- Municipal broadband expands the role of government. It's an extra program for the municipality to manage.
- Expanding government programs is a tax on residents, even if they don't benefit from broadband access.
- Municipal broadband is hostile to business. Companies cannot reasonably compete with a service that the government pumps money into.
For years, Spectrum has had a stronghold on this region with prices they set without any competition. The citizens of this region have pleaded with numerous carriers to bring better internet, but all balk at the prospect.
We finally said enough is enough and decided to rollout FTTH for every resident, without a single penny spent of tax dollar money. We've been fortunate to get enough grant money from both state and federal to get this off the ground. The service will be fully subscriber-funded and end up making the town money in several years.
There is absolutely nothing about this service that is:
1. A handout from government. You must pay for the service.
2. Expanding the role of government.
3. Increasing taxes
4. Hostile. The only hostility until now has been Spectrum bullying the competition.
How are state and federal grants not made up of tax dollars?
OP is bragging that the municipality is paying for a service without increasing local taxes to pay for it. Increasing local taxes is the obvious way that municipalities typically pay for something like this. But increasing local taxes also generates predictable and often persuasive complaints from old cranks who never want to increase local taxes. OP's muni is thus circumventing those complaints by using grant money for the rollout.
While it's true that state and fed grants use tax dollars, it's irrelevant to the OP's brag. E.g.,
Old crank at meeting says, "I don't want to pay more money for a service I don't need." Applause break.
Old crank at meeting says, "I don't think it's right to take a grant created with state and federal taxes which I don't believe in paying." Awkward silence.
Edit: clarification
Grants are paid for by taxes.
Many tax pennies were spent.
Just because it didn't come out of the city council pot makes no difference.
Could be a good use of taxes but I don’t think it’s correct to say “not a penny of tax revenues spent”.
He literally said 'no tax pennies were spent'.
They obviously were, what he wrote is factually incorrect, taxes are taxes, just because they didn't have to rise council tax is totally irrelevant.
He also claimed "There is absolutely nothing about this service that is a hand out from the government".
That is also completely WRONG if as he claimed they received state and federal grants. A lie. It is subsidised.
i.e. You're completely wrong, the original poster woefully misunderstands taxes and grants if he's claiming no handouts and and taxes, please stop now.
I think broadband should be a public utility, this has got nothing to do with my politics, it's simply pointing out the original comment is factually incorrect in its claims.
His town's broadband was subsidised, it was built using tax payer pennies and it did require a handout.
If you want to go down that road, however, grant dollars are already allocated and could thus be considered already spent.
Do you really want to be having an argument about what spend means?
> municipalities and electric cooperatives in the state do not have access to the proposed $250 million broadband expansion grant program that will be established
"without a single penny spent of local tax dollar money. We've been fortunate to get enough grant money from both state and federal to get this off the ground."
That will get local support as local anti-tax people know that if they don't spend the state/fed money, other towns will. They won't get lower state/fed taxes.
If the tax dollars aren't necessary & the vision is profitable, why does it need to be municipal? Can't these people just start their own company? Something here seems a bit weird.
State is different because the funding situation of state and federal governments are not equivalent, but marginal federal spending is not tied to marginal increases in tax revenue even in principal, so quite literally changes in federal spending do not come from tax dollars.
If you assume that (1) the lifespan of the federal government is finite, and (2) the federal government will have no unpaid, transferred, forgiven, or externally covered debt from now until and including the eventual final shut-down, then it follows that any spending must eventually be covered by taxes, but while (1) is a reasonable assumption, (2) is...less clearly justified.
Because federal government spending doesn't depend marginally on taxes.
> If it comes from the government, it's tax payer funded.
This would be true if changes in government spending were tied to changes in taxes, but it isn’t because they aren’t.
For state government operational spending its closer to being a general truth.
If most money nowadays is calculated digitally (which it is, most transactions are spreadsheets and databases instead of actual cash or goods) and the way most new money that is created is created in similar fashion (it is). Then the constrains of money creation are limited to faith in the system, value speculation (mostly by other countries for what they can trade it for) and inflation. Most monetary systems crash due to overprinting of money and excess inflation which causes a lack of faith in the system. Having something akin to "Gold Sinks" is part of keeping things running, taxes are a perfect way to do that, though the distribution could use some tweaking to get better results, especially if one cares about wealth redistribution.
In aggregate, to offset, to the extent viewed desirable, the money supply effects of the creation of money in spending, and in terms of specific distribution of taxes to effect a desired (re)distribution of net income.
Also, though the above would be sufficient on its own, because prior to the abandonment of commodity-representational currency for pure fiat, the metaphor of the fisc, a finite purse (from which we get the adjective “fiscal”) was a reasonable model of government finances, and there is a lot of inertia in popular models of the world. So, even though it is no longer an apt model, lots of people — both in the electorate and even in government — still view the world through a framework in which that is exactly how things work, which affects their decisions as electors or government decision-makers.
