Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead • Hacker News Board

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#141

Post by wool_gather » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 5:56 PM UTC

ergothus wrote: post #112

netcan wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some things tend to be outside the competence of government departments. Face-to-consumer business tends to be one of them. Public telcomms were the norm in most of the world (sans US) until the 80s-90s. It wasn't good. What an ISP is is customer support & infrastructure. These sorts of ideas make ISPs less infrastructure, more customer facing services. Btw, this is not some untested theory. It's been done a bunch of…

For areas where occasional failure and/or occasional required provider changes are tolerable (basic education, for example, may not qualify as one of these): competitive market > govt control > uncompetitive market to be more realistic, there's overlap at the ends of these - you can find some local govts that outperformed competitive markets and some uncompetitive markets that outperform local govts, but on average,…

> so a competitive market won't stay competitive forever just by existing

Certainly. If we consider "competitive market" under the same rubric that you proposed: "areas where occasional failure and/or occasional required provider changes are tolerable", it clearly fails that test. So we can probably say that ensuring a stable, competitive market may be a government's responsibility.

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#142

Post by dragonwriter » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 6:00 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #137

lolc wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize the people who will be taxed over this agreed to it? > throw in that any project past a few years will see the costs explode and this will mean that many will never see their new internet any time soon. Speculation. > it will be interesting what protections are built into the system that prevent the government from tracking the habits of the residents using the service. The same protections you'd get from…

You realize that 89 people out of 1300 residents voted against the Comcast deal. That is not the same as a majority of residents voting for a tax increase to pay for internet. So no, the people that will be taxed overwhelmingly did not agree to this.

People who choose not to vote choose, by so doing, to defer to the preferences of those who vote.

Also, the municipal deployment was approved in 2015, this was rejecting Comcast's offer to become a monopoly provider with inferior technology to head that off.

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#143

Post by theptip » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 6:10 PM UTC

xoa wrote: post #120

bronco21016 wrote: post #86

I hate Comcast with a passion and have always fantasized about living in a progressive municipality that provides fiber to the home. However, a few years ago I bought a home and it’s only been over the last 6 months or so I’ve realized how horribly corrupt and mismanaged small city governments can be. We’re being sucked dry by our mayor who hired her cousin as city manager for an exorbitant compensation package. They…

> is the panacea we all hope for I have never seen "panacea" used by anyone except those opposed to any public infrastructure, and while you sound like you're speaking in all good faith and I appreciate that I still have trouble seeing this as something other then a strawman. Of course governments can have issues too. Public roads can have potholes. Bridges have not been kept up. Public parks aren't always maintained…

> I have never seen "panacea" used by anyone except those opposed to any public infrastructure

This is a good point; seems like an isolated demand for rigor. The bar we should be aiming to be above is "better than Comcast", which is a quite low standard.

> Corruption is simply something that has to be fought, period, but we do have the tools to do so more easily at the local government level then for more widely distributed private entities.

I like this way of putting it. At the local scope, you aren't fighting well-paid lobbyists; you just have to persuade a majority of people in your area, and that's a much more tractable problem.

The only problem here is that people tend to care less about local politics (turnout is lower, information flow is harder, etc.) which does add challenges.

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#144

Post by Riseed » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 6:13 PM UTC

luckydata wrote: post #140

I despise Comcast like everyone here but I'm not sure I would be so happy about municipal internet service unless there was some way to make it not suck. I'm speaking from experience, I used to live in San Bruno that has San Bruno Cable and it's one of the worst customer support experiences I've ever had in my life. I'm currently living in the East Bay, I have Comcast and while I had my share of issues with them both…

> Is it even possible to have good internet service in this country?

Yes. I have zero complaints about sonic.[0] They deliver reliable service at a reasonable price (cheaper than Comcast's intro pricing here), and have stellar customer service and punctual install techs. They also have a history of receiving all 5 stars on EFF's yearly "Who Has Your Back" report [1].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_(ISP)

[1] https://www.eff.org/who-has-your-back-2017

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#145

Post by ghostly_s » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 6:19 PM UTC

ghaff wrote: post #126

Coldgamr wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A more broad question. Why is it that corrupt officials continue to get re-elected? Especially in a small town (speaking as someone who has never lived in a small town), it seems like the residents would be better informed of a representative's corruption.

It’s rarely corruption as such. In a genuinely small town, you have town officials maybe making $30K per year and decisions like the one discussed here being voted on by the 10% who care enough to show up at a town meeting. Most probably hadn’t heard what was going on if there’s no town newspaper. I don’t mean to sound bleak. I live in a small town. In general public works does a fine job. I’m not sure I’d trust them…

Sounds like your small town is socially dysfunctional. If you think your neighbors are apathetic, why aren't you out doorknocking to get them to show up to these things, or bringing it up at the church potluck/what have you? I don't see how these things are different in cities except when people are wiling to do this civic engagement work.

