[mattrp]

Electrical coops are a good solution and in many cases, there are such organizations other than the incumbents who are better suited than the city to build and run operations. I’ve been in the fiber business for a long time (though never for an incumbent). There have been numerous times in my experience where cities and incumbents have such a poor relationship that managers within the cities start to convince themselves it can’t be that hard - we are just talking a few miles of fiber. And yet for every misinformed city manager who thinks they can do it all, there’s one who seems to be able to make fiber work. I guess if I were at the state level, would I want cities to just run around deploying tax dollars Standing up telco operations when we have generally decided in the US that telecom is a private enterprise? Cities tend to make short term decisions that aren’t always the best - take for example the reluctance of cities to share resources with adjacent cities (fire, police, schools). That said whenever a hole is dug I don’t think it would hurt to drop fiber in it. Having reasonable incentives for civil and private works projects to be dual purpose would help to propagate fiber. In combination with reasonable rules for access and build backs this would generally help the situation.