Another US State Repeals Law That Protected ISPs From Municipal Competition (arstechnica.com) 34
Minnesota this week eliminated two laws that made it harder for cities and towns to build their own broadband networks. From a report: The state-imposed restrictions were repealed in an omnibus commerce policy bill signed on Tuesday by Gov. Tim Walz, a Democrat. Minnesota was previously one of about 20 states that imposed significant restrictions on municipal broadband. The number can differ depending on who's counting because of disagreements over what counts as a significant restriction. But the list has gotten smaller in recent years because states including Arkansas, Colorado, and Washington repealed laws that hindered municipal broadband. The Minnesota bill enacted this week struck down a requirement that municipal telecommunications networks be approved in an election with 65 percent of the vote. The law is over a century old, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance's Community Broadband Network Initiative wrote yesterday.
Water (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you imagine if a state passed a law saying municipalities could not provide water, in order to protect the bottled water industry?
Re: Water (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop giving them ideas.
Re: (Score:2)
Those are not the same service.
Re:Water (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Bottled water is not the same industry as piping water. It's not even similar, other than one is typically a client of the other.
Former is a retail business selling highly mobile products. Latter is a service fixed to a location.
Re: (Score:2)
IIRC - Chatanooga TN , aka "Gig City" , ran fiber to homes and has been offering gigabit ISP service to residents for many years now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Not sure about relevance to discussion of this specific analogy, but awesome if reasonably priced without too much subsidization from tax payer side.
Re: (Score:2)
Fiber to the home is more of a fixed service. I would not really consider it a mobile service.
Their rates look good to me - https://epb.com/fi-speed-inter... [epb.com]
Subsidized? Well they were the local municipal power company first and then Internet provider. They post their financials but I don't have the time to dig in to see if the customer base pays for the whole thing or if all residents pay into it.
Re: (Score:2)
>Fiber to the home is more of a fixed service. I would not really consider it a mobile service.
>Former is a retail business selling highly mobile products. Latter is a service fixed to a location.
Yes, that was my point above.
Re: (Score:2)
I may have reversed your comparison ... I should know not to post before coffee. :-)
Re: (Score:2)
Caffeine is a hell of a drug.
Re: (Score:2)
Most water is public, but more than 30 million Americans get their water from a private utility company.
Water supply and sanitation in America [wikipedia.org]
Re: (Score:2)
Can you imagine if a state passed a law saying municipalities could not provide water, in order to protect the bottled water industry?
No, but I can wait.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Didn't Flint, Michigan try that?
Re: (Score:2)
You jest, but there are some laws like that, just not in the way you think. You think of consumers buying bottled water, but the laws protect bottlers with access to water.
Most bottled water is simply tap water, bottled. There are exceptions, like Evian or Fuji which actually are bottled and shipped from those locations in the world (with corresponding prices to match). The c
Pretty good news (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Pretty good news (Score:5, Insightful)
The term is "performance bond," and it should be constitutionally required on all contracts with government agencies at all levels. With prison time for overruns that exceed a reasonable limit without a damned goo reason (which does not include large contributions to someone's reelection fund).
Re: (Score:2)
If there's sufficient money on the table, there will very likely be takers. Demand creates supply.
Re: (Score:2)
Is there any reason that contractors who usually work for ISPs would not work for municipalities?
Money talks. Just pay the going rate and there will be takers.
Re: (Score:2)
And the skills to do that kind of work are not exactly rare.
Re: (Score:3)
I don't think that will be a problem. My utility company contracted with a private installer to install a fiber trunk (which is owed by the utility company) throughout the city, then brought in an ISP (Quantum Fiber, when then got bought by Brightspeed) to install the fiber to my house and provide service. The entire city-wide rollout took about six months.
I've had the gigabit fiber service for a few years now, and it's the best Internet I've ever had. No caps, no arbitrary restrictions, no throttling, etc.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, easily.
Who installs the fiber for the ISP?
very VERY often, not the ISPs themselves, just contractors!
And contractors don't really give a shit who is giving them the cash, so long as they're getting the cash flow. A new customer all of a sudden pops up with a city-scale work order? Who the hell WOULDN'T want that scale of contract !?
Re: (Score:3)
Several, such as Chattanooga TN. already have.
We've forgotten what an "ISP" is (Score:5, Insightful)
Where I live, we have municipal fiber. We have a choice of upwards of a dozen ISPs.
I contracted with my first ISP in 1998. They didn't own the phone lines; I dialled their number with my modem to connect to the Internet.
Just because phone companies and cable companies have become the main broadband ISPs doesn't mean the definition has changed.
Municipal fiber doesn't compete with ISPs; it competes with the local phone/cable duopoly.
Terrible idea (Score:1)
Re:Terrible idea (Score:4, Insightful)
You mean except for everywhere it's already been done in the U.S. and elsewhere.
Re: (Score:2)
Competition is good (Score:2)
Pretty much everywhere where new players have entered the market in competition with the last century dinosaur monopolies, things have gotten better for consumers with more choice and lower prices.