I don't see the problem here. The government doesn't need to be competent to design anything; the job of government is to control the funding and legalities, and contract with companies that can do the work. If the government isn't competent to hire a competent company, that's the government's fault, and by extension, the voters'. If the voters can't elect competent people to run their government, that's really OK: they're getting the government they deserve. If they're not competent enough to vote for decent government officials, they're not going to be competent enough to purchase service from good companies themselves either.

>If the government isn't competent to hire a competent company

In a small town, there may just not be anyone with the necessary knowledge and expertise. You can't vote for someone who doesn't exist.

In theory this should be simple:

1. find a similar town that has good municipal internet 2. ask them who did it for them 3. hire those people

If everybody knows they are ignorant, you're probably OK. The big problem is in the towns where people think they have the expertise but don't.

The town has a government comprised of the people from that town. If there isn't anyone in the town smart enough to run for government who, as the other responder pointed out simply needs to look for other towns that did something similar and ask them how they did it and who they contracted with, then obviously the town is full of utter morons, and by definition, the democracy in that town is working as designed: the people are getting what they deserve.

In the case of Charlemont, they're working with Westfield Gas & Electric, which has already designed and installed municipal fiber for its own town (Whip City Fiber) and has designed fiber installations for several other cities in Western MA.

Charlemont has studied the issue for years and are working with an organization that took the time over years to test out municipal fiber in the own community by creating "fiberhoods" and now is covering 70% of Westfield.

The obvious solution seems to be a public entity at federal level. They would be big enough to have the relevant expertise without the misaligned incentives of the big corporate companies.

> public entity at federal level

> without the misaligned incentives of the big corporate companies

There's plenty of misaligned incentives at any Nth level of government. They're just more diverse. Some are political instead of financial.

However, there are plenty of example of government organisation successfully managing broadband infrastructure projects.