that "other" FCC ruling last Thursday...

[Rob Seastrom]

Those of you who followed the previous net neutrality thread won't be
surprised that I hold the Title II ruling of last Thursday in low
regard, as fundamentally a no-op.

But something else happened that morning at the FCC, which in my mind
is much bigger and more significant.  It would have to be, since I
considered the Title II machinations to not address any issues of
substance.

Without going into the reasons for it (which would no doubt devolve
into conspiracy theory and finger pointing), municipal broadband is
illegal outright or highly restricted to the point of uselessness in
about half the states right now.  Thursday morning, the FCC got into
the fray at the behest of a pair of cities in North Carolina and
Tennessee, to try to overturn those laws.

It's a good first step, but it's an uphill battle in cases where the
states outlaw it outright instead of allowing municipal broadband with
severe restrictions, where the FCC has a bit more purchase.

The ultimate solution in my estimation would be a situation in which a
local government or pseudo-government agency (like an electrical
co-op) pulled fiber and left running the services over it to other
organizations.

A properly architected layer 1 municipal or county fiber deployment could:

  a) allow true competition by letting an arbitrary number of internet
     and cable providers deliver service independently of each other
     and without need for coordination
  b) be financed with tax-advantaged municipal bonds over a longer time
     frame than typically is considered by private industry, with a useful
     life measured in decades
  c) be paid for by some mix of user fees and general tax assessments,
     just like county rec centers are today, and
  d) not require the local government to acquire the talent or overhead
     necessary to run an ISP, beyond the ability to patch and hang
     fiber, since everything above layer 1 is handled by someone
     who's already being an ISP "at scale"...  or small, "boutique"
     providers who cater to nerds, old people, or anyone else who
     is not well-served by the usual cast of characters.

When you've got competition, an extremely light regulatory touch (if
any) is all it takes.

I hope for more steps in this direction.

Very non-technical New Yorker article:
http://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/fcc-municipal-broadband-ruling-matters-net-neutrality

-r