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When the company offerings can be beaten with local government offerings you know something is bad. Wondering why US has such terrible internet options.
corruption.
Internet access, like a lot of "free market" items in the USA are really a "capture" market. You grab your share and then get the government to keep out competitors.
When the company offerings can be beaten with local government offerings you know something is bad. Wondering why US has such terrible internet options.
Nobody asks “why does Germany and France have such terrible internet options?”
When the company offerings can be beaten with local government offerings you know something is bad. Wondering why US has such terrible internet options.
Akamai ranks the US in top 10 for actual speeds, ahead of every large EU country: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiS... Nobody asks “why does Germany and France have such terrible internet options?”
Earlier quoted context omitted.
corruption.
Yup. Good old corruption. Funny fact I learned recently: The US is one of the most corrupt countries in the first world, especially at the state and municipal level.
Good! By allowing individual municipalities to manage their own Internet infrastructure, we can help keep the Internet from becoming effectively owned by the likes of Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon.
I'm nervous about how thoughtlessly we're embracing public ISP ownership. Local governments are notoriously corrupt, in both politics and police. These referenda expand their power without rebalancing any checks or balances. We just happen to have something breathlessly more broken in the monopoly ISPs.
Going forward, it would be nice to see cities re-open their networks to private management. The city would continue to own the infrastructure. But subpoenas, et cetera would be served to the private operator.
We have some towns on the eastern shore of MD that did municipal cable, back when that was the state of the art. Those systems are lagging far behind Comcast now because nobody wants to raise rates to generate cash for upgrades.
Municipal fiber is a solution to a problem created by the municipalities. The municipalities suppress competition by using their authority over TV regulation to impose build-out requirements. You can’t enter as a competitor without building out to a whole city. No MVPs or niche products.
There's also more free-market ways to accomplish the same thing. Stockholm, for example, has quasi-municipal dark fiber. The network was built by a company created by the city for that purpose. While the city owns the company, the city does not run the company, fund it, or control its business strategy (prices, deployment). The company built the fiber network using private capital, charging customers up-front for a hookup, and expanding the network over more than a decade based on demand and revenue potential (e.g. businesses first), rather than politics.
1300 residents? How many individual premises? That is a rather small scan gpon project. Hope they hire someone with a clue and experience to build and run it, there is not a lot of Venn diagram overlap between municipal managers and network engineers. I do hope they realize that if they want to do everything themselves, they'll still need transport links to the nearest major IX point, and IP transit upstreams. I don'…
Sounds like they need to hire you. Your third option sounds pretty smart.
But they are also electrical grid operators and share common expenses for lineman crews, bucket trucks, etc between power and fiber. A town of 1300 people is in a very different position.
Good! By allowing individual municipalities to manage their own Internet infrastructure, we can help keep the Internet from becoming effectively owned by the likes of Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon.
> By allowing individual municipalities to manage their own Internet infrastructure, we can help keep the Internet from becoming effectively owned by the likes of Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon I'm nervous about how thoughtlessly we're embracing public ISP ownership. Local governments are notoriously corrupt, in both politics and police. These referenda expand their power without rebalancing any checks or balances. We ju…
My local community owning my roads, sidewalks, water, sewer (storm AND human waste), fire hydrant infrastructure, as well as fire and police services has worked out a-ok. And while I take issue with Florida politics, EVERYTHING is open records. If my local police are corrupt and obtaining data illegally from my muni ISP, I can involve my state's attorney or other legal oversight bodies.
So! The overreaching issue isn't "this is about local internet infra", it's about local governance and self-reliance, which I find it difficult to argue against. Concentrated power corrupts, distributed power empowers.
Obligatory Muni/Startup ISP links: https://muninetworks.org/communitymap | https://startyourownisp.com/
1300 residents? How many individual premises? That is a rather small scan gpon project. Hope they hire someone with a clue and experience to build and run it, there is not a lot of Venn diagram overlap between municipal managers and network engineers. I do hope they realize that if they want to do everything themselves, they'll still need transport links to the nearest major IX point, and IP transit upstreams. I don'…
Good! By allowing individual municipalities to manage their own Internet infrastructure, we can help keep the Internet from becoming effectively owned by the likes of Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon.