State Laws That Stop Cities From Installing Fast Internet
Do the laws prohibit private companies from installing fast internet? I don't necessarily want a city government running my internet. Cities should not be in the telecommunications business. However, there SHOULD be laws promoting competition and thus restricting the de facto monopoly positions of many providers. Where I live in France, I have, in just my small town of Avignon, at least 5 high speed internet providers available -- resulting in my monthly cost for 120mbs + full cable (all the movie channels) cell phone with unlimited data, unlimited calls to over 49 countries in the world AND home phone (which I never use) for about 70 euro per month. The internet portion of that is something like 20 euro per month, the cell portion is about 15 or so (give or take 3 euro.)Cities don't need to get in the telecoms business -- however governments do have a responsibility to promote competition. Cities getting into the internet business would be about as efficient as the Post Office getting into the letter delivery business -- a ton of public-union-related waste, bureaucratic inefficiencies as well as an inherit incentive to discourage private companies, thus reducing innovation. You also have the issue of city-run networks being subject to political pressures such as "I'll donate money to your reelection if you allow my content to have preference on the network." You also have the city having access to your usage records and they'd be nothing keeping them from using it for law enforcement purposes without a warrant or your consent. After all, you'd be using city-owned property, thus you really wouldn't have much leverage. The police would certainly leverage that. We all know that most internet traffic isn't going to be safe from NSA-types, however, there's a reasonable belief that NSA-level intercepts aren't filtering down to the local cop on the beat. Maybe it's a bit of paranoia, however based on my experiences with city governments in the US, they are some of the most power-hungry, corrupt sufferers of little-man(woman) syndrome I've ever encountered. These are the same twits that want to ban large sodas because they think they're your daddies and mommies. Yeah, count me out. Last thing anyone needs to do is give a city (or any) government more power to do anything.