Washington state removes all barriers to municipal broadband
I was involved in a local government committee to investigate local broadband for my town. The incumbents were understandably lazy at improving service quality, so we struck out on our own to look at alternatives, including a municipally run service or wholesale backbone.What actually happened is someone in government called up a friend at a municipal fiber specialist company, who agreed to start making rumblings that they were going to pull fiber to our town.Within two weeks, one of the large incumbents announced their own project for a $6M upgrade, which involved running submarine cables and totally rewiring the town’s network to enable gigabit service.I’m saddened that the town never got a chance to build and own its own infrastructure, which would have been so much better, because it would have put locals in charge of this essential infrastructure - much as they already control water, roads, and sewage.But, ultimately, I now have gigabit service at a reasonably competitive price, in a small town that arguably never “deserved” it.