https://tylercipriani.com/blog/2022/04/20/the-unreasonable-fight-for-municipal-broadband/

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Tyler Cipriani/ blog/ 2022/ 04/ 20/ The Unreasonable Fight for
Municipal Broadband
posts | My Home Assistant Music Cube -

I love Longmont's municipal broadband, but we had to fight Comcast
every step of the way to get it.

[large]NextLight--Longmont's Broadband

As a gracious person, I'll dutifully pretend that the problem might
be on my side of the Zoom call. But the problem is never me--my
internet is just too good.

Since 2016, I've been using Longmont's municipal
broadband--NextLight--and it's been objectively awesome.

  * It's fast--1Gbps symmetric
  * It's cheap(ish)--$49.95 per month
  * It's rock-solid--I've never had an outage
  * I've never hit a data cap
  * PC Magazine ranks NextLight among the top five ISPs in the United
    States every year--often besting Google Fiber

And, even better, the city insists I'll pay $49.95 forever.

But Longmont spent more than a decade fighting Comcast to provide
this excellent internet. And any city working on its municipal
broadband offering should prepare to do the same.

 Canceling Comcast P

In 2016, I was paying Comcast $150 a month for their top-tier (at the
time) 100Mbps speeds. I could usually eke out a little more than
30Mbps on a good day.

I lept at the chance for gigabit internet. I signed up for NextLight
as a charter member--locking in $49.95/mo for life (the current price
is only $69.95 last I checked). And I took the opportunity to upgrade
my $20 router from 2008 at the same time.

[large]My new fancy router--Ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite + EdgeSwitch
16-POE

And when I returned my cable box to Comcast to cancel my service, the
representative felt compelled to counsel me: "NextLight, huh? you
know," he said, leaning in, "if you miss even a single payment,
they'll raise your price?"

"I'll take my chances."

I've been automatically billed $49.95 every month since, and this is
what my speed looks like this morning:

[2022-04-19]930Mbps is not quite 1Gbps, but I'll take it

 Why can't we have nice things? P

Big cable companies suck. Big cable companies burned hundreds of
thousands of dollars to stop Longmont's municipal broadband.

In 2005, Comcast and CenturyLink rammed through the egregious
Colorado SB-05-152, prohibiting municipalities in the state of
Colorado from offering telecommunication services.

Longmont had to hold two referendums on the measure--one in 2009,
which failed, and another in 2011, which passed:

In 2009, "No Blank Check Longmont" (Comcast/CenturyLink) spent
$250,000 to dash our dreams of municipal broadband. They framed it as
a choice between fast internet vs. police and firefighters.

In 2011, "Look Before You Leap Longmont" (Comcast/CenturyLink) spent
$300,000 urging us to rethink our municipal broadband plans. They
stood in lone opposition to our unanimous city council and our local
paper.

Comcast spent $500,000 in a tiny city of less than 100,000 people.
You can be sure, Comcast will do all this again in a heartbeat.

 Lessons P

Rather than use their vast resources to improve their service,
Comcast will spend big to ensure they never have to compete.

Let Longmont be a lesson. In 2011, Longmont won because it formed an
honest citizens' advisory group: Longmont's Future. Longmont's Future
got the word out about the vote on Facebook, its website, and the
local press.

And ever since, Longmonsters (that's right--Longmont's demonym is
"Longmonster") have chosen NextLight over competing services.

Real competition won. Fuck Comcast. Long live municipal broadband.

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Last edited Wed 2022-04-20 05:31:39 PM Created Wed 2022-04-20
02:17:08 PM

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