^^ No. That is a Constitutional issue. Constitutionally, cities are subservient to the State. Although, I am unclear when it comes to California's Constitution.

This is a bad idea. As such, I am thankful when the constitutional authority opposes it.

4/2/2011 7:54:58 PM

municipal broadband service is an excellent idea, and the only people wanting to fuck it up are the existing companies like TWC that gouge customers and morons like LoneSnark that are too stupid to realize just how bad they're currently being ripped off in comparison to municipals that already offer broadband service.

4/3/2011 12:13:42 PM

Can someone more clearly state what the arguments for and against muni broadband are? I tried to establish what the arguments for it were, but people didn't like what I wrote.

4/3/2011 3:01:08 PM

PROs

1.)municipals don't need to be as profit driven as a corporation, because the appeal of great internet service will draw more people to live in the area or run businesses from home, thus increasing tax revenue.

2.)many municipals already have existing electric utility infrastructure, and they already have a requirement to install fiber-optics to run their SCADA and smart-grid systems. The difference in cost between 12-count fiber to run their basic needs and 288-count fiber for various backbone purposes is minor, since most of the cost is tied up in the labor and attachment hardware which is the same for both cables. Since their infrastructure costs are reduced, they can simultaneously improve their electric systems while offering superior broadband service.

3.)kind of a followup from #2, municipal broadband makes operation of meter reading on the gas and electric systems much cheaper and allows a lot more customer interface. Customers will be able to get very accurate readings of their energy usage, with AMR systems allowing for polling of the meters every 15 minutes instead of monthly with people physically reading the meters. having readily available and accurate metering can help people be more consciencious of their energy consumption, which lowers their bills and helps the environment.

4.)municipals are building their systems up from scratch instead of trying to capitalize on 50 year old coaxial and twisted pair networks. Instead of creating a patchwork legacy system, they are installing state of the art communications equipment.

5.)municipals already have customer accounts for water, sewer, natural gas, trash collection, and electricity. Adding one extra utility to the bill and only having one bill a month for all of your household needs would be a nice convenience factor.

6.)municipals want to offer the exact services that people in their town want, instead of matching what sells well throughout the rest of the state / country. The services offered can be more specialized to the customer base, especially when offering commercial services to businesses that generate large amounts of tax revenue for the area.

7.)municipals offer competition against the established providers. This can be seen easily in Wilson, where the cost of TWC service is almost half of what you pay in Raleigh for the same service.



CONs
1.)there might be incentive for municipals to subsidize their broadband services with tax revenue. Some states have passed legislature mandating that municipals must make a profit on the broadband service.

2.)there are privacy concerns with your municipal having access to your internet connections. Technically, the municipality could track internet history and give this over to their municipal police force for profiling or any number of other things. This is a concern with most internet providers though, as they really don't give a shit about your personal privacy.

3.)municipal broadband makes government operations bigger. If you don't like big government, this isn't for you. then again, telecoms hire so many lobbyists already that there isn't much difference between the two. At least municipal broadband programs wouldn't be able to donate to campaign funds.

4/3/2011 4:37:07 PM

You left out all the cons I gave in this thread and mentioned pros that are silly, such as using one wasteful government program (the smart grid) to justify another.

But, I think I can sum it up with fewer words. Everything you listed as a pro, applies equally well to the city residents founding a non-profit corporation and doing everything you said. It can even partner with the city to share billing if you wish, as it must acquire right-of-way somehow, such as through a franchising agreement. As such, none of the PROs you listed have anything to do with founding a Municipal Broadband service.

The only PROs to making your non-profit community fiber broadband service a Municipal entity are:
1.) Provides access to Municipal Bonds which have a lower interest rate thanks to the city's tax payers assuming all the financial risk in the venture. I would call this a CON considering 80+% of the city's taxpayers either a) chose to sign up with existing commercial providers such as Cable, Telephone, or Cellular Broadband, b) don't sign up for any internet at home, or c) live in areas too rural to be reached by the community fiber.
2.) Encourages the city to suppress commercial competitors to the business, driving out competition, driving up prices, and ensuring the business survives. I view this one also as a CON, as profitability does not serve public interest, a free marketplace does.
3.) Provides the city zone and code regulators a strong incentive to not block expansion of the service, as governments tend to do. This one is most definitely a PRO, it is too bad we live in such a world where this is necessary.

4/4/2011 1:47:42 AM

Quote :

"mentioned pros that are silly, such as using one wasteful government program (the smart grid) to justify another. "

you never cease to amaze me with your stupidity. smart grid is a utility movement being undertaken across the country, not a government program. The government allocated a small sum of money to go to utilities with existing smart grid programs during the bailout to make sure they kept moving forward, but that had very little influence on the projects because of just how little money the government actually granted.

the cons you gave in this thread are stupid, wrong, and do not bear repeating.

[Edited on April 4, 2011 at 9:16 AM. Reason : smart grid volt/var reduction is a great moneymaking / energy saving initiative that pays off fast.]

4/4/2011 9:14:17 AM

Quote :

"Lumex, broadband in the US merely price differentiates a different way from everyone else. We charge different prices based upon bandwidth, so most sign up for 1mbps unlimited DSL and call it a day. Meanwhile, our Canadian, British, and European cohorts get 24mbps DSL with a 15GB cap. Americans could pay more for a wider pipe, and foreigners can pay $5 per gigabyte of cap. "

Citation? What internet service in Europe offers access for $5 per gig per month? Also, what is your point? What you said doesn't dispute the fact that internet access in Europe is significantly cheaper than in the USA. A 15gb cap is practically a non-issue, since its way more than the vast majority of Americans use in a month.

4/4/2011 9:30:25 AM

^^ Right, my bad, $4.5 billion dollars is apparently chump change. Never-mind the real government part, which are state regulators mandating that utilities implement the scheme against their will.

^ This one is Canadian:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/01/canada-gets-first-bitter-dose-of-metered-internet-billing.ars
Base cap is 2GB for $24.95 per month, with a fee per GB on top of that. For AT&T DSL here in Raleigh for $19.95 a month you will get a cap of 150GB.

If you believe 2GB is more than more people use, or about one movie on netflix, then you must accept that 1mbps is more than most people will use.

As for the point, the point is that internet is not significantly cheaper, it is just priced differently, and therefore people on both sides of the border (or Atlantic) get told how much better things are on the other side.

As reported in America: In Canada $24.95 gets you 25mbps, where-as here here in American that price only gets you 3mbps! Their internet is cheaper and faster!
As reported in Canada: In America $19.95 gets you unlimited data, where-as here in Canada $24.95 only gets us 2GB per month! Their internet is cheaper and better!

I have a family friend living in Canada, they pay about the same as me for about the same service. My brother lives in Germany, he is paying more for less. Another friend lived in Japan for four months, had a 100mbps connection for about $20 a month, the lowest speed connection he could sign up for, but it only came with 10GB and they charged $1 for every GB he went over. I downloaded 300GB last month, such a connection would be a nightmare for me, as it would have cost me $310 every month. The Canadian connection would cost me $61 every month. But here in America, even After U-Verse imposes caps I will be paying $46 a month.

4/4/2011 12:19:28 PM

Why are you talking about Canada? The comparion involved Japan, the USA and Europe. I never said anything about 2gb being adequate.

Your ancedote about your Japanese friend is also pointless. If you lived in Japan, you wouldn't use his plan. You would would probably buy a plan with a higher cap, or no cap at all. Even if you ended up paying more than you would in Raleigh, clearly you should pay more because you use expoentially more bandwidth than most users.

Europe and Japan have better, cheaper internet service, due to more regulation. Just swallow the bitter pill.

4/4/2011 2:18:04 PM

"due to more regulation" [citation needed]
Given denser population, they should have better cheaper internet service. And why not Canada? Canada has all the regulations you favor, with obviously poor results. But, this thread is not about regulation, as the only regulation that gets you cheaper internet is price controls, like they have in Canada and Britain with the expected result of poor investment. This thread is about subsidization of the 10% with municipal service by the 90% who don't.

