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Some municipalities have tried to get into the high-bandwidth-ISP-as-a-public-utility business, because they’re too small for $BIG_TELECO to invest in, but they
by gen220 6y ago
Some municipalities have tried to get into the high-bandwidth-ISP-as-a-public-utility business, because they’re too small for $BIG_TELECO to invest in, but they want fiber networks to attract businesses and remote tech workers. It’s mostly been unsuccessful because running a local and profitable ISP is hard.
In the few municipalities where they’ve been successful, the big telecom companies have been more successful in lobbying state legislatures to make such municipal enterprises illegal. “It won’t be fair to private businesses to have to compete with a tax-funded local teleco.”
It’s a reasonable argument, but it perpetuates the problem. Maybe the solution is for cities to award a prize (say, $2mm) to private ISPs that can offer high bandwidth connections.
- tirpen 6y agoIt's not a reasonable argument at all. It's like arguing that the USPS is "not fair" to companies like UPS or FedEx. Or that public buses are not fair to Uber. Or libraries to book stores.
- gen220 6y agoHey, I agree with you. I was just trying to give context on what’s happening, without passing judgement or inflections my opinion. I guess I would rephrase it as “it’s not a totally unreasonable argument”, i.e. you can understand why it would be persuasive to small c conservatives and libertarians who would otherwise be pro-any-policy-that-attracts-business. It depends on whether you see access to high bandwidth internet as a public utility or not. Arguably it is, because the economics of it don’t make usually make sense for private companies unless that private company is a monopoly.