This is great news; in yesterday's broadband story I left this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7271044 , which is about how the cable lobby has worked hard to prevent municipal broadband.
Or that these bills can be shot down over and over until municipal broadband is built out, at which point the battle will have been won. When people start getting better, faster, and cheaper service it will be pretty hard for legislators to take it away.
I'm a big believer in private enterprise. But I also believe in local control.
The more local, the better, and the less subject it is to lobbyist control.
Comcast may be a private company, but its knee-deep in the Washington game. The public/private distinction is not as clear as one might think.
I think we'd all be better off forming small co-ops that own the last mile. That would make it easier to make providers compete for business. Only one last mile, with lots of options to connect.
Government likes to have a single water system, a single grid over a geographic area. But that makes the entire system more susceptible to failure and also fairly immune to competitive pressure.
If your local monopoly grid isn't robust, you can't switch. And huge areas can go dark.
With competing grids, your co-op might go dark. But there just be a competing grid up within walking distance. And these grids would be competing on reliability, just like cell phone carriers do. You'd have more options than going to a public utility commission meeting, speaking your piece and then having them do whatever is politically expedient.
