I dont there's anything inherently different about Internet delivery. There's some last mile problems and some services no market exists because the cost would be higher than people are willing to pay. Internet service is expensive and maybe the high fixed cost makes it so only a few people can deliver and they can charge monopoly prices. There are also regulations that could make this expensive to provide too
But you can't just look at final price with a lower price being good. If some municipal service costs half the price but it costs taxpayers the other half, is that better? Maybe if you think they have a right to this service and you're okay with subsidizing it. But there is no free lunch, someone is paying.
I think ultimately you want it to be provided by private market if possible. So leaving it open at a high price encourages others to try and innovate. Think about starlink. If government was providing Internet to everyone for below market prices, no innovation would happen because they essentially crowded out private industry. So in the long run it would be much more expensive and opaque. You lose a market signal through artificially low prices
>But you can't just look at final price with a lower price being good. If some municipal service costs half the price but it costs taxpayers the other half, is that better?
Where, exactly, is that happening?
As I understand it, the vast majority of taxpayer monies for broadband doesn't go to municipally owned networks, but rather to private ISPs. And that's been the case for decades.
And those monies are given with a pinky-swear that this time, we'll actually spend the money on expanding broadband to under-served areas, with a similar likelihood that will happen as the last four or five times taxpayer monies were given to those folks.
Meanwhile, actual municipal broadband[0][1] pays for itself by charging multiple ISPs to access their last mile -- paying for the infrastructure and introducing (often for the first time) competition into the market.
What's more, nearly a third of states have laws[2] blocking/hindering municipal broadband. Most of which are related to model legislation promulgated by groups like ALEC[3]. Many of the artificial roadblocks put up by such laws make municipal broadband (both implicitly and explicitly[4]) more expensive than private broadband
But you can't just look at final price with a lower price being good. If some municipal service costs half the price but it costs taxpayers the other half, is that better? Maybe if you think they have a right to this service and you're okay with subsidizing it. But there is no free lunch, someone is paying.
I think ultimately you want it to be provided by private market if possible. So leaving it open at a high price encourages others to try and innovate. Think about starlink. If government was providing Internet to everyone for below market prices, no innovation would happen because they essentially crowded out private industry. So in the long run it would be much more expensive and opaque. You lose a market signal through artificially low prices