> As we wrote earlier this month, the Ohio Senate approved a version of the budget containing an amendment that would have forced existing municipal broadband services to shut down and prevented the formation of new public networks. The proposed law was reportedly "inserted without prior public discussion," and no state senator publicly sponsored the amendment.
> It was approved in a party-line vote as Democrats opposed the restrictions in municipal broadband.
I read everything that mentions amendments, and it appears that they either must come out of committees, or be sponsored by a single senator. It looks like the Clerk would know who sponsored an amendment. Though, I'm not sure how this plays in, but at least one of the rules specifically says, "This rule does not apply to the President Pro Tempore, the Majority Floor Leader, the Minority Leader, or the Assistant Minority Leader of the Senate," in regards to limits on number of amendments to a bill.
My guess is that it's not "anonymous" in the sense that no-one knows who added it, but that it's not "transparent", i.e. came out of a committee or was put in by one of the leaders (above) in the Senate.
I'm sure they know who added it, the question is do they have to tell anyone (they should have to for government transparency).
Ballot initiatives are one way it happens in some states. A means for the population to ask their legislators to enact a law or statute absent the legislature making such a proposal on their own.
It seems pretty obvious, in this context, that he's referring to this specific instance, and not a completely different scenario where there's popular support enough to get through a ballot question.
Sorry. That's different kind of amendment. I don't think you've read what people have written to you. You are misunderstanding the subject of "amendment to a bill".
PS Intimating is the wrong word. I think you meant infer instead of imply.
As a Canadian I've always found it weird (and worrisome to some extent) that the two dominating political parties in America go all the way up from the Presidency to all the way down to municipal politics. I mean the term "conservative mayor" is pretty much unheard of in terms of party lines.
All fine and dandy but you do see the irony of a Canadian showing American problems with legislation affecting broadBand speeds right? Canada has one of the shittiest broadband scenes of any developed country! And it probably ties directly to the systemic problems Canada faces, just like the US and every other country does. No place is heaven, only that most developed countries put in sufficient social nets before the internet came so they're more livable than the US.
I live in a small village in central NY and we are months away from rolling out municipal broadband.
For years, Spectrum has had a stronghold on this region with prices they set without any competition. The citizens of this region have pleaded with numerous carriers to bring better internet, but all balk at the prospect.
We finally said enough is enough and decided to rollout FTTH for every resident, without a single penny spent of tax dollar money. We've been fortunate to get enough grant money from both state and federal to get this off the ground. The service will be fully subscriber-funded and end up making the town money in several years.
There is absolutely nothing about this service that is:
1. A handout from government. You must pay for the service.
2. Expanding the role of government.
3. Increasing taxes
4. Hostile. The only hostility until now has been Spectrum bullying the competition.
"without a single penny spent of tax dollar money. We've been fortunate to get enough grant money from both state and federal to get this off the ground."
How are state and federal grants not made up of tax dollars?
They are, but you are either being ungenerous in your question or missing vital context that anyone familiar with a city council meeting would already know.
OP is bragging that the municipality is paying for a service without increasing local taxes to pay for it. Increasing local taxes is the obvious way that municipalities typically pay for something like this. But increasing local taxes also generates predictable and often persuasive complaints from old cranks who never want to increase local taxes. OP's muni is thus circumventing those complaints by using grant money for the rollout.
While it's true that state and fed grants use tax dollars, it's irrelevant to the OP's brag. E.g.,
Old crank at meeting says, "I don't want to pay more money for a service I don't need." Applause break.
Old crank at meeting says, "I don't think it's right to take a grant created with state and federal taxes which I don't believe in paying." Awkward silence.
I agree with you. I think it is perhaps a great use of tax revenues, but at the state level all that tax revenue came from taxes. At the federal level it is possible to create money from nothing, something fans of Modern Monetary Theory would emphasize. Tho for the most part that is also tax dollars.
Could be a good use of taxes but I don’t think it’s correct to say “not a penny of tax revenues spent”.
^THIS. The fed govt prints more money. Cities and everyone else cannot,until every town starts to mine their own coin. Would you rather mine dodge coin or ‘new York’ coin that is backed by a municipal bond issue?
It does, because this is ultimately a discussion about allowing municipalities to operate their own broadband. The questions of whether the state and federal governments should be handing out grants to build out these issues would be separate legislative issues.
They obviously were, what he wrote is factually incorrect, taxes are taxes, just because they didn't have to rise council tax is totally irrelevant.
He also claimed "There is absolutely nothing about this service that is a hand out from the government".
That is also completely WRONG if as he claimed they received state and federal grants. A lie. It is subsidised.
i.e. You're completely wrong, the original poster woefully misunderstands taxes and grants if he's claiming no handouts and and taxes, please stop now.
I think broadband should be a public utility, this has got nothing to do with my politics, it's simply pointing out the original comment is factually incorrect in its claims.
His town's broadband was subsidised, it was built using tax payer pennies and it did require a handout.
The article mentions that municipal broadband networks in Ohio are now explicitly banned from applying/receiving new rounds of state grants. That’s part of this package.
> municipalities and electric cooperatives in the state do not have access to the proposed $250 million broadband expansion grant program that will be established
"without a single penny spent of local tax dollar money. We've been fortunate to get enough grant money from both state and federal to get this off the ground."
That will get local support as local anti-tax people know that if they don't spend the state/fed money, other towns will. They won't get lower state/fed taxes.
But they could have lowered taxes by that amount. The argument here seems to amount to scoring one over political opponents by mis-framing the situation. Money is being taxed and spent on broadband. The fact that the opponents of that plan can be made to look ridiculous with rhetorical tricks isn't really a factor in deciding what is happening.
If the tax dollars aren't necessary & the vision is profitable, why does it need to be municipal? Can't these people just start their own company? Something here seems a bit weird.
> How are state and federal grants not made up of tax dollars?
State is different because the funding situation of state and federal governments are not equivalent, but marginal federal spending is not tied to marginal increases in tax revenue even in principal, so quite literally changes in federal spending do not come from tax dollars.
If you assume that (1) the lifespan of the federal government is finite, and (2) the federal government will have no unpaid, transferred, forgiven, or externally covered debt from now until and including the eventual final shut-down, then it follows that any spending must eventually be covered by taxes, but while (1) is a reasonable assumption, (2) is...less clearly justified.
In MMO's they have a concept called a "gold sink" where in order to fight inflation they create very expensive things and methods/payments that essentially waste money to keep the economy from crashing.
If most money nowadays is calculated digitally (which it is, most transactions are spreadsheets and databases instead of actual cash or goods) and the way most new money that is created is created in similar fashion (it is). Then the constrains of money creation are limited to faith in the system, value speculation (mostly by other countries for what they can trade it for) and inflation. Most monetary systems crash due to overprinting of money and excess inflation which causes a lack of faith in the system. Having something akin to "Gold Sinks" is part of keeping things running, taxes are a perfect way to do that, though the distribution could use some tweaking to get better results, especially if one cares about wealth redistribution.
> Why have taxes at all if spending is not dependent on them?
In aggregate, to offset, to the extent viewed desirable, the money supply effects of the creation of money in spending, and in terms of specific distribution of taxes to effect a desired (re)distribution of net income.
