y ago
Well it’s pretty hard for private businesses to compete against a municipal ISP. A business has to covers its cost with the fees charged to its customers. A municipal ISP has to cover its cost with the combination fees charged to its customers and subsidies from local government (which are charged to all citizens through taxes, whether or not they use the municipal ISP). Not exactly an enticing business proposition to compete against a company that gets to charge your customers money whether or not they use the competitors service. So unless the municipal ISP is so horribly inefficient that a private entity can compete with them on pricing despite the lack of subsidies, presence of a municipal ISP will lead to a municipal monopoly. I suppose there is also the case of a municipal ISP that receives no government funding, in which case what is the point of the government here? Also, I have never heard of such an arrangement in practice so when people refer municipal ISPs, they are likely referring to government subsidized ISPs.
- subway 9y ago
  Rather than a full on ISP, I think I'd prefer to see municipal NSPs. The municipality should be concerned with passing packets within the municipality. When an end user needs packets routed outside the municipality, they engage with an ISP connected to the municipality's network. This ends up operating very similarly to the way CLECs have allowed 3rd party ISPs to provide DSL service. The end user has a modem that attached to the CLEC's ATM network, then a PPPoE connection transits the ATM network to the user's ISP. With a municipal NSP, you effectively acknowledge the municipal cable plant and switching fabric as a natural monopoly, while allowing competing ISPs to provide internet transit.
- shkkmo 9y ago
  > Also, I have never heard of such an arrangement in practice so when people refer municipal ISPs, they are likely referring to government subsidized ISPs. Did you not read the article? EPB is a government owned company and operates at a profit. They seem to be doing a much better job providing high speed coverage to their customers than large publicly traded companies like Comcast.
  - jaredklewis 9y ago
    I can read just fine, thanks. I think EBP is great, but it doesn't really contradict anything I said as EBP received more than $100 million in free federal grants to use in building out its initial fiber optic infrastructure. I'm not against municipal ISPs, but I think government backed businesses are generally going to turn into monopolies, contrary to the parent's comment.
    - shkkmo 9y ago
      > EBP received more than $100 million in free federal grants to use in building out its initial fiber optic infrastructure. A grant is not (technically) a subsidy and I would suspect that the majority of ISPs building infrastructure have received federal grants in some form or another. The difference is that EPB actually provided gigabit speeds instead of taking the money and making excuses. > I think government backed businesses are generally going to turn into monopolies, contrary to the parent's comment. That may be true, but I think they are less likely to become monopolies when they are government owned than when then are owned by a mega-corp. Sure, if you already have several small, privately-owned networks in your area offering gigabit speeds then introducing a municipal competitor may increase your odds becoming a monopoly dominated area. Communities like that are the outliers though and not a valid reason for state legislatures to prohibit municipality owned broadband.
- knieveltech 9y ago
  Case study in brief: Residents of Wilson, NC were unable to purchase quality high-speed internet access at any price. The incumbent near-monopoly private ISP in the state was disinterested in servicing rural communities to any significant degree, citing "cost of infrastructure" as their primary reason to neglect these markets. Eventually the folks in Wilson got tired of ISDN-equivalent internet access and took matters into their own hands. The municipality floated a bond, contracted to lay fiber, and within a couple years had most of the town wired up with some of the fasted connectivity anywhere on the eastern seaboard. Then (and only then) Time Warner steps in and starts pressuring state legislators to do something because "government shouldn't compete with private industry". HB 129 was drafted, passed the GA, and the governor at the time, while refusing to sign the thing, also refused to veto it. Wilson's ISP was forced to halt expansion despite several other local rural communities interest in getting added to the network. Internet access in eastern NC still sucks, with no remedy in sight.
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  >Not exactly an enticing business proposition to compete against a company that gets to charge your customers money whether or not they use the competitors service. The less enticing it is to be comcast the better. The government can play a valuable role being a "competitor of last resort" in stagnant markets. I remember when I lived in Singapore (where the government builds a large quantity of social housing at a reasonable quality), the average quality of private housing would be considered stellar elsewhere - simply because the government had set the bar so high.
- jellicle 9y ago
  The much more likely situation is that a municipal ISP can undercut the competitors on price charged to the public and still throw off a healthy profit to the local government (opposite of a subsidy). Which is why Comcast et al. are so vigorously opposed... they like the current low-competition system.
- s73v3r_ 9y ago
  "Well it’s pretty hard for private businesses to compete against a municipal ISP." No it's not. All they have to do is provide better service for a good price. Same as any other competitor. "A business has to covers its cost with the fees charged to its customers." Most municipal ISPs are the same.
- gowld 9y ago
  Local utilities (water, trash, gas, electric) are often provided by municipalities, funded by users. There's no reason they must rely on subsidies from non-user-fee tax sources. USPS is a government agency, and even has a legally protected monopoly on first-class mail pricing, and still gets plenty of competition. What's the point of non-subsidies municipal utilities? Accountability. It uses the structure of government to facilitate cooperative ownership.

