Colorado Cities Keep Voting To Build Their Own Broadband Networks
from the roll-your-own dept
So we've long mentioned how incumbent ISPs like Comcast have spent millions of dollars quite literally buying shitty, protectionist laws in more than twenty states. These laws either ban or heavily hamstring towns and cities from building their own broadband networks, or in some cases from even engaging in public/private partnerships. It's a scenario where ISPs get to have their cake and eat it too; they often refuse to upgrade their networks in under-served areas (particularly true among telcos offering DSL), but also get to write shitty laws preventing these under-served towns from doing anything about it.
This dance of dysfunction has been particularly interesting in Colorado, however. While lobbyists for Comcast and CenturyLink managed to convince state leaders to pass such a law (SB 152) in 2005, the legislation contains a provision that lets individual Colorado towns and cities ignore the measure with a simple referendum. With frustration mounting over sub-standard broadband and awful customer service, more than 100 towns and cities have done so thus far.
Late last year in Fort Collins, for example, 57.15% of locals voted to open the door to community-run broadband despite Comcast and Centurylink spending nearly $1 million on misleading ads claiming the plan would cause the city to fall into disrepair. And this week, the city council voted unanimously on a plan that will help deliver cheap, ultra-fast (gigabit) fiber broadband to most city residents. Under the proposal, the city will take out a $1.8 million loan to help the local utility with startup costs, with expansion funded by bonds:
"Last night's three unanimous votes begin the process of building our city's own broadband network," Glen Akins, a resident who helped lead the pro-municipal broadband campaign, told Ars today. "We're extremely pleased the entire city council voted to support the network after the voters' hard fought election victory late last year. The municipal broadband network will make Fort Collins an even more incredible place to live."
With the Trump administration's assault on net neutrality, broadband privacy rules and pretty much all meaningful oversight of telecom duopolies, interest in these kinds of creative solutions as an escape from the broken telecom market is only going to grow. In Fort Collins, a city planning document indicates the city is promising to operate a network that actually adheres to net neutrality and avoid usage caps:
"The network will deliver a 'net-neutral' competitive unfettered data offering that does not impose caps or usage limits on one use of data over another (i.e., does not limit streaming or charge rates based on type of use). All application providers (data, voice, video, cloud services) are equally able to provide their services, and consumers' access to advanced data opens up the marketplace."
ISP lobbyists, executives, and their paid policy parrots like to paint these community broadband efforts as automatic boondoggles. In reality, they're just like any business plan, with some good and some arguably awful. But lost in this claim is the fact that ISPs are bribing state legislatures to take local infrastructure decisions out of the hands of local voters -- simply because they're terrified of anything vaguely resembling competition. Also lost is the fact that these towns and cities wouldn't be looking into these efforts if U.S. broadband wasn't such an anti-competitive, uncompetitive shitshow.
But why should ISPs like Comcast compete when it's much easier to buy awful state laws, then sue any community broadband efforts into oblivion (as Comcast attempted to do in Chattanooga)? The problem for incumbent ISPs is their ham-fisted efforts to obliterate things like net neutrality is only fueling anger in communities looking for any alternative to the dysfunctional status quo.
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Filed Under: broadband, colorado, competition, municipal networks
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If the people succeed,
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Century link??
I wonder how much they would have spent IF' that had jumped into the city and JUST DONE THE WORK..
Colorado is interesting as there are NOT that many METRO areas. Its smaller towns and so forth, mean that Century link has LITTLE TO DO..
BUT the best part is the USERS of Centruy link, will have to PAY abit extra for all the BS Century link did..to stop 1 town from doing THEIR OWN THING..
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Re: Century link??
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Re: Re: Century link??
Do I care? Probably not.
For a language that was Re-hashed by Mr. Webster, WHO hated the english language..and changed many words, meanings, and Pronunciations..
Lets ad that our language is a conglomerate of Many languages and the RULEs from those languages that dont make sense in any other language..
It always entertains me when we Bring another word over from French, and CAUSE it uses the same letters, we dont change it to AMERICAN(not english). and we have to learn another word that does not mix with 6 other Rules of language..
This language has no inference or common expression that can be handled with JUST typing.. Like opening a random book to a random page and TRYING to figure out the expression and meaning of what is being said. Is is exasperated, Excited, Condoling, ???.. Even with the words above you cant tell any expression except that Im typing words..
So good luck with your language...Mine is JUST weird.
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Re: Crooked Politicians
The basic problem here is OBVIOUSLY corrupt state politicians. COMCAST is helpless in this without crooked government officials.
State government failed the citizens of Colorado and other states, but somehow ONLY Big ISP's are the core problem?
Fix the fundamental 'government' problem.
