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HackerNewUser's expectation: Municipal Broadband means that a community gets together, digs their own trenches, pulls their own fiber, and creates a completely

HackerNewUser's expectation: Municipal Broadband means that a community gets together, digs their own trenches, pulls their own fiber, and creates a completely new, modern, independent local fiber network that charges enough to run at Cost + Future Investment. Reality: City Council puts out a bid for construction. Comcast buys the bid. They tell the city "We've already got this super duper hifi modern network we installed in 1834. You'll save a ton of money if you just piggyback that." All residents now get subscribed to Comcastic service. And if they can't pull that off, the "City's traffic" is routed over "Comcast existing superdeuper network infrastructure", which basically means the same thing. Do you really think the entrenched local monopolies are going to let these projects succeed? The problem is, most municipalities simply aren't sophisticated enough to prevent the 2nd scenario from happening. I'm 100% for communities running these projects, but there's only been a handful of success stories. The key to success is keeping the local monopolies out at all costs and make sure you get fresh, independent infrastructure pulled, not leased from one of these asshats.

prophesi 4y ago
I wouldn't say that there's a lack of success stories, there's a lack of policies like this making it through for communities to attempt it in the first place, thanks to lobbyists.
jancsika 4y ago
Where are you getting your reality from? Even here in NC in an "unsophisticated" municipality (as far as tech is concerned), the situation is precisely reversed. The municipality started the project for stringing fiber during the period where the FCC overturned the state law banning muni broadband. And they lease that out to an ISP with a contract requiring delivery of symmetric connectivity. The online reviews for that ISP are the pits; however, in this municipality that ISP hired the team that had been running the muni wifi program that started during that FCC-allows-muni-broadband period. I've been getting 300/300 for months; my ire is now wholly directed at the crappy state of wifi on my linux machines! :( Long story short-- I'd steer clear of taking an upshot about muni broadband in the U.S. unless it's from a user reporting what speeds they are actually getting on a business or residential endpoint on a muni broadband plan, measured over at least a few months.

prophesi 4y ago

I wouldn't say that there's a lack of success stories, there's a lack of policies like this making it through for communities to attempt it in the first place, thanks to lobbyists.

jancsika 4y ago

Where are you getting your reality from? Even here in NC in an "unsophisticated" municipality (as far as tech is concerned), the situation is precisely reversed. The municipality started the project for stringing fiber during the period where the FCC overturned the state law banning muni broadband. And they lease that out to an ISP with a contract requiring delivery of symmetric connectivity. The online reviews for that ISP are the pits; however, in this municipality that ISP hired the team that had been running the muni wifi program that started during that FCC-allows-muni-broadband period. I've been getting 300/300 for months; my ire is now wholly directed at the crappy state of wifi on my linux machines! :( Long story short-- I'd steer clear of taking an upshot about muni broadband in the U.S. unless it's from a user reporting what speeds they are actually getting on a business or residential endpoint on a muni broadband plan, measured over at least a few months.