Internet infrastructure in most countries is publicly owned... Market competition isn't the only way to produce socially desirable outcomes.

It's certainly not publicly owned in the most populous Western countries (UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, etc.).

What is “most countries?”

Note that breaking even over 20 years in this town requires 72% of households to sign up, according to the article. Even if someone managed to cut costs by half, that's a town that can only ever handle two ISPs - maximum - with their own infrastructure at once with everybody signed up.

You could think of a system by which multiple ISPs could sell service over the same city-owned infrastructure, but there's no real benefit to that. (And I say this as someone living in a country where that essentially happens.)

>how is it any better than current oligopoly?

I mean I suppose you could ask the people that voted for it.

>The solution should be raising competitiveness of the market.

Networks like internet providership are notoriously hard to get competitive markets in. Even removing the regulatory barriers to entry there are still natural barriers to entry (high start up cost) and huge returns to scale. The natural state of this market is monopoly or oligopoly.

But even beyond this, this is raising the competitiveness of the market. Internet has become so integrated into the fabric of modern life that many feel compelled to purchase it from the one or maybe two providers in their area. That lowers competitiveness. Demonstrating that municipalities have ways of 'opting out' should force Comcast and other providers to compete with the hypothetical 'public ISP' that citizens can always vote in.

Your comment was dead, but I vouched for it because I believe your second paragraph has value. I'd ask you consider removing the first part, which is unnecessarily snarky and doesn't address the point (how is this better than an oligopoly).

The first point is valid IMHO in a way. Like a lot of small towns in Massachusetts, Charlemont uses an open town meeting style of government, which means all residents have a vote in determining how the town is run.

I would personally believe that if there are issues with quality of service or price or whatnot, this governance style allows for a much better opportunity of addressing issues. Versus being run by a very large monopoly that honestly may not care that much about the ongoing needs of a 1200 population town (read: small revenue source) in the future.

A competitive environment would be better if possible, but failing that, I personally would take a municipal broadband system with a good degree of accountability built into the town governance over an oligopoly.