By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 07/04/2026It doesn't make any sense to build multiple, competing fiber networks - any more than it would make sense to build multiple, competing sewer systems or electric grids. In the US, private fiber providers get city permits to dig up the roads and lay their network. 9/ 1221
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 07/04/2026 If you have two competing networks, they dig up the road twice. You'd think that the (more regulated) Germans would lay a single network, but they, too, have multiple, competing networks. 10/ 1140
By Cory Doctorow (GPG 0xBF3D9110957E5F4C) @doctorow.pluralistic.net · 07/04/2026German regulators have a complex set of priorities and constraints: to encourage competition, they promote the idea of competing networks in competing trenches, often just meters apart (rather than competing services on the same fiber and/or fiber run through the same conduit in one trench). 11/ 2140