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With HR 3557, Broadband Monopolies Are Pushing A Bill That Would Crush Your Town’s Ability To Stand Up To Them (www.techdirt.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

We had something similar in my city. Basically, we started building a broadband network, then our state legislature blocked new municipal service (we hadn't turned it on yet), so we were forced to sell it at a loss (we've almost finished paying off the debt). I have service from the new ISP (only offers service in my city), and it rocks, but has limited max speed. The laws changed, so we're trying it again.

I understand the high level complaints here because municipal ISPs could simply move costs to taxes to undercut competitors, but that argument falls flat when you see how private ISPs do exactly the same thing, but with lawsuits and promotional deals instead of taxes.

So I'm 100% in favor of municipal broadband, but I can see having some regulations there such as:

municipalies must allow other ISPs to offer service on their network
pricing of service must include all necessary maintenance of the network
a special provision that allows municipalities to offer a base free tier at an acceptable speed that's enough for remote school (say, 10/10 down/up); perhaps this is treated as a credit that any ISP could accept