Why does Cambridge need a municipally owned broadband system?
A consultants’ report with scenarios for a municipally owned broadband system (“Results of municipal broadband feasibility study: City-owned Internet has big pluses and price tag,” March 13) had a critical omission: a justification for why the city should even be considering such an investment. The first order of business needs to be what the motivation is for a very costly, high-risk venture that would be a municipally owned broadband system.
- Is it, as has been the case with some other small cities, that Cambridge was totally or partially bypassed by commercial broadband providers such as AT&T, Spectrum or Comcast?
- Is it because Cambridge finds it cannot attract business due to a lack of broadband infrastructure?
- Is it because the cost of broadband for residences is out of reach of too many households?
- Is it because poor neighborhoods or households do not have access to affordable broadband?
- Or is it because some users need a service faster than the gigabit service available to residences and small businesses today. Are households being stymied in online education or streaming movies due to insufficient broadband to the household?
There is some overlap in these questions. But the answers are unambiguous.
First, Cambridge is fully wired. Every household, apartment building and business has ready access to at least Comcast and in many places two or more broadband providers. There are no Internet deserts. There have been no blocks bypassed.
Second, certainly businesses and large institutions have not complained about the lack of sufficient broadband. We have not lost businesses to Boston or other cities due to insufficient digital connections.
Are Cambridge’s Internet connections slow by today’s standards? Comcast, the largest provider, offers a range of connection speeds capped at different prices, but even the basic service is sufficient for Zoom calls, streaming movies and TV shows, certainly email or access to news and government websites. There will always be a small number of users who want more. Today that might be for gamers who indulge in real-time games, where a few nanoseconds of additional speed might help. But more bandwidth will not do much for most households unless one is buying into the widespread adoption of the “metaverse” in the foreseeable future. But even then, existing providers have been upgrading their networks consistently to meet the preponderance of consumer needs.
Is the price for existing services too high? Of course, almost everyone would like to pay less for whatever they buy. But in multiple surveys, cost has not been the most salient factor for the vast majority of households. And the price in the basic scenario projected for the municipal system, $70 (without specifying what level of service that would provide), is not dramatically less than current commercial rates. (For Comcast, which also offers cable TV as well as landline telephone service over the same wires as broadband, the cost of the broadband portion is lower than subscribing to the same level of service as broadband alone. This makes perfect economic sense, as one wire and one bill cover multiple services, spreading the operating cost for that household over multiple revenue streams. A municipal broadband system will have to cover all the costs of the infrastructure and operations from a single revenue stream). In any event, price can’t be the main motivation.
Are lower-income households priced out of broadband in Cambridge? Certainly, there is a small proportion of households that might find paying for broadband impinges on their limited income. On the other hand, the federal government has been promoting subsidized connections for low-income households. Comcast provides free (including hardware) 100MB service as well under the federal Affordable Connectivity Program. Those who qualify under this program may chose another level of service and get a $30 per month subsidy. It may not buy the fastest speeds but does provide the wherewithal for Zooms, classroom videos, email and even a streaming service.
So, why does Cambridge seem hell-bent on undertaking such a high-cost, high-risk venture? This must be asked especially in light of the greater competition from Starry and early wireless providers, such as T-Mobile, which offers moderate broadband speeds over 5G wireless for $50 per month (less $30 for low-income households).
If the motivation is simply to create a competitor to Comcast, this is a very expensive way to accomplish whatever marginal improvements in service or prices a municipal broadband service would bring. It would be far less costly to reexamine the regulatory conditions in Cambridge that have discouraged Verizon to bring in their 5G broadband service, as it has just across the Charles River.
And if the real need is to get gigabit service to the lowest-income households, it would seem that a program of city subsidies atop federal subsidies would be cheaper and more immediate than the years it would take to get there even with a municipal system.
As we cited in the Broadband Task Force report in 2026, there is not one example of a city the size of Cambridge that has successfully created a municipally owned stand-alone broadband system that has not been a huge money pit. (Note that a few systems have been successful only when they did not have to compete with an existing broadband provider or were added to an existing municipally owned electric utility that already had conduits and wires strung, trucks for service calls, a billing system and a call center.)
