The road to serfdom
Really folks, do you want your local town council deciding who gets service and on what terms?
We've had "muni" fiber for over a decade, and continue to spend millions of tax dollars to keep it afloat, and yet, none of us peasants have rights to access it, while they continue to add tax after tax.
We have a "muni" Wi-Fi that likewise, we pay for. And yet, we can't use it, except in a few select zones, and its restricted to short bursts.
The city has torn up the streets a half-dozen times in the last ten years in the pursuit of this utopian nonsense, claiming internal cost savings (retiring 3G modems they never needed), and yet, they can't seem to achieve simple goals, like keeping cars moving.
Our local MSO and Cable company offer competitive broadband services. Not cheap, not the best billing systems, not the best customer service, but definitely competitive if you actually read your bill and negotiate every 6-24 months. I wonder what it would be like if the city had been successful in running either one of them out of town, as they've tried in the past.
This celebratory article doesn't address the real issues.
1) The last mile is a natural monopoly.
2) Most households are unwilling to pay the cost of FTTH. Why do you think VZ abandons Fios?
Without a sufficient uptake rate, the monthly fees never pay off the investment.
That holds true whether private or public.
ISDN didn't happen here, because it cost $2K/household in 1984 dollars. DSL succeeded because it cost a fraction thereof. We have to wait for similar cost reductions for FTTH, before it can be practical to deploy to lower-density settings, at monthly rates low enough that the populous will adopt en-masse.
But what we don't need is yet another government entity controlling our lives.
