Comment Re:Why can't taxpayers decide for themselves? (Score 5, Informative) 111
So you don't think the government should step in if the big guys are abusing their monopoly? You don't think the voters in a municipality should be allowed to decide for themselves if they want the government to establish broadband services for their own use? I know it's a popular meme to presume that governments are nothing but incompetent but the reality is that sometimes the government is the best way to get something done. If the existing ISPs find it not worthwhile to serve a population I see no credible argument why the local government couldn't fill that role if the taxpayers want them to. Might not be economically ideal but sometimes perfect is the enemy of good enough.
My region (the 2M people metro area) is going through municipal broadband fights. They started the fights back in 2002.
The group got an initial rollout in a few of the smaller cities, roughly 11,000 people got hooked up. Then the entrenched monopolies kicked in. Some highlights:
* Lawsuits from both the incumbent megacorps on cable-based and phone-based Internet on the claim that it was unlawful and anti-competitive for a state agency to compete with an established business. The lawsuits took several years and cost millions. The judges and the appeals court found that government is allowed to provide services, similar to how they provide municipal trash services and still businesses compete; nothing prevents the cable and phone companies from competing if they want.
* Every year state legislators keep introducing new bills prohibiting government agencies from competing with existing businesses, or requiring that governments cannot provide information services to the public without high fees and those fees should go to education, or that any group providing Internet services have so many billions in assets to mitigate risk of disaster, and other variations. Invariably a little research shows the legislators get money from the phone and cable companies, and the company lobbyists vocally support them. The municipal fiber groups have needed to spend several million dollars to fight these as well.
* In a few cities installation was unexpectedly stopped again when some of the smaller cities discovered their own contracts with the megacorps demanded that they couldn't build their own systems until after a multi-year vetting process with the megacorps plus giving them another multi-year opportunity for megacorps to adjust prices and to improve their infrastructure. Basically the smaller city and town governments signed deals for their own cheap Internet that block municipal fiber within their limits for a decade or more. Since then the FCC and other groups have urged cities to be more careful in the contracts they sign.
* Incumbents even got the federal government to drop contracts. In one case they had a contract with the federal government for a $66M under the RUS. After the municipal system had invested and contracted based on that contract it was unexpectedly cancelled. Investigation showed the federal contract was cancelled because the federal RUS system was threatened by the megacorps. A chain of 'smoking gun' emails were discovered where Comcast and CenturyLink demanded the RUS cancel the contract or the two megacorps would act against it; a lawsuit on tortious interference is ongoing, but the cost will be several more million before any ruling will follow, in the mean time the municipal system is out the $66M plus all the interest they need to pay on the emergency loan they had to take out to avoid defaulting on the expenses.
* Because the megacorps have forced the municipal fiber system to spend hundreds of millions on lawsuits and illegally-broken contracts, and because the redirected money has resulted in higher interest rates and longer-term loans costing over $500M to date, they are leveraging it and constantly sponsoring print ads, billboards, and TV ads (on their own cable networks) making nonspecific claims about how the municipal fiber has collected so many millions but only invested a limited amount and how so few people are currently hooked up. The city is covered with signs paid for by the megacorps with things like "$500,000,000 Wasted!", "Municipal Fiber Failed!", "Demand (city) Stops Internet Tax!" They all say things like "sponsored by Citizens for Fair Taxation and Representation", which in turn are run by and sponsored by the megacorps. They fail to mention that they're the ones who induced the huge expenses.
* The few people who are hooked up try to convince everyone just how good it is. Just $20/month for a hundred megabit (both ways) Internet connection on a fiber-to-the-home connection. Business pay a just little more and are seeing into the gigabit speeds. They are immediately drowned out by people making claims that is only cheap because the entire region is subsidizing only a few thousand connections and that nobody will ever see that when everything is hooked up and that we should all by Comcast because it is only $45 for the first year plus taxes and fees and installation. They are also accompanied with ads are along the lines of "Right now you are paying the city $20 every month for high speed Internet that you can't use. Get high speed Internet from Comcast starting at just $45 per month for the first year."
So while it is nice to think the governments could do that kind of transformation, know that the incumbents see this as a death threat. The cable and phone monopolies are willing to spend hundreds of millions of dollars fighting municipal broadband because they see it as a threat to their very existence. It is very much a case of adapt or die, but they fail to see the adapt part.