San Francisco: Building Community Broadband to Protect Net Neutrality and Online Privacy
Like many cities around the country, San Francisco is considering an investment in community broadband infrastructure: high-speed fiber that would make Internet access cheaper and better for city residents. Community broadband can help alleviate a number of issues with Internet access that we see all over America today. Many Americans have no choice of provider for high-speed Internet, Congress eliminated user privacy protections in 2017, and the FCC decided to roll back net neutrality protections in December.
This week, San Francisco published the recommendations of a group of experts, including EFF's Kit Walsh, regarding how to protect the privacy and speech of those using community broadband.
This week, the Blue Ribbon Panel on Municipal Fiber released its third report, which tackles competition, security, privacy, net neutrality, and more. It recommends San Francisco's community broadband require net neutrality and privacy protections. Any ISP looking to use the city's infrastructure would have to adhere to certain standards. The model of community broadband that EFF favors is sometimes called "dark fiber" or "open access." In this model, the government invests in fiber infrastructure, then opens it up for private companies to compete as your ISP. This means the big incumbent ISPs can no longer block new competitors from offering you Internet service. San Francisco is pursuing the "open access" option, and is quite far along in its process.
(Score: 2, Informative) by DrkShadow on Sunday February 25 2018, @01:33AM
This is discussion of the city creating a fiber network to allow companies to compete as ISP's. Taken to what you're suggesting, the city would own all of the properties, all of the buildings, and farm out management to outside service organizations.
Do you understand what you're saying? Separately, are you just entirely socialist? If the last item, then just come out and say it, but it's not particularly relevant to this discussion. Do you want to be charged service charges by random company XYZ for providing you with renter services?
What are you even trying to say?