But fine, let us go around the world:
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/04/how-internet-users-are-disciplined-around-the-world.ars
Australia, another country with the regulations you favor, starts with caps at 2GB per month, throttled afterward. In the United Kingdom they also show starting at 10GB per month.

Quote :

"If you lived in Japan, you wouldn't use his plan. You would would probably buy a plan with a higher cap, or no cap at all."

Oh my, like I said, in Japan they price GB caps, in America we price mbps, leading to uneducated claims like "Europe and Japan have better, cheaper internet service". And like I said, my brother currently lives in Germany and is paying $50(US) for a 6mbps capped DSL connection. Something my parents get in Fayetteville for $29.95 from CenturyLink without the cap. So, please, do some feet on the ground research before you make your blanket statements. Have you even been to any of the countries you seem so eager to mimic?

[Edited on April 4, 2011 at 2:59 PM. Reason : .,.]

4/4/2011 2:57:41 PM

It wouldn't mean a damn thing if I had been there. It takes more than ancedotal claims to dispute a Harvard Study and the chairman of the FCC.

4/4/2011 4:58:36 PM

Quote :

"Right, my bad, $4.5 billion dollars is apparently chump change. "

considering that the utilities in NC alone are spending over $4.5 billion just by themselves on smart grid, it is chump change.

Quote :

"Never-mind the real government part, which are state regulators mandating that utilities implement the scheme against their will. "

you mean like in Maryland and California, where the smart-grid initiatives from the utilities are being blocked by the public utilities commissions? Or are you implying what's happening here and in most of the Southeast, where the utilities are telling the utilities commission exactly what they want to do with their systems? I can't think of a single utility that is against smart-grid; they just don't agree with every implementation of the technology because cookie-cutter solutions don't always work in the engineering world.

4/4/2011 5:20:05 PM

^ In a Cost-Plus regulatory environment, utilities will always be in favor of anything that drives up their costs, such as Smart Grid Technology, provided the regulators will price the costs into the regulated prices. As the government is sufficiently in favor of Smart Grid technology that they are giving billions of dollars towards it, I suspect they will also be willing to price it into the cost structure and then some, making utility profits higher than they were before investing in Smart Grid Technology even if no cost savings ever accrue from the technology. It is the public utility commission's job to prevent such cost stuffing from occurring. That they are blocking it in some states implies they agree with me: it will never be worth the money and is being implemented due to perverse incentives (the utilities to drive up their costs and therefore regulated profits and politicians because it sounds good in speeches).

4/4/2011 7:26:41 PM

Once again, you're talking out of your ass about shit you know nothing about. Maryland and California are blocking smart grid initiatives because they object to the concept of mandatory time-of-use metering. The politicians who appoint the PUC have instructed them not to allow any rate changes that would increase the power bill of your average know-nothing consumers, even though that is what it takes for most people to take energy savings seriously. The politicians are afraid of consumer outrage from higher power bills reflecting at the polls.

4/4/2011 10:24:16 PM

So glad you agree with me. They are blocking Smart-Grid Tech because "The politicians who appoint the PUC have instructed them not to allow any rate changes that would increase the power bill of your average know-nothing consumers", which is shockingly close to what I said, which was they are trying to use smart-grid initiatives to make the average know-nothing consumer pay more for exactly the same service.

Before you talk down to me, you should probably disagree with me first.

[Edited on April 5, 2011 at 12:41 AM. Reason : .,.]

4/5/2011 12:40:01 AM

I'm going to continue to talk down to you because you're a dumbass that continues to comment on topics you know nothing about. What I said was in no way agreeing with you. If you really understood the purpose of time-of-use metering, you'd realize just how stupid what you just said is.

besides, you claimed that government is trying to push smart grid and the utilities are trying to stop it. The exact fucking opposite is what is happening, and you think that means I'm agreeing with you? God damn, if you weren't always like this I'd think you were trolling.

