Name For a Community-Owned Fiber Network?

CleverMonkey writes "I'm a town representative to a newly created municipal group creating a new type of telco. This group has formed to build and operate a FTTH network, and provide both triple-play services and access to other providers, to over 20 mostly rural towns in East-Central Vermont. The project is novel because of the size of the network (a cable pass down every road within 600 square miles), the low-density of the area served, and the public-ownership/private-financing model that is being used. Some of the towns included in this group currently have nothing beyond 14.4 dial-up on a good day. This project began as a grassroots effort in a couple of towns and the name they chose was ECFiber — East-Central Fiber — or sometimes the East-Central Vermont Community Network. We hope that this network will grow beyond one corner of this state, and we would like a name that is both descriptive and flexible. What would you name a community-owned, cutting-edge, G-PON fiber-optic network covering every remote corner of two-dozen contiguous towns?"

Grassroute!

[penguin king (673171)]

Reflects the grass roots movement and that you're routing traffic down fibre (grass is a fibre!)

Obligatory

[by Anonymous Coward]

Grassroots Open Access To Serve East-Central Vermont

Re:

[MrShaggy (683273)]

GOATSE! {)_

Re:

[by Anonymous Coward]

How about this: "Screw You, Verizon".

Re:

[somersault (912633)]

Why muck about? Fairly obvious extrapolation of G-PON:

Gigabit
Passive
Rural
Optical
Network

G-PRON! Or G-PORN if you will, but that is just crass.

Easy.

[The Ancients (626689)]

What would you name a community-owned, cutting-edge, G-PON fiber-optic network covering every remote corner of two-dozen contiguous towns?"

Heaven.

Re:

[Percy_Blakeney (542178)]

Utah has a municipal fiber network called Utopia [utopianet.org].

Obligatory

[mrbcs (737902)]

In Alberta, we call that the SuperNet.

http://albertasupernet.ca/ [albertasupernet.ca]

In Sweden

[aliquis (678370)]

I don't know if it works similair, but here in Ã-rebro/Kumla it's called "StadsnÃt":
http://www.stadsnat.se/ [stadsnat.se]

Simply "Urban network".

The prices are right atleast, I think you can get 10 mbps for 99 sek = 10.5 euro / 16.65 us dollar.

Re:In Sweden

[fluffman86 (1006119)]

I hate you.

Need a roomate? :D

Re:In Sweden

[aliquis (678370)]

I don't have stadnat, I still have Bredbandsbolaget.

100 mbps down / 10 mbps up for 320 sek / month.

Was 10/10 since feb 2000 or was that 2002? for 200 sek. But then they raised it to 320 sek and offered 100/100 as an alternative for 895 sek or whatever it was with a cap at 300 GB or something and additional payments for each additional 100 GB. Now they don't offer 100/100 longer but 100 down and 10 up for everyone instead.
But personally I think 320 sek are quite expensive, especially since I don't download much stuff and IRC are dead nowadays which was why I needed it anyway.

But then again with cable you only get 256 kbps for 99 sek, so that suck. I hate the guy/team/company/university/whatever which invented xDSL, and especially ADSL. Crappy Internet onnections to everyone!! Hurray!

They should have got fiber to everyone, kill the old copper telephone network, not built any new air broadcasting antennas for digital TV and just run it all over fiber to everyone. DVB looks like shit to begin with, sure it's "sharp", but there are artifacts all over the place.

And now someone will complain that the Internet aren't good for broadcasting, well, then fix that!

Fiber to everyone in Sweden was affordable at around 50 billion sek, stupid politicans which didn't took the plunge.

I have no idea where you live, maybe you could have had fiber in all homes in the USA instead of war in Iraq? ;D

How about...

[Stormwatch (703920)]

...Skynet?

Bob

[techmuse (160085)]

I would call it Bob.

Re:

[smitty_one_each (243267)]

What, you want it to suck mightily?
Granted, it might be the only former MicroSoft product whose name you could use without getting sued...

Re:

[me at werk (836328)]

Titan A.E. [wikipedia.org] reference, obviously

Gothic Reference

[DaedalusHKX (660194)]

"Old camp"

Now seriously, why not call it "Our Net (tm)" ?

Our Net might sound damn good... and give the people paying for it a measure or at least a feeling of some sort of stake in this thing.

Re:

[me at werk (836328)]

Beat ya by a minute [slashdot.org] probably more if this damn slow commenting system wasn't so damn slow

Isn't it obvious?

[Minwee (522556)]

I would say CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet [compuglobalhypermega.net], but it's already taken.

How about CutCo, EdgeCom or Interslice?

I've got a good title

[by Anonymous Coward]

How about this:

Vermont's Eastern/Rural Independently Zoned Open Network

I'm sure the name has never been used.

Re:

[Wonko the Sane (25252)]

Perhaps you were posting in the wrong article [slashdot.org]?