Even if this is all true and it's effectively free - we're saying the tax payer isn't paying for it. However isn't there still an unfairness when it comes to who BENEFITS from said broadband?
US Federal Taxes go to the Treasury[1][2], which then spends it on Federal government programs. If spending is more than receipts, the US Federal Reserve issues securities (ie, sells bonds) to raise money[3].
Quantitative Easing by the Federal Reserve does cause money to "appear", but this is different to the general process for funding federal government programs[4] (Note that the money can disappear if/when the Reserve chooses to resell those assets).
[1] https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/monthly-treasury-st...
[2] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-taxes-revenue-e... ("Of the $3.46 trillion in receipts taken in by the U.S. Treasury during fiscal 2019")
[3] https://www.stlouisfed.org/open-vault/2019/november/where-fe...
[4] https://www.forbes.com/advisor/investing/quantitative-easing...
The shortfall between Federal government spending and tax receipts is the deficit. The government has to borrow that money, which it does by having the Treasury issue debt securities.
Not sure where these claims come from either.
There are numerous examples of this. Your water supply might be one of them.
Municipal broadband is also usually pay-for-use, and you could fund it with bonds, which is also common.
You could argue against how a municipality decides to implement their own broadband service. But saying that no municipality should be able to provide any service - or even particular services - seems a bit odd. Since that's the majority of what local governments do...
The police, education, water, roads, parks, etc...
However, there is an unspoken assumption here that broadband belongs to the private sector. That’s an assumption worth thinking carefully about.
Many of the types of arguments against muni broadband have also been raised against other government infrastructure programs like public roads, bus routes, subways, etc. Many of those programs compete directly with private companies and displaced private investment.
Yet we know now that government-funded or subsidized infrastructure, done right, becomes a common platform that the rest of the economy can grow on.
It seems increasingly likely that broadband falls into this category. We just had a national year-long demonstration of the critical importance of connectivity to our economy.
If only they stopped their greed at ... enough profit to survive
Your implementation may be good.
Living in NY it should not stretch your imagination to think up what an implementation that meets all those criteria would look like.
Municipal broadband is the hip new thing right now so nobody half-asses it. I expect in time (like over the next 80yr) it will follow the model of other government services and everywhere that can afford the graft, boondoggles and BS will have the graft, boondoggles and BS and the Detroits and BFEs who simply can't afford to do it wrong it will be the only ones left with municipal broadband done right.
That said, if a town or city wants to do their own broadband they should be able to do so without state interference. Local government is best government. Allowing the towns to have a "well we could DIY it and not buy your services at all" option as a backstop when negotiating with ISPs furthers competition in a market that is otherwise mostly devoid of it IMO.
Not to be confused with the plastic ducts the fiber optic cables are often placed in.
Makes perfect sense for the last mile to be run by the government, just like the last mile of roads are.
Then you can have choice of ISPs. Or run your own.
if you want to an ISP which gives you a real IPv4 address, a guarenteed service and known contention ratio -- say they buy a couple of 10G lines from two diverse upstream providers like HE or Tata to a central location, land on a 52 port switch, and use it to serve their customers with 400mbit each way guaranteed and upto 10G if there's capacity.
On the other hand if you just want basic broadband with contention meaning that you could run into problems if everyone is pulling 50mbit, even though you can burst upto 1G, and perhaps you have CGNAT, you'll be paying less for it (the 10G uplink is spread out over more people), but that's your choice
This empowers the customer and ensures competition in the market, while the basic costs of fibre from a central internet exchange point are borne by either taxes or access charges (if you use the circuit you pay $5/month)
so, basically what we have now for non-muni net in most places with telco+cableco duopoly?
It may very well be a good program and if it is, I'm in favor of it, but it seems like it's clearly spending taxpayer-funded grants and likely has an expansive (even if slight) force on government.
> Spectrum bullying the competition.
Curious how did Spectrum bully out the competition.
Because cable requires a massive financial outlay, we end up with regional monopolies unless cable companies are forced to open up their physical platform to others. Which is rare.
It was(is) more than that. Those companies were granted a franchise/local monopoly on providing the service. By law, nobody could compete with them, whether it was economically possible or not.
Why not just fix that law now though. OP is stating that it is a profitable business. If they fix that law wouldn't there be new entrants, fixing original problem.
> The service will be fully subscriber-funded and end up making the town money in several years.
seems like an a business lots of private operators would be interested in building.
What village? Would love to learn more about it. I'm from upstate and Spectrum absolutely has a hold on many cities. Them + Verizon have a duopoly on areas, and access can change block by block. It's insane.
Edit: did a google search and I found Parish, NY posted something asking residents to fill out a survey about their internet. But nothing else.
