To play devils advocate, in NYC which has a massive transit network. There exists a series of private transit "companies" (sometimes just a guy with a 10 person van), that provides routes that are poorly served by the publicly run transit network. The famous Chinatown buses would be another example, that run between Chinatowns in the North East, are incredibly cheap, fast, and are profitable.

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triceratops 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

They still run on public roads.

I'm all for multiple city bus operators.

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mixdup 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is a great example/argument for how a competitive local ISP market can work. The city/county/state should string fiber to every single house, and then various ISPs can just plug a customer into their particular switch/OLT/splitter.

A common "monopoly" of the physical last mile served by many providers traveling over it

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mindslight 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The difficulty is that most of this competitive dynamic is already provided by IP itself (remember when you got your email address from your ISP?), and what remains is basically the physical layer technology which is exactly where the worries lie about stagnation.

There is a small angle where several ISPs can compete around customer service, data caps, equipment rental, business support, price margin, etc. While then forming larger units that put pressure on the physical provider to not stagnate the underlying infrastructure.

On the other hand I've got municipal fiber, and it just works. Great friendly local support (at least from what I understand, I don't really call them), no data caps, the price has stayed fixed for it's whole existence. I don't see any reason to want another layer on top of that, as it would only make all of those things worse.

The incumbent coax provider ("cable compay") still exists. If the municipal fiber provider stagnates on technology, then they could theoretically step up, right?. But given they had been coasting on a monopoly for decades (the other option being DSL), and that their service is still slower than the municipal gigabit (now deployed for a decade), I think that is giving them too much credit! In fact I've seen more talk about next-gen connection speeds from the municipal fiber provider.

For all the marketing about "free market competition", large corpos can be less innovative and responsive than small governments. So for the foreseeable future, I see no reason to not just voice my support for municipal fiber everywhere.

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rayiner 3 hours ago | parent [-]

But what about large governments? Japan has amazing internet service, and NTT is mostly private (with the government retaining only 1/3 ownership).

I would trust my county to deliver my fiber internet. All my government services work great. I literally marvel every time I visit our municipal dump, which is cleaner and mode efficient than my home country of Bangladesh. But I wouldn’t trust most of the other counties I’ve lived in before to do it (Baltimore, Wilmington DE, Chicago, etc.).

	▲	mindslight 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Given that the argument about municipal fiber centers around a dynamic of large corpos preventing competition from small municipalities (by lobbying for state level prohibitions, etc) that seems besides the point. If a city can't get its own network off the ground, then the whole thing becomes a noop (apart from having wasted the money, which they would have done on something else regardless). But when cities have the population density to support multiple competing Internet providers with decent physical layers and non-extractionary terms, then there generally doesn't seem to be much of a call for the city to provide its own services in the first place. Furthermore cities that are incompetent about deploying infrastructure are going to be similarly incompetent at facilitating the permit process for private infrastructure - giving governmentesque incumbent providers a hold over a captive market regardless. So while this is a general problem that deserve its own exploration, it wouldn't seem to have much bearing on Internet access specifically. The real concern is municipalities that would be perfectly capable of providing Internet service (along with the rest of their municipal services), yet are being held back from even trying. (Also I don't know what the Japan example demonstrates anything because 1. Japan and 2. that 1/3 ownership stake belies a much bigger controlling interest due to being the government)

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triceratops 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I agree, bring it on.

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causesothere 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You should look up how private buses worked in Chile's capital.

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threetonesun 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's not really devil's advocate, it's the way Capitalism should be structured. If we had government covered health care I'd expect private markets of vanity surgery or uncovered procedures to still exist. If we had government run utilities you'd still have private installments for demanding needs, generators, off-grid construction, etc, etc.

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luckydata 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

then that's not a natural monopoly and not a good example of what is being discussed.

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ecshafer 5 hours ago | parent [-]

They said transit as a class of natural monopoly and I showed a counter example where there are private companies entering a space where the natural monopoly already exists.

	▲	izacus 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		No, you misunderstood the point of the poster and decided to bloviate about unrelated things.

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mschuster91 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> To play devils advocate, in NYC which has a massive transit network. There exists a series of private transit "companies" (sometimes just a guy with a 10 person van), that provides routes that are poorly served by the publicly run transit network.

Are they part of the regular fare structure?

	▲	ecshafer 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		No, they are typically more impromptu set ups. $5 a person, leaves Queens for Bayonne at 8am, that type of thing. Some have set pick up/ drop off locations like a normal bus. Usually cash only, under the table.

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CPLX 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

A bus isn’t a natural monopoly. A subway system is.

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ecshafer 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Tokyo uses privately run subway/train systems and is largely considered the envy of the world with regards to transit. The united states prior to WWII mostly ran on privately run transit systems, with private companies running street car and subway lines. So it does not appear to actually be that much of a natural monopoly.

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jppittma 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It is though? Are you gonna open a second unconnected subway system in new York and compete with them? That's always the question for a natural monopoly I thought.

Youre gonna have another company digging a second set of tunnels?

Does it make any sense whatsoever to have two?

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ecshafer 4 hours ago | parent [-]

> Are you gonna open a second unconnected subway system in new York and compete with them?

Yes thats how it works in Tokyo. They get land, build stations, then dig the tunnels. Their profit comes from fares and rents around the stations that they own.

	▲	BobaFloutist 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Right, but they don't directly compete by digging parallel tunnels and routes, because that would be a poor allocation of resources for everyone involved.

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cogman10 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Japan is very much an oddball in terms of capitalist nations. They are basically the only highly capitalist nation where corporations still put a high value on delivering high quality services and products at reasonable prices. They haven't yet ran into the vulture capitalist problems every other nation has. There's nothing stopping that from happening other than cultural values AFAIK.

Britain and the US are both good examples where privatization of the rail systems has been a complete mess. The US being the worst public transit rail system of any developed nation.

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hcknwscommenter 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Not really. Tokyo has an entirely publicly owned subway system. And a separate subway system that was govt owned and then, after buildout, sold some shares to the public via IPO.

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tjpnz 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

With a fare cap to prevent them from screwing over the public.

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krunck 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Or to better apply to the bus example: A bus isn’t a natural monopoly, a city street is.