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posted by martyb on Wednesday December 12 2018, @06:18AM   Printer-friendly
from the sueden-outbreak-of-common-sense? dept.

Comcast rejected by small town—residents vote for municipal fiber instead

A small Massachusetts town has rejected an offer from Comcast and instead plans to build a municipal fiber broadband network. Comcast offered to bring cable Internet to up to 96 percent of households in Charlemont in exchange for the town paying $462,123 plus interest toward infrastructure costs over 15 years. But Charlemont residents rejected the Comcast offer in a vote at a special town meeting Thursday.

"The Comcast proposal would have saved the town about $1 million, but it would not be a town-owned broadband network," the Greenfield Recorder reported Friday. "The defeated measure means that Charlemont will likely go forward with a $1.4 million municipal town network, as was approved by annual town meeting voters in 2015." About 160 residents voted, with 56 percent rejecting the Comcast offer, according to news reports.

Charlemont has about 1,300 residents and covers about 26 square miles in northwest Massachusetts. Town officials estimate that building a municipal fiber network reaching 100 percent of homes would cost $1,466,972 plus interest over 20 years. An increase in property taxes would cover the construction cost. But the town would also bring in revenue from selling broadband service and potentially break even, making the project less expensive than Comcast's offer. "With 59 percent of households taking broadband service, the tax hike would be 29 cents [per $1,000 of assessed home value], similar to that for Comcast," a Recorder article last month said. "But if 72 percent or more of households subscribe to the municipal-owned network, there is no tax impact, because subscriber fees would pay for it."


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  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Wednesday December 12 2018, @11:08PM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Wednesday December 12 2018, @11:08PM (#773756) Homepage
    Yeah, I'm not anti- the idea, I'm just anti- the idea that it's being sold as "paying for itself" - it's not, it's being paid for by customers who have an economic want that needs satisfying. Like you, I'm also quite pro- the middle finger to the big guys who pretty much expect to get such contracts, mostly due to lack of competition. Putting up your own "actually, we don't need you to do it" competition is a brave, and hopefully smart move.

    The single suggestion that I think would be most useful - absolutely all accounting records, down to the miniscule details, regarding to this should be public, so that people can know exactly where their money is going, and who has signed off what. The taxpayers are *investors* in this scheme, after all. That should be true for all governmental work - all government money is taxpayers' money - but so rarely is. Partially, I say this as I expect some bits to, oooops, go over budget - who could have foreseen that? Knowing who signed off on that estimate, and to whom more money is going, is a good way of reducing attempts to pork-barrel things. That size of town should be fine, I would expect almost everyone knows everybody.
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