[1st-mile-nm] Should Denver city government enter the internet business to compete with Comcast

[Steve Ross]

The magazine's policy has always been to encourage anyone who can build, to
build. Since we started in 2004, we have been astonished at the time and
money many corporate carriers have put into barring or trying to bar public
entities from building where the corporate carriers themselves have zero
intention of providing service, or where they wish to protect the marketing
to a few high-paying customers they can squeeze.

This is emphatically not directly the carriers' fault. It is Wall Street's
fault. The big carriers compete for money there, and money goes to the
highest bidders, as frankly it should. But I can (and have) cited dozens of
examples of misinformation spread by elite Wall Street investment firms on
broadband. One guy recently told me and a bunch of Columbia University
conferees that 5G would not penetrate modern construction -- a problem that
the industry long ago solved at a reasonable price.

The "whiteness" of Wall Street and rich investors doesn't help. Until about
7 years ago for example, Verizon was somewhat slow in providing Fios to
Harlem (where I live when in NYC). But when Bloomberg nudged them and they
killed off the last of their copper trunk anyway, they discovered that
Black and Hispanic households are often large, filled with kids, willing to
spend money on broadband... and were also reliable payers. The neighborhood
was filled with Verizon service trucks for years as they caught up.

This isn't charity. It is good business. And if, because of the growing
importance of broadband, cities eventually fund them like they fund
streets, so what?


Steve Ross
Editor-at-Large, Broadband Communities Magazine (www.bbcmag.com)
201-456-5933 mobile
steve at bbcmag.com
editorsteve at gmail.com



On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 11:52 AM Christopher Mitchell <christopher at ilsr.org>
wrote:

> There is evidence that the "examples of how these are mismanaged and
> eventually fail, or are forced to be picked up by a private entity" are
> written by organizations funded by cable and telephone companies to scare
> other communities from not investing in networks.
>
> There are some networks that were poorly run by munis but the vast
> majority have been successful. You rarely see people claiming that big
> corporations are unable to run networks because they screw it up despite a
> pretty rotten record in many ways.
>
> Denver is not proposing, as best I can tell, to build some kind of
> citywide ISP. They want some basic authority for limited investments
> specifically aimed at families that the market is not interested in
> serving.
>
> Christopher Mitchell
> Director, Community Broadband Networks
> Institute for Local Self-Reliance
>
> MuniNetworks.org <http://www.muninetworks.org/>
> @communitynets
> 612-545-5185
>
>
> On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 10:47 AM Trey Scarborough <trey at 3dsc.co> wrote:
>
>> I would agree they typically do improve service in areas where they will
>> be likely to get the recognition and return on investment when threatened.
>> The problem comes in when the municipalities actually build some companies
>> like ATT use it as an excuse to abandon portions of there network that
>> don't make money. There are also many examples of how these are mismanaged
>> and eventually fail, or are forced to be picked up by a private entity.
>>
>>
>> On 8/2/20 8:49 AM, Steve Ross wrote:
>>
>> My data from every USA county shows that when municipalities can threaten
>> to build, carriers fall into line and improve service.
>>
>> I might add that no carrier has ever disputed the data.
>>
>> Steve Ross
>>
>> On Sat, Aug 1, 2020, 10:24 PM John Osmon <josmon at rigozsaurus.com> wrote:
>>
>>> No -- Denver city government should not enter the internet business to
>>> compete with Comcast.
>>>
>>> However, Denver *SHOULD* provide connectivity between residents and
>>> multiple ISPs so that the citizens can partake in a true competitive
>>> market.
>>>
>>> If you utilize the public right of way, you should not be able to be an
>>> ISP.  You can merely connect end users to the ISP of their choice.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Sat, Aug 01, 2020 at 05:40:21PM -0600, Tom Johnson wrote:
>>> > https://www.denverpost.com/2020/08/01/denver-municipal-internet/
>>> > ============================================
>>> > Tom Johnson - tom at jtjohnson.com
>>> > Institute for Analytic Journalism   --     Santa Fe, NM USA
>>> > 505.577.6482(c)                                    505.473.9646(h)
>>> > *NM Foundation for Open Government* <http://nmfog.org>
>>> > *Check out It's The People's Data
>>> > <https://www.facebook.com/pages/Its-The-Peoples-Data/1599854626919671
>>> >*
>>> >
>>> > ============================================
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>>
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