Comcast, Centurylink Fail To Derail Community-Owned Gigabit Fiber Network In Bountiful, Utah
from the do-not-pass-go,-do-not-collect-$200 dept
More than 600 communities across the U.S. have decided to build their own broadband networks after decades of predatory behavior, slow speeds, and high prices by regional telecom monopolies.
That includes the city of Bountiful, Utah, which earlier this year voted to build a $48 million fiber network to deliver affordable, gigabit broadband to every business and residence in the city. The network is to be open access, meaning that multiple competitors can come in and compete on shared central infrastructure, driving down prices for locals (see our recent Copia study on this concept).
As you might expect, regional telecom monopolies hate this sort of thing. But because these networks are so popular among consumers, they’re generally afraid to speak out against them directly. So they usually employ the help of dodgy proxy lobbying and policy middlemen, who’ll then set upon any town or city contemplating such a network using a bunch of scary, misleading rhetoric.
Like in Bountiful, where the “Utah Taxpayers Association” (which has direct financial and even obvious managerial tethers to regional telecom giants CenturyLink (now Lumen) and Comcast) launched a petition trying to force a public vote on the $48 million in revenue bonds authorized for the project under the pretense that such a project would be an unmitigated disaster for the town. (Their effort didn’t work).
Big ISPs like to pretend they’re suddenly concerned about taxpayers and force entirely new votes on these kinds of projects because they know that with unlimited marketing budgets, they can usually flood less well funded towns or cities with misleading PR to sour the public on the idea.
But after the experience most Americans had with their existing broadband options during the peak COVID home education boom, it’s been much harder for telecom giants to bullshit the public. And the stone cold fact remains: these locally owned networks that wouldn’t even be considered if locals were happy with existing options.
You’ll notice these “taxpayer groups” exploited by big ISPs never criticize the untold billions federal and local governments throw at giant telecom monopolies for half-completed networks. Or the routine taxpayer fraud companies like AT&T, Frontier, CenturyLink (now Lumen) and others routinely engage in.
And it’s because such taxpayer protection groups are effectively industry-funded performance art; perhaps well intentioned at one point, but routinely hijacked, paid, and used as a prop by telecom monopolies looking to protect market dominance.
Gigi Sohn (who you’ll recall just had her nomination to the FCC scuttled by a sleazy telecom monopoly smear campaign) has shifted her focus heavily toward advocating for locally-owned, creative alternatives to telecom monopoly power. And in an op-ed to local Utah residents in the Salt Lake Tribune, she notes how telecom giants want to have their cake and eat it too.
They don’t want to provide affordable, evenly available next-generation broadband. But they don’t want long-neglected locals to, either:
Two huge cable and broadband companies, Comcast and CenturyLink/Lumen, have been members of UTA and have sponsored the UTA annual conference. They have been vocally opposed to community-owned broadband for decades and are well-known for providing organizations like the UTA with significant financial support in exchange for pushing policies that help maintain their market dominance. Yet when given the opportunity in 2020, before anyone else, to provide Bountiful City with affordable and robust broadband, the companies balked. So the dominant cable companies not only don’t want to provide the service Bountiful City needs, they also want to block others from doing so.
Big telecom giants like AT&T and Comcast (and all the consultants, think tankers, and academics they hire to defend their monopoly power) love to claim that community owned broadband networks are some kind of inherent boondoggle. But they’re just another business plan, dependent on the quality of the proposal and the individuals involved.
Even then, data consistently shows that community-owned broadband networks (whether municipal, cooperative, or built on the back of the city-owned utility) provide better, faster, cheaper service than regional monopolies. Such networks routinely not only provide the fastest service in the country, they do so while being immensely popular among consumers. They’re locally-owned and staffed, so they’re more accountable to locals. And they’re just looking to break even, not make a killing.
If I was a lumbering, apathetic, telecom monopoly solely fixated on cutting corners and raising rates to please myopic Wall Street investors, I’d be worried too.
Filed Under: bountiful, community broadband, competition, fiber, gigabit, gigi sohn, high speed internet, open access, utah
Companies: centurylink, comcast, lumen
Comments on “Comcast, Centurylink Fail To Derail Community-Owned Gigabit Fiber Network In Bountiful, Utah”
If only there were laws on the books against predatory monopolies, knowingly making false statements,
breaking contracts, bribery …. I mean lobbying … who are we kidding it’s bribes.
