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The first wired article you linked to pretty much mirrors my line of thought. I'm a rather "free market" person myself, and whereas I can envision problems with local municipalities controlling installation of wire and controlling the network after the fact, the fact that it is regional is already a gigantic leap forward beyond what we have now.

The bit about the installation company not owning the fiber they install is a very important part of it. Companies should be getting paid to install fiber in any given area, and companies (or in this case government) would simply administer this network. Divorcing ownership of lines from the internet service providing business makes sense even on a free market level because free market advocates cannot possibly condone the government bidding portions of your land away to be indefinitely owned by a company which was allowed to own it - without your consent as the property owner.

Granted a lot of lines run through municipal land as well, but in those cases you as the ultimate consumer still have virtually no say in the process of selecting a service provider, which leads to issues we have now.

So yeah, I'm basically on board with that wired article. It is fairly close to my ideal solution.

More ideally I'd enjoy housing communities controlling installation contracts, upkeep and administration - but if this is as close to the ideal I can get, that is what I'd want to happen.

Edit: Also I've no idea why I used the word "ideal" like 20 times

Speaking on this whole net neutrality issue, don't you ever think the issue is just a band-aid for a much bigger problem?

I mean I won't shed any tears that people want to force the government to control monopolies the government installed, but it seems even if we get network neutrality we still have the issue with internet service monopolies that nobody seems even close to willing to tackle.

To me this whole thing seems like attacking a symptom, rather than the disease. They would not be able to do this in the first place if any real competition existed. So I imagine problems like these will continue to persist, even if we get network neutrality?

Are you interested in any efforts to tackle the problem of government contract bidding or those which are for allowing the consumer more control?

Personally I think a bill which allows governments to formulate contracts with large providers to lay wire and control access for profit only until the lines are built and paid for (with them collecting a fee of sorts I suppose) would be ideal.

After that allowing smaller municipalities to control access to that wire they've paid for however they see fit seems ideal.

Then again corruption can occur here, also. Either way I think the system we have in place now can only result in more problems in the future, and I wish people were attacking the root cause rather than the symptom.