So why did the other carriers not want to participate?
Could removing barriers that prevented the other carriers from contributing be a better solution than replacing the one bad carrier with a government bureaucracy?
You are welcome.
[1] https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/us/definition/eng...
"money that the government pays regularly to people who are poor, unemployed, sick, etc."
I still don't see the problem? A social safety net is good for everyone. Human compassion and lofty ideals of a just government aside, the rich are benefitting from it, too, in the sense that you can't have a functioning economy if there's no one to actually do the labor, rather than just collect the dividends.
Nevertheless, I just picked the very first definition that came up (literally, the one that Google presents on search), without any editorializing. Maybe you’re the one who is deliberately picking and choosing a narrow reading?
This isn't fixing global warming, this is giving some people discounted internet and leaving the rest of us with nothing.
How should we decide who gets my taxes for Internet?
It is in fact providing infrastructure that benefits and improves the lives of all citizens.
Why do you place greater importance on how a hypothetical business can in theory not be benefited by the government over the quality of life of all citizens?
Very often it is, quite deliberately.
Government is funded by taxes from the people who live in the municipality. Even if they offer it for "free", everyone in the area gets the benefit of it. This is like roads. Most communities pay for roads out of taxes or bonds levied on the community. None of that is a handout, on top of that, most places will still require you to pay for internet.
> Municipal broadband expands the role of government. It's an extra program for the municipality to manage.
This isn't necessarily bad, and requires voters be more involved in local politics to ensure that infrastructure in general is being kept up.
> Expanding government programs is a tax on residents, even if they don't benefit from broadband access.
This repeats the first point, but, yes it's a tax, but to say that not everyone benefits? This past year showed how important it was for every student to have broadband access to attend remote learning. Seems hard to argue at this point that not everyone would benefit.
> Municipal broadband is hostile to business. Companies cannot reasonably compete with a service that the government pumps money into.
To ISPs possibly, but not all businesses. Counter point, municipal broadband will benefit many businesses by ensuring that they have high-quality fast internet, that allows them to keep in better touch with their customers. This is pro-business, not anti.
But if I wish to purchase internet from a different provider, I still have to subsidize other people's internet. I'm forced to pay for something whether I use it or not.
Everyone gets to go to school for free, your taxes should be thought of as paying off your own education.
It seems silly to me that someone goes through public schools, then doesn't have kids and starts complaining that schools don't benefit them and they shouldn't have to pay.
What makes you think this is the correct perspective? Many Americans had parents who were educated abroad or not at all (if I'm paying for my education, what did my parents pay for?). Further, my education was less expensive than my education-focused-taxes are now - if I really were paying just for myself, shouldn't it be an inflation adjusted amount? Instead, I pay what it costs to educate a kid today.
We're not 100% keeping score here: some kids will die they day after they graduate high school, but on the whole people start lives as children, have a period of productivity and then are too old to really be productive.
I think it's not good to be bitter about supporting the young or old while you are working because you have been and will be (to some rough approximation) supported by the previous and the next generation.
Roughly 15 years of education roughly $5k annually at an interest rate roughly set at 15% interest (you have no credit history or school grades to showcase your credibility).
Roughly owing $150k at the end of high school, and building until you can pay it off.
Are you sure you want to make the argument that a public school education cost you many many times what a private school education would paid over a lifetime of taxes?
Of course not. There is nothing wrong with the argument you are paying for other people's kids. You are. It's a net good for society. I personal don't want roving gangs of uneducated youths who today are confined to schools all day, this is a big win for everyone. The day-prison system works well unless you're really interested in high quality education.
Deal with it, don't make weird excuses and pretend scenarios (like mine above).
I know that's how taxes work. The point is that there's no reason that should apply to purchasing internet.
Even if you think it should be government provided, that doesn't mean it needs to be funded in that way. Many government utilities are billed to the consumer based on usage. There's no real public good in forcing me to pay for other people's internet.
Something potentially offering a good to the public is not irrefutable argument that the government should do it.
You pay taxes to provide a minimum service to all of the community, you can then take advantage of it or not - that's your prerogative.
I pay for school taxes, but I don't have kids - should I get my money back?
Government mediating equal access to last mile lines and funding their construction — probably good to everyone.
Government running consumer ISPs end-to-end is a tougher sell.
Private business should justify itself by doing better and ensuring nobody wants the public version -- which also ensures the public version stays cheap. [Expensive per unit, but inexpensive overall]
>" You can get you own armed guards - but you will still subsidize other people's police force."
Why? This is an especially open question in areas with large police forces and high crime rates, or histories of police abuse of power.
>"You pay taxes to provide a minimum service to all of the community, you can then take advantage of it or not - that's your prerogative."
Again, why? What's 'a minimum service to the community'? Do you mean public goods, or services that have positive externalities, or things that help the poor?
