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Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado

arstechnica.com

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Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado

#11

Post by _greim_ »

peterjmag wrote: post #2

I'm pretty proud of my hometown for passing this measure! Longmont, a town 30 miles south of Fort Collins, passed something similar a couple years ago, and it sounds like it's been pretty successful so far[1], so I'm excited to see where this goes. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15570559#up_15573817

Yes, all us front-rangers are envious of you, Longmont :)

I'm guessing word-of-mouth helped defeat incumbents' efforts to kill this, as much as anything. It's almost become a standard conversation piece around here: "I'm from Longmont." "Oh, you have decent internet, then? Jealous!"

Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado

#12

Post by bllguo »

chungy wrote: post #9
sizzzzlerz wrote: post #6

Keep your powder dry, Coloradians. COMCAST is like some non-giving up cable guy who simply won't let citizens determine their own fate when there is oodles of money to be made from them instead. Prepare for them to come back through the rear door, bribing the legislature and congress to enact laws that restrict the practice just approved.

Maybe it's just me, but the right thing for Comcast to do is try to provide a better product. Competition is healthy, legislation is illness.

Did you misinterpret? Obviously it's not just you. No consumer would be happier if Comcast didn't try to provide a better product. The point is that judging by their past actions, Comcast won't do that.

Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado

#13

Post by ssambros »

chungy wrote: post #9
sizzzzlerz wrote: post #6

Keep your powder dry, Coloradians. COMCAST is like some non-giving up cable guy who simply won't let citizens determine their own fate when there is oodles of money to be made from them instead. Prepare for them to come back through the rear door, bribing the legislature and congress to enact laws that restrict the practice just approved.

Maybe it's just me, but the right thing for Comcast to do is try to provide a better product. Competition is healthy, legislation is illness.

Apparently corporations take the path of least resistance - it's cheaper to 'influence' the big state instead of competing in an open market. Now the question is: will increasing the power of the state make such behavior less or more lucrative?

Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado

#16

Post by dhimes »

bllguo wrote: post #12
chungy wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe it's just me, but the right thing for Comcast to do is try to provide a better product. Competition is healthy, legislation is illness.

Did you misinterpret? Obviously it's not just you. No consumer would be happier if Comcast didn't try to provide a better product. The point is that judging by their past actions, Comcast won't do that.

No, he's agreeing with everybody that Comcast acts shitty when they do this.

Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado

#17

Post by jclulow »

Bromskloss wrote: post #14

I hear a lot of people being dissatisfied with Comcast. What is it that makes them so hard to compete with that people have to resort to city-run networks?

I don't really see why having the city run its own Internet service should be considered a resort. Getting the profit motive as far away from basic utilities like Internet transit as possible seems like a win, because you don't want an undifferentiated bit pipe to have to continue to make more and more money over time.

Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado

#18

Post by peterjmag »

exhilaration wrote: post #7

Whenever this happens - and it happens a lot - Comcast & Co just goes up a level to the state legislature and has them outlaw municipal broadband: https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/08/28/15404/how-big-tel... Can't they just do the same thing in Colorado?

Theoretically, yes. In fact, Senate Bill 152, passed in 2005, already outlaws municipal broadband. From the article:

Colorado has a state law requiring municipalities to hold referendums before they can provide cable, telecom, or broadband service. Yesterday, voters in Eagle County and Boulder County authorized their local governments to build broadband networks, "bringing the total number of Colorado counties that have rejected the state law to 31—nearly half of the state's 64 counties," Motherboard wrote today.

As far as I know, there have been attempts to make it impossible for a community to opt-out, but nothing's been successful yet. In fact, most recently, it looks like the tide has been turning in favor of repealing the ban state-wide (which wouldn't be surprising considering the 31 counties that have already opted out). Here's a bit more info:

https://co-wa.org/2017/01/26/senate-bill-152-primer/

Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado

#19

Post by sigstoat »

zanny wrote: post #5
user-on1 wrote: post #4

how to encourage other cities to do the same? can colorado guide the rest of the cities and states to through similar initiatives?

If your town / city is less than 10k people simply going to city council open forum meetings (most places host those monthly or quarterly, some even weekly) and constantly hounding representatives about it being a problem with a straightforward solution (taxpayer funded public telecom operation in the city). Probably the #1 problem is the ignorance of how bad the telecom monopoly is in the US, that there even are alt…

> Probably the #1 problem is the ignorance of how bad the telecom monopoly is in the US, that there even are alternatives, and that this is the problem domain government needs to approach in the same way they approach electric access or roads.

amusingly, boulder county, which passed this same thing, tried for years to get out of maintaining my neighborhood's roads. (and our electric service is privately provided.)

Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado

#20

Post by oh_sigh »

exhilaration wrote: post #7

Whenever this happens - and it happens a lot - Comcast & Co just goes up a level to the state legislature and has them outlaw municipal broadband: https://www.publicintegrity.org/2014/08/28/15404/how-big-tel... Can't they just do the same thing in Colorado?

muni broadband already has an established history in colarado - for example nextlight by Longmont, CO
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