On Wed, 29 Mar 2023, dan via Bloat wrote:

> The obvious solution is to foster competition.  Anywhere you overlay cable
> companies with fiber BOTH companies remain and compete against each other
> and the cable company increases upload speeds.  If fiber was so naturally
> superior, the cable companies would be erased.   I have MSP customers in
> multiple markets with competing techs and it's VERY nice to be able to get
> fiber and cable or terragraph and cable to a business for resilience.  I
> cannot do that on single product dominated markets.  The 'exchange' model
> above doesn't do it because of that single point of failure of the
> municipal fiber.

The problem is that laying cable (or provisioning wifi access to cover the area) 
is expensive, and if you try to have multiple different companies doing it, they 
each need a minimum density of users to make it worth their while.

In the current monopoly approach, they are required by contract to serve less 
profitable areas in order to be given the monopoly for the profitable ones, take 
away that monopoly, and further dilute the user density by having multiple 
companies provide service, and the result isn't good.

Even in the big cities where there is enough density, the results aren't pretty. 
Go back in history and look at what was happening with phone and power lines 
in places like New York City before the monopolies were setup. Moving to the 
regulated monoopolies was hailed by users as a win from that chaos (including 
deliberate sabatage of competitors)

I'm in a Los Angeles Suburb, and until recently, I couldn't even get fast cable 
service to my home, the city owned fiber will be a huge win for me, and I can 
still have my starlink dish, cell phone, or (once they cover my area) a wireless 
ISP as a backup

David Lang