[wbracken]

I get why people here are jazzed about government offering the service (yeah! government cures all ills!). Let me offer another look.

Small town in GA does the same. Cable is offered through CNS. Here is the About CNS:

In 1995, the City of Thomasville began building a fiber optic network to serve local schools, libraries, businesses and hospitals with telecommunications and Internet services. After seeing success in this limited offering, it was identified that the community at large would be able to benefit from access to high-speed Internet. So, in 1998, in order to better serve the community, the City of Thomasville began construction of a new high-speed, fiber-optic network and in 1999, CNS, or Community Network Services, was created. In 1997, the Cities of Cairo, Camilla, Moultrie and Thomasville joined forces in order to better serve the citizens of each community. This multi-city partnership, titled the South Georgia Governmental Services Authority (SGGSA), enabled CNS to further expand its services to communities that were in need of high-speed Internet, television and telecommunications services, and, in 2001, these services were provided to all SGGSA cities. The best part about CNS is that it is funded locally, by the cities which it serves. This means if you are a CNS customer, you are investing in your own communities, not a corporation headquartered across the country.

The problem is, we are stuck with dated hardware and software and NO competition from Comcast/AT&T, etc. I wish I could show screenshots of the cable TV on demand interface - it looks like DOS. The cable box itself is the size of those old school VCRs that took up the entire cabinet. The internet has reported speeds up to 35 MBS, but the service is totally unreliable. Tons of dropped packets, etc. I have never seen past about 20 MBS even though we pay for 35 ($59/month).

The big cable companies won't enter the market because CNS has the monopoly and CNS isn't motivated to keep up to date because there is no competition and because it probably doesn't have the money to truly invest. Mediacom does offer service in the area, but reported 3-4 weeks before they could install and reviews of the service are terrible too.

I guess the point is, any monopoly sucks, whether a government run one or a corporate run one.

[tux1968]

But is there any reason Comcast or AT&T is prohibited from entering the market and competing? If there is a demand for improved services, shouldn't they be able to do well regardless? Likely there are other reasons that make the market less attractive and not likely to be a hotbed of competition even if the CNS didn't exist.

[kcmarshall]

The reliability problems and limited speed is a big concern. Do you know if CNS runs the network itself or if it out-sources the technical operation?

As far as the cable service goes, though, what you describe is what we have with Comcast. At least it was the last time we looked at it. Now we have Netflix and cut the cord with Comcast. That's the beauty of network neutrality - buy best of breed services from a focused provider. All I want from my cable company is a dumb, fast pipe.