Also, though the above would be sufficient on its own, because prior to the abandonment of commodity-representational currency for pure fiat, the metaphor of the fisc, a finite purse (from which we get the adjective “fiscal”) was a reasonable model of government finances, and there is a lot of inertia in popular models of the world. So, even though it is no longer an apt model, lots of people — both in the electorate and even in government — still view the world through a framework in which that is exactly how things work, which affects their decisions as electors or government decision-makers.
Ok, so we're at the point where we just create money I guess. I didn't understand any of this mumbo jumbo but I'll follow for a second.
Even if this is all true and it's effectively free - we're saying the tax payer isn't paying for it. However isn't there still an unfairness when it comes to who BENEFITS from said broadband?
It appears you have defined the taxpayer out of existence. Assuming that the government goes to extremes and does away with the idea of taxes as the primary source of funding, what term will you accept to pithily describe "someone has to give up the resources that were used for this project, despite not personally wanting the project to happen"?
It’s doubly confusing when you see signs up on the highway claiming “your tax dollars at work” next to highway projects when they come from fed and state taxes, but apparently those are not tax dollars...
Well, any Federal funds are categorically not tax payer funds. The Federal government spends money into existence as it is a currency issuer (through the Federal Reserve).
US Federal Taxes go to the Treasury[1][2], which then spends it on Federal government programs. If spending is more than receipts, the US Federal Reserve issues securities (ie, sells bonds) to raise money[3].
Quantitative Easing by the Federal Reserve does cause money to "appear", but this is different to the general process for funding federal government programs[4] (Note that the money can disappear if/when the Reserve chooses to resell those assets).
Taxing your money away is a means of fighting inflation. Taxes and tax breaks also shape behavior. Sugary beverage taxes, tobacco taxes, mortgage interest deductions.
Wait, what? No; that's not how that works at all. Where did you read that?
The shortfall between Federal government spending and tax receipts is the deficit. The government has to borrow that money, which it does by having the Treasury issue debt securities.
Federal government deficit=private sector surplus. The money is conserved. Federal surplus=private sector surplus. People who want to balance the federal budget either don’t know what they are talking about, or are cynically trying to redistribute money to the wealthy.
The government is using its power of taxation to convince lenders that it can cover its debt. If that isn't taxpayer funded, then nothing I charge on my credit card is funded by my salary. Saying federal spending isn't "taxpayer funded" because there is a deficit is sophistry.
Looking at it a different way, it’s entirely possible that those grants are the same ones that the companies would have applied for to roll out broadband to rural areas. In that sense, it doesn’t spend tax dollars in excess of what would have been spent anyway if they got the cable company to do it for them.
The post office has been around for a very long time, and is an example of the government providing a service which people pay for by using the service.
There are numerous examples of this. Your water supply might be one of them.
Municipal broadband is also usually pay-for-use, and you could fund it with bonds, which is also common.
You could argue against how a municipality decides to implement their own broadband service. But saying that no municipality should be able to provide any service - or even particular services - seems a bit odd. Since that's the majority of what local governments do...
The police, education, water, roads, parks, etc...
The reason other broadband providers have balked is because of the large investment needed to offer a competitive broadband service. Your town is instead funding that investment with state and federal grants, which are pretty much the definition of a government handout.
However, there is an unspoken assumption here that broadband belongs to the private sector. That’s an assumption worth thinking carefully about.
Many of the types of arguments against muni broadband have also been raised against other government infrastructure programs like public roads, bus routes, subways, etc. Many of those programs compete directly with private companies and displaced private investment.
Yet we know now that government-funded or subsidized infrastructure, done right, becomes a common platform that the rest of the economy can grow on.
It seems increasingly likely that broadband falls into this category. We just had a national year-long demonstration of the critical importance of connectivity to our economy.
The GOP argument is kind of highlighted here. Your city didn't have to spend any of its own money. while a business would have had to spend millions to build then to maintain. A business must have ROI and profit to survive(due to inflation). Your city doesn't need to any of that.
>There is absolutely nothing about this service that is...
Your implementation may be good.
Living in NY it should not stretch your imagination to think up what an implementation that meets all those criteria would look like.
Municipal broadband is the hip new thing right now so nobody half-asses it. I expect in time (like over the next 80yr) it will follow the model of other government services and everywhere that can afford the graft, boondoggles and BS will have the graft, boondoggles and BS and the Detroits and BFEs who simply can't afford to do it wrong it will be the only ones left with municipal broadband done right.
That said, if a town or city wants to do their own broadband they should be able to do so without state interference. Local government is best government. Allowing the towns to have a "well we could DIY it and not buy your services at all" option as a backstop when negotiating with ISPs furthers competition in a market that is otherwise mostly devoid of it IMO.
Municipal fiber is a far easier service to provide than almost anything else a municipality does. One tiny plastic cable into the house. It can be run on telephone poles. Plumbing, sewer, and roads are many orders of magnitude more complex and expensive to build and maintain.
> I expect in time (like over the next 80yr) it will follow the model of other government services and everywhere that can afford the graft, boondoggles and BS will have the graft, boondoggles and BS and the Detroits and BFEs who simply can't afford to do it wrong it will be the only ones left with municipal broadband done right.
so, basically what we have now for non-muni net in most places with telco+cableco duopoly?
The ideal situation would be to run the fibres (or maybe just ducts) centrally and allow different ISPs to run their own equipment.
Makes perfect sense for the last mile to be run by the government, just like the last mile of roads are.
Then you can have choice of ISPs. Or run your own.
if you want to an ISP which gives you a real IPv4 address, a guarenteed service and known contention ratio -- say they buy a couple of 10G lines from two diverse upstream providers like HE or Tata to a central location, land on a 52 port switch, and use it to serve their customers with 400mbit each way guaranteed and upto 10G if there's capacity.
On the other hand if you just want basic broadband with contention meaning that you could run into problems if everyone is pulling 50mbit, even though you can burst upto 1G, and perhaps you have CGNAT, you'll be paying less for it (the 10G uplink is spread out over more people), but that's your choice
This empowers the customer and ensures competition in the market, while the basic costs of fibre from a central internet exchange point are borne by either taxes or access charges (if you use the circuit you pay $5/month)
This is the correct idea. It maximizes competition while minimizing barrier to entry. Micro IPSs become extremely affordable, and all you have to do is have each ISP pay a set fee for each customer for line maintenance and expansion.
This is inspiring to hear. I'm a recent transplant to a small city in Western NY (20k residents). Are there any studies or documents available from your village's deployment? I'm interested in getting involved in this issue in my own city. Thanks!
5. There are also several examples of municipalities rolling out Municipal broadband at great expense to taxpayers, then failing, and then cities giving them away for-profit companies.
similar to sports arenas ? If you are looking for red-hot local government corruption, there are long lists available .. be warned they look reasonable on the surface, and will self-report positives.. thats the nature of the beast there
Does the municipality have any role in the administration of the service? If so, did they have that role last year? If yes and no, respectively, how is that not an expansion? (And if the municipality has no role in the service, in what way is it municipal broadband?)
It may very well be a good program and if it is, I'm in favor of it, but it seems like it's clearly spending taxpayer-funded grants and likely has an expansive (even if slight) force on government.
