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I was involved in a local government committee to investigate local broadband for my town. The incumbents were understandably lazy at improving service quality,

by ttul 5y ago

I was involved in a local government committee to investigate local broadband for my town. The incumbents were understandably lazy at improving service quality, so we struck out on our own to look at alternatives, including a municipally run service or wholesale backbone. What actually happened is someone in government called up a friend at a municipal fiber specialist company, who agreed to start making rumblings that they were going to pull fiber to our town. Within two weeks, one of the large incumbents announced their own project for a $6M upgrade, which involved running submarine cables and totally rewiring the town’s network to enable gigabit service. I’m saddened that the town never got a chance to build and own its own infrastructure, which would have been so much better, because it would have put locals in charge of this essential infrastructure - much as they already control water, roads, and sewage. But, ultimately, I now have gigabit service at a reasonably competitive price, in a small town that arguably never “deserved” it.

chmod775 5y ago
> in a small town that arguably never “deserved” it. Apparently it was still profitable. Just less so than continuing to milk old infrastructure.
- smiley1437 5y ago
  I suspect the incumbents also want to minimize the number of precedent-setting municipalities that control their own broadband. Each one could potentially become a good example of the benefits of publicly owned infrastructure - and then inspire other cities to do the same.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
darig 5y ago
I live in a small city, but it's the biggest one 100+ miles in any direction, so it shows on most maps. AT&T laid fiber everywhere, but just capped off all the endpoints. Now any plan to lay municipal fiber would probably interfere with AT&T's infrastructure, and AT&T could hold up the process. If anyone actually made anything that worked, AT&T could just finish the job (that they got grants to do that assumed they wouldn't just stop after the fiber was laid), and compete on price. Shady, shady business.
rz2k 5y ago
The incumbent ISP would have eventually had to upgrade to gigabit anyway. Maybe they were waiting until the same upgrade would cost $2M instead of $6M. Clearly, they revised their schedule because decades of revenue streams, even from a small town, can be worth more than the relative expense of upgrading now rather than later. Did the rates increase for customers who chose the new gigabit service? Often the new service offering doesn't make sense to a monopoly provider in terms of revenue increases in the short term, so competition or threat of public options are an important tool that can work even better than public utility boards. Finally, it's worth noting that with changing political climates priorities changes, especially when it comes to infrastructure. The Flint water system was publicly managed, and it isn't even the worst one in the country. Thousands of publicly managed bridges are at risk of collapse due to underfunded maintenance. Cold War fears about existential threats motivated great federal projects that focused on resiliency and creating the foundations for productivity. Without those same threats, legislation mandates intentional vulnerabilities like backdoors, fails to fund national standards that could limit cyber-extortion, and new internet-related initiatives are regularly more intent on erecting barriers to entry and toll booths than they are on nurturing any new or disruptive industries.
- doikor 5y ago
  > Maybe they were waiting until the same upgrade would cost $2M instead of $6M. Most of the cost is the actual digging/laying new fiber. The price of that does not really go down over time (instead the cost of labor goes up over time usually). The actual fiber and equipment is a very small part of the cost. This happened at my parents town. They were looking at setting up their own municipal ISP and after some research/quotes it ended up costing X which was too much. They tried again a decade later and the cost for roughly the same system was 1.5X so even more out of their budget. The other case is the fiber already existing and the ISP refuses to upgrade to enable higher speeds then that is just pure greed.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    The trick is to seize on when existing infra projects are being done (major roadwork or perhaps replacing water, sewer, or buried power) and throw the conduit and fiber down at the same time, as the incremental cost is trivial. This is referred to as Dig Once policy. Fiber is cheap. When you dig, install fiber! https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/otps/policy_brief_dig_once.pdf https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/otps/policy_brief_dig_once.p...
skybrian 5y ago
That’s some good negotiating. It’s probably for the best because the town doesn’t have to take the financial risk? If something goes wrong you want there to be some shareholders to take the loss. (In return, they profit if nothing goes wrong.) A lot of towns have a huge bill coming up when they have to replace outdated sewer systems. > The EPA reckons water and sewer systems will need $743 billion of upgrades through 2035 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/climate-change-means-water-and-sewer-utilities-will-need-billion-of-upgrades-over-the-next-decade-report-says-11620753790 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/climate-change-means-water...
- ttul 5y ago
  As a consumer, I am not terribly displeased. Value-wise, I would have preferred that the municipality ended up owning the base fiber infrastructure and leasing it out to commercial operators. But that fantasy has passed.
m463 5y ago
> reasonably competitive price I would suggest that this is a lower price, but not a price you would get with robust competition.
- xbar 5y ago
  No doubt. But it's 2021 and rural communities are catching up to where urban centers were 10 years ago. Not perfect, but better.