4th amendment issues?
So, anything you tell the government can be used against you in a court of law, right?
If the government owns the local internet, you’ve already told the government what you’re doing online. Or, you’ve told their computers what you’re doing online. Using municipal broadband to search for “good barbeque recipes” would be no different than going down to the local library, or city hall, or the police station and saying, “I’m looking for good barbeque recipes.”
There would then be no 4th amendment protections when you’re online with municipal broadband?
Never mind that most ISPs are so embedded with the government, and the 3rd party doctrine is so overgrown, that you don’t have any 4th amendment protections ANYWAY, but at least you could TRY to argue it in court.
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Never heard of a VPN before?
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You know VPN vendors can see ALL your traffic right? And a staggering number of them are owned by malware distributors or are based in countries where American privacy is not exactly a top priority. The top use case for VPN is viewing streaming services from abroad. Privacy is not.
Re: Re: Re: It's easy to set up your own VPN server
It’s easy to set up your own VPN if you’re worried about sketchy providers (of which there are plenty, though I think using something like Mullvad for example is pretty safe) Many newer wifi routers can be configured as VPN servers (my Asus even does Wireguard) or you could pay $3-5/mo for a cloud server and use a tool like Algo to set up a VPN automatically for you.
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They only provide the infrastructure, not the internet.
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It’s common for ISPs using common infrastructure (e.g., third-party cable and DSL providers in Canada) to not encrypt. Even long after the infrastructure providers such as Bell were found to be fucking with the traffic (throttling BitTorrent), they can still read all the traffic passing over their infrastructure. There really should be a standard form of encryption that’s supported by every home router and doesn’t limit packet size.
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Oh great … Now BBQ is woke!
damn, what’s next – smores?
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When all the government owns is the fibers and rights of way, and private companies own the routers, the government will not be in a position to monitor everybodies activities, at least not without the cooperation of the ISPs.
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Ha ha, you’re so off base it’s not even close. You should be more worried about corporations stealing your information with no rules or regulations to speak of beyond their own impossible to read “terms” or “privacy policies”. And these corporations have demonstrated to hand over your data all nicely organized at anytime that the government requests it.
In addition, encryption works. This website, it’s encrypted. Your ISP and all the intermediaries along the way cannot read this page. Only the source and the destination can do so. If this weren’t the case, the government would not need to actually go to telecoms to demand your data.
If you’re that spooked, you need to invest in a tinfoil hat. You should absolutely be using a VPN or TOR access point, you should not be posting comments to techdirt, and you should never login to any site. You should probably disable javascript and block all ads and other trackers.
No doubt, because of the naivety of your post, you don’t understand much or any of what actually happens to your data and what you should actually be concerned about. A small city-owned ISP does not even get to the top of the concerns list.
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You do realize that corporate rule is much worse, right?
Same shady techniques in Ft. Collins. All kind of FUD, even at the neighborhood level. Obvious shills infiltrating the local groups to try to gather opposition.
But we voted for it, and I couldn’t be happier.
– Fast download AND upload.
– Service is always up (as opposed to my old centurylink connection which would regularly drop at least twice a day)
https://fcconnexion.com/residential/resident-internet-service/
Good luck Bountiful.
Ultimately the entire rant above is about ” launched a petition trying to force a public vote on the $48 million in revenue bonds authorized for the project under the pretense that such a project would be an unmitigated disaster for the town.”
Would it be so bad for it to go to vote? Population of Bountiful is about 45,000. Back of the napkin math tells me that is about $1,050 per person in this community for the bond.
If my community is spending that kind of money I would like to have a say.
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usually the idea is to force ANOTHER vote, ya know, a second chance to get it with the nays.
and if that doesn’t work? try another vote! and another! cause for corporate america, it isn’t over until you can’t lie, steal, or bribe your way into it, and well hell, there’s always next election cycle!
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Nothing in the article written stated that it was voted on by the citizens of the community. The link goes to an article that states “By unanimous vote of the city council, the issuance of $48 million in bonds was authorized on May 26 to fund construction of what will be a city-owned open access fiber network.”
This particular measure did not get to the community to vote on.
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This particular measure did not get to the community to vote on.
And why should they? Municipalities often spend money without directly asking the public to vote on it.
