Cities Building Own Fiber Networks 301
cmburns69 writes "It's been posted before that some municipalities have plans for building their own networks (such as Utah's UTOPIA). There are many people who don't want that to happen. But despite that, CNET News has coverage of some success stories regarding 'a growing number of municipalities, state and county agencies, and local governments that are building their own networks.'"
We did this (Score:4, Informative)
Complaints?! (Score:5, Informative)
Honestly, I'm sick of paying $45 a month for Comcast. If the city would be willing to offer the service:
They could partner with an existing provider.
Keep fees very low.
Use the revenue from that service to maintain the service, expand and even pour it back into the city's budget.
I don't know the actual numbers, but consider the Comcast (and others) monopoly-type situation. This is not something to complain about, it's something to push for and watch closely enough to keep it safe.
Re:Dark Fiber (Score:5, Informative)
Alberta, Canada (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Sad thing is (Score:5, Informative)
Alberta Canada Supernet (Score:1, Informative)
SCBN (Score:2, Informative)
Lessig Agress (Score:5, Informative)
He think it's a good idea [wired.com] and reminds people it's a perfect example of a natural monopoly, except in this case, citizens own the infrastructure, not a private organization. Go local fiber runs!
palo alto fiber net (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:2, Informative)
Municipal facilities are fine... (Score:3, Informative)
There's every reason for a town to provide its own services if the magic of the marketplace isn't doing the job.
The town of Norwood, Massachusetts, population 40,000, not a hotbed of socialism by any means, has town electricity, and a few years ago added town cable TV and internet access: Norwood Light Broadband [norwoodlight.com]. It coexists with (and competes with) private offerings.
People I know who live in Norwood are generally happy with the town services. Compared to neighboring towns, the perception is that the electric service is somewhat more reliable than that provided by Boston Edison. And it is slightly cheaper. The municipal light department has been in operation for, oh, many decades and I wouldn't say people swear by it, but they certainly don't swear at it.
Norwood Light Broadband is newer, but it is competing successfully with private companies, and again, people who use it seem to be happy with it. This is particularly relevant, because before town cable, there was a succession of cable companies (Adams-Russell, Cablevision, MediaOne, Comcast... I think I've left at least one out) that came and went and merged and a long succession of unreliable service and unresponsive customer service. Each one disclaimed responsibility for the broken promises of the previous company and, in turn, made and broke promises of their own.
If you're in/near Ann Arbor this Wednesday (Score:4, Informative)
The Quixotic Quest for Universal Broadband [computersociety.org]
Rich Wiggins
Overview and Bio
Wednesday, March 3, 2004 7:30 PM - 10:00 PM
Ann Arbor IT Zone
330 E. Liberty
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Description
It seems broadband will cure whatever ails you. Economic developers for villages and states claim it's essential for business growth. Comcast and SBC claim their broadband offerings will transform your Internet experience. A Carnegie-Mellon professor promises 100 megabits/second to 100 million homes.
Yet there isn't even a universally accepted definition of "broadband." You may have a semi-fat pipe to your house, but we still don't have end-to-end quality of service. Universities invest billions in campus networks but struggle to keep MP3 downloads from consuming all the bandwidth. This talk explores the crosscurrents and pitfalls in the quest for universal broadband.
Presenter Bio
Richard Wiggins is an author and speaker specializing in Internet topics.
Wiggins writes for national publications such as New Media, Searcher, and Internet World. He serves on the editorial board of First Monday, a peer reviewed e-journal about the Internet.
He is author of the first book on Web publishing, The Internet for Everyone: A Guide for Users and Provider (McGraw-Hill, 1995) and is writing a new book called A Guide to the Literature of the Internet (Libraries Unlimited, 2000).
Wiggins is executive producer and co-host with Charles Severance of a television program, "North Coast Digital," which explores Internet topics as well as broader coverage of digital developments. Wiggins and Severance previously hosted "Internet: TCI" and "Nothin' But Net," seen on cable systems in Michigan and in various systems across the United States.
Wiggins has interviewed numerous Internet pioneers, including Vint Cerf (inventor of Internet Protocol), Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the Web), David Lytel (first White House Webmaster), Brewster Kahle (WAIS, Alexa), Michael Mauldin (Lycos), Larry Wall (PERL), and Sherry Turkle (MIT professor and author).
(I wasn't sure if this is related enough to the topic at hand to post, but since at least one
I'm the network admin for a city govt... (Score:5, Informative)
Secondly is that all that dark fiber that's laying dormant all over our city will likely stay dormant forever because the phone company does not want to sell it unless they can make a killing off of it. When we approached them about leasing some, the dollar signs just lit up and rolled in the salesmen's eyes. They came back with a price quote that was utterly ridiculous and didn't really want to hear what we were asking for... they instead came back with basically double the quantity and bandwidth links we'd asked for. Remember that cheesy Computer Associates television commercial with the thin cardboard software salesman that keeps saying "Great!!! 500 units is is!!!" when the customer only wanted 25? That's what it's like dealing with these maroons. They don't want to sell their dark fiber to anyone, or else they'd price it according to the market.
We did the math and the cost of installing our own fiber to the various municipal buildings across town will pay for itself in under 5 years, plus since it is securely owned and operated, it satisfies the tinfoil hat guys.
