Comment on Tired Of Being Ripped Off By Monopolies, Cleveland Launches Ambitious Plan To Provide Citywide Dirt Cheap Broadband

SeaJ@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

• PeleSpirit@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  Seriously, something like that is going to happen. Tacoma, a city near Seattle, had their own broadband. The city broke all kinds of laws to give a contract to another provider so they don’t own the service anymore. Seattle was fighting for their own internet at the time and used Tacoma as an example. Guess what happened next.

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  • ElectroVagrant@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Since it appears there’s precedent for this falling apart, hopefully Cleveland’s government will have done their research and be prepared, albeit I’m not necessarily optimistic either.

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    • chaorace@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      It’s not a precedent, it’s a playbook and telecos have been following it for decades. If you have one of the big telecoms in your city, they will sue to block municipal broadband. These suits win more often than not and even when they lose the rollout is usually delayed long enough as a result that they break even on legal fees.

      This is actually Cleveland’s second attempt to expand municipal broadband after their last effort in 2021 was thwarted when the Ohio state government banned Cleveland and other cities from building out fiber – obviously at the behest of lobbying from ISP special interests.

      This new attempt works around the law by forming public-private partnerships instead of true state-owned infrastructure. It’s the most they can do without violating state law:

      SiFi and CircleC, not the city, will own the finished networks. With little to no taxpayer money being spent, it’s a tradeoff city leaders say they felt made sense.

      “They already have a right to use our right of way—we’re not providing any special access to it, the agreement is just us all getting organized for how permitting for such a large scale project will go,” Davis said of the SiFi partnership. “Since the city’s paying for it or putting anything in, it’s not getting an equity stake.”

      Similarly, Davis noted that DigitalC will also maintain ownership of their finished wireless network.

      “We at the City are not contracting for infrastructure,” Davis noted. “We’re contracting for DigitalC to take 23,500 households–about 50,000 residents–that don’t subscribe to at-home broadband today and get them to become at-home internet subscribers, and provide digital adoption services and training to 50,000 residents. Basically, we’re paying to halve our present unconnected rate of 32 percent.”

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      • bassomitron@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        The metro area where I live had to do this public-private partnership for the same reason. They proposed public fiber years ago and Mediacom sued and blocked it. This was how our metro area (a collection of roughly 6 cities) got around that bullshit lawsuit. As a result, we now have 1Gb symmetrical fiber for $60/mo (Mediacom charged $120+/mo for 1Gb and maaaaybe 10Mb up on good days, oh and constantly had outages).

        Fuck Mediacom and their ilk.

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      • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Just because the city’s not “putting anything in” doesn’t mean they aren’t contributing or absorbing costs.

        The city should have a stake in it, since it’s on city property, and the city maintains the local infrastructure (poles, right-of-ways, etc) that these companies need to install anything. Otherwise it’s just another (local) monopoly.

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      • Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Wow, I missed that they banned it in Ohio. It must only apply to new systems as I’m fairly sure Fairlawn is still operating municipal fiber.

        That’s really irritating though, of course they snuck it into a budget bill.

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    • neatchee@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      I grew up in Cleveland. Family still lives in the area. I am not expecting anything good to actually happen

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      • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        The Browns are more likely to win the Super Bowl than this happening.

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• vector_zero@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  [deleted]

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  • reversebananimals@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Nope. Republicans don’t like anything except “owning libs”.

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  • Tyfud@lemmy.one ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They profess to, but if you look at their voting history and policy making, they really support corporations that spend lobbying money to enrich their campaign.

    Pretty nearly every time.

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  • guacupado@lemmy.world ⁨11⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    No. They like corporations.

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