A Broadband Utopia from IEEE Spectrum describes how a few municipalities in Utah joined together to build the high speed Internet infrastructure that for-profit telecommunication companies were not willing to. This article is definitely worth the somewhat long read. Several good points are made. The physical network duplication between the phone and cable companies is very expensive. The analogy given in the article is that this duplication is similar to every airline building its own airport instead of sharing the costs. I also find the argument that public Internet infrastructure opens up the market to new entrants very compelling. Competition is a good thing. Customers using the public network described in this article have their choice of companies offering TV, Internet, phone and other network services.

Fishburn says that the Utopia design makes it easy for every high school to have, in effect, its own TV station. “And not just the school,” he says. “Why not every high school student?”