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ISPs as publically owned Utilities (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 months ago by to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Hey everyone, I'm new here but all this news about age verification and data privacy got me thinking about how the Internet itself works and how we connect.

I recall hearing somewhere that a town in the US created a city run internet provider and it significantly increased speeds and lowered overhead, as well as provided more of a voice to its users.

How would you go about implementing this from the technical side? I figure it would be an uphill battle politically, but I don't see a lot of good alternatives in this day and age. I love the idea of I2P and Yggdrasil, but as a matter of user accessibility, they take at least some technical experience and time to set up.

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[–] [S] 4 points 6 months ago* (3 children)

Laying fiber lines can be done by the city. Building server farms can be done at the city level. The municipality, depending on size, would have the resources to make a MAN. I understand that the most difficult aspect of implementing it is politics.

I ask because I am tired of corporate pig shit finding more and more insane ways of extracting money from every single minutia of our lives. Especially with services like utilities that have a monopoly because of the physical nature of the infrastructure.

We will have claw back our rights one at a time.

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  • [–] 1 point 6 months ago (2 children)

    The question still stands, does your city have enough capital? Fibre is expensive to lay at a city scale, the equipment to connect is inexpensive to buy and maintain, you also need to ensure compliance with local telecoms regulation, you'll also have to deal with competition from existing established and experienced competition.

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  • [–] [S] 4 points 6 months ago* (1 child)

    All true. It would be easiest to lay in heart of the city where it is most dense to attract more customers per square mile.

    Ideally, the utilities are made public and regulated by the public, but nationalizing or bringing it under state control is an even harder political sell.

    I'll have to spread the word one way or another, which will be tough when so much is happening these days.

    If it could be done, it would be in Seattle, given that the city owns its Utilities already.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 months ago

    Yeah hard sell in the US. Nationalising infra is the way forward. Laying new cable and ducts in a city is wildly expensive and not always possible due to the need for new ROWs.

    We nationalised our telco infra here in Aus. Our conservatives tried to stop it and ended screwing up the deal and making it cost 30 to 60 billion more than it should have, but conservatives are mostly incompetent so kinda expected.

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