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?
Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado
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Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado
#22I 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?
https://consumerist.com/2014/05/10/why-starting-a-competitor...
https://consumerist.com/2014/03/07/heres-what-lack-of-broadb...
Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado
#23I'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
Do you happen to know where they hire people for working on this? Are they city or state employees, or are they using a bunch of contractors? Edit: Hmm, looks like Fort Collins will use contractors for installs and hire 10 to 38 people over five years (p. 39 - Personnel Requirements): https://www.fcgov.com/broadband/pdf/7.27.17%20Broadband%20Bu... However, this is excluding developers for things like customer portals…
Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado
#24how to encourage other cities to do the same? can colorado guide the rest of the cities and states to through similar initiatives?
Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado
#25I 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?
By "infrastructure" I mean last-mile fiber buried/strung throughout neighborhoods and into peoples' homes. It's expensive to build such infrastructure, due to varieties of local laws, right-of-way access, and for the same reasons leaf nodes are most numerous in typical tree data structures.
So, Comcast's approach is to extract as much money as they can from existing infrastructure which they've built, acquired, or gained exclusive rights to, while directing minimal resources to building new such.
Along with that, they expend a lot of effort lobbying to protect that infrastructure from encroachment or competition by other entities, like other private ISPs, unbundling laws, municipal broadband, and the like.
Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
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
#27Whenever 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?
Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado
#28Earlier 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.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/ezpk77/chattanoog...
A couple shorter articles on the same topic:
https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-comcas...
https://consumerist.com/2017/04/11/comcast-introduces-gigabi...
Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado
#29I 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
#30Whenever 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?
I am sure people in colarado are bold and smart enough to not let such back door efforts come in the way of their expectations.
I mean, really - how dare they?