If we did that then we'd all still be stuck with DSL. Electric and gas utilities aren't expected to drastically improve performance year over year, but we want that from our telecom providers.
US broadband is a horrible. 50mb up down is DSL with today's tech. It's 5% the speed of what many company's roll out for ~60$ / month.
As to density arguments, you don't need to cover every square foot of the US with fiber only where people actually live. We build Roads to just about every house which cost 50+ times what broadband does. (2-3 million per mile in rural areas per mile vs ~50k per mile for fiber.)
>Electric and gas utilities aren't expected to drastically improve performance year over year
There's a reason for that. We have enough electricity to power our things. We have enough gas pressure to create a flame. Delivery, price, performance, etc are all pretty good. They're solved problems.
Not too long ago Edison was running filthy coal plants in downtown city centers and running thick-gauge DC wires to businesses. That's where we are today with the mish-mash of cable and copper for last-mile internet. Half-assed, but profitable, efforts by players incentivized by the wrong things.
The last mile problem is largely solved via municipal fiber. The real question is do we have the political will to socialize/monopolize these things like we did in the past. It seems that we don't. We have the innovations and we know how to fix this. Its getting there politically that is the problem.
This sketch of a sketch of an argument that you have laid out it a total non sequitur. It seems to me that you're pointing to the Flint water crisis as proof either that all municipal infrastructure efforts are disastrous, or that enough of them are that the public utility alternative is essentially dead. If that is the "argument," then the easiest way to defeat this is just to say, "Flint was news because it represented a rare and egregious failure."
That's it. That's all we need to say to rebut that in its entirety.
If we stop there, however, we miss the opportunity to point out the converse: It's not news when customers get gouged for sub-par service, because corrupt and monopolistic practices are rampant within capitalist institutions, especially around lock-in. Cable companies. Phone companies. Privatized utilities. Airlines after deregulation. Military suppliers. It's just not news.
We'd also miss the opportunity to point out that the tactic of pointing to one criminal failure of a civic organization as proof positive that private industry is universally better is a favorite tactic of a certain obnoxious kind of 20-something free-market fanboy set.
HN is better off when that set either stays home or ups its game.
Flint is an extreme example, but almost all municipal water systems are a disaster. In Atlanta, the sewer system dumps raw sewage in the Chattahoochee when it rains. In Chicago, old lead pipes are poisoning kids. It happens because rates are set by elected boards, not by markets, and because municipalities are not forced to bear the external costs of poor infrastructure.
U.S. broadband speed and cost lag other industrialized nations too. The only general lesson here is that the U.S. is big and infrastructure is expensive.
Flint is an extreme example, but underinvestment in infrastructure is not rare. It's endemic. Governments across the country are underinvesting in infrastructure at all levels. It's not just me who's saying this. It's been a major talking point of the democratic party for years.
And that's for infrastructure like roads and water delivery where technology is largely static. The problem would likely only be worse for more dynamic infrastructure like broadband.
In large part because the wealthy, and corporations, have entirely shirked their taxpaying obligations. That is: paying for the services which enabled them to become wealthy in the first place.
It is for now; come back in 10 years and lets see. Keeping fibre in the ground working in the face of storms, other people digging it up and tech churn (ok, what is after 10Gbe ? How are you going to run that round the mainstreet?) isn't rocket science, but it is a technical maintenance task and new build infrastructures have a great upfront advantage. For a while.
Buried fiber works just fine regardless of storms. Aerial fiber is a different matter. Patching up fiber cables after a cut is no big deal. Tech churn, i.e. what active equipment to use, is just run of the mill stuff. You can upgrade the optics to 100G if you need it, but if you don't nobody is forcing you to move past 10G.
I've built and ran fiber networks for over 10 years and operations and maintenance is no big issue.
Super interesting: what fault rate (per 1000 per week) do you see and what kind of geography are you in (urban?)
On the past 10Gbe point : contention is the killer, there is a rise of "super users" for example video editors shipping to and from the cloud, which drives the need for > backhaul - are you not seeing that?
Also on the bigger points; small providers have to peer, like everyone, but do they get good deals? How about prices on kit? Strategic deals with Huweii / Cisco are hard enough for tier one, do you not think that you'll get squeezed ?
Because the incompetence of municipal governments (in most of the US) is in overbuilding infrastructure to serve unproductive areas so that maintenance obligations come to consume ever larger portions of the budget unless they can achieve the Ponzi scheme of paying for it with the taxes from new growth. That would be terrifying to compete with.
There's no need for gas/electricity to drastically improve year over year. But when there is a need, as there is with electric cars, the government steps in and offers tax credits and covers the installation fees for things like home car chargers.
Well private monopolies aren't doing any better so I doubt the government could be worse.
The government should lay fiber just like they lay water pipes and pave roads. Anyone can connect on either end of the fiber, providing a nice competitive market for ISPs... just like the original days of dialup ISPs.
As to density arguments, you don't need to cover every square foot of the US with fiber only where people actually live. We build Roads to just about every house which cost 50+ times what broadband does. (2-3 million per mile in rural areas per mile vs ~50k per mile for fiber.)