This is an excellent article succinctly describing all of the issues around municipal broadband. I hope they succeed so it spreads to other communities and dissolves the federal government sponsored monopolies we have now with Time Warner, Comcast, and others. Go Wilson, NC!
Normally I'd make some argument about how Big Government has no real motivation (i.e. money) to supply a better product and private enterprise is better qualified, but the current state of the telco companies make that argument impossible. 10mbit fiber for $35/mo, no caps, and no packet sniffing? Where do I sign?
this is great now, but what about in 10 years when you're still stuck with a 10mbit connection because the city has a monopoly and competing telcos are offering 100mbit lines?
Well, first off, they already offer 100mbit lines. Which as far as I know, no current telco does. Secondly, the answer to your question should be obvious: if the private business is doing it better, switch back to them. There is no exclusivity here; the local government has just shamed the shit out of the telcos (for now) by offering a far better product. I guess you could masochistically choose the worse provider...
if it truly is a case where the city isn't regulating but instead simply competing with the telcos and beating them that's great. I'm just paranoid because the government has the legal right to enforce whatever they can get away with.
This is why Democratic orthodoxy on healthcare policy is to allow citizens to "buy into" Medicare. Premiums at every private firm would plummet and coverage would expand.
if this is true it is something i can support. free competition is the defining feature that has created the standard of living we enjoy. it is also the only thing that will bring that standard of living to the 3rd world. never ending aid doesn't fundamentally improve conditions.
I posted this article because I was interested to see what HN thinks on the issue of having broadband as a public utility.
Sure, you get faster internet because you're handing over control and subsidization to government, but then you're taking something that really should be in the hands of every private individual and allowing the government to get its hands into something that has traditionally been defined by open access and freedom.
Personally I'm very happy with my private fiber service and would much rather have a private company with consumer interests (supposedly) at stake instead of simply plugging into Big-Brother Net.
It would be naive to think the government isn't already monitoring, scraping, and sniffing every corner of the net that they can. However, it has to be a much easier pathway to abuse once Internet service leaves the hands of private enterprise.
Your first point is simply the tired old ideology of "government bad, private enterprise good". Municipal governments already run a number of public utilities which are far more important and critical than broadband, so there's no reason to think they would not do a good job with internet.
Your second point is just plain stupid. If a government makes it lawful to snoop, it won't make any kind of difference who controls the servers - ISPs are not going to start breaking the law of the land on behalf of their customers.
For sake of argument, let's say that everyone's abiding by the rules and the government's ultimate goal is to have as much access to private data as possible. Which method do you think is easier?
"We're doing you a favor!" - own the network by marketing ridiculously cheap subsidized internet with extremely high-speeds.
"We're taking away your freedom" - change the rules by forcing privacy-violating legislation past the house and senate
This is a strange mixture of paranoia and naiveté. On the one hand you suppose that the government's goal is to snoop on everyone, but on the other you ignore that they have already been caught doing that with the willing participation of private telcos. (FISA, warrantless wiretapping, etc.)
Putting telecommunication service in the hands of municipalities reduces the possibility of diabolical eves-dropping schemes for all the same reasons that it's less efficient than private enterprise: it's decentralized and it's run by incompetent local government.
I would much rather have the local city doing something than AT&T (et al.). I find it absurd to think that you have a greater amount of influence and trust that a huge corporation has your interests in mind than a democratically elected local government.
The mere idea that a corporation would be run with the consumer interest in mind is weird. I do believe corporations are designed to maximize profits, not to maximize public interest. And maximizing profits means screwing over the rural communities, just like described in the article and just like private health care means screwing over those in poor health.
The local city government is at least required to maximize their number of votes to stay in business.
Can someone tell me how a corporation can argue that a group of people in a city are not allowed to get together and decide to offer whatever they think it's in their own best interests to?
A group of people are certainly free to organize a non-profit and do this whenever they want. When "the government" (state, local, etc) does it, its quite a different animal.
Lets say it actually costs $40 to provide this service. TWarner currently provides it for $45 and makes $5 a month per subscriber. The local government provides it for $35. They make -$5 per subscriber. The deficit is covered by taxes (probably a $10-$20 tax increase as government is rarely very efficient).
It is now impossible for any carrier to provide the service and make money. Its actually costing the consumers more. People who don't even use it are paying for it. The market has been defacto-socialized, perhaps without even a proper vote.
The cable companies suck monkey balls but this is not automatically the right thing either. It might very well be. Local governments usually do a pretty good job with water. Still, it should not be undertaken lightly no matter how mad at comcast you might be.
I guess in my mind there is little difference between "the government", at least at a city level, and a group of people cooperating for their own good.
Your example is a strawman argument, as there is no evidence that government is less efficient than a private enterprise. (The example that comes to mind is Medicare, which as far as I understand it has lower administrative costs than most private plans.) That's not the point of the lawsuit, in any case.
I agree there is a difference between the government providing a service as a nonprofit, self-financing corporation and using taxes to finance a service. But you can't just argue that the market has been "defacto-socialized" without saying why that would be bad.
There are many instances where people who don't use it are paying for it. Roads, for example. A "fair" system would be to have every inch of roadway be toll road, where the toll would be in proportion to the amount of space used and wear inflicted on the roadway. Pedestrians would pay next to nothing, bikes slightly more, then motorcycles, cars and finally SUVs and trucks. Every lane on the freeway should be toll, with an increasing toll for the lower-numbered lanes in case you want to go "faster". Such a system would be ridiculously inefficient and cumbersome, so I'm fine paying my share of the roads even if I use them less than average, because roads are an essential infrastructure.
In the same vein, a city should be able to decide that a fiber network is an essential infrastructure that should be provided to all inhabitants and that shrinking the digital divide is important enough that low-income people should have subsidized access. And no corporation should be able to argue that this is "illegal".
Private corporations are allowed to exist to serve the needs of the people, not the other way around.
You know, this is probably the most insightful comment I have ever seen on this topic, and I wish I could give you 100 karma for it alone.
I'm even in favor of municipal broadband, because I'm sick of having the same speed of DSL that I had seven years ago, but I had never considered the absurdity of the idea (that companies can constrain a city's actions) itself. An altogether startling wakeup call.
The arguments against municipal networks are not that trivial. If a muni network is funded with tax money, ISPs can legitimately claim that they have no power to tax. If a city both runs its own network and regulates networks, there is a possible conflict of interest. There is also an argument that municipal bonds have a lower cost of capital, but I don't understand the details.
Ever notice that government monopolies and government sponsored corporate monopolies and corporate monopolies are all very similar? They all tend to suck in the same way. When one removes the motivation of having to please the customer, one also removes many of the drivers of excellence.
Local governments are sometimes a lesser evil, because sucking at that level can't be done as anonymously.
I would argue with you, but I've already written a 20 page research paper on this at the same University and under the same professors who created Freepress and SaveTheInternet.com. I've cited everything if you'd like to refute any part of it.
I'm not sure where you're getting your facts, but your story is pretty far from the truth. The government did not create the telecom monopoly that we have now, they only failed to prevent it (can you blame them? The Big 3 all lobby Congress). It was the government who started all of this back with ARPA, so I wouldn't point the finger at government because they supported the research efforts to create the Internet. Point the finger at the corporations who are refusing to build a better, faster network (even though their revenues support it) and practice redlining. The faster your speeds, the worse off their old business models are.
I assure you that local municipalities have the interest of the people at hand when they build these networks out, after all, the people collectively decide to build something like this before it gets approval. And they would most likely not have access to it any other way.
