[rayiner]

> A city that wants fiber has the obvious choice to subsidize the investment of a large ISP, say Comcast, thus severely reducing the investment cost. The permission to build is of course non-exclusive, but the subsidizing is not. Once built, the ISP gained a government granted advantage, and thus a monopoly is born.

Cities don't subsidize cable companies. Indeed, they extract concessions from them. E.g. every time Comcast re-ups the contract in Wilmington, DE, where I used to live, they have to kick in a random couple of million to government programs.

> Ars Technica narrative talk about how the cable division paid little or no construction costs.

Who cares what division within the ISP paid the construction costs? At the end of the day, the money came from the company's paying customers, not the municipalities.

[belorn]

If that is true, we will see Comcast try to sell off its losses in the coming years, and if that fails, go bankrupt. No company, no matter size, can keep a failing investment indefinitely.