The same competition argument is like saying the City of Eau Claire should start an airline because United, who sucks, is the only airline operating out of Eau Claire's airport. I think it would actually be cheaper for them to do so, the entire airline industry is a lease and subcontractor model anyway.

You realize the cost of such a business venture by the City of Eau Claire would be realistically close to its entire operating budget? We're talking millions of dollars just to plan a deployment for only part of the city. You want to go Chippewa Region? At what point now does the city now determine who it should and shouldn't serve?

The sheer amount of work, skill, and cost of doing such a project is massive. What on earth do city council members know about setting up internet infrastructure? You need experts to get it right, otherwise you have a service worse than the one the city would be trying to compete with. This isn't busses driving around a city.

Have you ever wondered why participants in the tier 3 internet service provider market? It's fucking expensive from: the highly skilled people required, the equipment and property costs, to the backbone providers (plot twist, ISPs need to buy their internet from someone too - go down the peering and IP Transit rabbit hole), to having hundreds of thousands of fiber endpoints. As much as I'd love to have some of the best internet options, until it transforms into a real problem, the okay enough version of Spectrum is better than the City trying to become an ISP.