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#146

Post by onlyrealcuzzo » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 6:23 PM UTC

xoa wrote: post #120

bronco21016 wrote: post #86

I hate Comcast with a passion and have always fantasized about living in a progressive municipality that provides fiber to the home. However, a few years ago I bought a home and it’s only been over the last 6 months or so I’ve realized how horribly corrupt and mismanaged small city governments can be. We’re being sucked dry by our mayor who hired her cousin as city manager for an exorbitant compensation package. They…

> is the panacea we all hope for I have never seen "panacea" used by anyone except those opposed to any public infrastructure, and while you sound like you're speaking in all good faith and I appreciate that I still have trouble seeing this as something other then a strawman. Of course governments can have issues too. Public roads can have potholes. Bridges have not been kept up. Public parks aren't always maintained…

Is private sector waste a big thing?

I wonder if there's something simple we're missing for a way to stop public spending that goes to corruption/waste.

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#147

Post by dd36 » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 6:24 PM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #68

cm2187 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is the bulk of the cost is pulling wires. Fiber optic cables have an almost unlimited theoretical bandwidth. You just need to upgrade the hardware on both sides, which is getting cheaper by the minute.

A lot of the cost is pulling wires, but the equipment on both sides is also a major expense. FiOS scaled up from 75 mbps to 1 gbps over the same passive infrastructure, but the cost of upgrades was substantial. BPON line cards were upgraded to GPON linecards, and an upgrade to NGPON2 is in the works. As bandwidth went up, the number of customers per line card had to go down. 1G router ports had to be upgraded to 10G…

Why would it cost the government more to do that than Verizon?

Half joking: is it because the government gave Verizon billions of dollars?

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#148

Post by zzzcpan » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 6:30 PM UTC

luckydata wrote: post #140

I despise Comcast like everyone here but I'm not sure I would be so happy about municipal internet service unless there was some way to make it not suck. I'm speaking from experience, I used to live in San Bruno that has San Bruno Cable and it's one of the worst customer support experiences I've ever had in my life. I'm currently living in the East Bay, I have Comcast and while I had my share of issues with them both…

> unless there was some way to make it not suck.

There is no way. Highly reliable internet access can only be achieved via multiple independent ISPs including independent last miles. And if high reliability is not important, competition is still the only way to make ISPs care enough for customers not to switch ISPs.

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#149

Post by gregmac » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 6:31 PM UTC

craftyguy wrote: post #72

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it would be much more efficient for a municipality to just negotiate citywide peering agreements for everyone Negotiating peering, providing customer support, buying routers and modems, maintaining equipment, et cetera isn't a core competency of most municipalities. If municipal broadband scales, we'll likely replace the ISPs with broadband servicing companies. Explicitly privatizing those operations makes it more…

> providing customer support It could be argued that they don't even provide this adequately in areas where they are a market monopoly. My local government provides far better customer support. When there is an issue or grievance, there is a place to file it and someone will always respond. As an added bonus, they don't try to sell me additional services every 5 minutes.

> > providing customer support

> It could be argued that they don't even provide this adequately in areas where they are a market monopoly.

It's almost as if being a monopoly means you don't have to invest in cost centers like customer support...

Really though this is pretty much the core problem. High costs + build-out requirements mean monopolies are granted, whether explicitly or not.

Municipal last mile means the hardest part is done once, and then any ISP is free to compete -- which they can do based on offering the best support, fastest peering, etc. The cost of entering the market is reduced to getting set up in the PoP(s).

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#150

Post by microcolonel » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 6:33 PM UTC

theptip wrote: post #143

xoa wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is the panacea we all hope for I have never seen "panacea" used by anyone except those opposed to any public infrastructure, and while you sound like you're speaking in all good faith and I appreciate that I still have trouble seeing this as something other then a strawman. Of course governments can have issues too. Public roads can have potholes. Bridges have not been kept up. Public parks aren't always maintained…

> I have never seen "panacea" used by anyone except those opposed to any public infrastructure This is a good point; seems like an isolated demand for rigor. The bar we should be aiming to be above is "better than Comcast", which is a quite low standard. > Corruption is simply something that has to be fought, period, but we do have the tools to do so more easily at the local government level then for more widely dist…

> This is a good point; seems like an isolated demand for rigor. The bar we should be aiming to be above is "better than Comcast", which is a quite low standard.

The problem is that in many cases, the common folk in a town have to pay at least somewhat for the municipal broadband even if they do not use it; so it'd better be worth using.

I can understand municipal cable conduits and such, since they are somewhat analogous to the roads; but when your municipal government is actively excluding competition (Comcast in this case, if the title is anything to go by), they had better make sure they municipal cars on those roads are good; because if you don't like them, your only recourse is generally to leave town.

To satisfy the "better than Comcast" requirement, generally speaking the only thing you need to do is stop excluding their competitors. Comcast is actually pretty reasonable in competitive markets; but when a satellite internet company needs specific permission to operate in your county, that's something you can fix right now, with no investment, and immediately gain some competitiveness in your ISP market.