[joebubna]

The municipal ISPs I've heard of (from AMA's on Reddit and such) still have to create a peering contract with Comcast/AT&T because those companies own the lines. And granted, RIGHT NOW, it's not that expensive to peer with them. However, it's my understanding the new FCC just relaxed the rules on how much Comcast can charge businesses that need to use their lines???

"The two specific items to be voted on Thursday include a plan to make it easier for broadband providers to charge other businesses higher prices to connect to the main arteries of their networks." - From a pre-vote article. The vote passed. It includes a link to the document. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/19/technology/ajit%2Dpai%2Df...

Ok, so assuming the monopolies aren't just going to let you steal away their business by creating a municipal ISP that uses their lines... You could try and lay your own lines to get around this. However, that's the exact problem Google ran into. Google required cities pass ordinances that allowed them to move Comcast/AT&T lines on the utility poles so that Google could add their own, but the existing ISPs sued saying that the cities did not have the right and won in court. This means Google had to wait for Comcast techs to come out and move the lines for each and every pole, a process which could take months and the ISPs were dragging out just to make Google's life miserable. This battle over the utility poles is something you can research.

So, assuming we're not better than Google, and that laying new lines will be a regulation nightmare, we're left with the option of renting the existing ISP's lines... of which I already stated I don't think would work either because the same anti-regulation mentality that caused the FCC to deregulate NN has also caused them to deregulate pricing protections for business peering.