>"I pay for school taxes, but I don't have kids - should I get my money back?"
Maybe! Depends on your beliefs surrounding political authority and ethics.
Perhaps you might do better to point to your ethical framework, and highlight what it means with respect to municipal fiber.
Not should it. An ideal government functions to help the people not individual persons.
I see national defense and public schools as very different. Defense is a non-excludable, fixed cost, so-called ‘public good’. Primary and secondary education are not public goods, though they may be long-term investments (which defense is not).
I am not saying that I ‘like’ or ‘dislike’ either, but they’re very different.
>”An ideal government functions to help the people not individual persons.”
I’ve never heard this argument before, could you please elaborate, or point to a good source for your “ideal government” ethical framework?
Ironically a functioning police service is a necessary condition for far-libertarianism to exist. It is a self extinguishing ideology.
Especially if the service eventually becomes revenue positive and pays for itself, possibly providing non-tax revenue into the municipal general fund and lowering your tax load.
To play devils advocate, not everyone wants or needs internet. My grandmother has buried fiber available straight to her rural home. I'm sure it cost tens of thousands of dollars to get that buried fiber run a mile down her dead-end road. She's never owned a computer and never will. Neither do any of the Amish families in the area.
They still pay taxes that fund all of that.
My grandmother became interested in computing and learned how to use the internet in her 80's before she passed away a decade later. The number of people who don't require or want internet access going into the future is going to be very few.
So, there is clear precedent for not paying some common taxes and not using the benefits.
> Municipal broadband is hostile to business.
I think 'business' in second sentence means business its competing with( ISP) not business in general.
But in general it discourages any business by signaling that govt might swoop in and kill your business that you build over decades by starting it own that isnt' bound by the same pressures of market.
Government is going to swoop in and provide free nail care.
Government is going to swoop in and provide free Mexican food.
Government is going to swoop in and paint homes for free.
Etc.
I'm all for having strategic nail care. I'd grab some free nail care, and if it's any good, I'd be a customer of paid nail care
Why is that?
> - Municipal broadband is a government handout. It artificially lowers prices.
There are many places where municipal broadband is at cost rather than subsidized or a hand out. With little to no competition the higher prices vs at cost can look funny.
> - Municipal broadband expands the role of government. It's an extra program for the municipality to manage.
Totally. If ISPs could get on poles to run lines to peoples homes I expect there would be a lot less of a call for them as there would be more capability for competition.
> - Expanding government programs is a tax on residents, even if they don't benefit from broadband access.
I'm not sure about this. If it's at cost or close to it than I'd be curious to see the case.
> - Municipal broadband is hostile to business. Companies cannot reasonably compete with a service that the government pumps money into.
Who can do broadband is constrained by law which is hostile to business. You can't just start and ISP and run lines to homes. That's against the law most places.
Municipal broadband is often a work around to the other hostile laws that benefit telephone companies and cable tv companies which have staked out local monopolies most places.
I wonder if we'll ever see anyone trying to technically sidestep this requirement. "We're a TV company, you can go to this url to see our 'clear sky 24/7' channel. Also we provide internet access."
- Many poles are owned by power companies, or telephone companies. You can absolutely get a JPA (joint pole attach) agreement with most of these companies in theory.
- In practice, your first problem is that most poles are horribly maintained. And if you are a new attachee, you will often find yourself having to share in the cost to make an already non-compliant pole compliant and with enough room for you to attach.
- If you are dealing with, say, Verizon poles and are trying to attach for a competing cell service, your make ready costs are oddly inflated, and they may go as far as expect you to split the cost 50/50 for a pole that is already out of spec.
- In many municipalities, the kickbacks of 'franchise agreements' cause a lot of inertia. This is mostly the case with CATV, the industry of 'how can we be minmax our monopoly'. Essentially, the cable provider pays the city X dollars per subscriber, gives them a couple public access channels, and in return gets exclusivity.
I used to do HFC design for Xfinity Fraudband, as well as fiber design/permitting for other CATV providers and cell carriers. Its a corrupt and abusive industry, the entire contractor/subcontractor system is made to shield the companies both from overall liability as well as prevent unionization.
Also, any of the SV folks speaking up about social injustice would have a heart attack in a week or two. Being in that climate for so long made me numb to a lot of injustice, and it took years to recover.
One of the bad examples that is often brought up is iProvo municipal internet. The city raised 40 million in bonds, ran up another 10 million in operating deficit, placed monthly internet bills on all residents even if they weren't connected. The city ultimately gave up and sold the infrastructure to google for $1.
https://reason.org/news-release/think-tank-iprovos-losses-at...
The world is becoming ever increasingly connected online and people should expect to have fast consistent access to online services. ESPECIALLY when government's are using internet for interfacing to do things citizens have to do.
edit: minor typo corrected.
