Chris Mitchell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance has an excellent article on municipal and community broadband at Ars Technica. Mitchell discusses some of the positive outcomes from the Lafayette, Louisiana municipal network, where you can get a 50 megabit symmetrical Internet access connection for just $58/month--which would qualify it for the lowest prices in the country. A ten megabit symmetric connection is just $29/month, which is also probably the lowest price in the country for that level of service.
It is the symmetric service that is so important. Many incumbent providers will tout services "up to 50 megabits" without noting that the service is asymmetric, meaning you may have 50 megabits downstream but as little as 2-5 megabits upstream, and that both the upstream and downstream bandwidth gets shared with a bunch of your neighbors (often 25 to 50 of your neighbors).
Why is symmetric bandwidth important? It enables work from home job opportunities and enables running a business from home. The availability of symmetric bandwidth is an economic development and jobs issue. A community that does not have symmetric broadband services is cutting off jobs and business growth.
Finally, while the article highlights the positive impact in Lafayette from the municipal network, it is important to note that there are other business models for muni networks that do not involve getting local government to sell services in direct competition with private providers. The open access, open services model being pursued by local governments in Virginia and Utah are doing extremely well, although you don't hear much about them because there is tremendous pressure from incumbents and lobbyists to not talk about them--they don't want to have to tell legislators there is a "third way" that provides an appropriate role for government but keeps local governments out of direct competition. nDanville, The Wired Road, and Utopia are all doing extremely well.
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