<story><title>Don’t Blame Big Cable. It’s Local Governments That Choke Broadband Competition</title><url>http://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-just-cable-companies-and-blame-local-government-for-dismal-broadband-competition/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>zdw</author><text>The fundamental problem here is that in most places we&amp;#x27;ve arbitrarily decided that certain things like:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    - Roads
    - Water&amp;#x2F;Trash&amp;#x2F;Sewer
    - Police&amp;#x2F;Fire service
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Are a part of municipal government, whereas:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    - Electrical
    - Telephone
    - Cable TV
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
Are frequently not, but are regulated.  Frequently, one of these last 3 will own the poles (usually the Electrical company, but sometimes the municipality) and the Phone&amp;#x2F;Cable companies lease the poles to put up their lines.&lt;p&gt;So, what do you do?  Make the Electric company put up New Companies A-Z&amp;#x27;s lines for free?  That doesn&amp;#x27;t work and would quickly lead to companies covering the lucrative part of town (read: &amp;quot;rich&amp;quot;) and widening the digital divide.&lt;p&gt;It comes back to the bad decision that didn&amp;#x27;t force Cable to be a common carrier.  Had that happened, we&amp;#x27;d end up with a situation like DSL where there are multiple vendors, except the lines would have the same speed capabilities as Cable.&lt;p&gt;So, in short, it comes back to a bad FCC decision.  Requiring a bunch of new physical infrastructure isn&amp;#x27;t needed when the existing could just be broken up and leased out as dumb pipes.</text></comment>
<story><title>Don’t Blame Big Cable. It’s Local Governments That Choke Broadband Competition</title><url>http://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-just-cable-companies-and-blame-local-government-for-dismal-broadband-competition/</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>yaur</author><text>Municipally owned&amp;#x2F;maintained FTTH with ISP access from an analog to a CO is a good thing IMO and something that the incumbents have used the courts to shut down in the past[1].  The Wired piece makes a seemingly legitimate argument (franchise agreements increase the cost for new entrants) while ignoring the actual alternative (which would dramatically decrease the cost for new entrants) that those outside of the industry may not even be aware of and in that regard is a bit dishonest.&lt;p&gt;Why is this coming up now? One of the interesting tidbits I picked up from industry coverage[2] of the current round of FCC rule making is &amp;quot;Wheeler intends to nullify state laws that prevent local governments from establishing broadband service&amp;quot;.  Which is something I don&amp;#x27;t think the industry wants to happen. So, yeah open access is great but giving cities the &amp;quot;If you don&amp;#x27;t provide acceptable internet service we will&amp;quot; stick is valuable as well.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;http://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2008/07/telco-wont-install-fiber-sues-to-keep-city-from-doing-it/&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;arstechnica.com&amp;#x2F;uncategorized&amp;#x2F;2008&amp;#x2F;07&amp;#x2F;telco-wont-inst...&lt;/a&gt;
[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.cedmagazine.com/blogs/2014/05/fcc-four-more-months-of-bickering-about-net-neut&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.cedmagazine.com&amp;#x2F;blogs&amp;#x2F;2014&amp;#x2F;05&amp;#x2F;fcc-four-more-month...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>