Outside of major urban areas, there is often no bullying required. It was not economical 20+ years ago for there to be more than one physical cable or telephone provider in an area. Moving away from dial-up and DSL (which sit on top of phone lines which anyone can buy access to) toward cable (and fiber in the past decade) has put the power on the cable companies who physically own and maintain the lines. Since, in contrast to phones, cable has not typically sold access other than direct-to-customer, they maintain that same model. They don't sell access for someone who buys a fast fiber connection to then connect to the cable network and then their cable customers "dial into" that person's box. Instead, you only get service through the cable company itself.
Because cable requires a massive financial outlay, we end up with regional monopolies unless cable companies are forced to open up their physical platform to others. Which is rare.
" It was not economical 20+ years ago for there to be more than one physical cable or telephone provider in an area. "
It was(is) more than that. Those companies were granted a franchise/local monopoly on providing the service. By law, nobody could compete with them, whether it was economically possible or not.
> By law, nobody could compete with them, whether it was economically possible or not.
Why not just fix that law now though. OP is stating that it is a profitable business. If they fix that law wouldn't there be new entrants, fixing original problem.
Acquisitions mostly. They've gotten into trouble with the state over their acquisition of TWC when they failed to uphold the conditions of the merger which required them to improve and expand service.
I heard it costs a lot of money to do these builds, for low return. You might even call it a natural monopoly, if you believe in such things like basic economics.
Not sure what OP meant by "several years" but avg business like restaurents/bars take "several years" to break even but OP is saying its actually going to turn profits. 7 years isn't a long time at all to become profitable.
What village? Would love to learn more about it. I'm from upstate and Spectrum absolutely has a hold on many cities. Them + Verizon have a duopoly on areas, and access can change block by block. It's insane.
Edit: did a google search and I found Parish, NY posted something asking residents to fill out a survey about their internet. But nothing else.
>> For years, Spectrum has had a stronghold on this region with prices they set without any competition. The citizens of this region have pleaded with numerous carriers to bring better internet, but all balk at the prospect.
So why did the other carriers not want to participate?
Could removing barriers that prevented the other carriers from contributing be a better solution than replacing the one bad carrier with a government bureaucracy?
"practical or financial help that is provided, often by the government, for people or animals that need it"
"money that the government pays regularly to people who are poor, unemployed, sick, etc."
I still don't see the problem? A social safety net is good for everyone. Human compassion and lofty ideals of a just government aside, the rich are benefitting from it, too, in the sense that you can't have a functioning economy if there's no one to actually do the labor, rather than just collect the dividends.
And that is a valid argument that could lead to a discussion. Deliberately misinterpreting the word to pretend someone said they hate health and happiness is not.
I am sorry, but I genuinely do not see a difference in meaning between the first example and the second two. They all concern the social well-being of the whole (in fact, they’re all part of the _same_ definition).
Nevertheless, I just picked the very first definition that came up (literally, the one that Google presents on search), without any editorializing. Maybe you’re the one who is deliberately picking and choosing a narrow reading?
A government isn't picking who wins or loses if it builds a road or a sewer line.
It is in fact providing infrastructure that benefits and improves the lives of all citizens.
Why do you place greater importance on how a hypothetical business can in theory not be benefited by the government over the quality of life of all citizens?
I am with you, my issue is that 740 billion dollar a year drain on the the taxpayer known as the Department of Defense. We could just privatise it... Defense as a Service, think of the possibilities! /s
> Municipal broadband is a government handout. It artificially lowers prices.
Government is funded by taxes from the people who live in the municipality. Even if they offer it for "free", everyone in the area gets the benefit of it. This is like roads. Most communities pay for roads out of taxes or bonds levied on the community. None of that is a handout, on top of that, most places will still require you to pay for internet.
> Municipal broadband expands the role of government. It's an extra program for the municipality to manage.
This isn't necessarily bad, and requires voters be more involved in local politics to ensure that infrastructure in general is being kept up.
> Expanding government programs is a tax on residents, even if they don't benefit from broadband access.
This repeats the first point, but, yes it's a tax, but to say that not everyone benefits? This past year showed how important it was for every student to have broadband access to attend remote learning. Seems hard to argue at this point that not everyone would benefit.
> Municipal broadband is hostile to business. Companies cannot reasonably compete with a service that the government pumps money into.
To ISPs possibly, but not all businesses. Counter point, municipal broadband will benefit many businesses by ensuring that they have high-quality fast internet, that allows them to keep in better touch with their customers. This is pro-business, not anti.
> Government is funded by taxes from the people who live in the municipality. Even if they offer it for "free", everyone in the area gets the benefit of it.
But if I wish to purchase internet from a different provider, I still have to subsidize other people's internet. I'm forced to pay for something whether I use it or not.
That's how taxes work. I don't have any children, but my taxes fund schools. My house isn't burning down, but my taxes fund fire departments. I don't commute with a car, but my taxes fund bridges and highways. There is a net economic benefit to pulling your fellow person out of the gutter when it comes to some things. We are all richer because we have an educated populace, cities that don't burn down, highways to move people and goods. To put it into HN friendly terms, all of these benefits increase the quality of our labor, which increases our valuation in the eyes of global investors and makes them want to invest in American companies and keep us paid and employed. And who knows, some day you might need help out of the gutter, too, or a fire put out.
I realize this isn't your point, but one of my pet peeves is about 'your taxes paying for other people's kids'.
Everyone gets to go to school for free, your taxes should be thought of as paying off your own education.
It seems silly to me that someone goes through public schools, then doesn't have kids and starts complaining that schools don't benefit them and they shouldn't have to pay.
> Everyone gets to go to school for free, your taxes should be thought of as paying off your own education.
What makes you think this is the correct perspective? Many Americans had parents who were educated abroad or not at all (if I'm paying for my education, what did my parents pay for?). Further, my education was less expensive than my education-focused-taxes are now - if I really were paying just for myself, shouldn't it be an inflation adjusted amount? Instead, I pay what it costs to educate a kid today.
It's one perspective. And I think it's a good one.
We're not 100% keeping score here: some kids will die they day after they graduate high school, but on the whole people start lives as children, have a period of productivity and then are too old to really be productive.
I think it's not good to be bitter about supporting the young or old while you are working because you have been and will be (to some rough approximation) supported by the previous and the next generation.
If you’re viewing it as “I’m paying off my own education” it should be considered an uncolateralized loan and you should be paying a high interest rate on it.
Roughly 15 years of education roughly $5k annually at an interest rate roughly set at 15% interest (you have no credit history or school grades to showcase your credibility).
Roughly owing $150k at the end of high school, and building until you can pay it off.
>Everyone gets to go to school for free, your taxes should be thought of as paying off your own education.
Are you sure you want to make the argument that a public school education cost you many many times what a private school education would paid over a lifetime of taxes?
Of course not. There is nothing wrong with the argument you are paying for other people's kids. You are. It's a net good for society. I personal don't want roving gangs of uneducated youths who today are confined to schools all day, this is a big win for everyone. The day-prison system works well unless you're really interested in high quality education.
Deal with it, don't make weird excuses and pretend scenarios (like mine above).
> That's how taxes work. I don't have any children, but my taxes fund schools.
I know that's how taxes work. The point is that there's no reason that should apply to purchasing internet.
Even if you think it should be government provided, that doesn't mean it needs to be funded in that way. Many government utilities are billed to the consumer based on usage. There's no real public good in forcing me to pay for other people's internet.
Another part of how taxes work is people decide what they they want to fund or not. It is possible for people and/or representatives to decide not to fund 'public goods'.