I'd call it..

[Pythor (1133919)]

FOG
It envelopes everything and everyone. The Fiber Optic Gateway.

Good luck!

[cromar (1103585)]

That is awesome; what a great idea. Please be sure to keep us posted on what it is you all actually end up doing with all that fibre.

As for a name I dunno. Why not something simple and Vermonty like "Red Clover Rural?"

Wireless (mobile) networking?

[wvmarle (1070040)]

14.4k dial-up, wow... how about mobile broadband? Hey even GPRS is faster than this!
And when setting up a community network, I'm also quite sure there are reasonably fast and much cheaper wireless solutions. Not necessarily WiFi (but with strategially placed directional antennas that should do quite well too), but maybe even packet radio like solutions?
Why laying cables in this wireless age in the first place? Cables are expensive to roll out and very hard to upgrade, especially when you are talking about low-density rural areas.
Or what about wireless connections for the backbone, and only wire the last bits to the homes, assuming clusters of homes that you want to connect?

Re:Wireless (mobile) networking?

[tomhudson (43916)]

Why laying cables in this wireless age in the first place? Cables are expensive to roll out and very hard to upgrade, especially when you are talking about low-density rural areas.

Fibre isn't affected by rf interference, sunspots, etc.

Fibre supports much higher speeds, w/o the problems of one person hogging all the bandwidth on an available channel.

It's now really easy to lay even in built-up areas [liteaccess.com]

It's CHEAP!!! [controlcable.com] 12 strands @ $1.30 /foot works out to 11 cents a foot/strand. Even if you only service 12 people with 1000' of the stuff, that works out to $130/person.

Re:

[Captain Nitpick (16515)]

It's not cheap as soon as you are going to take the digging into account. A 1000 ft trench will easily costs you as much as the $1.30/ft for the cable.

They're not digging, they're putting the fiber on existing poles.

Re:

[nonades (1053946)]

You sir, do not apparently know how Vermont works. We have these things called "Mountains", they block these "signals" you speak of. In most places we're lucky to get cell phone reception (I live in a dead zone a touch south of Rutland).

Re:

[Javarrito (1272088)]

14.4k dial-up, wow

Yeah, I agree, that's blazing. I'm from the North-East Kingdom and I'm still taking my TCP packets to and from the ISP on foot. The bandwidth can be fairly good, but I have some serious latency and I keep timing out for some reason.

CommUNITY Network

[ScottCooperDotNet (929575)]

CommUNITY Network sounds nice, gets the point across, etc.

How about COFFEE

[SubComdTaco (1199449)]

COFFEE as in Community Owned Fast Fiber Enterprise E-initive ?

Fiberoads

[CFrankBernard (605994)]

Fiberoads, take me home
To the place I belong
East-Central Vermont, mountain momma
Take me home, Fiberoads

rethink public ownership

[by Anonymous Coward]

If you go with public ownership, you're going to run into the same problems many community wifi projects have run into. Interference from telcos at the state and federal government level. They will be all over you, and you will end up wasting funds fending off legal challenges, and lobbying the state government to not pass legislation that would destroy your project.

Instead I suggest the cooperative model that has worked for rural electric providers for over fifty years. A cooperative is a corporation that is owned by its customers. Using a cooperative organization will keep the government out, which I think will be essential to your organization's survival.

Good luck!

This is Vermont

[FranTaylor (164577)]

Perhaps in California or Florida your argument might make sense, but this is Vermont we are talking about here. I grew up in that part of the country. There is an enormous sense of community spirit that cuts across town and even state (why isn't Hanover in on this?) boundaries. These are very small communities we are talking about here, so this basically IS a cooperative. You can see it in the way they share school systems, mutual aid for fire and ambulance support, snow removal, and the like. The towns already own their own infrastructure for water and sewer, and in some cases they own their own electrical power infrastructure. They do things for themselves and they don't need the feds or Verizon to tell them what to do. Owning and running their own computer network is not a stretch at all.

Re:This is Vermont

[Telvin_3d (855514)]

the GP is not saying that the community is not capable of this. Or that these people somehow need the government or major telcos help to be able to pull it off.

The GP is saying that the telcos, through lobbying and lawsuits and other means, are entirely likely to do all they can to CRUSH this effort. They have a history of similar actions. A suggestion was made that being a cooperative might help provide some protection in the legal sense. It wasn't some sort of backhanded way of saying that the communities involved weren't capable of cooperating on their own.

Re:This is Vermont

[thpr (786837)]

While I would generally agree with you, in this particular case, that path has been paved already. The state legislature already took action to make such networks legal. The doubt disappeared when Burlington was tied up in court. The telcos & cable companies lost.

You can read the case study [newrules.org], or just go find out more [burlingtontelecom.net].