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Re: Re: Crooked Politicians
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Re: Re: Re: Crooked Politicians
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Crooked Politicians
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Re: Re: Re: Crooked Politicians
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Re: Re: Crooked Politicians
Which part about funded by a bond issue was unclear?
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Re: Re: Re: Crooked Politicians
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Re: Re: Re: Crooked Politicians
I'm interested, could be a stable return.
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Re: Re: Re: Crooked Politicians
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Crooked Politicians
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Re: bonds
He apparently thinks municipal bonds are independent of the taxing authority of the municipal government issuing them. Every Ft Collins resident is now on the tax-hook for about $1,000 each for that $150M municipal bond/borrowing authorization, but most adults there did not vote for its approval.
state and local governments cannot create money from thin air, as the Federal government routinely does.
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Re: at great expense to taxpayers
Funny you should say that, because it turns out city-owned ISPs seem better at explaining their costs.
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So do the Finance Math.
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Re: So do the Finance Math.
AT&T dug full, deep trenches across every front yard in my neighborhood with hundreds of homes -- all dug with pick & shovel manually
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Re: Re: So do the Finance Math.
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Re: So do the Finance Math.
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Re: Re: at great expense to taxpayers
There is legitimate debate about the economic efficiency of municipal ISP's, as Consumer Reports noted in January 2017.
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Re: Re: Re: at great expense to taxpayers
What about the debate over getting a decent broadband service, or not getting a decent service, which is the real problem the municipal broadband is dealing with?
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Re: The study was a very narrow, superficial review...
As opposed to ... what “study” did your info come from?
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Re:
I can't speak for Colorado, but I live in Arizona and lawmakers here hate referenda, as they are used for the explicit purpose of passing laws that the legislature refuses to. (Medical marijuana and raising the minimum wage are two examples.) Our legislature is always looking for ways to make it harder for ballot referenda to pass.
If Colorado is anything like Arizona, it won't take much persuasion from the lobbyists to convince the legislators that the referendum process needs to be "reformed".
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Pedantic
No, it isn't. It's a scenario where ISPs get to eat their cake and have it too.
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Re: Pedantic
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Hey, Techdirt: ya need another piece to end the week, at least Geigner rambling...
Not that I mind. If Techdirt folds by end of this month, I have side bet that triples my winnings.
It's just that, geez, you could go with a thousand topics, and you're only doing one piece a day, each? I don't think The Masnick even bothered today. -- How exactly do you expect to amuse the alleged 27 Bangladeshi who click in and stay long every day? -- If not for me, do it for the Bangladeshi!
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Re:
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Re: Hey, Techdirt: ya need another piece to end the week, at least Geigner rambling...
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Re: Re: Hey, Techdirt: ya need another piece to end the week, at least Geigner rambling...
So he posts as an anonymous coward now. He still gets downvoted into oblivion, since his writing style is distinctive. But it takes a minute or two now.
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Re: Hey, Techdirt: ya need another piece to end the week, at least Geigner rambling...
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Numbers-wise, the ISPs made "killing" federal Net Neutrality a lot more work for themselves.
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Battle Plan
TOtB.
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Re: Battle Plan
Seems to me you're simply setting up another "last mile" problem.
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Re: Battle Plan
The only place where wireless telecommunications makes physical and economic sense as an infrastructure is in rural areas where the costs of deploying cabling as physical infrastructure is higher than the income from those areas. The problem comes in when telecoms try to use these wireless systems for emergency communications as well as data transfer. Unfortunately, it's been proven these wireless communications networks can't be depended on for emergency communications. See what happened after hurricane Sandy in the New York/New Jersey area for reference. So with that caveat, data services could be served reasonably well, but not emergency services.
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Re: Battle Plan
Why does everybody think that wireless, which has a limited capacity and no ability to use the same spectrum multiple times between end points is a good alternative to a technology that has a much or more capacity per individual fiber, and can use multiple fibers between end points. What you are proposing is the equivalent of feeding a firehouse via a garden hose.
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Re: Re: Battle Plan
Depends how you define "end points". 2 parallel laser-pairs could double the connection speed of wireless the same way they could with fiber (except with a bit more spacing to account for divergence).
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Re: Re: Re: Battle Plan
Add a second beam is easy when it is an isolated system between two points, but much harder to do in a metropolitan area, when you have hundreds of end points in relatively close proximity. That is also where mesh networking runs into big problems because of the amount of traffic to and from nodes that provide the connection to the Internet backbone.
Try laying out a system, with say 5 degrees or 30 foot as required separation, for a city street, ensuring that that 5 degree beam has an opaque stop between it and any other beams in that arc beyond its target end point.
Free air propagation, even with tight beams, does not scale, well, and mainly scales by reducing the range and increasing the access points, ala cellular technology, where cell tower density is creeping towards one per city block per carrier.
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Taxpayers pay either way
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