Something potentially offering a good to the public is not irrefutable argument that the government should do it.
This line of reasoning could be used to justify government expansion into literally any market. Given that most people don’t want government providing services in every market there has to be some other factor that limits the scope which is where the disagreement lives.
Government mediating equal access to last mile lines and funding their construction — probably good to everyone.
Government running consumer ISPs end-to-end is a tougher sell.
Having a government provided baseline for all markets sounds great.
Private business should justify itself by doing better and ensuring nobody wants the public version -- which also ensures the public version stays cheap. [Expensive per unit, but inexpensive overall]
I understand you're trying to use examples that seem clear to you, but you're begging more questions than you answer:
>" You can get you own armed guards - but you will still subsidize other people's police force."
Why? This is an especially open question in areas with large police forces and high crime rates, or histories of police abuse of power.
>"You pay taxes to provide a minimum service to all of the community, you can then take advantage of it or not - that's your prerogative."
Again, why? What's 'a minimum service to the community'? Do you mean public goods, or services that have positive externalities, or things that help the poor?
>"I pay for school taxes, but I don't have kids - should I get my money back?"
Maybe! Depends on your beliefs surrounding political authority and ethics.
Perhaps you might do better to point to your ethical framework, and highlight what it means with respect to municipal fiber.
Public Schools aren't just benefiting people with kids. It benefits society (a society you and OP are members of). Getting rid of schools is like getting rid of the military. Maybe you feel like you don't personally benefit from it and you want your taxes back, but that's not how it works.
Not should it. An ideal government functions to help the people not individual persons.
>”Getting rid of schools is like getting rid of the military.”
I see national defense and public schools as very different. Defense is a non-excludable, fixed cost, so-called ‘public good’. Primary and secondary education are not public goods, though they may be long-term investments (which defense is not).
I am not saying that I ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ either, but they’re very different.
>”An ideal government functions to help the people not individual persons.”
I’ve never heard this argument before, could you please elaborate, or point to a good source for your “ideal government” ethical framework?
Defense seems very excludable. If I've got a gun, I'm doing the defense by myself. No need to pay for aircraft carriers in the middle of the unpopulated ocean
There exist many countries where you do need armed guards. I've never once heard someone from one of those countries express the viewpoint that it is a desirable state of affairs.
Ironically a functioning police service is a necessary condition for far-libertarianism to exist. It is a self extinguishing ideology.
Arguably, your purchased internet will be of better quality and have better support because of competition than if they remained a local monopoly (which is the case is a vast majority of regions).
Especially if the service eventually becomes revenue positive and pays for itself, possibly providing non-tax revenue into the municipal general fund and lowering your tax load.
And if by subsidizing other people's internet they have better access to higher quality connections then it will be a net benefit for your community, which will in turn improve your life while interacting with and in that community.
> Even if they offer it for "free", everyone in the area gets the benefit of it.
To play devils advocate, not everyone wants or needs internet. My grandmother has buried fiber available straight to her rural home. I'm sure it cost tens of thousands of dollars to get that buried fiber run a mile down her dead-end road. She's never owned a computer and never will. Neither do any of the Amish families in the area.
The Amish don't get the benefit of all the highways in their area, generally don't need paved roads, and don't send their children to public school. Additionally they are pacifists who don't believe in war.
They still pay taxes that fund all of that.
My grandmother became interested in computing and learned how to use the internet in her 80's before she passed away a decade later. The number of people who don't require or want internet access going into the future is going to be very few.
Other replies to you post make some good points, but there is also the fact that having a fiber line running to her property significantly increases the value of the property and attractiveness to future purchasers.
> To ISPs possibly, but not all businesses. Counter point, municipal broadband will benefit many businesses by ensuring that they have high-quality fast internet
> Municipal broadband is hostile to business.
I think 'business' in second sentence means business its competing with( ISP) not business in general.
But in general it discourages any business by signaling that govt might swoop in and kill your business that you build over decades by starting it own that isnt' bound by the same pressures of market.
In the US there are usually limits on who can get on a pole to run cables to homes to provide cable based broadband. Utilities, cable TV companies, telephone companies, and municipalities. This is why people want municipal broadband. You can't just start an ISP and get on the pole with your cable.
> - Municipal broadband is a government handout. It artificially lowers prices.
There are many places where municipal broadband is at cost rather than subsidized or a hand out. With little to no competition the higher prices vs at cost can look funny.
> - Municipal broadband expands the role of government. It's an extra program for the municipality to manage.
Totally. If ISPs could get on poles to run lines to peoples homes I expect there would be a lot less of a call for them as there would be more capability for competition.
> - Expanding government programs is a tax on residents, even if they don't benefit from broadband access.
I'm not sure about this. If it's at cost or close to it than I'd be curious to see the case.
> - Municipal broadband is hostile to business. Companies cannot reasonably compete with a service that the government pumps money into.
Who can do broadband is constrained by law which is hostile to business. You can't just start and ISP and run lines to homes. That's against the law most places.
Municipal broadband is often a work around to the other hostile laws that benefit telephone companies and cable tv companies which have staked out local monopolies most places.
> In the US there are usually limits on who can get on a pole to run cables to homes to provide cable based broadband. Utilities, cable TV companies, ...
I wonder if we'll ever see anyone trying to technically sidestep this requirement. "We're a TV company, you can go to this url to see our 'clear sky 24/7' channel. Also we provide internet access."
- Many poles are owned by power companies, or telephone companies. You can absolutely get a JPA (joint pole attach) agreement with most of these companies in theory.
- In practice, your first problem is that most poles are horribly maintained. And if you are a new attachee, you will often find yourself having to share in the cost to make an already non-compliant pole compliant and with enough room for you to attach.
- If you are dealing with, say, Verizon poles and are trying to attach for a competing cell service, your make ready costs are oddly inflated, and they may go as far as expect you to split the cost 50/50 for a pole that is already out of spec.
- In many municipalities, the kickbacks of 'franchise agreements' cause a lot of inertia. This is mostly the case with CATV, the industry of 'how can we be minmax our monopoly'. Essentially, the cable provider pays the city X dollars per subscriber, gives them a couple public access channels, and in return gets exclusivity.
I used to do HFC design for Xfinity Fraudband, as well as fiber design/permitting for other CATV providers and cell carriers. Its a corrupt and abusive industry, the entire contractor/subcontractor system is made to shield the companies both from overall liability as well as prevent unionization.
Also, any of the SV folks speaking up about social injustice would have a heart attack in a week or two. Being in that climate for so long made me numb to a lot of injustice, and it took years to recover.
To GP's point, the poles are privately owned. The Cable TV company put them there, or the telephone, or other utility. If you want to use space on their poles, you have to rent it, or install your own poles. Both happen. On the road I live on, there are power lines on one side of the road which also carry telephone lines. Cable TV (Comcast) has poles on the other side of the road.
Your first point is important. Governments have protected citizen's quality of life by restricting the number of wires going around on poles and/or digging up of the streets. This is why local governments created regulated telephone and cable monopolies in the first place. Unfortunately the regulated telephone and cable infrastructure later become much more valuable due to the emergence of broadband internet. The companies that owned this infra then loaded up on debt based on the skyrocketing value of this infrastructure and we are forced to pay for this debt.
>I'm not sure about this. If it's at cost or close to it than I'd be curious to see the case.