[Edited on April 5, 2011 at 8:45 PM. Reason : .]

4/5/2011 8:43:33 PM

We have 50 states and even more entities known as utilities. As shocking as it may be to you, they do not all agree all the time. When I point out the incentives of the situation, it is quite offensive for you to reply with what basically amounts to "that cannot be true because human beings are not that complex!" As shocking as it may be to hear, some politicians are against SGT because it is a scam, some politicians are in favor because their voters respond to the rhetoric. Some utilities are in favor because it will boost their profits through higher prices, some utilities are against because it will cause headaches. And some people, like you, have drunk the koolaid and believe the hype.

Just because I disagree with you does not make me ignorant. I seem to know more than you, since you seem incapable of speaking in anything but talking points and when I repeatedly point out the situation is more complex than that, you respond with personal attacks.

If I am wrong, then speak the truth. That you cannot strongly implies you know not.

4/5/2011 10:58:07 PM

you're the one posting talking points and hypotheticals. I'm putting out cold hard facts about utilities and telecoms, to which you have absolutely no response other than more fake hypotheticals.

If you don't like being called the fuck out for being a dumbass, then keep your mouth shut about things you know nothing about. If you think you actually know something, then back it up with real facts, not some unrelated "what if" scenario.

[Edited on April 6, 2011 at 11:27 AM. Reason : I've actively worked on smart grid projects. what are your credentials?]

4/6/2011 11:24:42 AM

I actively worked on a smart grid project for the NSF. As much as all the various levels of government are spending on it, I suspect any competent engineer would at least know someone that had.

Looking back at your posts, I see nothing of what you speak, but a slew of personal attacks on anyone you disagree with, including a suggestion to have the government sieze the nation's utilities for no better reason than to issue a fuck you to some corporation you disagree with politically.

[Edited on April 7, 2011 at 1:05 AM. Reason : .,.]

4/7/2011 1:01:20 AM

No wonder you have such a dumb and slanted view of smart grid; your only experience comes from a government program and not from actual utilities.

you started off by showing you know nothing about the level of service being provided by municipals vs. telecoms and a complete lack of understanding of easements/property rights. You then further complicate the issue by incorrectly stating that cities are chartered by the state of NC, which thy aren't. If you think you can make statements arguing your point like you're an expert and you don't even have the simplest facts right, you can expect to be personally attacked.

I never once claimed that government should come in and sieze utilities. I merely claimed that they should regulate telecom profits just like every other utility. If you can't understand the difference between the two, then you should back out of this thread.

4/7/2011 9:57:11 AM

Quote :

"complete lack of understanding of easements/property rights"

So, you are sticking by your assertion that a city does not own city property?

Quote :

"You then further complicate the issue by incorrectly stating that cities are chartered by the state of NC, which thy aren't"

You are quite wrong. While there are alternate forms of organization, any city we would speak of is chartered by the state and any eventual bankruptcy might result in the state revoking that charter. I didn't jump on you too hard when you first made this mistake, as it is obscure law that, to my knowledge, has not be relevant for a generation. As such, your ignorance on the subject is understandable. I myself only know it from attending a lecture on Campus entitled something like "North Carolina and the 19th century battle for local governance." So I googled it, and sure enough, it was plastered everywhere, you clearly didn't bother doing even this before jumping to a position. Entry #4: "January 21, 1795 - ...Raleigh finally becomes a city. The General Assembly ratifies the first Raleigh City Charter, and seven commissioners are chosen to govern the new city." Entry #6: "In North Carolina, the legislature creates cities, counties and other units of local government, gives them their authority to act and their structure, and can modify this authority and structure in its discretion."

So, why has everything you said been absolutely untrue? Certainly it has been on purpose?

4/7/2011 11:54:34 PM

If city's owned all city property, then they wouldn't be required to obtain easements to build their own utilities. They do have to obtain easements though, because the state owns most of the major road righ-of-way and individual property owners own the rest. If you think the city has the right to everything in the town, you are dead wrong. If you want to argue quick-take capabilities under imminent domain, then that is another subject altogether. Either way, it's a major difference from the practice of most Telecoms to hang their facilities on existing utilities and illegally piggyback off of the other utilities easement.