by ttul 5y ago

chmod775 5y ago

> in a small town that arguably never “deserved” it. Apparently it was still profitable. Just less so than continuing to milk old infrastructure.

smiley1437 5y ago
I suspect the incumbents also want to minimize the number of precedent-setting municipalities that control their own broadband. Each one could potentially become a good example of the benefits of publicly owned infrastructure - and then inspire other cities to do the same.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

darig 5y ago

I live in a small city, but it's the biggest one 100+ miles in any direction, so it shows on most maps. AT&T laid fiber everywhere, but just capped off all the endpoints. Now any plan to lay municipal fiber would probably interfere with AT&T's infrastructure, and AT&T could hold up the process. If anyone actually made anything that worked, AT&T could just finish the job (that they got grants to do that assumed they wouldn't just stop after the fiber was laid), and compete on price. Shady, shady business.

rz2k 5y ago

The incumbent ISP would have eventually had to upgrade to gigabit anyway. Maybe they were waiting until the same upgrade would cost $2M instead of $6M. Clearly, they revised their schedule because decades of revenue streams, even from a small town, can be worth more than the relative expense of upgrading now rather than later. Did the rates increase for customers who chose the new gigabit service? Often the new service offering doesn't make sense to a monopoly provider in terms of revenue increases in the short term, so competition or threat of public options are an important tool that can work even better than public utility boards. Finally, it's worth noting that with changing political climates priorities changes, especially when it comes to infrastructure. The Flint water system was publicly managed, and it isn't even the worst one in the country. Thousands of publicly managed bridges are at risk of collapse due to underfunded maintenance. Cold War fears about existential threats motivated great federal projects that focused on resiliency and creating the foundations for productivity. Without those same threats, legislation mandates intentional vulnerabilities like backdoors, fails to fund national standards that could limit cyber-extortion, and new internet-related initiatives are regularly more intent on erecting barriers to entry and toll booths than they are on nurturing any new or disruptive industries.

doikor 5y ago
> Maybe they were waiting until the same upgrade would cost $2M instead of $6M. Most of the cost is the actual digging/laying new fiber. The price of that does not really go down over time (instead the cost of labor goes up over time usually). The actual fiber and equipment is a very small part of the cost. This happened at my parents town. They were looking at setting up their own municipal ISP and after some research/quotes it ended up costing X which was too much. They tried again a decade later and the cost for roughly the same system was 1.5X so even more out of their budget. The other case is the fiber already existing and the ISP refuses to upgrade to enable higher speeds then that is just pure greed.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  The trick is to seize on when existing infra projects are being done (major roadwork or perhaps replacing water, sewer, or buried power) and throw the conduit and fiber down at the same time, as the incremental cost is trivial. This is referred to as Dig Once policy. Fiber is cheap. When you dig, install fiber! https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/otps/policy_brief_dig_once.pdf https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/otps/policy_brief_dig_once.p...

skybrian 5y ago

That’s some good negotiating. It’s probably for the best because the town doesn’t have to take the financial risk? If something goes wrong you want there to be some shareholders to take the loss. (In return, they profit if nothing goes wrong.) A lot of towns have a huge bill coming up when they have to replace outdated sewer systems. > The EPA reckons water and sewer systems will need $743 billion of upgrades through 2035 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/climate-change-means-water-and-sewer-utilities-will-need-billion-of-upgrades-over-the-next-decade-report-says-11620753790 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/climate-change-means-water...

ttul 5y ago
As a consumer, I am not terribly displeased. Value-wise, I would have preferred that the municipality ended up owning the base fiber infrastructure and leasing it out to commercial operators. But that fantasy has passed.

m463 5y ago

> reasonably competitive price I would suggest that this is a lower price, but not a price you would get with robust competition.

xbar 5y ago
No doubt. But it's 2021 and rural communities are catching up to where urban centers were 10 years ago. Not perfect, but better.