One of the bad examples that is often brought up is iProvo municipal internet. The city raised 40 million in bonds, ran up another 10 million in operating deficit, placed monthly internet bills on all residents even if they weren't connected. The city ultimately gave up and sold the infrastructure to google for $1.
The fix for the first point would be local loop unbundling. Statutory rates for leasing access preserves the incentive to continue investing in infrastructure. This allows for competition without requiring a duplication of last mile infrastructure requiring huge costs. And without giving a significant advantage to a government endorsed group over private companies
Why is internet connectivity NOT viewed similarly to road connectivity? We expect to be able to travel across the city to do stuff. We similarly expect to be able to use the internet.
The world is becoming ever increasingly connected online and people should expect to have fast consistent access to online services. ESPECIALLY when government's are using internet for interfacing to do things citizens have to do.
For myself, it's because it's physically prohibitive to have competing roads but it is possible in most cases to have competing internet providers.
In general I am of the opinion that fostering competition results in the best internet. That said I disagree with the GOP here; for some rural areas it's hard to get companies to run cable without some guarantees. Outright banning them hurts rural communities.
Not just rural. I live in a medium density suburban metro and we can't get more than one provider to compete. They've divvied it up amongst themselves so they maintain a monopoly in their area.
Exactly. I am in silicon valley (FFS) and have exactly two choices: AT&T and Comcast.
Curiously they cost the same and run about the same speeds. Both of them continue to increase their rates.
I'm all for competition, but I'm not seeing it. Worse, I see the U.S. heading in precisely the opposite direction with acquisitions, mergers, buyouts.....
I'm being somewhat sarcastic here, as its not clear there has been that much innovation in this space for a while. Or if there is, I welcome hearing about it.
The innovation is realizing that consumers are tired of your tiered upsell bs (looking at you Xfinity/comcast) and just offering everyone 1000/1000 and being done with it. That is literally what some of the reseller ISP are doing now.
>In general I am of the opinion that fostering competition results in the best internet.
I wholeheartedly agree.
That said, I posit that municipal broadband, implemented as wired infrastructure to the premise, fosters competition rather than limits it.
IIUC, most planned/completed municipal broadband networks only provide last-mile connectivity, while internet connectivity is (or will be) provided by private ISPs.
This definitely fosters competition because a broader set of ISPs can service these customers since they don't actually have to run wires to each premise, rather they just need internet uplinks from the municipal broadband interchanges.
What's more, we can even have private or quasi-public[0] businesses/entities using ISP connection fees to manage and maintain the last-mile infrastructure. Quite possibly with a surplus for upgrades/support for other municipal programs.
That leads to more competition and not less.
I suppose it's possible that my analysis is flawed, but I'm not seeing how. If I missed/glossed over some stuff, I'd appreciate being corrected.
"competing internet providers"
I wish this was the case. I have lived in 6+ homes in the last 15 years and I cant remember a single time I had a choice of internet provider. They seem to have an agreement amongst themselves to not compete.
That's all well and good - but when there are 88.3m Americans that have only a single ISP serving them, that model breaks down.
In this case, the competition only seems to come from municipal broadband, so to your argument that fostering competition results in the best internet, the status quo currently in operation is in opposition to that.
If you count all the people whose 2nd or 3rd ISP options are Hughesnet and Frontier dsl (or mobile broadband hotspots with abysmally low data caps) those options barely count.
If only 1 option can provide me with greater than 25 Mbps bandwidth (what is the minimum requirements for a single 4k Netflix stream) with unlimited (or at least reasonably high) data caps, it is hard to see the alternatives as truly competitive options.
If we count everyone who then falls under this definition that be double the number you provided.
In that case, if it provides real choice and the level of service required, the case for municipal broadband falls away. I find it hard to believe that any municipality WANTS to go through with the arduous task of setting up a locally bounded ISP, it's just that the commercial market has, by and large, sat on its hands - if the outcome is more choice in the market, more realistic pricing and removal of data caps that seems like a win for consumers, which IMHO is a good thing.
Isn’t it physically inefficient and wasteful to have multiple companies running fiber through a neighborhood? Why not run one set of fiber and let companies compete for the customers on those lines?
This is a fundamental difference in attitude of conservative vs progressive thoughts, it's about what's considered a necessity and what isn't.
As an example I've lived all over the US, but when I first moved to Texas I was shocked and upset by how many toll roads there were, in some ways it was almost impossible to travel properly without them, the short answer was that the government of Texas didn't consider infrastructure like roads a service worth investing more than the minimum amount of effort into, and so they delegated a lot of it to companies. Arguments for internet are the same, many would consider it a basic utility or right, something hard to survive without. This is essentially what net neutrality and labelling it as a Title 2 were about, about wether or not it's a need or a luxury.
Conservatives have started labelling things like infrastructure, a living wage, health care or even internet connectivity as a luxury, which progressives have labelled them as necessities.
> Municipal broadband is a government handout. It artificially lowers prices.
- This is a feature of muni broadband and other natural monopolies, like water, electricity, transportation, where economies-of-scale cost savings stimulate economic growth.
> Municipal broadband expands the role of government. It's an extra program for the municipality to manage.
- The State government stepping in to interfere with city government by blocking muni broadband is an expansion of the role of government.
> Expanding government programs is a tax on residents, even if they don't benefit from broadband access.
- The same argument has been made against public roads, not everyone uses them directly but indirectly they still benefit regardless.
> Municipal broadband is hostile to business. Companies cannot reasonably compete with a service that the government pumps money into.
- Natural monopolies are hostile to business. The natural barrier to entry prevents competition and innovation, hence why the government needs to pump money into it.
I think the question then becomes: what did the government give to these private companies. If they gave big discounts and provided right of way access, one could argue it would be fair to either: take some public ownership in the private companies (controversial) or at least provide the same benefits to a private collective if requested. If the government is handing out subsidies to private companies it would seem only fair to at least also provide that to private collectives.
All of which are decent arguments in the abstract. Unfortunately the practical situation is that US broadband solutions outside of major urban cores are really bad (and even in the cities, we're essentially just barely at parity with the rest of the industrialized world).
The free market, objectively, has failed us. That's why these initiative exist to begin with.
Protecting the abstract market is a worthless philosophy when the effect is to impede progress.
All of these assume municipal broadband is subsidized by taxes.
That might or might not be true, and could vary from example to example, but is something you need data to support, and it should be possible to determine if such operations are revenue positive or negative.
It is also difficult to swallow that it's hostile to competition in those cases where the alternative is a private monopoly by an ISP. The theory of competition in a free market is that it is also beneficial to consumers.
If there is already no potential for private competition, then the market has failed and consumers may be harmed. If the municipality steps in to offer an alternative-- as long as it is not subsidizing it & artificially lowering prices-- then it is enhancing the competitive landscape.
Even if I don’t directly benefit from a service, if other people benefit is that a good thing? If I’m acting selfishly, perhaps I can console myself that some of those beneficiaries might spend more money on my for-profit service.
Those are all pretty standard garden variety small government proponent talking points but do you have any idea what arguments they make regarding the natural monopoly issue?
- Natural monopolies don't exist. No inefficiency lasts long in a free market. There are areas with competition. Lifting regulations would create more. Or maybe most people are satisfied with the service they have.
- Competition is everywhere. Satellite is good enough for most people. Maybe it costs more. But you choose where to live.
