I am not going to spend a lot of time on this, because if it isn't in the proverbial weeds for the focus of this site, it is pretty close. But the merger between Comcast and NBC would be bad news for publicly owned networks.
Comcast is already a massive company that has huge advantages due to its scale. When a community served by Comcast decides it wants a network that puts the community first rather than the boardroom in Philadelphia, they have to compete with Comcast for customers. Comcast can cross-subsidize from its non-competitive markets, meaning it can offer its services at a loss in competitive communities, offering prices that a new network simply cannot beat while paying its bills.
The larger it gets and the more channels it owns, the more market power it has and the harder for competitors to get enough subscribers to stay in business.
Beyond publicly owned networks, the Comcast and NBC merger is bad for everyone who likes real choices in channels to watch and programming to consume. In these times of great creativity due to the openness of the web, it further constrains opportunities for independent content creators - as illustrated by two articles describing the sausage-making of creating a channel lineup: Comcast vs. the Tennis Channel and How Cable Programming is 'Chosen.'
As the FCC has restored both net neutrality and its Title II authority over Internet access providers, smaller ISPs and municipalities worry the new rules saddle them with burdensome regulations as punishment for the sins of much larger companies. But the FCC, state leaders, and consumer groups insist the rules should be a net benefit all the same.
Telecom monopolies have hoovered up the lion’s share of $214 million recently doled out by the Pennsylvania state Broadband Infrastructure Program (BIP), with cooperatives, smaller ISPs, and community-owned networks left largely out in the cold. It’s not a surprising move for a state long considered politically hostile to community-owned and operated broadband networks, though industry experts say this latest round of awards was particularly egregious when it comes to dodgy politics and its total lack of any real transparency.
At a recent Martinsville City Council meeting, the council offered unanimous support for a phased expansion of the city’s Municipal Internet Network (MiNet). What exactly the expansion will look like, and how it will be funded, very much remain a work in progress. Despite having been first constructed in the 1990s, Martinsville’s MiNet only has about 376 customers in a city of nearly 14,000 residents. There’s roughly 20 users currently on a multi-month waiting list, eager to get access to affordable fiber at speeds up to a gigabit per second (Gbps).
Golden, Colorado has struck a new right-of-way agreement with Google Fiber that should expedite the competitive delivery of affordable fiber to the city of 20,000. The deal gives Google Fiber non-exclusive access to public right-of-way to build a commercial broadband network, though it delivers no guarantee of uniform access across the entire city.
The Idaho Broadband Advisory Board (BAB) has greenlit $120 million in broadband grants from the Idaho Capital Projects Fund (CPF) to fund 18 different broadband projects across Idaho, delivering affordable fiber access to 30,000 homes and businesses, many for the first time.
UTOPIA Fiber has completed its fourth major broadband deployment of 2023, with the finished construction of a $23.5 million citywide fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) build in Syracuse, Utah. The new fiber network passes 12,324 residential addresses, and has already reached a nearly 16% subscriber take rate in the city.