The incumbent ISP would have eventually had to upgrade to gigabit anyway. Maybe they were waiting until the same upgrade would cost $2M instead of $6M.

Clearly, they revised their schedule because decades of revenue streams, even from a small town, can be worth more than the relative expense of upgrading now rather than later.

Did the rates increase for customers who chose the new gigabit service? Often the new service offering doesn't make sense to a monopoly provider in terms of revenue increases in the short term, so competition or threat of public options are an important tool that can work even better than public utility boards.

Finally, it's worth noting that with changing political climates priorities changes, especially when it comes to infrastructure. The Flint water system was publicly managed, and it isn't even the worst one in the country. Thousands of publicly managed bridges are at risk of collapse due to underfunded maintenance.

Cold War fears about existential threats motivated great federal projects that focused on resiliency and creating the foundations for productivity. Without those same threats, legislation mandates intentional vulnerabilities like backdoors, fails to fund national standards that could limit cyber-extortion, and new internet-related initiatives are regularly more intent on erecting barriers to entry and toll booths than they are on nurturing any new or disruptive industries.

> Maybe they were waiting until the same upgrade would cost $2M instead of $6M.

Most of the cost is the actual digging/laying new fiber. The price of that does not really go down over time (instead the cost of labor goes up over time usually). The actual fiber and equipment is a very small part of the cost.

This happened at my parents town. They were looking at setting up their own municipal ISP and after some research/quotes it ended up costing X which was too much. They tried again a decade later and the cost for roughly the same system was 1.5X so even more out of their budget.

The other case is the fiber already existing and the ISP refuses to upgrade to enable higher speeds then that is just pure greed.

The trick is to seize on when existing infra projects are being done (major roadwork or perhaps replacing water, sewer, or buried power) and throw the conduit and fiber down at the same time, as the incremental cost is trivial. This is referred to as Dig Once policy.

Fiber is cheap. When you dig, install fiber!

https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/policy/otps/policy_brief_dig_once.p...

It's also interesting that (well, like copper) fiber speeds have been upgraded again and again using different transcievers (the gbic thing)

>The incumbent ISP would have eventually had to upgrade to gigabit anyway

My cynicism does not let me agree with you.

Same, my parents still can't upgrade beyond 8down/1.5up mbit DSL, and they live in the neighborhood area where people would pay twice or even three times as much for anything better. Unfortunately cable is so deteriorated in the area that it barely scrapes above 20down/2up, but is reliably unreliable. Until a competitor shows up, they'll probably never fix the degrading lines or upgrade the service. Basically, if you don't like it, go f-yourself. It's not like the neighborhood is the hood or the sticks either, it's in a mostly richer/upper middle class area. If you're familiar with Century Link in the SouthWest, you shouldn't be surprised by the garbage service they offer, out there they're riding off POTS laid by BELL, and network infrastructure installed by QWEST in early 2000's, and haven't maintained, upgraded, or touched a damn thing since.

> in a small town that arguably never “deserved” it.

Apparently it was still profitable. Just less so than continuing to milk old infrastructure.

I suspect the incumbents also want to minimize the number of precedent-setting municipalities that control their own broadband. Each one could potentially become a good example of the benefits of publicly owned infrastructure - and then inspire other cities to do the same.

That’s some good negotiating. It’s probably for the best because the town doesn’t have to take the financial risk? If something goes wrong you want there to be some shareholders to take the loss. (In return, they profit if nothing goes wrong.)

A lot of towns have a huge bill coming up when they have to replace outdated sewer systems.

> The EPA reckons water and sewer systems will need $743 billion of upgrades through 2035

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/climate-change-means-water...

As a consumer, I am not terribly displeased. Value-wise, I would have preferred that the municipality ended up owning the base fiber infrastructure and leasing it out to commercial operators. But that fantasy has passed.

> reasonably competitive price

I would suggest that this is a lower price, but not a price you would get with robust competition.

No doubt. But it's 2021 and rural communities are catching up to where urban centers were 10 years ago. Not perfect, but better.