I think your last point should be that it's hostile to competition which could, in theory, benefit the consumer. That's kind of the big reason against government run businesses, that they stifle innovation and competition because they don't have to be profitable while their private sector competitors do.
Though it sounds like competition doesn't work properly for broadband so it's more of an in theory reason.
Seems like the simple solution is to require that all infrastructure be open. Anyone can lease, for a reasonable cost (margins set by regulation), the wires that any other entity has laid. This way, there is still incentive to lay and upgrade infrastructure but you don't get to gouge consumers by being the only game in town
I think it is more: once the government enters the market with a subsidized or free product, you not only kill existing businesses, but any hope of future competition. The 1 gif fiber from the city looks good today, but 10-20 years down the road when 100gb is cutting edge, who is going to risk offering it?
What confuses me here is that this isn’t “The Ohio state government will not offer municipal broadband”; it’s “cities like Fairlawn are no longer allowed to run broadband.” To me, that sounds like the state restricting rights of the citizens in a given township or municipality.
> Municipal broadband is a government handout. It artificially lowers prices.
prices are artificially high due to pseudo or actual monopolies in part due to existing regulation and prohibitive costs.
internet is effectively a utility anyways so cheaper is better.
- Municipal broadband expands the role of government. It's an extra program for the municipality to manage.
not necessarily a bad thing
- Expanding government programs is a tax on residents, even if they don't benefit from broadband access.
a large majority of residents use internet in most of the USA. either way, removing the right for a community to choose seems heavy handed and anti-libertarian to me
- Municipal broadband is hostile to business. Companies cannot reasonably compete with a service that the government pumps money into.
does everything have to be exploitable for profit??
They're not unreasonable at face value (obviously, that's how the game works) but they're entirely in bad faith as none stand up to any real scrutiny. US political discourse is about boiling a complex system down to feel good talking points that sound snazzy and evoke strong emotions.
"government handout" leading language, no substance
various "expands government" also leading, still no substance/data
"hostile to business" obviously, that's the point. Private enterprise has failed here and created a number the most customer hostile organizations in existence.
> they're entirely in bad faith as none stand up to any real scrutiny
The expansion of the role of government bit is not nothing. Yes, there is a cozy relationship between the federal government, many state governments and ISPs. But municipal broadband makes it much easier for e.g. the Louisville police department to influence how much of what type of information is collected on whom, and under what circumstances it may be shared.
I support municipal broadband. Any competition is good competition. But it's disingenuous to write off the concerns so quickly.
Sure, but we've been fighting this exact battle against the entrenched ISPs for decades now (think MPAA, RIAA etc DMCA notices). If the ISP is actually "owned" by the people it serves, through the process of government these issues can be addressed directly instead of through a 3rd party corporation that has no incentive to fix anything.
For one municipal broadband can be profitable without subsidies. It can be run by local governments but can also be spun off after the infrastructure is built etc.
- Municipal broadband is a government handout. It artificially lowers prices.
Artificially lowers price in what sense? Unless it's operating at a loss, it's just another market participant. In my experience with municipal broadband, this was the case. Their prices were below the other options, but they were operating at a profitable level (not a high profit, mind you). But with the general race to the bottom on prices, short of very high demand or collusion, their prices weren't really that much cheaper than what the local cable company would have dropped to if there'd been real competition (in fact, I had to go through the local cable company because I was in an apartment that had contracted them, and the cable company got to add a $5/month fee while doing nothing but billing).
- Municipal broadband expands the role of government. It's an extra program for the municipality to manage.
This one is kind of true, however the billing (if you weren't like me) what through the same office that handled other municipal utilities (in that area, water and sewer were billed by the county). The labor itself was contracted out, both for the initial roll out and the maintenance. This potentially adds some oversight positions but we're not talking about hundreds of extra government jobs here. And actually, if what I was told was correct their contract went to their competitor, the local cable company who had opted not to roll out their own high-speed service in the area (which precipitated the local push for municipal broadband).
- Expanding government programs is a tax on residents, even if they don't benefit from broadband access.
The program covered its own costs. Residents choosing not to participate were not charged. So it was only a tax on those residents who elected to participate in the program, but those residents were also getting better service for 50-75% lower prices compared to the old DSL and dial-up in the area (NB: This was in the late 00s, dial-up and low-speed DSL as the best options in a college town with several major businesses is insanely stupid.)
- Municipal broadband is hostile to business. Companies cannot reasonably compete with a service that the government pumps money into.
The local cable company could have competed, again, if what I was told was correct. It was their own labor that put the fiber and last-mile connections in place.
To start, all arguments about price are nonsense. Cities offer broadband because it's cheaper per household. This has been repeatedly demonstrated. Right-wingers are threatened by this fact because it's yet another disproof of their claim that the free market can do everything better than government.
Arguments about business being unable to compete with government are irrelevant in the case of utilities needed by everyone, since free market principles break down in innumerable ways.
This is not true for broadband outside your bubble. DSL is a reasonable option for the vast majority of non-tech people living outside cities and suburbs.
For many goods and services, they are actually quite reasonable requirements. Internet access, however, is a form of public infrastructure, regardless of whether it is administered by a for-profit corporation or a government.
> - Municipal broadband expands the role of government. It's an extra program for the municipality to manage.
It requires physical infrastructure, and that physical infrastructure needs to reach people's houses. That, in turn requires the use of public resources (streets) and/or eminent domain. In short, government is already involved.
> - Municipal broadband is a government handout. It artificially lowers prices.
The level of infrastructure investment required makes it hard to justify new for-profit investment, especially if the area is already being served or isn't populated enough for the company to make a profit. As a result, internet access providers naturally tend towards being a monopoly, which in turn artificially increases prices.
> - Expanding government programs is a tax on residents, even if they don't benefit from broadband access.
I can see where this point is coming from, and it's not wrong. At this point, however, even those who don't directly benefit from internet access seem like they benefit indirectly. It's also worth noting that a lot of locales (mine included) already pump money into corporate broadband providers to entice them to build and maintain the infrastructure. In other words, the tax gets applied, regardless of whether it's a for-profit corporation reaping the benefits or not.
> - Municipal broadband is hostile to business. Companies cannot reasonably compete with a service that the government pumps money into.
Companies already can't compete with a service that requires enormous infrastructure investments and the use of government property.
Internet access (and most large-scale infrastructure) is different due to the heavy infrastructure investment required.
- It's hard to convince a for-profit organization to build out that sort of infrastructure in an area that isn't populated enough to allow the organization to make a profit.
- It's hard to convince a for-profit organization to build out a second set of infrastructure in an area that already has it, as increasing competition will lower prices and make it harder to make a profit on the investment.
- Building out multiple redundant infrastructures can also be a hassle for normal citizens. More closures due to maintenance/construction work, more use of eminent domain, more unsightly telephone poles, etc...
In short, Internet access tends towards being a monopoly. With that in mind...
- Artificially lowering prices is a good thing if it counters the natural tendency of a monopoly to push prices up.
- Expanding the role of government is a bit of a non-argument, since
I read a republican article on CO2 taxes and it had exactly the same talking points with the exception that CO2 taxes artificially increase prices.
I don't know why but the lack of nuance and inability to admit that some things can be a good idea given the right situation is really getting old. When you are following absolutes (with nothing forcing them to be true) you are bound to get it wrong eventually.