Suggestions

[Dr. Eggman (932300)]

iNet
[The] Technate
ECV Technate
Lightway
[The] Freeway
Digisect
Cybertech
Tri-county square route (or whatever instead of tri-)
IV (Internet Vermont, IV as in intravenous therepy)
Cybotiks Inc.
Fiber-Comm
Community Nexus
Nexus Comm
Fiberopia
SysComm
fNet
LoComm (local community/communications)
uNet (unit, your 'net, etc.)

Too Good...

[Nom du Keyboard (633989)]

I'd call it the 2G2BT network. (Too Good To Be True.)

You don't really think that the incumbent telcos are going to let you survive to complete this, do you?

Coffin!

[citking (551907)]

I'd name it coffin.

Community Owned Fiber Network, or COFN (coffin) for short.

It fits because it'll be the death of you!

YMMV - I was not a marketing major.

First pick the acronym

[BeBoxer (14448)]

Pick the acronym first. Then decide what it stands for. Use a 'V', it is Vermont after all. Let's say you go with "VLAN". Vermont Local Access Network. That was easy. Or "VICAR". Vermont Internet and Commodity Access Route. Another easy one. "RAVE". Rural Access for Vermont Enlightenment. See how easy it is? Just remember: Acronym first. Meaning second.

Why not keep it simple

[zappepcs (820751)]

CWAN
Community Wide Area Network. You might go with Community Metropolitan Area Network but that would lend itself to being called c-man... no good.

Then later, outside of the East-Central Vermont CWAN project, you can add the South-Western Vermont CWAN

I'd stop short of calling it VCWAN in case McCain starts getting flashbacks.

Technically Grid or MAN describe what you are trying to make. Metropolitan Area Network is an old term. You could put an F on the front for Fiber, FGrid or FMAN instead of CWAN...

Findi

Pipe Dream

[Froze (398171)]

Of course that is probably not PC enough so maybe somethings like
The InterTube
or
IP Freely
or, just
The Special Internet Group Network Architecture Layer (The SIGNAL)

OK OK, those are pretty bad, but I applaud your goals and wish you well in your en devour.

Hrmmm news?

[definate (876684)]

WOW, they are getting really creative with slashvertisements now a days.

What would we call it? A rose by any other name.

Re:

[cdrudge (68377)]

Yeah, because if I was going to advertise a service to a very geographically limited area with about 60k people, Slashdot is the FIRST place I would look to advertise.

Re:

[definate (876684)]

Of course, you make a good point. Although the article states they will be looking for private financing, all of those financiers will live in that geographically limited area, and they could not benefit in the slightest by raising their public profile. Hell, if something like this worked, then you'd have more people doing it, and they'd probably call them Public Relations people, then abbreviate it to something easy to say like PR. Then those fictitious people would probably create "campaigns".

But we're sm

Re:Hrmmm news?

[rfunches (800928)]

Slashvertisement it may be, but it shows just how far some people in the U.S. have to go to get even semi-high-speed networks where they live despite the countless dollars in subsidies given to the telcos for improving network access across the country. Obviously AT&T, Verizon et al. have done so much with the help of subsidies that financiers are trampling each other like gold miners to get in on the Vermont market.

Pick a dumb name

[menace3society (768451)]

I would call it IntarWeb, or Interbutts, or some other dumb slang word for the internet, and then go around and sue the pants off everyone that uses it online. This way has three advantages:
1 - you have a lot of built-in name recognition
2 - you have an extra revenue stream from suing idiots
3 - you will force said idiots to stop using at least one dumb slang term, the whole world benefits!

Conduit

[Belial6 (794905)]

Since you are already going to be digging, you should really consider putting down large conduit, much like sewer pipes. Yes, it would be more expensive, but when you are done, you would have the benefit that upgrading would be dramatically simpler. You could also rent out the space to anyone that wants to run their own data lines. While the idea is that you will offer the data lines yourself, having the backup plan of being able to offer citizens multiple data lines from different sources would be a hug

H_O_P_E_D

[edwardpickman (965122)]

"Home and Office Porn Efficiently Delivered"

OOBS Fiber

[us7892 (655683)]

Out Of Business Soon Fibre

Metamunicipal

[Torodung (31985)]

Name it Metamunicipal: Get your fiber here.

--
Toro

Re:I'd call it...

[WaltBusterkeys (1156557)]

You might be right. The city of Alameda tried it with traditional cable [sfgate.com] and failed miserably. It has a bond payment due soon and revenue won't even cover the interest [multichannel.com].

Lowell, Michigan also tried and gave up in 2007 [wzzm13.com] when it realized that the cost of upgrading the system to modern standards would far exceed the value.

Running a telecom service in an underserved area is more expensive and complex than many people think. Often, the area is underserved for a reason.

That said, maybe fiber will work. Or maybe it's worth it as a social value to the community, even if it's pricey. Fingers crossed for you.