There are so many methods of connectivity and funding munis can pursue, it’s impossible to make blanket statements about how they’d be outdated to quickly, aren’t a good idea, etc.

You’d need to argue them case by case, which is how it should be.

Statewide muni bans are the bells and cable companies making that decision for us.

The muni’s would not be dealing with easily obsoleted technology. Conduit builds would have a 50 year lifetime and the dark fiber would have at least a 10 year lifetime. It could be properly funded by Muni bonds and maintened by muni “men in trucks”, very little tech.

The services would all be provided by competitive service providers (which could be a mix of commercial and “coop” if there was a market desire for that). The competitive service providers would have open access at cost+ rates to the dark fiber to homes and businesses on a link by link basis. They, not the muni’s would “lite” the fiber. A whole ecosystem of service providers would be enabled this way (fiber lighters, VoIP, Video on Demand, etc) could leverage the local, open access collocation.

This would truely open up broadband and deliver the proper mix of municipal / commercial ballance. But it would still piss off the incumbents, who should be allowed to go out of business from such a disruptive technological advance if they can’t cope.

Yes.