Notwithstanding the humor of your assertion, Amtrak and the USPS are indeed perpetual GOP targets for hobbling, creatively destructive encumbrance, and dissolution.
In order to ensure the best outcome for consumers, we want customers to have a variety of competing options for broadband service. That way they can select the option which gives them the best cost/value proposition. No individual provider can abuse or take advantage of customers, because they can just switch to another provider.
Municipal broadband, by its nature, is incompatible with this competition. Such service is at least partially taxpayer funded which means that everyone pays for it whether they use it or not. Further, the city controls access to the corridors needed for providing internet service. The consequence is that the city ISP would have a great advantage over other ISPs, preventing any real competition.
The case then is that we need to ban city-run ISPs so as to promote competition amongst ISPs in order to ensure the best service.
However:
I'm not sure of a good defense of forbidding it at the state level, instead of allowing individual municipalities to make their own decisions. Furthermore, I'm not sure of a good defense ensuring competition by forbidding public isps but not also requiring cities to make it easy for new isps to enter markets by giving access to corridors.
By and large, thank you for the argument it’s well articulated.
The one thing I want to no clarify,
> Such service is at least partially taxpayer funded which means that everyone pays for it whether they use it or not.
If the muni-broadband increases competition from 1 to two, and reduces costs for everyone, then even if some tax payer that fund the muni-broadband don’t use it actively, they do benefit from its existence.
> I doubt a scenario where taxpayers benefit by funding a municipal competitor will actually work out.
Umm, I hear your concerns and I agree if muni-broadband reduces competition, that is not ideal. That said, this is an odd statement to make. There is data to show muni-broadband can be successful and is many times successful.
> The cost to taxpayers of the muni-broadband are less then the decreased prices to consumers brought about by this competition.
Again, I hear you. The municipality has to be competent and use funds appropriately. Ideally, no net-new taxes should be used. Ideally, muni-broadband is a net-positive venture funding other municipality endeavors.
There are a lot of cases where both versions of this story are true, the same way a lot of companies succeed and a lot of companies fail. It is not intrinsic to muni-broadband but rather intrinsic to the people running it.
Meanwhile, I was just responding to "do all of the taxpayers in the municipality benefit from the muni-broadband?"
And specifically to that one question, yes if there are 0 or 1 broadband providers serving a municipality, then every tax payer benefits from muni-broadband.
Either:
1. The price of the muni-broadband is too-low, i.e. everyone in the municipality move over to it.
2. The price of the muni-broadband is competitive, i.e. everyone in the municipality has reduced prices through competition.
3. The price of the muni-broadband is too-high, i.e. everyone in the municipality learns that their elected officials need to be changed. And/or some policy changes need to be made by learning from other municipalities.
Can you point me in the direction of data about how muni-broadband has turned out?
But my skepticism was a bit narrower than muni-broadband in general. In particular, I am skeptical of scenario where we have taxpayers paying higher taxes to subsidize muni-broadband, don't use that broadband, and yet are still better off due to increased competition, which is the sort of scenario I took you as suggesting.
But it seems that wasn't what you were talking about. It currently seems that you are arguing that if we just look at the benefits of municipal broadband, everybody benefits. Sure. But I don't see the point in looking only at the benefit side of the equation.
Chattanooga, Tennessee launched gigabit fiber in 2010. So we have 11 years of data.
> In 2015, it re-upped its status as a speed leader by becoming the first provider to offer 10 gigabits per second.
> The system has proven an unqualified success. Over half of the homes and businesses in the service area are signed up with “The Gig.” Plus, its price of $68 per month for a gig connection is lower than any private-sector rival for the same service. The operation is cash-positive, allowing EPB to pay off the bonds 12 years ahead of schedule and lower home utility rates.
> A recent study documented more than $2.69 billion in economic benefits to the region during the network’s first ten years. At the beginning of 2020, Forbes magazine predicted Chattanooga would be the number one city for new jobs, and even after the pandemic hit, Time Out magazine called it the best place in the country to work remotely. The expansion has been widespread, with the city seeing one of the highest income growths in the country.
To summarize "everyone benefits" because:
- "the operation is cash-flow positive" i.e. no net-new taxes.
- "price of $68 per month for a gig connection is lower than any private-sector rival" i.e. customers are saving money.
- "$2.69 BB in economic benefits to the region" i.e. everyone else is getting a boost, because connectivity (like roads) attracts business and now also attracts remote workers.
This is just one city (I googled for this success story and saw others, but I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader), and you might argue "its run competently, most gov entities are not". I agree! People get what they vote for. Vote for competency! Meanwhile, poor voting is not specific to muni-broadband so I'll leave it there.
Personally, I don't consider a single success story data, I consider it an anecdote.
But to reiterate my last point, I was expressing scepticism of taxpayer subsidized muni-broadband turning out to benefit everyone. If its cash-flow positive, that's a different scenario where I'm much less skeptical.
Despite all the discussion here, the real answer seems to be that there is no such argument. As the article notes, they won't even admit they're in favor of it:
> The proposed law was reportedly "inserted without prior public discussion," and no state senator publicly sponsored the amendment.
It's purely a favor to industry slipped in by some senator.
As it's a conservative measure [0] and as we're talking about the Ohio Senate here, it's entirely possible it was inserted into legislation by someone who might or might not know how to read and written entirely by ALEC. [1]
[0] nominally conservative. Ohio conservatives give a lot of lip service to "home rule" authority for municipalities. Broadband is one of several areas including LGBT measures and civil rights, oil and gas drilling, education policy, voting, and basically anything you could name where they violate their stated principles of home rule without any apparent irony when the mood strikes.
The proposed law was reportedly "inserted without prior public discussion," and no state senator publicly sponsored the amendment.
They aren't even trying to make an argument, since they aren't owning up to it. Maybe they were either just hoping it would sneak by with no one noticing, or they just let the ISP lobby write it and didn't bother to read it themselves.
not involved, not a lawyer here - there is a theory in local US law about "regulated monopoly of municipal services" .. related to the way relatively expensive infrastructure is built, who pays for that, and who has rights to revenue and who has rights to do business on the infrastructure.
It has been ruled in most places that I know of, that certain utilities like water are in this category, but also sometimes things like garbage collection. The reason is that it does cost capital to build acceptable infrastructure, and also the services are less expensive to the consumer when a single business can recoup their costs over a longer period of time.
naturally, corruption and cronyism also thrive in this environment, seeking long-term returns as vendor lock-in. The amounts of money over years, plus the security of income, can be very attractive to certain parties.
I suspect that this background affects the debate and policy, but generally, political talking points do not rely on precedent and fact, more the emotions and loyalties.. no idea on that
It is a perfectly normal GOP position to be against a government service that isn't police or military. What is kind of weird is when the GOP bans at say, a state level, something some cities might want to do. This does run counter to some of the other GOP political ideas, that local governments should be free to make their own decisions and not hampered by state or federal government.
Perhaps they are worried that municipal broadband will be popular and thus spread, if cities are allowed to do it, which then would threaten some of their donations, and some of their fundamental ideas.
Another argument I've seen on redstate (a GOP news agency): "and the left keep shifting goalposts of what speed is considered broadband, they say you need 1 Gbps, while a typical video stream fits in 3 Mbps, and reality is that 25 down / 5 up is a great speed!" I guess the big ISPs don't forget to donate to GOP.
