The Fastest Broadband In The US Is Being Built by Local Communities

Marc

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The Fastest Broadband In The US Is Being Built by Local Communities

"It may surprise people that these cities in Virginia, Tennessee, and Louisiana have faster and lower cost access to the Internet than anyone in San Francisco, Seattle, or any other major city,” says Christopher Mitchell, Director of ILSR’s Telecommunications as Commons Initiative. “These publicly owned networks have each created hundreds of jobs and saved millions of dollars.”

Think about it... :notme: I remember when Cincinnati Gas and Electric, formerly a regulated public utility, was privatized abut 10 years ago - Electric rates went up over 30% the month following the switch.
 
M

MIREGMGR

My understanding is that the usual challenges for such operations are how the fairly substantial upfront capital investment is to be funded and recouped, and the legalities of getting locations for distributed physical plant.

If the capital investment isn't part of the cost structure for the public operation, i.e. their capital is free or cheap, and if they either have free access to governmental physical plant locations or by virtue of their legal power can "convince" another utility to allow such access on a cheap or free basis, then of course they will be able to sell services at a low price. It also helps that such an operation typically pays no taxes.

These are the standard arguments for socialized service provision. They're hard to extend too far across the economic spectrum, though, or a bit of a conflict arises between the tax revenue needed to make them work and the fact that not enough taxpaying enterprises are left to provide all of that nice funding.
 
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