In general I am of the opinion that fostering competition results in the best internet. That said I disagree with the GOP here; for some rural areas it's hard to get companies to run cable without some guarantees. Outright banning them hurts rural communities.
Not just rural. I live in a medium density suburban metro and we can't get more than one provider to compete. They've divvied it up amongst themselves so they maintain a monopoly in their area.
Curiously they cost the same and run about the same speeds. Both of them continue to increase their rates.
I'm all for competition, but I'm not seeing it. Worse, I see the U.S. heading in precisely the opposite direction with acquisitions, mergers, buyouts.....
Why is competition the goal? Because it ultimately lowers prices for consumers? That is what municipal internet achieves.
I'm being somewhat sarcastic here, as its not clear there has been that much innovation in this space for a while. Or if there is, I welcome hearing about it.
Real innovation would be going the EPB route and offering 10-gigabit for $300/month. https://epb.com/fi-speed-internet/
My feeling is municipal broadband is a good idea from a decade ago, but about to be made obsolete by fast wireless.
I wholeheartedly agree.
That said, I posit that municipal broadband, implemented as wired infrastructure to the premise, fosters competition rather than limits it.
IIUC, most planned/completed municipal broadband networks only provide last-mile connectivity, while internet connectivity is (or will be) provided by private ISPs.
This definitely fosters competition because a broader set of ISPs can service these customers since they don't actually have to run wires to each premise, rather they just need internet uplinks from the municipal broadband interchanges.
What's more, we can even have private or quasi-public[0] businesses/entities using ISP connection fees to manage and maintain the last-mile infrastructure. Quite possibly with a surplus for upgrades/support for other municipal programs.
That leads to more competition and not less.
I suppose it's possible that my analysis is flawed, but I'm not seeing how. If I missed/glossed over some stuff, I'd appreciate being corrected.
[0] Such as the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MTA_Bridges_and_Tunnels )
Edit: Added cited reference.
How do you square this with that the US trails all the more heavily regulated internet infrastructures in the rest of the world?
In this case, the competition only seems to come from municipal broadband, so to your argument that fostering competition results in the best internet, the status quo currently in operation is in opposition to that.
If only 1 option can provide me with greater than 25 Mbps bandwidth (what is the minimum requirements for a single 4k Netflix stream) with unlimited (or at least reasonably high) data caps, it is hard to see the alternatives as truly competitive options.
If we count everyone who then falls under this definition that be double the number you provided.
As an example I've lived all over the US, but when I first moved to Texas I was shocked and upset by how many toll roads there were, in some ways it was almost impossible to travel properly without them, the short answer was that the government of Texas didn't consider infrastructure like roads a service worth investing more than the minimum amount of effort into, and so they delegated a lot of it to companies. Arguments for internet are the same, many would consider it a basic utility or right, something hard to survive without. This is essentially what net neutrality and labelling it as a Title 2 were about, about wether or not it's a need or a luxury.
Conservatives have started labelling things like infrastructure, a living wage, health care or even internet connectivity as a luxury, which progressives have labelled them as necessities.
- building and maintaing roads expands the role of government. It's an extra program for the municipality to manage.
- Expanding government programs is a tax on residents, even if they don't benefit from building and maintaing roads.
- building and maintaing roads is hostile to business. Companies cannot reasonably compete with a service that the government pumps money into.
- This is a feature of muni broadband and other natural monopolies, like water, electricity, transportation, where economies-of-scale cost savings stimulate economic growth.
> Municipal broadband expands the role of government. It's an extra program for the municipality to manage.
- The State government stepping in to interfere with city government by blocking muni broadband is an expansion of the role of government.
> Expanding government programs is a tax on residents, even if they don't benefit from broadband access.
- The same argument has been made against public roads, not everyone uses them directly but indirectly they still benefit regardless.
> Municipal broadband is hostile to business. Companies cannot reasonably compete with a service that the government pumps money into.
- Natural monopolies are hostile to business. The natural barrier to entry prevents competition and innovation, hence why the government needs to pump money into it.
The free market, objectively, has failed us. That's why these initiative exist to begin with.
Protecting the abstract market is a worthless philosophy when the effect is to impede progress.
That might or might not be true, and could vary from example to example, but is something you need data to support, and it should be possible to determine if such operations are revenue positive or negative.
It is also difficult to swallow that it's hostile to competition in those cases where the alternative is a private monopoly by an ISP. The theory of competition in a free market is that it is also beneficial to consumers.
If there is already no potential for private competition, then the market has failed and consumers may be harmed. If the municipality steps in to offer an alternative-- as long as it is not subsidizing it & artificially lowering prices-- then it is enhancing the competitive landscape.
- Competition is everywhere. Satellite is good enough for most people. Maybe it costs more. But you choose where to live.
- 5G and Starlink are about to change the game.
