When Xfiniti was the only broadband option in my neighborhood, I was paying a lot for crappy service. Then AT&T decided to compete with them, ran fiber to my ho

When Xfiniti was the only broadband option in my neighborhood, I was paying a lot for crappy service. Then AT&T decided to compete with them, ran fiber to my house for no charge, and now I have a symmetric gigabit for less money. Policies designed to encourage this kind of competition should be preferred to some sort of public utility. This can include municipally-owned fiber, with the bandwidth rented out to providers, it can include subsidizing rural broadband, and it can include requiring that providers who are a monopoly in a given area meet certain standards in terms of quality and price. What I don't want is to backslide into a situation where I have only one option, and if it sucks, well then I'm welcome to not use the Internet. That option being publicly owned is at least as likely to make the result worse as it is better.