[sangnoir]

> The great thing about a private company "overcharging" or "underserving" a community is that citizens aren't forced to be in a relationship with that company for their services.

This is a hilarious thing to say about broadband, where the incumbents go to great lengths not to compete by carving out markets onto monopolized checkerboxes where customers are forced to use one ISP if they want anything meeting the FCCs definition of broadband, and their neighbor across the street (or next apartment building) has to choose another monopolist ISP on their block.

[belval]

You can be broadly for cities rolling out their own broadbands while still pointing out that on the long term your local government growing its spending can be an issue.

10Gbps is absolutely great, but then the city might create an entire bureaucratic structure around it and in 30 years when it's not great anymore the apparatus won't die or be displaced like a company eventually would.

Which is not to say that in this scenario this is not a bit of a farfetched scenario considering that's precisely what the incumbents are doing as you pointed out.

[sangnoir]

> 10Gbps is absolutely great, but then the city might create an entire bureaucratic structure around it and in 30 years when it's not great anymore the apparatus won't die or be displaced like a company eventually would

I would fully agree with you if there was actual competition. As it is, I have no faith that terrible internet companies - especially monopolies - are guaranteed to be replaced by better ones (see Ma Bells offsprings/reconstitution).

My ideal scenario is that cities lay down the last-mile fiber and handle physical layer connectivity issues between homes/offices and an exchange (for a fee). ISPs would provide Internet connectivity, that way, you get actual competition, and the cities stick to their core competency: infrastructure.