Though it sounds like competition doesn't work properly for broadband so it's more of an in theory reason.
If it's a question of local politics, Ohio has recently leaned red but historically been considered a battleground state, so they're somewhat diverse.
prices are artificially high due to pseudo or actual monopolies in part due to existing regulation and prohibitive costs. internet is effectively a utility anyways so cheaper is better.
- Municipal broadband expands the role of government. It's an extra program for the municipality to manage.
not necessarily a bad thing
- Expanding government programs is a tax on residents, even if they don't benefit from broadband access.
a large majority of residents use internet in most of the USA. either way, removing the right for a community to choose seems heavy handed and anti-libertarian to me
- Municipal broadband is hostile to business. Companies cannot reasonably compete with a service that the government pumps money into.
does everything have to be exploitable for profit??
"government handout" leading language, no substance
various "expands government" also leading, still no substance/data
"hostile to business" obviously, that's the point. Private enterprise has failed here and created a number the most customer hostile organizations in existence.
The expansion of the role of government bit is not nothing. Yes, there is a cozy relationship between the federal government, many state governments and ISPs. But municipal broadband makes it much easier for e.g. the Louisville police department to influence how much of what type of information is collected on whom, and under what circumstances it may be shared.
I support municipal broadband. Any competition is good competition. But it's disingenuous to write off the concerns so quickly.
Let the municipal governments dictate how they govern themselves with their own infrastructure.
Artificially lowers price in what sense? Unless it's operating at a loss, it's just another market participant. In my experience with municipal broadband, this was the case. Their prices were below the other options, but they were operating at a profitable level (not a high profit, mind you). But with the general race to the bottom on prices, short of very high demand or collusion, their prices weren't really that much cheaper than what the local cable company would have dropped to if there'd been real competition (in fact, I had to go through the local cable company because I was in an apartment that had contracted them, and the cable company got to add a $5/month fee while doing nothing but billing).
- Municipal broadband expands the role of government. It's an extra program for the municipality to manage.
This one is kind of true, however the billing (if you weren't like me) what through the same office that handled other municipal utilities (in that area, water and sewer were billed by the county). The labor itself was contracted out, both for the initial roll out and the maintenance. This potentially adds some oversight positions but we're not talking about hundreds of extra government jobs here. And actually, if what I was told was correct their contract went to their competitor, the local cable company who had opted not to roll out their own high-speed service in the area (which precipitated the local push for municipal broadband).
- Expanding government programs is a tax on residents, even if they don't benefit from broadband access.
The program covered its own costs. Residents choosing not to participate were not charged. So it was only a tax on those residents who elected to participate in the program, but those residents were also getting better service for 50-75% lower prices compared to the old DSL and dial-up in the area (NB: This was in the late 00s, dial-up and low-speed DSL as the best options in a college town with several major businesses is insanely stupid.)
- Municipal broadband is hostile to business. Companies cannot reasonably compete with a service that the government pumps money into.
The local cable company could have competed, again, if what I was told was correct. It was their own labor that put the fiber and last-mile connections in place.
To start, all arguments about price are nonsense. Cities offer broadband because it's cheaper per household. This has been repeatedly demonstrated. Right-wingers are threatened by this fact because it's yet another disproof of their claim that the free market can do everything better than government.
Arguments about business being unable to compete with government are irrelevant in the case of utilities needed by everyone, since free market principles break down in innumerable ways.
This is not true for broadband outside your bubble. DSL is a reasonable option for the vast majority of non-tech people living outside cities and suburbs.
> - Municipal broadband expands the role of government. It's an extra program for the municipality to manage.
It requires physical infrastructure, and that physical infrastructure needs to reach people's houses. That, in turn requires the use of public resources (streets) and/or eminent domain. In short, government is already involved.
> - Municipal broadband is a government handout. It artificially lowers prices.
The level of infrastructure investment required makes it hard to justify new for-profit investment, especially if the area is already being served or isn't populated enough for the company to make a profit. As a result, internet access providers naturally tend towards being a monopoly, which in turn artificially increases prices.
> - Expanding government programs is a tax on residents, even if they don't benefit from broadband access.
I can see where this point is coming from, and it's not wrong. At this point, however, even those who don't directly benefit from internet access seem like they benefit indirectly. It's also worth noting that a lot of locales (mine included) already pump money into corporate broadband providers to entice them to build and maintain the infrastructure. In other words, the tax gets applied, regardless of whether it's a for-profit corporation reaping the benefits or not.
> - Municipal broadband is hostile to business. Companies cannot reasonably compete with a service that the government pumps money into.
Companies already can't compete with a service that requires enormous infrastructure investments and the use of government property.
Internet access (and most large-scale infrastructure) is different due to the heavy infrastructure investment required.
