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They annoying thing is that it's not even privitsed in a sensible way. A reservoir company could pay a yearly rent to the taxpayer for the amount of water it co

They annoying thing is that it's not even privitsed in a sensible way. A reservoir company could pay a yearly rent to the taxpayer for the amount of water it could capture, and the space the resoviors use. They could then charge for water on demand per litre to a company that distributes that water, then that company would charge per litre to the consumer Having to buy 1000l of water for £1 and sell it for £1.20 gives a major investment to not throw the stock away through leaks. Other company have incentives to do things like building more storage (to buy supply when it's cheap and sell when it's not), and the consumer gets to choose which supplier to use. Same with sewage. The main problem is the last mile would have to remain in public ownership as you couldn't have multiple companies providing pipes to each premises, and that I believe is where most of the leaks go

nerdchum 4y ago
Internet companies are a good example of how difficult it is to bring a utility to a giant metro area. I'm not sure if that's because of government barriers or because of actual physical logistics. Even Google Fiber seems to have given up. But then you look at places where internet is managed by the government like Fort Collins and you have extremely fast, extremely cheap community internet. But then again, that's a pretty small homogenous rural community. I'm not too familiar with the ins and outs of utility distribution just sporadic data points so I can't hope to get close to the truth about this. It does seem like if you have the government and industry working together on something, it's the worst of all worlds rather than just one or the other.
- iso1631 4y ago
  If the municipality provides the fibre to each house to a local data centre, then private companies can rent space in the data centre to provide services. You still get a choice between ISPs (some may want a proper internet provision, perhaps with BGP handling and no contention on the uplink, others may be happy with a company that provides a wifi access point that also irradiates a public SSID. Presumably the former will cost more, but that's fine) Basically the local road (the fibre) is paid for by the local city and run on behalf of the residents, the local road transports people (packets) to the airport (municipal data centre), where the ISPs pay landing fees to take people where they need to go at different rates for different services, with competition between ISPs, and pretty easy entry costs, ensuring high standards, low prices, and plenty of choice.

nerdchum 4y ago

Internet companies are a good example of how difficult it is to bring a utility to a giant metro area. I'm not sure if that's because of government barriers or because of actual physical logistics. Even Google Fiber seems to have given up. But then you look at places where internet is managed by the government like Fort Collins and you have extremely fast, extremely cheap community internet. But then again, that's a pretty small homogenous rural community. I'm not too familiar with the ins and outs of utility distribution just sporadic data points so I can't hope to get close to the truth about this. It does seem like if you have the government and industry working together on something, it's the worst of all worlds rather than just one or the other.

iso1631 4y ago
If the municipality provides the fibre to each house to a local data centre, then private companies can rent space in the data centre to provide services. You still get a choice between ISPs (some may want a proper internet provision, perhaps with BGP handling and no contention on the uplink, others may be happy with a company that provides a wifi access point that also irradiates a public SSID. Presumably the former will cost more, but that's fine) Basically the local road (the fibre) is paid for by the local city and run on behalf of the residents, the local road transports people (packets) to the airport (municipal data centre), where the ISPs pay landing fees to take people where they need to go at different rates for different services, with competition between ISPs, and pretty easy entry costs, ensuring high standards, low prices, and plenty of choice.