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This passed in Boulder county as well, pretty overwhelmingly.
Boulder is still in an earlier phase -- the vote was to allow the city to start the planning process. Greeley also voted in favor of something similar.
I’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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I lived in a community with municipal broadband (Brigham City, UT / UTOPIA fiber) and it was extremely well run. There were still private ISPs handling basically everything, it's just that they used city-owned fiber and offered very reasonable rates.
So this is essentially the taxpayer paying to build out infrastructure that private enterprise then runs and collects profits on right? This is a good thing? Wasn't that always the argument why pharmaceutical companies are so evil, because they appropriate public research for private profit?
I’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?
That said, municipal governments are not sovereign entities, they derive all their authority from the state. States get to decide, as a general matter, what to make a public service and what to leave to the private market. Moreover, municipal governments do lots of stupid short sighted things. Remember, they’re the ones who are responsible for giving companies monopolies in the first place, which Congress had to step in an fix in the Cable Act of 1994.
There is also another matter of politics to consider. Municipal services are heavily unionized. Telecom services are also pretty heavily unionized, but less so. By shifting telecom from a private service into a public one, you’re giving more power to public unions. That’s not a good reason to oppose municipal broadband, but its undoubtedly a major consideration.
What are the odds that the city will run an ISP better than, say, the DMV?
My state's DMV has essentially moved to a mostly online system where you pay online and get documents mailed to you. I think the only reason to ever show up at the DMV is to take or re-take your driving test.
All the renewals are done online. I haven't been to the DMV in almost a decade.
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> What a sad, sad world we live in where a corporation can come in and use legislation to be obviously anti-competitive. If we actually had reasonable competition among local broadband (e.g. everyone in the country had a choice of at least 2-3 reasonable options, and DSL does not count as "reasonable" anymore), then I'd actually call the introduction of a government-backed option "anti-competitive", because how can a…
> how can any private ISP compete with that? Offer faster speeds and more reliable connections (compared what might be a very congested public network), at reasonable prices.
What are the odds that the city will run an ISP better than, say, the DMV?
In my observations, problems at the DMV are usually because of the public, not the DMV. People show up to register a car without a title, have missing paperwork to get a license plate, and are generally unprepared. The DMV spells out what you need online, but people show up and need every little thing explained to them. I'm at the counter for 5 minutes, pay my fees, and walk out the door. Why was this other goof-ball…
Knowing so little about the situation in Colorado, why can't they just allow more competition in the city, instead of running it themselves?
(I live in Boulder County, which passed something similar.) As far as I know, competition is allowed, it just doesn't exist. The market has failed to provide us with broadband options. This vote is not actually for the government to run it themselves, it's just to override a state-level ban on municipal broadband. The next step will be for Comcast to lobby against municipalities actually setting up competing broadban…