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A comment on My multi-decade quest for rural broadband. Parent comment

Re:My multi-decade quest for rural broadband by snarf21 on Wednesday May 12, 2021 @09:49AM (#27130278)
I agree with you but the other issue is the huge amount of pressure corporate concerns have. The regulatory capture game is strong. There are a lot of states that have passed laws that say it is illegal to run municipal broadband because of pressure from Comcast via campaign contributions. Everyone only cares about getting theirs. Very few public servants actually care about serving the public.
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Re:My multi-decade quest for rural broadband by nerdponx on Wednesday May 12, 2021 @09:57AM (#27130364)
It seems to me that state laws like this can't be passed with strong opposition from municipalities. I imagine that it's harder to ban municipal broadband at the state level if a medium-size city already has municipal broadband, or has strong local support for it.

Maybe there's some interesting political science research on this.

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Re:My multi-decade quest for rural broadband by nitrogen on Wednesday May 12, 2021 @12:40PM (#27132281)
Utah's UTOPIA fiber network was already established, but blocked from growth for over a decade by incumbent lobbying. Conveniently the Wikipedia page has no mention of the Comcast and Qwest/CenturyLink meddling in Utah state and municipal politics that derailed funding and subscription.
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Re:My multi-decade quest for rural broadband by gnopgnip on Wednesday May 12, 2021 @01:40PM (#27133019)
That isn't really how it works. The cities don't have a say in the state level government. The state level senators or assembly members make the laws.
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Re:My multi-decade quest for rural broadband by nerdponx on Wednesday May 12, 2021 @06:00PM (#27135678)
Yes, I know how it works.

I'm not claiming that there is a formal legal obstacle here. I'm hypothesizing that a state government would be less interested in banning something which has popular support in a medium-size city in that state.

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Re:My multi-decade quest for rural broadband by snarf21 on Wednesday May 12, 2021 @12:04PM (#27131874)
Maybe. The municipalities have no money and some small city council has no leverage over a US senator. How can they compete against the bankroll of Comcast in court, PR, etc. ?
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Re:My multi-decade quest for rural broadband by dantheman on Wednesday May 12, 2021 @12:35PM (#27132215)
The municipalities agree to these rules to subsidize those who live in unprofitable areas. Those people don't want to pay for the actual cost of their service, so the town grants a monopoly and subsidizes the cost for those who live in the outskirts.
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