- It's hard to convince a for-profit organization to build out that sort of infrastructure in an area that isn't populated enough to allow the organization to make a profit.
- It's hard to convince a for-profit organization to build out a second set of infrastructure in an area that already has it, as increasing competition will lower prices and make it harder to make a profit on the investment.
- Building out multiple redundant infrastructures can also be a hassle for normal citizens. More closures due to maintenance/construction work, more use of eminent domain, more unsightly telephone poles, etc...
In short, Internet access tends towards being a monopoly. With that in mind...
- Artificially lowering prices is a good thing if it counters the natural tendency of a monopoly to push prices up. - Expanding the role of government is a bit of a non-argument, since
I don't know why but the lack of nuance and inability to admit that some things can be a good idea given the right situation is really getting old. When you are following absolutes (with nothing forcing them to be true) you are bound to get it wrong eventually.
Doesn't have to be true. With enough launch day subscriber you can build the infrastructure without any additional taxes.
> Municipal broadband is hostile to business. Companies cannot reasonably compete with a service that the government pumps money into.
That's the reason FedEx and American Airline went bankrupt; they simply couldn't compete against the US Postal Service and Amtrak!
In order to ensure the best outcome for consumers, we want customers to have a variety of competing options for broadband service. That way they can select the option which gives them the best cost/value proposition. No individual provider can abuse or take advantage of customers, because they can just switch to another provider.
Municipal broadband, by its nature, is incompatible with this competition. Such service is at least partially taxpayer funded which means that everyone pays for it whether they use it or not. Further, the city controls access to the corridors needed for providing internet service. The consequence is that the city ISP would have a great advantage over other ISPs, preventing any real competition.
The case then is that we need to ban city-run ISPs so as to promote competition amongst ISPs in order to ensure the best service.
However:
I'm not sure of a good defense of forbidding it at the state level, instead of allowing individual municipalities to make their own decisions. Furthermore, I'm not sure of a good defense ensuring competition by forbidding public isps but not also requiring cities to make it easy for new isps to enter markets by giving access to corridors.
The one thing I want to no clarify,
> Such service is at least partially taxpayer funded which means that everyone pays for it whether they use it or not.
If the muni-broadband increases competition from 1 to two, and reduces costs for everyone, then even if some tax payer that fund the muni-broadband don’t use it actively, they do benefit from its existence.
1) The prices offered by the muni-broadband aren't too low driving out all competition
2) The prices offered by the muni-broadband are low enough to force competitors to offer the best pricing
3) The cost to taxpayers of the muni-broadband are less then the decreased prices to consumers brought about by this competition.
The end result being, that I doubt a scenario where taxpayers benefit by funding a municipal competitor will actually work out.
Umm, I hear your concerns and I agree if muni-broadband reduces competition, that is not ideal. That said, this is an odd statement to make. There is data to show muni-broadband can be successful and is many times successful.
> The cost to taxpayers of the muni-broadband are less then the decreased prices to consumers brought about by this competition.
Again, I hear you. The municipality has to be competent and use funds appropriately. Ideally, no net-new taxes should be used. Ideally, muni-broadband is a net-positive venture funding other municipality endeavors.
There are a lot of cases where both versions of this story are true, the same way a lot of companies succeed and a lot of companies fail. It is not intrinsic to muni-broadband but rather intrinsic to the people running it.
Meanwhile, I was just responding to "do all of the taxpayers in the municipality benefit from the muni-broadband?"
And specifically to that one question, yes if there are 0 or 1 broadband providers serving a municipality, then every tax payer benefits from muni-broadband.
Either:
1. The price of the muni-broadband is too-low, i.e. everyone in the municipality move over to it.
2. The price of the muni-broadband is competitive, i.e. everyone in the municipality has reduced prices through competition.
3. The price of the muni-broadband is too-high, i.e. everyone in the municipality learns that their elected officials need to be changed. And/or some policy changes need to be made by learning from other municipalities.
But my skepticism was a bit narrower than muni-broadband in general. In particular, I am skeptical of scenario where we have taxpayers paying higher taxes to subsidize muni-broadband, don't use that broadband, and yet are still better off due to increased competition, which is the sort of scenario I took you as suggesting.
But it seems that wasn't what you were talking about. It currently seems that you are arguing that if we just look at the benefits of municipal broadband, everybody benefits. Sure. But I don't see the point in looking only at the benefit side of the equation.
> In 2015, it re-upped its status as a speed leader by becoming the first provider to offer 10 gigabits per second.
> The system has proven an unqualified success. Over half of the homes and businesses in the service area are signed up with “The Gig.” Plus, its price of $68 per month for a gig connection is lower than any private-sector rival for the same service. The operation is cash-positive, allowing EPB to pay off the bonds 12 years ahead of schedule and lower home utility rates.