grahamburger 9y ago

One problem with this is that a lot of the problems people experience with their Internet service (slow speeds, latency) are due to problems (overcrowding, poorly maintained infrastructure) in the last mile. Unless the municipality is well incentived to fix problems this can be even worse for the end user - the ISP blames the Muni and vice versa and nothing gets fixed. Note that I actually agree that this is a good and maybe the best solution and is actually what I have at home (10 GB fiber on a last mile access network with multiple ISP options! In the U.S., even!) Just pointing out a risk.

Retric 9y ago
I disagree. Last mile is just bandwidth and a router, what people complain about is mostly between the last mile and the internet. Netflix slow even though your have X0+Mbit connection on a speed test? That's what people want to fix.
- grahamburger 9y ago
  Respectfully, I've been building these networks for about 15 years. I assure you that the last mile is often (but not always!) the problem.
  - Retric 9y ago
    In the last 10 years I have had last mile issues once if you include a firmware update on a router taking a while. That may be an outlier, but last mile networks should be stable consider the phone system used to just work? On average less than 5 miles of wiring should almost never have issues. Why is the website down when it's up for other people? Why is my BitTorrent being disconnected? Why is the video stuttering? Where is this lagg coming from? Why is Netflix look like crap? Yea, those are not last mile problems.
    - grahamburger 9y ago
      > Why is the website down when it's up for other people? Why is my BitTorrent being disconnected? Why is the video stuttering? Where is this lagg coming from? Why is Netflix look like crap? Literally all of these things are very commonly last mile problems. (but again, not always.) Consider what happens when a connection on the last mile network starts to get congested and/or underperform due to a physical problem (like an old/degraded copper line.) The provider can either upgrade/fix the network (expensive, time consuming, not profitable in the short term) or they can implement traffic control on that segment. The traffic control could be a high burstable rate with a much lower committed rate. In that situation browsing will feel snappy and speed tests will be good, but downloads and video streams will be slow and buffer. Problem solved from the provider's end - they can point to the speed test as evidence that they're providing what you're paying for and blame the streaming provider for the buffering, and they don't need to spend anything to solve the over-congestion problem! And they're not even breaking net neutrality! But experience for the customer is bad.

Brockenstein 9y ago

> If they're good, then great, if they're bad then too bad -- no other choice. If they're bad elect folks to government for whom fixing the ISP is a high priority... > Same as dealing with Comcast. Not exactly. If you're not happy with your municipal ISP you have some recourse to get people in there who align with your ideals. Yeah it's not an overnight solution, but it's an option you don't have as a single customer being serviced by a nationwide ISP like Comcast.

jaredklewis 9y ago
> If they're bad elect folks to government for whom fixing the ISP is a high priority... That hasn't been my experience with American democracy. For one thing, outside of Maine, the US uses first past the poll style elections which invariably lead to elections with only 2 viable candidates. That means the issue of ISP management will be wrapped up with all kinds of other things. For example, let's say I have an opinion on intervention in Syria and the one of the two available parties supports that view. Well, that's great, unless of course I have an opinion on anything else. Excepting that there just so happens to be a candidate that perfectly represents my views on Syria, free trade, the environment, abortion, education, infrastructure investment, military spending, the debt, and everything else, then I will be making compromises. Same at the local level. I will have to weigh any candidates ideas on reforming a badly performing municipal ISP against their ideas on recycling, NIMBY/YIMBYism, and so on. And the above situation is actually the good case. The bad (and much more likely case) case is that both parties, realizing that promising improved performance for a municipal ISP is a difficult endeavor, will not campaign on the issue at all. Instead both parties will focus on easy partisan issues, which are more likely to draw in voters than a nuanced governance issue.

philjohn 9y ago

That's essentially the way the UK market operates, albeit with one company (BT OpenReach) owning the last mile. We have tens of companies that use their network for the last mile and then take over transit at 27 POPs over the country (unless they want to pay BT for transit as well). And the best bit? We have an equivalent of the FCC (OFCOM) who regulate the price that BT is able to charge for access to this network, and to spur investment into faster solutions (g.fast and FTTP) they have recently reduced the amount BT can charge. We also have the AltNets snipping at BT's heels, GigaClear, Hyperoptic, B4RN, TrueSpeed, who are rolling out full fibre networks in different parts of the country. And all of this means prices are generally lower too - Vodafone offer 76 down 20 up using BT's national FTTC infrastructure for $34 a month for totally unlimited use, and that also includes telephone line rental.