Repave a road? Get bids and do it.
New roof on city hall? Get bids and do it.
Build a new storm-water sewer so the town doesn’t flood? Get bids and do it.
The public is virtually always offered the right to comment and to petition their elected reps. That’s the say they get.
z! (not signed in)
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I thought the point of representative democracy was that we elected people to make these decisions on our behalf? I cant possibly be expected to do enough research on all issues in front of every level of government. I have a full time job…
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Unfortunately politicians make the same claim, (and leave the ‘research to lobbyists).
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Which things should we all vote on, and which things are good to just let elected legislators handle (Wink Wink)?
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The community has been pushing for this for a long time. The bond will be funded by the internet subscribers.
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They did have a say. They said the ISP front group is full of shit.
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Speaking as a resident of Bountiful you are missing some major details on who is paying for this. It is the subscribers to the service that will be paying for it. If you are interested you can go to the City’s web site and read their published FAQs. It details how the bond will be funded as well as how it will be repaid.
Bountiful City already runs their own power company which has incredible reliability. I think over the past decade I have had less than 120 minutes total without power. The last major disruption I had was after a windstorm in the fall of 2011. I have no doubt that they will be able to have the same level of reliability with the fiber network.
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And it’s a 30 year bond! If they built it and the. no one used it ever that’d be less than $34 bucks a year
I know the city where I grew up has blown a lot more than that simply subsidizing private developers for things that then never got built.
I envy you your public utility grid and am glad you have it, and I’m happy whenever I see folks getting public broadband infrastructure
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Another Bountiful resident here. It’s also worth noting that:
– The fiber project has been very publicly debated and scrutenized by the city council for quite a while now. This isn’t something that was decided on a whim.
– A ballot would have delayed construction, and the company that builds the network, Utopia Fiber told the city that the delay would make things more difficult and more expensive (and Bountiful already had a great deal in place with Utopia)
– When Utopia first started, some of the cities that jumped on the bandwagon did end up with a good deal of debt, debt that is still being paid off years later. However, with the new way of financing things, no city starting with Utopia has had to raise taxes to pay for the fiber SINCE 2009 (!). Costs have been completely covered by subscription fees, and the infrastructure starts actually earning money for the city pretty quickly.
– The Utah Taxpayers Association hired a company to go door to door, asking if people wanted fiber on the ballot, and in some cases these signature-gatherers falsely claimed to be from the city government. They also have been known to misrepresent a signature on their “petition” as a vote FOR fiber rather than against: https://www.facebook.com/100069097154552/posts/pfbid0hb7VYTxLAeSJEErv3YABvxdUsGL2KKjikELpyMEHvzBPLFmpcqhAbhjx5s689nXil/
One irony is that I won’t be getting fiber from Utopia. Why? Because Centurylink actually does have fiber on my street, for cheaper than Utopia offers. The problem is that availability is not uniform and the non-fiber options aren’t always reliable (I used to have Xfinity over cable, but it was too flaky for WFH).
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It’s a 30 year bond expected to be self-funding. Even if it literally never gets used at all that’s $34 bucks a year.
A general vote over any infrastructure or utility bill is absurdly dis functional. That’s a foundational pillar of representative government. The idea is you can then decide whether to vote for that city councilor again.
The city decides to invest in it’s infrastructure because the city was being harmed by a lack of internet. They intend to fund it by charging less for better service because that would still allow them to pre-pay the bonds off before they mature.
Let’s have a popular vote for all road work, and bridges too! Yaaay!
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If it is cheaper and faster, I don’t want to second guess my city management.
One does hope that someone is saving the various mailers being sent out to talk towns out of doing community broadband so they can be shown next to the reality of the towns that went ahead with doing it despite the risk and what their prices & satisfaction ratings are.
'Sell what they want/need at a price they can afford', not a tricky idea
Other than picturing the sheer aggravation being experienced by the Comcast and Centurylink execs over failing to prevent this probably the best part of developments like this is that it’s entirely a self-inflicted wound.
All the major ISP’s had to do to spike community broadband efforts was offer good service at affordable prices, that’s it, and no-one would be jumping through all the hoops of setting it up themselves. As such to the extent that community broadband initiatives are increasing it’s entirely because of their refusal to those two simple things and as a result every instance like this is just packed to the brim with schadenfreude.