[lwn]

I recently moved to a Dutch municipality that runs its own non-profit ISP. They installed a symmetric 1 Gbps fiber connection with a static IP at my house for 40 euros per month.

The service is solid, there’s no upselling or throttling, and hosting things from home just works. I bring this up because when we talk about “open”, “fair” and “monopolies” the model of a local, non-profit ISP backed by the municipality could offer a real alternative. It doesn’t directly solve the peering issues, but it shifts the balance of power (and cost) somewhat.

[thelaxiankey]

i've wondered for a long time why this isn't a more common solution to these services that are almost inevitably monopolous. power, water, and internet kind of things.

[jimbokun]

In the US the governments have actively killed them as a favor to the large corporate Internet providers.

[j-bos]

Good explainer vid: https://youtu.be/CIEQPwf9MHY

tldr: one town in the US did it and it became an economic miracle, big telcos noticed and have set up lobbying and advertising infra to ensure it never happens.

[deaux]

The video doesn't explain much. At the end, it says this:

> "The average voter doesn't understand how these systems work so there is little risk for [state] lawmakers in siding with these companies."

The million-dollar question is why those lawmakers are siding with these companies when the economic miracle case exists right in front of their eyes. The answer to that question is the real explainer.

[port11]

In Europe these were largely publicly-owned, but the neoliberal tendency to privatise everything has slowly dismantled the public corporation.

My home country's formerly public energy provider has a weird share structure: a Chinese company and BlackRock add up to a fourth of the stock. No foreign investor should really be buying up stock in critical infrastructure.

This will always upset me.

[ProllyInfamous]

Somewhat similar over here in Chattanooga (aka "Gig City"): our city's Electric Power Board has offered synchronous gig fiber for $75/month, a 300mbps "slower option" for $58/month — it's plenty fast — or 25gbps for $300/month... to all electric customers [0].

Of course our lobbied state congress critters passed a law to restrict this, so EPB can only offer internet to a limited geographic area (under the auspices of network monitoring of power delivery) — wouldn't want their Comcast-bros to have any competition! Certain apartment complexes are exempted, which prevents you from using EPB.

Wish more jurisdictions were even allowed to do this; wish politicians weren't such whores.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPB

[LaurensBER]

While this is great when it works it does raise some interesting challenges, what happens if the ISP loses money, should taxes be used to cover the cost since this is a public service? Is it reasonable for this ISP to undercut commercial offerings? Internet is in a weird grey zone where it's almost a utility but not on the same level as water or sewage.

I'm glad this non-profit ISP exists but on a national level I would prefer (strong) net neutrality laws. Probably not an issue in NL but in less developed countries neutrality isn't guaranteed.

[linohh]

Usually these ISPs are part of or under the municipal utility provider. So if they lose money, it first gets offset by profits from other utilities and eventually yes, the taxpayer will step in, directly or indirectly. No big deal. No one is complaining about subsidies for water or power lines in rural areas, neither should they when it comes to internet. Remember: These ISPs were founded because the market was already failing to provide decent offers or any at all.

[rcbdev]

In Austria the Internet, like the postal service, is a Universal Service ("Universaldienst"). As such, any completely unserviced citizen can petition the current Finance Minister to decree an ISP of his choice - usually A1, which is the privatized form of our former public office for postal services and telegraphs - to service their area. The costs of facilitating the servicing of this area are covered by all active ISPs of a certain size operating in Austria.

Telecommunications law in Europe is a very interesting thing.

[redserk]

Why make the assumption that municipalities must treat their internet services as a second-rate utility? Many local governments are competently run.

If the internet is out, it's going to be just as visible and probably will yield as many complaints as losing power, sewer, and water.

[markdown]

> If the internet is out, it's going to be just as visible and probably will yield as many complaints as losing power, sewer, and water.

More. Far more visible. Much easier to go without municipal power than without internet.

[VWWHFSfQ]

I don't find that it is usually even possible to have internet without power. How would that work?

[ssl-3]

After a famously bad wind storm in 2008, my house (along with thousands of others) was without power for about two continuous weeks.

The internet connection, which was FTTN VDSL, never skipped a beat. It was completely solid.

This was accomplished by using batteries and generators.

The ISP was The Phone Company, so their Cold War-era central office had very good backup power.

The VRAD nodes scattered all over town had enough battery backup that (at least in my neighborhood) things stayed up until they brought out generators for those nodes.

And at my house, the VDSL box had its own UPS. And I also had a rather overkill UPS, and a portable generator

We ran the generator intermittently, mostly to charge batteries and chill down refrigerators.

It wasn't an awesome time. It was hot as hell. It was a pain in the ass to keep the generator fueled. We didn't even try to run the desktop PC rigs.

But, yeah: The internet was working fine.

(We charged batteries for neighbors, too. One or two neighbors also dragged over extension cords to run their own fridge. And I opened up the WiFi completely so everyone nearby could use it.

So if you were my neighbour in that 2008 power outage, I'd have just taken care of that internet problem for you. The range at 2.4GHz was amazingly good in that abnormally-quiet RF environment.)

[tharkun__]

When we loose power here internet usually works just fine. All you need is a generator and you're back up and running. Usually the POP still has power so this works for a long time. Sometimes they are or run out of (backup) power too if its widespread and prolonged. Cell service including LTE is usually still up / up for longer, so again as long as you have a generator, you're good.

[markdown]

One doesn't have to rely on others for power. One can run their own generator, or set up a solar power system, or if you live out in the sticks, run a mini hydro system or use wind power. All of these can provide power to the home.

[knollimar]

Seems like a question of whether solar power with battery backups or satellite internet is easier, no?

[oersted]

There's voting with your wallet and voting with your, well, vote.

In some sense a democracy is also a market and can lead to efficient allocation of resources, particularly common resources for common good.

This is why public utilities tend to work so well in practice. People, especially in the US, don't seem to realise that such services are also subject to strong market forces, just a different kind of market.

Voters care a lot about good public services, and they also care a lot about not getting taxed much. This can lead to very efficient outcomes in well functioning democracies, often more efficient than those that come out of private enterprise, when it comes to services that most of the population needs.

[wat10000]

If it loses money, do some combination of raising prices and cutting costs. Aim for an average of zero profit/loss over the long term. Undercutting commercial offerings is perfectly fine if it works out that way.

[radeeyate]

And here I am in the US paying $50+/mo for CenturyLink to give me 20Mb down and 0.5Mb up.

[ulfw]

And here I am in Hong Kong paying a too high (there's cheaper offerings) 248HKD (USD32) for 2gbit/s up/down

[emeril]

shhhh.... don't say any.... the US is the bestest country in the world...

we're also really good at feeding our poor and disabled too