I've seen this work now twice (Score:5, Informative)
On the education front, the school district which I work for has 6 locations in three different municipalities. We were linked together by T1 lines that really were pretty terrible - bad connections which were weather-sensitive (not such a good thing in Oregon!), and slow even when they were running at full speed. We were approached by a local (and reputable) company which offered to build out and give us 2 dark fibers to each location and a pair of fibers to our upstream provider (thereby giving us glass all the way to the NOC), all for the price we were paying for our T1 line. Sounds too good to be true? Nope. We put out an RFP, the guys who made the original proposal won the bidding by miles, they did all the hanging from poles, trenching, etc, gave us our glass, we put media converters in, and voila! we've got screaminig connection between locations - all for the price of that cruddy T1 that we were apparently paying too much for.
The moral of this story? I guess there isn't one, except to say that what they're talking about in the lead story is real, and works. As a slashdot-friendly aside, Paul Allen, in his role of higher-up for the local cable pigopoly [charter.net], swore to the City Council that he'd do everything in his power to sink the fiber project since they weren't using his Borg-infested kit to do it, preferring instead to use local people and companies. This threat occurred about 5 years ago, and the fiber network is still doing OK. Sorry, Paul =P
Re:Like Memphis Networx (Score:5, Informative)
"How can a company compete HONESTLY when the playing field is not level?"
which can be a fair criticism.
To answer it, consider this. Other posts to this thread have mentioned cities or municipalities doing the work themselves, and finding out that it cost only about 10% of what they were quoted by commercial concerns. Local governments have also looked at providing their own broadband because they want to reach poorer neighborhoods that some businesses consider unprofitable, or to create a special tier of services for schools and other such reasons.
Based on their own statements, interested businesses seem to be steering towards "cherry picking", wanting to select the wealthyest customers, and even ignore a share of these that are above the average for their middle class neighborhoods. Yes there are exceptions to this, and I suspect those exceptions are the ones who will make money in the long run.
I'd say net access is moving towards a ubiquitous model, and the only way to make money there is to do like the grocery store chains, and aim for a relatively modest profit margin. Most groceries are glad to get 3 to 4% or so. That price is mostly because there's lots of competition, not because the government is involved. Notice that margin is very low even though food is _not_ a luxury item, and most of us can't put off purchasing it indefinitely. Can you imagine if a grocery store chain said, "Yes, there's lots of competitors, and some people even plant their own gardens or take up deer hunting just to give us less business, but if the government would just stop giving away cheese, we could have a 10% per annum profit margin.". Would anyone take that claim seriously? (Well here on slashdot, someone would.).
GMING (Score:5, Informative)
This is a metropoliton network covering most of the Greater Manchester area, using optic fibre (not crude copper) and the ATM protocol.
The fact it is using ATM (a point-to-point system) is significant. It means that lines aren't shared.
The GMING system was developed out of a project by the three main Universities of Manchester and the regional computer center, and was targetted at businesses who wanted a secure, fast system to connect to other businesses in the region.
The early talks focussed mainly on getting as many businesses as possible to buy-in. However, the ability to upgrade was also discussed. Essentially, optic fibre can support any speed you like, provided you have enough frequencies to play with. GMING was, right from the start, designed with the idea that businesses could simply buy faster connections at any time by swapping the end-points over. The only upper limit was what existed on the market.
It didn't catch on to the point of revolutionizing Manchester - a pity, as the concept is excellent and the implementation far better than any other broadband service - in the UK or any other country.
Nonetheless, it deserves the title of success. It has been adopted and is in use to the point where it is self-supporting.
Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:5, Informative)
They're always adding to it, expanding lanes and lengthening it and stuff.
Its a privately owned highway... if the government wanted to restrict rate increases then it should have been included in the terms of the sale.
re: reasonable timeframe. heh. you're always free to get up that hour early and take the 401.
Re:Alberta, Canada (Score:1, Informative)
I had a conversation with the head tech of a school district the other day. He said that he'd just done the walkthrough for one of their schools, and that the company trenching the fiber (under contract from Bell) was supposed to have it done by January 31, 2005.
Of course, this is just bare fiber sticking out of the wall - not connected to anything.
And they had no timeline estimate for the other 20 schools.
"Supposed to be" and "will be" are two different things. I don't think that Supernet will be available for at least another couple of years.
Grumpy ILECs (Score:3, Informative)
Personally, I'm in favor of the model that has the city building the infrastructure, and telcos (note the use of plural) handle the stuff in the pipes. ILECs seem fond of just providing enough service to get by, and spending lots of time protecting their turf from rogues who want silly things like modern telecommunications services. It's no bloody wonder that wireless carriers are wiping the floor with them. Like many, I use no services of the ILEC in my home.
Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:5, Informative)
I'm from Missouri, home of SBC's (then Southwestern Bell) "We're sorry we invinted several non-existant charges and charged you for years...If you let us keep it we will use it to wire up fiber to the home.." That was 1992-1993? What fiber?
Sorry guys, no fiber here! Either do it, or give the people of Missouri their money back + all the years of interest.
Competitive? Ha. At least the government as slow as it moves can complete a fiber network. The phone company isn't going to get any sympathy here. Hell, SBC hasn't even started! 10 years from now they will still be talking about their "just around the corner" same song and dance and no results.
Okay, SBC -- Show me. Do it. You promised it 10 years ago, I want it hooked up to my house and everyone else in my neighborhood by the end of next month. You want to be competitive? That's competitive. Until then -- save your "unfair playing field" whine. Stealing billions from your customers is a pretty "unlevel" advantage as well.
just $50k and a son-in-law may kill UTOPIA (Score:2, Informative)
This comes as the Salt Lake City Tribune, a strong foe of the UTOPIA initiative, ran an article [sltrib.com] wondering why Utah is losing its' position as a major technology center.
There are more UTOPIA links at http://communityfiber.blogspot.com/2004_02_08_com
Tacoma, WA (Score:4, Informative)