4 ms·

It's entirely possible for the same situation to happen in a free market, and it does in some states. Replace "municipality" with "private corporation that owns

It's entirely possible for the same situation to happen in a free market, and it does in some states. Replace "municipality" with "private corporation that owns the common areas of the subdivision" (sometimes called "homeowners' associations" or similar names). As long as there's a landowner that owns land that's necessary to transit to run cable to a neighborhood, they can reach exclusive deals with providers, because you can't dig up stuff without permission of the landowner. And having lived in both "traditional municipalities" and the new private-style non-municipalities in Texas, it's not clear to me the latter result in markets that are freer in any meaningful sense: in both cases the only real freedom you have against the organization is to either try to change their policies through internal democracy (municipal elections, board elections, etc.), or "vote with your feet" and move to a different organization's territory.

jmccree 13y ago
Our HOA fees cover providing internet access for every resident. I've found the end-user "tech support" to be totally incompetent. (A call back 3 DAYS after I submitting traceroutes showing my traffic was stuck in a routing loop in their network, wherein the "tech support professional" asked me to try rebooting my computer before even asking me if I was still having issues. I hung up mid-script.) However, when we had consistent outages and horrible service, I eventually gathered enough evidence to give to the HOA of what the problem was, and when the HOA contacted the ISP, they looped me into an email chain with their account rep and we got immediate service. If we all had to choose Comcast or ATT individually, neither would really care about individuals. But the HOA is in a much larger bargaining position and our ISP cares about losing the whole building. From my experience and friends in the area, those in condo buildings with the exclusive ISP arrangement tend to get better/faster service than those in condos with the standard cable/telco choice. Since condo buildings are managed by the residents who mostly use internet, usually enough percentage care about the quality of internet access to hold the exclusive ISP accountable or replace them. Of course in Apt buildings, mgmt just views internet as an expense and it's a different scenario.

jmccree 13y ago

Our HOA fees cover providing internet access for every resident. I've found the end-user "tech support" to be totally incompetent. (A call back 3 DAYS after I submitting traceroutes showing my traffic was stuck in a routing loop in their network, wherein the "tech support professional" asked me to try rebooting my computer before even asking me if I was still having issues. I hung up mid-script.) However, when we had consistent outages and horrible service, I eventually gathered enough evidence to give to the HOA of what the problem was, and when the HOA contacted the ISP, they looped me into an email chain with their account rep and we got immediate service. If we all had to choose Comcast or ATT individually, neither would really care about individuals. But the HOA is in a much larger bargaining position and our ISP cares about losing the whole building. From my experience and friends in the area, those in condo buildings with the exclusive ISP arrangement tend to get better/faster service than those in condos with the standard cable/telco choice. Since condo buildings are managed by the residents who mostly use internet, usually enough percentage care about the quality of internet access to hold the exclusive ISP accountable or replace them. Of course in Apt buildings, mgmt just views internet as an expense and it's a different scenario.