Well, who expects a private company be able to compete with a ARPA-funded system that gets an extra $26m to pull fiber optics throughout the county? The wordin

Well, who expects a private company be able to compete with a ARPA-funded system that gets an extra $26m to pull fiber optics throughout the county? The wording here is just a tad biased. Two companies, Charter and Verizon, are said to be, "regional New York State monopolies". Yet they're competing against each other. The county government, on the other hand, is truly the only government there, yet when it owns all of the fiber it is somehow encouraging competition. I'm not saying that government ownership of a collective resource is bad. Maybe it's the best option, especially in rural environments, but the tone doesn't seem very fair. $26m is quite a nice chunk of change, even today.