* There is a limited role for government. For example, government should provide public goods, but should not be in the business of competing with private businesses.
* There is no need to have government involved in the provision of broadband (or phone service or cable TV).
This GOP argument is the capitalist argument. It also often overlaps with centrist Democrats like the Clinton/neoliberal view.
The government is not productive. The Government can't create broadband because the government doesn't actually create anything. But the government can implement a mandate, for something like "broadband for all". It sounds great, but it will fall short. The Government will inefficiently allocates resources leading to downtime and shortages. The free market allocates resources properly and will provide better and less expensive broadband internet, at no cost to the tax payer.
> The free market allocates resources properly and will provide better and less expensive broadband internet, at no cost to the tax payer
I really hope nobody thinks that applies to Internet service in the real world. All evidence suggests that there is no free market, the resulting service is not better, nor less expensive, and it has cost the taxpayers a significant amount.
So then why institute a ban? If opponents are so confident that the private sector will do such a good job, let the municipality compete with private providers and offer residents the choice, see who wins.
Clearly not all of them or we wouldn’t be in this thread discussing it under this particular OP. I don’t care either way though I was just working through what the GOP logic likely is. Not representing my own opinion.
It is rare, in the US at least, for any representative or direct democratic situation to ask for unanimous consent. Someone will almost certainly disagree once you get past 1 voter (or one representative), and possibly they'll disagree with themselves.
What's interesting about this case is that the municipalities have made moves towards this with their own money and efforts. And it is the state which is attempting to squash it, that is those around them. It would be as if you said to your neighbors, "I'm going to try and do something which will have zero impact on you, like eating more vegetables that I grow at home." Then they all gang up on you and deny you the right to grow and consume your own vegetables. If the action were harmful to you and your neighbors, like say you decided to make meth in your home, then it could be a reasonable response.
What about municipal broadband causes harm to those outside the community which wants it such that their representatives in the state legislature have any reasonable standing to try and bar it?
> It is rare, in the US at least, for any representative or direct democratic situation to ask for unanimous consent. Someone will almost certainly disagree once you get past 1 voter (or one representative), and possibly they'll disagree with themselves.
Just because something passes by a margin of, let's say a hypothetical margin of 51/49, you're right that it didn't require unanimous consent but if you ignore the concerns of that other 49 and decide not to at least understand, represent parts of or compromise on certain aspects of an issue you're going to just create a situation of hostility for a large group of people that eventually leads to bigger issues.
As to your explanation/example, sure and I don't have an argument against that because I don't disagree with it. I would vote for municipal broadband and think the state is over stepping it's bounds here.
The other arguments in the replies here covered a lot of it, but one other that I didn’t see is that it is unfair to the broadband companies who built out networks.
The argument goes, the broadband company spent a lot of capital to build out a network, but they can’t compete with a government run system that doesn’t have to make a profit.
It is an interesting argument, but I don’t find it compelling. I think internet access is a public good.
Nineteen states currently have laws limiting and in some cases effectively prohibiting municipalities from offering commercial services on broadband networks. Most of them did so under the guise of constructing and operating community broadband networks requires taking on public debt via bond offerings, tying up money that could otherwise have been used for public safety, public pensions, roads and other infrastructure.
In my state there was a ballot measure passed by a large margin (by voting standards, anyway). The legislature hated it (it had to do with making gerrymandering harder, among other things), so they introduced another ballot measure ASAP that read like did a couple very minor things that seem like good ideas, provided you don't think about them too much, and that was what the ballot measure highlighted—but also entirely undid the most important parts of the prior measure.
It passed by like 1%. They lied and got what they wanted. 0% chance a version of that with honest language would have passed.
The current broadband monopolies/duopolies are strangling the US broadband markets (which lag the rest of the OECD), but I think a bell world would have been even worse (and I'm a Bell system fan!).
One good thing would be that the bell system really pursued universal service, and did its best to raise the service quality floor (e.g. they did install, or take over party lines, but also did the work to eliminate such service for individual lines). The QoS requirements in city center (how many times they are allowed to have someone pick up a phone and have no dial tone; how much capacity they needed to provision (the famous Erlang unit) and so on) were the same for almost every subscriber.
And even "disconnected" phone lines would still make a 911 call.
BUT
The flip side of what I said was true too: they didn't deploy a service unless they could tariff it and had to. They had a circuit-switched mentality and could't deal with packet-switched architectures that didn't have a tollbooth. They deployed ISDN and considered that an adequate data service.
Their regulation and tariffing also lead to mistakes. For example the price to make a call was typically fixed and regulated by state regulators. Thus calls to mobile phones were the same as non-mobile phones with the person walking around paying for the radio charge (there was less capacity) because they were the ones benefiting for the convenience. This is why mobile phone numbers look the same as fixed ones in the USA.
In Europe they went the opposite way: reciving a call on a mobile device was free (just like receiving one on a landline) while calling a mobile number cost extra. Thus mobile numbers had different area codes so the caller could tell. This lead to a huge uptake of mobile phones in the GSM territory while the US mobile providers were stuck in their old bell mentality, causing the US to be 10-15 years behind in mobile calling and SMS.
Depends on how the mandate is specified / enforced.
But generally speaking : broadband is infrastructure & utility = natural monopoly.
Same applies to electric grid & production btw.
Way better results to be had this way then false competition.
I think everyone is missing the point here. The point of municipal broadband is not to Run efficiently, but to keep the ATTs of the world HONEST! -- IF ATT and the rest did, there would be zero need for it. Europe shows that somebody needs to keep the "Capitalists" honest. If this is how its done. so be it. the ATTs of this industry, spend more time lobbying for laws to make enable them to charge people more for less. Its laughable, and bad for the US.
OP is talking about ISPs not “US Tech”. In the UK (and talking to F&F across Europe) we have significantly better access to broadband than the US. I have at least 6 companies I can purchase broadband from (thats off the top of my head, it’s probably more if I did some research) - I currently pay £32 per month (so like $45) for 200Mb up and 20Mb that is bullet proof stable.
Probably OP was thinking at services like ISP, cable and mobile providers. I do not see US ISP or mobile companies have a chance to compete in EU markets.
We'll see - it's been fun watching Oneweb vs SpaceX where this battle for global dominance will play out in part.
EU again seems to be focusing on basically red tape as a way to slow folks down - if you follow EU's Oneweb protests they look pretty weak. Even the near miss stuff was weak.
In terms of ISPs a somewhat fair point domestically. That said, internationally I see I lot more penetration of US fiber deployments (think google / AWS / Microsoft / Facebook, US based CDNs for content distro, Netflix etc etc)
Locally - ATT and Comcast both offering competitive service.
Comcast Up to 1200 Mbps Download Speeds $84.99 / $129
Rural is a big challenge in US. Not sure EU really has the same type of market (ie, Alaska). If so and we are getting $35/mo for gig - then that is a unique setup.
But again, internationally I do expect US companies to continue to perform OK even in the connectivity space.
Just about every single US ISP's advertised price is a lie. Even when it's not a teaser-rate (or silently include a discount that requires TV and/or phone service in addition to internet), they charge fairly arbitrary fees on top of the advertised price.
I think the rule should be they are forced to maintain the price shown, unless the actual price shown is in the same font size on the same page and the teaser period is clear.
> It was approved in a party-line vote as Democrats opposed the restrictions in municipal broadband.