What are the odds that the city will run an ISP better than, say, the DMV?
Residents are generally happy with the other municipal utilities provided in Fort Collins.
Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado
51–60 of 230 posts
Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 h…
What a sad, sad world we live in where a corporation can come in and use legislation to be obviously anti-competitive. What would the world do if comcast or a group of content owners tried to sue netflix out of existence because their business model threatened the incumbents? There'd be pandemonium.
It's almost as if money in politics is the death of ethics. Almost.
Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado
#53I 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?
The real explanation is that cities make competing hard through well intentioned but misguided requirements. Getting a cable franchise means shouldering substantial public interest obligations, in particular the obligation to serve a whole city without regard to proven demand. (You can tell that’s the real reason because waiver of that requirement was the key concession Google demanded where it rolled out Fiber.)
Your financial viability as an infrastructure provider is do, instead by your uptake rate. Most of your cost is in passing each house. Your cost per customer is thus driven by your uptake ratio (subscribers divided by houses passed). Fiber deployments struggle to get to 0.4 or so, meaning you have to pass 2.5 houses for each paying customer. Forcing build out in all neighborhoods tanks your uptake ratio by forcing you to build in lots of places where people can’t necessarily afford your service.
Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado
#54I’m failing to think of a single reason why it would ever be legally acceptable for a government to ban municipal broadband. I understand the whole corporate shill stuff, I’m speaking literally from the arguments FOR the ban...how is it justified at all?
I felt the same way about prison guard unions lobbying against legal recreational weed. Like, what even is a good thing you could pretend this is about?
Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado
#55I’m failing to think of a single reason why it would ever be legally acceptable for a government to ban municipal broadband. I understand the whole corporate shill stuff, I’m speaking literally from the arguments FOR the ban...how is it justified at all?
Preface: Whether these fears are reasonable I am not saying either way. I am answering your question about how a ban on municipal broadband could be justified.
Another way to describe municipal broadband: state-run media pipeline. Allowing the government to control the last mile of the Internet. Port all those fears you have about Comcast violating net neutrality, stifling competition, spying on users.. Now, increase the power from "firm that can put other firms out of business" to "group of people who can put other people in jail."
Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado
#56Earlier 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.
You can’t “compete” with a municipal service. How many competing options do you have for your water or sewer or trash pickup? It’s a reasonable argument that broadband should be provided municipally. But cloaking it in the guise of “competition” is disingenuous.
In the town of West Henrietta, there actually is competition for trash pickup as it is not provided by the town or county.
Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado
#57What are the odds that the city will run an ISP better than, say, the DMV?
Pretty good actually. My main gripe with the DMV is the time spent waiting in line. That's hard to scale. To make the line go faster you need to hire more people. Your driver's license is an important security touch point, so it's going to be hard to move away from getting it in person. An ISP is pretty different from that, right?
Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 h…
What a sad, sad world we live in where a corporation can come in and use legislation to be obviously anti-competitive. What would the world do if comcast or a group of content owners tried to sue netflix out of existence because their business model threatened the incumbents? There'd be pandemonium.
> What a sad, sad world we live in where a corporation can come in and use legislation to be obviously anti-competitive
This is always a risk with any government. The problem is voters keep voting for these same people passing these laws (or worse yet, don't even vote claiming "nothing will change anyways."
Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado
#59What are the odds that the city will run an ISP better than, say, the DMV?
DMV is run by the state, not the city. Municipal level organizations are police and fire, which can be run very efficiently.
Re: Voters say “yes” to city-run broadband in Colorado
#60What are the odds that the city will run an ISP better than, say, the DMV?
They don’t need to run it better than the DMV to beat Comcast.