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The fear is that the government will start creating noncompetitive laws once they win the bid. I have no problem with government taking over local ISPs if they

The fear is that the government will start creating noncompetitive laws once they win the bid. I have no problem with government taking over local ISPs if they can deliver a service that's just as good without caving to gov employees when they fall behind. There must exist some shared infrastructure (or cities must allow for redundant service lines) if true competition is to emerge.

CaptainZapp 12y ago
To this European some American laws appear just weird and, I dare say, corrupt. The telecom - and cable industry in the city of Zurich - yelled "bloody murder!" and foretold all sorts of doom and mayhem if the publicly owned electric utility would build a publicly financed fiber network. This happened about ten years ago. The same companies argued that fiber is not economically viable and the investment not worthwhile. They pored massive funds into a NO campaign for the referendum, which was accepted by the public in a landslide, twice! After construction started the biggest telco, Swisscom, actually jumped onto the train. Now, thanks to the foresight of a public utility and the spending of public money Zurich has one of the densest, most modern, high capacity fiber networks. Oh, the argument that a public utility smokes out poor private companies? That's not happening and that's very easy to avoid: EWZ (the utility) does not act as an ISP. They sub lease the network to ISPs under equal and transparent conditions, who in turn sell network capacity to the consumer. This also avoids the "censorship issue", which, in my opinion, is a spurious argument, at best. I'm aghast about some of the arguments used in order to keep the public from pursuing its best interest. I'd wager that a private company, whom's business model is built on force and coercion provides rotten service and will not act in the best interest of its customers. When you look at where broadband stands in the US, compared to the rest of the world, I think my argument has merit.
- mercurial 12y ago
  Besides, as the UK demonstrates, companies will happily implement "voluntary" filtering as soon as somebody in the government starts spelling "regulation", so it makes little difference either way.

CaptainZapp 12y ago

To this European some American laws appear just weird and, I dare say, corrupt. The telecom - and cable industry in the city of Zurich - yelled "bloody murder!" and foretold all sorts of doom and mayhem if the publicly owned electric utility would build a publicly financed fiber network. This happened about ten years ago. The same companies argued that fiber is not economically viable and the investment not worthwhile. They pored massive funds into a NO campaign for the referendum, which was accepted by the public in a landslide, twice! After construction started the biggest telco, Swisscom, actually jumped onto the train. Now, thanks to the foresight of a public utility and the spending of public money Zurich has one of the densest, most modern, high capacity fiber networks. Oh, the argument that a public utility smokes out poor private companies? That's not happening and that's very easy to avoid: EWZ (the utility) does not act as an ISP. They sub lease the network to ISPs under equal and transparent conditions, who in turn sell network capacity to the consumer. This also avoids the "censorship issue", which, in my opinion, is a spurious argument, at best. I'm aghast about some of the arguments used in order to keep the public from pursuing its best interest. I'd wager that a private company, whom's business model is built on force and coercion provides rotten service and will not act in the best interest of its customers. When you look at where broadband stands in the US, compared to the rest of the world, I think my argument has merit.

mercurial 12y ago
Besides, as the UK demonstrates, companies will happily implement "voluntary" filtering as soon as somebody in the government starts spelling "regulation", so it makes little difference either way.