You didn't "jump on you too hard when you first made this mistake" on the charter issue; I never said it before. I meant to say yesterday that the city charter doesn't hold the state financially responsibly for them, which you claimed numerous times on the first page.

Why don't you argue the real point here? Wilson provides better service for cheaper than TWC, and other towns could do the same if TWC would stop lobbying the shit out of the state. You seem to have no retort for that. All you've done until now is attempt to troll with misdirection, so address the issue point blank. I've already listed out the pros and cons on this page, so you do the same if you think you know so much. Keep in mind that everything you post better match up with what is physically happening in this state and others regarding municipal broadband.

4/8/2011 8:44:07 AM

A city does not need a easement to build on city property. I can't imagine how you don't already know this, but it is not city property if it is owned by the state. Similarly, the city doesn't own my house, either.

And how odd that you planned to completely contradict yourself yesterday, opting instead to state lies as fact. I gave you the benefit of the doubt by assuming you just didn't bother looking it up and so spoke without knowing. It is very honest of you to put me straight and confess that you knew perfectly well what you were saying was a lie, yet said it anyway.

Quote :

"Why don't you argue the real point here? Wilson provides better service for cheaper than TWC"

Fine. the fact is, Wilson provides crappy service compared to TWC. Anyone in Wilson and outside of Wilson can sign up for TWC, therefore spreading the internet far and wide. Wilson doesn't even offer internet service to everyone in Wilson, nevermind that only a tiny percentage of those offered muni-internet sign up for it, yet wants everyone living in Wilson to help pay for it through taxes. Forgive me for valuing more in life than my own personal internet access. It is wrong to tax everyone to provide the few with "faster cheaper internet!" Especially when there is a real chance of it all ending in tears a decade or two down the road when the muni-internet monopoly is finished and the people of Wilson are left with crappy internet they pay for twice and can't get rid of. There is also a real chance Wilson will screw it up so badly the problem becomes the state's to clean up.

For someone that thinks he knows so much about utilities, I have a question. Why is the power company, which is a real monopoly, usually not a municipal service but you think internet service should be a municipal service?

4/8/2011 10:53:19 PM

Quote :

"Why is the power company, which is a real monopoly, usually not a municipal service but you think internet service should be a municipal service? "

power is a very common municipal service in North Carolina. Wilson has it, along with several dozen other towns and cities from as small as Louisburg to as big as Fayetteville. Have you never heard of Electricities or NCEMPA? It's not just a NC thing either, as municipal power is very common in Florida as well. I'm not certain about the rest of the country, since I haven't worked for municipals in those areas.

FYI, the state is trying to pass legislation now to bust up NCEMPA, and I can't figure out why in the hell they would want to do so.


[Edited on April 10, 2011 at 3:18 PM. Reason : you don't provide much reasoning for why uncompressed video and extreme bandwidth is inferior to TWC]

4/10/2011 3:16:13 PM

I support anything that puts the current companies out of business. There is no way these companies would survive in a competitive market.

If cities have to join the market in order to spur competition, so be it. The status quo is not fixing a damn thing -- this is not theoretical.

Service providers are fucking shitty. They have no incentive to provide a quality product AND good customer support.

We need more competition instead of the oligopoly we have now. Thought experiments are not going to solve this problem. The government needs to kick these crooks in the ass.

4/16/2011 12:31:50 PM

Competition would be great. Get some friends together and start raising money to begin laying fiber. Let us see which roadblock you hit first. You don't need city money to start an ISP, all that is required is city permission.

4/16/2011 12:51:39 PM

So you support the status quo. Go it.


This is why no one taps libertarians for anything because they always fold like a cheap tent when faced with the prospect of solving a problem in a non-theoretical world. You don't have to work hard in the ivory tower of academia.