> A recent study documented more than $2.69 billion in economic benefits to the region during the network’s first ten years. At the beginning of 2020, Forbes magazine predicted Chattanooga would be the number one city for new jobs, and even after the pandemic hit, Time Out magazine called it the best place in the country to work remotely. The expansion has been widespread, with the city seeing one of the highest income growths in the country.
To summarize "everyone benefits" because:
- "the operation is cash-flow positive" i.e. no net-new taxes.
- "price of $68 per month for a gig connection is lower than any private-sector rival" i.e. customers are saving money.
- "$2.69 BB in economic benefits to the region" i.e. everyone else is getting a boost, because connectivity (like roads) attracts business and now also attracts remote workers.
This is just one city (I googled for this success story and saw others, but I'll leave that as an exercise to the reader), and you might argue "its run competently, most gov entities are not". I agree! People get what they vote for. Vote for competency! Meanwhile, poor voting is not specific to muni-broadband so I'll leave it there.
https://prospect.org/infrastructure/building-back-america/in...
But to reiterate my last point, I was expressing scepticism of taxpayer subsidized muni-broadband turning out to benefit everyone. If its cash-flow positive, that's a different scenario where I'm much less skeptical.
> The proposed law was reportedly "inserted without prior public discussion," and no state senator publicly sponsored the amendment.
It's purely a favor to industry slipped in by some senator.
[0] nominally conservative. Ohio conservatives give a lot of lip service to "home rule" authority for municipalities. Broadband is one of several areas including LGBT measures and civil rights, oil and gas drilling, education policy, voting, and basically anything you could name where they violate their stated principles of home rule without any apparent irony when the mood strikes.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Legislative_Exchange_...
They aren't even trying to make an argument, since they aren't owning up to it. Maybe they were either just hoping it would sneak by with no one noticing, or they just let the ISP lobby write it and didn't bother to read it themselves.
It has been ruled in most places that I know of, that certain utilities like water are in this category, but also sometimes things like garbage collection. The reason is that it does cost capital to build acceptable infrastructure, and also the services are less expensive to the consumer when a single business can recoup their costs over a longer period of time.
naturally, corruption and cronyism also thrive in this environment, seeking long-term returns as vendor lock-in. The amounts of money over years, plus the security of income, can be very attractive to certain parties.
I suspect that this background affects the debate and policy, but generally, political talking points do not rely on precedent and fact, more the emotions and loyalties.. no idea on that
Perhaps they are worried that municipal broadband will be popular and thus spread, if cities are allowed to do it, which then would threaten some of their donations, and some of their fundamental ideas.
* There is no need to have government involved in the provision of broadband (or phone service or cable TV).
The government is not productive. The Government can't create broadband because the government doesn't actually create anything. But the government can implement a mandate, for something like "broadband for all". It sounds great, but it will fall short. The Government will inefficiently allocates resources leading to downtime and shortages. The free market allocates resources properly and will provide better and less expensive broadband internet, at no cost to the tax payer.
I think the problem is that the opposite has actually happened, which is what motivates municipal broadband.
I really hope nobody thinks that applies to Internet service in the real world. All evidence suggests that there is no free market, the resulting service is not better, nor less expensive, and it has cost the taxpayers a significant amount.
What's interesting about this case is that the municipalities have made moves towards this with their own money and efforts. And it is the state which is attempting to squash it, that is those around them. It would be as if you said to your neighbors, "I'm going to try and do something which will have zero impact on you, like eating more vegetables that I grow at home." Then they all gang up on you and deny you the right to grow and consume your own vegetables. If the action were harmful to you and your neighbors, like say you decided to make meth in your home, then it could be a reasonable response.
What about municipal broadband causes harm to those outside the community which wants it such that their representatives in the state legislature have any reasonable standing to try and bar it?
Just because something passes by a margin of, let's say a hypothetical margin of 51/49, you're right that it didn't require unanimous consent but if you ignore the concerns of that other 49 and decide not to at least understand, represent parts of or compromise on certain aspects of an issue you're going to just create a situation of hostility for a large group of people that eventually leads to bigger issues.
As to your explanation/example, sure and I don't have an argument against that because I don't disagree with it. I would vote for municipal broadband and think the state is over stepping it's bounds here.
The argument goes, the broadband company spent a lot of capital to build out a network, but they can’t compete with a government run system that doesn’t have to make a profit.
It is an interesting argument, but I don’t find it compelling. I think internet access is a public good.
https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp...
The private argument is that it lowers profits for the corporations who give them campaign contributions.
https://www.govexec.com/workforce/2020/09/poll-biden-leads-t...
Democrats Lead Ranks of Both Union and State Workers
https://news.gallup.com/poll/146786/democrats-lead-ranks-uni...
For an example, see this:
https://www.govexec.com/pay-benefits/2020/02/white-house-rev...
Not sure about state and local government employees.