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Comment by a2tech | Hacker News Reader

So after all that, the city paid for new telephone poles out of their own pocket and then Charter was interested in running lines on them and charging the residents.

So in the end, the city got the worst of both worlds--they spent a bunch of money on upgrading things only to let a private company become a defacto high speed monopoly in their town.

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That is a valid way to look at it. I and probably a lot of our former Broadband committee would tend to agree with you. However, the last time I spoke with any of them was spring of 2020, to thank them again for their efforts - because I was thinking about how supremely screwed we all would have been going into Covid without high speed internet in town. I think all things considered now, they were more or less equally happy with our (imperfect) outcome as I.

Hopefully the city was wise enough to not sign a monopoly agreement with Charter--my city owns our own poles and it allowed us to let in a small fiber ISP who's competing with ATT and Comcast (and I think winning handily). 1gpbs symmetrical Internet access for ~50USD/month. No caps.

There's no such thing as a "monopoly agreement." Monopoly franchise agreements are banned under federal law. If you read one you'll see a provision that makes clear it's "non-exclusive."

Providers end up with de facto monopolies for two reasons:

1) Many places (like the one here) are marginal in terms of whether it's worth building anything at all. A second provider coming in is unattractive.

2) What's legal is build-out requirements, which force a provider to serve every (or nearly every) home in a town. That torpedos competition except in the largest cities, because a second provider can't just wire up the areas where it makes sense to overbuild.

Without the town investing, it appears that wouldn't have happened at all. Without charter, it appears it would have cost the town more money (and money on an ongoing basis too).

It's not obvious that this is the worst possible outcome, it's conceivable that it's the best possible outcome.

Except you are stuck with charter. There is no world in which charter is the best possible outcome. With a bit of luck, though, it is better than a 4g lte mvno

Charter is better than nothing.

In the real world you hardly ever get "best possible" because everyone has a different view on the defintion of that.

I have had charter, Comcast and others. Charter takes the cake for terrible service, technical and personal, in my experience.

I was actually very pleasantly surprised by what i was able to do with a mvno over cell connection- OS updates and downloading VMs were really the only major pain points. Of course, I have since gotten fiber, which wins hands down.

Well don't take "better than nothing" at anything more than face value. I wasn't endorsing Charter.

Anecdotally I just moved from California to North Carolina and Charter (Spectrum now I guess) is actually doing all new builds with fiber, RFoG, out in this area. Seems to be leaps and bounds more reliable.

So their reliability might depend on the locale.

As long as the city continues to own the polls and they can allow more than just one provider in the future, I think that's a win. They may have a defacto monopoly, but if they charge too much or provide too poor service, then someone else can start competing.

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