4/16/2011 1:52:53 PM

To be honest, i firmly believe both models are doomed to failure. I believe the future rests with neighborhood fiber cooperatives. You see, in either case, if only one strand of fiber runs to your home then you are at the mercy of whoever owns it, be it AT&T or the city of Wilson, which will mean a conflict of interest. However, when you yourself own the last 0.1 mile to your home, then no conflict exists. an ISP contracts with the neighborhood to provide fiber to the neighborhood cooperative, then bills customers directly to light up their individual fiber to the home. If you or the coop want a different ISP, the new ISP only needs to run to the neighborhood.

The issue with internet is often only this last run to the individual homes which is expensive, as the run to the neighborhood or town can be spread over everyone. The grand to run to your individual house is not. However, this is not an insane sum of money, it is just that no one wants to pay it only to have customers either not sign up or discontinue service after less than a year, long before the debt from laying the fiber has been paid off. Well, this impasse seems easily solved by having the homeowner pay the up-front costs of the fiber run so they can then contract just for the FTTN service. This model has been used in several areas of Europe and the Americas and the homeowners were left with absurdly fast fiber service for only $10 a month.

However, such setups are rare. Most people in a neighborhood balk at the high up-front cost and having to reach agreement to do the entire neighborhood at once to reduce the cost. Especially, and this is key, when substitutes satisfactory to 60+% of the neighborhood exist in the form of AT&T and TWC.

4/17/2011 2:55:49 AM

your solution makes no sense at all. who owns the headend equipment? Who negotiates rates with long distance and TV providers? Who maintains the maintenance agreements when someone digs into the lines or runs over a service pedestal with a car? middle mile and last mile are cheap compared to the millions of dollars that get dumped into generators, UPS systems, DC telephony equipment, satellite broadcast uplink equipment, microwave links, routing / multiplexing equipment, etc. that is required to make the FTTH network actually provide something. A small city like Wilson can justify this cost, but a 3,000 home subdivision can't.

50 years ago, we used to have telecommunication cooperative networks for owning twisted pair runs to the house. When computerized switching devices became commonplace, cooperative networks sold their systems off to Bell / AT&T because they couldn't justify the costs of the headend equipment for such a small number of members. The cooperatives got assimilated into much larger groups so that the expensive switching equipment could be better utilized.

4/17/2011 8:00:45 PM

"who owns the headend equipment?" The FTTN internet provider. Keep in mind they only provide internet, so their headend will consist of a box on the side of the road.

"Who negotiates rates with long distance and TV providers?" Skype and GoogleTV. It only makes sense that we need to negotiate phone and TV service from our internet provider because the internet connection by itself cannot sensibly handle such services and therefore requires alternate means of provision. However, Fiber is different. With effort, the U-Verse TV model could work for the internet at large if only the internet links were big enough, and in a FTTH situation, they are. It is absurd for a small regional provider, such as Wilson, to be negotiating TV and telephone and maintaining the equipment to distribute it. As you say, they are smaller and therefore at a disadvantage to their national over-internet competitors with tens of millions of customers. But, i recognize this is a bit ahead of its time for TV. In areas already using this model, subscribers sign up for an internet phone service such as magicjack or Skype. They get TV from Dish Network or DirectTV. But, with FTTH, they are ready for over-internet TV when it finally gets here. But, for the people of Wilson, the city would most likely block or cap such an internet service because they need to pay for their absurdly expensive head-end which is providing TV and phone server to a relatively tiny customer base.

"Who maintains the maintenance agreements when someone digs into the lines or runs over a service pedestal with a car?" Depends. If it is the fiber running to your house, which you own, then you need to call someone from the yellow pages to come fix it. If they dug up AT&T's fiber line, then AT&T will have it fixed.

[Edited on April 18, 2011 at 1:56 AM. Reason : .,.]

4/18/2011 1:35:49 AM

Having multiple data networks built and owned by different entities is retardedly inefficient. It needlessly inflates the cost of the service and complicates the task of standardizing equipment and software.

4/18/2011 9:42:24 AM