While a full overlay municipal broadband system might eventually bring small marginal improvements in prices and service (assuming that whatever operating entity employed – city employees or an outsourced private sector business – could run the system more efficiently than current providers), it is a massive stretch to justify the cost to the city and the risk involved.
The city’s consultants identified four possible implementation scenarios. What they omitted was a fifth scenario. That would be to calculate what it would cost the city to get whatever broadband connections it thinks should be made available to the lowest-income households without resorting to a massive infrastructure project and creating a bureaucracy to run it – or monitor an outsourced private provider.
Cambridge should start by articulating a prioritized accounting of its most critical broadband needs and look at how they may be accomplished though existing and potential providers, as well as publicizing options for low-income households, before jumping to what would seem to be the most complex, expensive and risky “nuclear option” of funding a municipal system.
Ben Compaine has been a Cambridge resident for 44 years. He served on the City Manager’s Broadband Task Force from 2014 to 2016.
Finally the broadband task force is making some progress, which is what the citizens of Cambridge asked for, and now this former member is complaining about it.
Ben,
Pitch perfect. Everything was covered. No one
could have said it better.
Of course, the key question is whether the Council will listen. They seem to have gotten it into their head that a municipal owned system is vital to the city. Hopefully, they’ll listen to your arguments against it.
Whatever it takes to tell Comcast to shove it. Has to be the number one commercial entity that I loathe for monopolistic service, pricing practices that ratchet up every year, and aggressively unaccessible customer service. Sure, i’d love to get Verizon here to compete. But I feel this commentary is too accepting of the status quo. If the City Council errs on being too ambitious, this errs on understating the misery that is being a Comcast customer.
I don’t know if municipally owned broadband is the best solution, but I do know that the current broadband offerings are insufficient. My Xfinity internet is slow, unreliable and the customer service is beyond bad. And they’re my only available choice.
I say, go for municipal broadband – especially if federal dollars are available.
@taguscove
You said: “Has to be the number one commercial entity that I loathe for monopolistic service, ”
And who gave Comcast the monopoly? Our City Council did. And now, that same entity (different people) is about to make another terrible blunder.
The City Council, too often, thinks in terms of fantasy rather than reality.
I’d rather my money do to the city than to comcast. That said, why did the city give comcast the monopoly? And Ben, you write a lot about how expensive this will be, but so far no one has said how expensive or broken it down, which would honestly be super helpful.
To q99: The consultants project an upfront cost of $150 million to $194 million, which would come via debt financing. Operating the system would be on top of that.
By the way, many people complain that Comcast internet is slow, the first thing to check is Wi-Fi where you live. If you can, run and Ethernet cable from the router to your computer. That will usually double or triple your performance. There are other reasons why service might be slow or unreliable other than what is actually coming into your router.
First off, anyone who the previous city managers, who were dedicated to prevent broadband expansion in the city by competitors to Comcast for decades and who sabotaged previous attempts to assess the possibility of city operated broadband, placed on a board is suspect as a contributor to the current discussion.
Chattanooga TN (which is slightly larger than Cambridge in pop. has its own Municipal Broadband system (since you were claiming no city of our size has one). There are also 200 municipalities and counties that have their own systems in place, and 10 towns/cities here in MA.
See:
https://www.milton-municipal-fiber.com/other-towns-municipal-broadband#:~:text=In%20Massachusetts%20there%20are%20ten,Holyoke%2C%20Shrewsbury%2C%20and%20Concord.&text=These%20are%20the%20cities%20and,to%201892%20for%20for%20Braintree!
Yes I am aware of some of your credentials, but really they and some of what you have written defending specific industries makes you come across as an apologist for big business and someone that wants to protect the big corporations against local social interests and needs.
Comcast has been steadily making its broadband and other services more and more expensive (far beyond inflation) for long term residents and property owners. They offer low discounts to new customers and then hike up the rates year after year. The average internet bill in the U.S. is $64/mo. cost here in Cambridge is QUITE a bit more and for some of us who have been trapped with them for years that price is continuing to be a serious expense.
