Comment Re:Of Two Minds on This (Score 1) 234
The most sensible government broadband propsals seem to only involve the government in the layer 1/2 aspect of the network and any layer 3+ services are simply using the municipal network as a transport layer and are actually provided by third parties. Even management of the layer 2 side could be outsourced to a third party on some kind of basis where they just make it work for some kind of fixed margin for a period of time.
The metaphor that makes the most sense to me are municipal roads. The government is just tasked with building and maintaining the roads -- nobody expects the government to deliver pizzas or get you to the airport. A municpal network would just provide connectivity, it would be up to individuals to contract with an ISP or teleivision vendor to provide services over the network.
I would expect that there would be some attempt to provide a minimal service over a municpal network in the same way that the government is involved in public transportation, like maybe you could get access to city web sites without buying ISP service, but it hardly seems like these would squeeze out private ISPs from selling service on a municipal network anymore than the city bus system has put the auto industry or the hired car services out of business.