[sujal]

I think someone hits on this in a different thread, but there are forms of incorporating these sorts of utilities that avoid most of the difficulty of maintenance, etc. For example, in the recent multi-week power outage a few years ago here in CT, the best response came from the municipally owned power company serving the Norwich area [1]. It's not impossible to do this.

Also, there are better ways to look at how to fund these. For example, having municipalities own the wiring only, and let ISPs pay to have access to the homes (similar to how telecom or power systems work now, e.g. different charge for distribution). I would love more choices of providers, honestly, and with fiber, there are better options for managing traffic at the neighborhood and local level.

[1] http://www.norwichpublicutilities.com and http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/04/business/the-troubling-con... (the section re: Norwich is about halfway down)

[tssva]

It's not really mentioned in this article but EPB owns the fiber and EPB Fiber Optics which delivers the broadband service pays a fee to them to use the infrastructure. What would be interesting is if EPB opened the infrastructure up for other providers to use and compete for customers.