[toofy]

why would we do that? not everything has to skim profits to a certain group of people just because they exist. they can use magical competition and build it if they want a piece.

if an area has been waiting for… (what would it be now? around 30 years since the internet took off?) so these companies had 3 decades to build out and have refused, if we the tax payers step in and we pay for it, why should we let them in? they have refused to do anything for literal decades… even worse, many of these companies took billions in subsidies and still did nothing. they’ve refused to be good boot strappin capitalists, for decades.

(i want to reiterate what i said above, i believe competition can often work really really well. but if we dont understand by now that it fails sometimes too, we're not seeing clearly.)

think about how long that is, like some people become grandparents at around 35. someone born in the windows 95 days might have a grandkid and the poor sap still wont be able to get fiber. even in tons of urban and suburban areas.

some of these same ceos have gone on about how perfect the marketplace is, how awful taxes are, how magical the marketplace is… decades later if we have to build it, why should they get a piece?

[AnthonyMouse]

The physical cable that goes to every house is a natural monopoly. Really it's even more like the conduit the cable is installed in. Doing that part more than once is both fairly inefficient and tends to market failure.

The rest of the service isn't. Transit is a fairly competitive market. You may also have providers willing to use more expensive terminating equipment and then offer higher-than-gigabit speeds on the same piece of fiber. You want the competitive market for every aspect of the system where it can work and to keep the monopoly as narrow as possible.

Notice that the point isn't to let just Comcast use the municipal fiber and then get ~100% of the customers again, it's to let this happen with fiber to the home:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_virtual_network...

[VorpalWay]

Having the municipality run the whole thing would be even better sure. I'm not sure why we do that mix here in Sweden, but it worked out OK for us I think.

Also, wouldn't those subsidies come with a legaly enforceable requirement to actually build out infrastructure? If not, I think that is where you went wrong.

[toofy]

im saying we shouldnt give them subsidies at all. if they cant make it work in the marketplace, if they arent up to the task, then the competitive marketplace is a failure in that instance. and thats ok.

no subsidies. if they cant do it, fine, we'll do it and we'll provide cheaper than they ever would have. and in the case of fiber, we know this is the case. there are plenty of municipally owned fiber areas that are solid and cheap af.

its ok to admit that the market doesnt always work. often, absofuckinlutely. always? not at all.

a lack of subsidies would make it obvious where those failures exist so we can just do it ourselves (the spooky government) for cheaper. tell them "you had your chance" and move on with our day.