They have been historically slow to make repair when there are problems… in past years they would hire outside contractors who regularly cut corners. In multi unit buildings sometimes this meant running splitters off someone else’s cable causing signal drop and data loss, when setting up a new tenant’s hookup.
>> Every household, apartment building and business has ready access to at least Comcast
And everyone *loves* their Comcast service and never has problems with it.
Calling out Starry and Verizon wireless as competitors is pretty funny. I wish they were real competitors to Comcast.
I think it’s absolutely crazy that every street reconstruction and utility project over the last 10 years hasn’t included provisions for laying dark fiber or conduit to *actually* make this city “fully wired” with fiber to the premises.
Thanks for the additional clarification, Ben. So 200million/50k households = about 4000$ per household, or 4 years at current prices.
That is fairly expensive, plus maintenance. More than I thought it would be, bummer. Still might be worth it to stick it to comcast tho.
@q99
The numbers are even worse than you show.
I’ve gone through the entire consultants report.
Below is what I wrote on Cambridge Day on March 14th.
(https://www.cambridgeday.com/2023/03/13/results-of-municipal-broadband-feasibility-study-city-owned-internet-has-big-pluses-and-price-tag/
“Take rate of 40%. If there are 47,449 households in Cambridge and the expectation according to the plan is 27,000 customers (the 192 million divided by the 7,117 cost per customer), that is a take rate of 56%. Councilor Nolan, I’m sure I made a mistake in my numbers? Would you be so kind as to correct me.”
Of course, we didn’t hear back from Councilor Nolan. Why should we? After all we’re only her constituents. Patty Nolan talks a good story. She did it when she was on the school board. I voted for her. Then, I saw that she really didn’t do the difficult task on changing a broken school system.
As for the City Council, well, more of the same. The Council is dreaming about municipal broadband, but is unwilling to face the reality of what it is going to cost, not only in terms of money, but in digging up every Cambridge street.
If there are some people in Cambridge who cannot afford internet service (although how many of them have cell phones which cost much more), then the city should subsidize those people. It will cost a lot less in money and aggravation.
@concerned43
Yes adding a citywide broadband will have costs that financing via bonds etc. the city has the AAA rating that makes this viable… from what we have been told. The long term value is the important thing you are missing. The other options in regards to competition are not actually available to the majority of households and businesses in this city so they remain otherwise trapped only with overpriced Comcast (which for many folks can be double the national average cost for broadband).
Thinking to the future always includes costs… do you think roads, sewage systems, transit etc. didn’t have a cost in the past or for maintenance?
Civilization and progress will always cost… and it costs more when a monopoly situation happens, as we have for the majority of this city.
I remain suspicious of motivations involved in regards to anything that city managers spent 2 decades blocking the research into. I don’t assume that city managers with such autocratic power in the city are necessarily neutral in their reasoning or even having the best interest of the residents in mind.
I do want further research before any decisions are made, and I do want the discussion I noted with Somerville etc. in possibly pooling efforts to get improved results or lowered costs overall.
I would like to know also where the major tech companies (and the universities) get their internet feeds from. Maybe a deal could be made with MIT or Harvard or Google to interconnect if they are using non-Comcast sources or to reduce costs. MIT and Harvard both have on campus Internet access, talking to them could come up with another alternative direction than going it alone as well.
I pay $101 a month for internet only.
Every year the rate goes up just a little bit more and I look in vain for other legitimate options, but there are -none- in my neighborhood.
$70/month would save me $372 a year.
You think almost $400 is nothing?!
This city can’t even properly do some basic services. Do you really believe it can dig up every street in Cambridge and keep the total cost at the amount now quoted?
Somehow, I think that would be a bad bet.
If the city believes that there are people who can’t afford internet service, subsidize those people.
@ unquietsoul
Beware of the AAA rating. Be very aware.
@Concerned43
I assume that on any construction project there will be cost overruns. I know of no project on a local or state level that has come in under expected costs or even at expected costs when bid on.
I assume at least 10% more than stated construction costs just because of delays that will occur and additional oversight that will be needed of such a project while being built.