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.'"
this is very good.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:this is very good.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:this is very good.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Wireless Networks (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Dark Fiber (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:2, Interesting)
Why have a central authority at all (Score:5, Interesting)
not all monopolies are bad (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm usually in agreement with complaints about monopolies but in some cases they have their uses. This is one of them. Rather than several companies all running their own cables everywhere in town, it is a LOT more cost effective (and therefore more likely to get done) to have ONE set of cables. Note that this cuts down on construction (digging up the streets for buried cable) and/or clutter in the sky (poles and cables strung along).
As citizens, instead of private consumers, you have to use the apropriate weapon in case you are unhappy with the service (for whatever reason). In the case of a government owned service, use the vote.
So given that one provider is more efficient than multiple providers in this case, consumers have a choice. Do you want a government sponsored company to run it or a private one? Keep in mind there are plusses and minuses on both sides.
Sacramento has had that for years (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.surewestbroadband.com/products/resid
Re:This is the future... (Score:2, Interesting)
Would we really want to replace that with the government controlling all of our information?
Its about time (Score:5, Interesting)
County Wide School Fiber Project (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:not all monopolies are bad (Score:3, Interesting)
In the 80s a number of municipalities paid to run cable lines or subsidized the installation costs. But now many of those government-paid cable lines are de facto controlled or even owned by the cable companies. Ultimately, the cable companies were able to do this because a little bit of money goes a long way in local politics. Will this not just happen again with the fiber?
If you want a great example... (Score:5, Interesting)
AFN (Score:5, Interesting)
The lesson is simple: Without competition, the current cable/phone companies have no incentive to make things better.
Re:Why have a central authority at all (Score:2, Interesting)
City Lans (Score:4, Interesting)
They already do (Score:1, Interesting)
When you control the mail, you control information.
- Newman
Re:Sad thing is (Score:5, Interesting)
The same thing happens with cell phones. We were stuck on CDMA/TDMA forever because it was so expensive to upgrade the networks, and we're only now getting nationwide GSM as the rest of the world is phasing it out in favor of 3G. Building infrastructure is very, very expensive, and a company will only do it if they know they can make money off it. That's not apparent with municipal fiber, because the vast majority of consumers will not pay more than about $30-40/mo for internet access, and they can offer DSL or cable at that price and consumers will pay it. They don't even know what a kilobyte is, they just know their porn sites load up real fast. High bandwidth killer apps will drive the need for faster connections.
City of the future (Score:5, Interesting)
Fredericton, NB Canada has a project as well... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:5, Interesting)
Uhh... I beg [407etr.com] to differ [407etr.com].
Even our government (Provincial government of Ontario, Canada) can't seem to be able to control [google.ca] the skyrocketing rates the Highway 407 corporation has imposed. Unfortunately with few alternative ways to get around for those of us who live in the 905 within a reasonable timeframe, we are at their mercy [ontariondp.on.ca]. Whether or not we actually use [thestar.com] the thing.
Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:5, Interesting)
As anyone in Los Angeles can tell you, the best way to make sure that the infrastructure is built once and never updated is to let the government control it. Just look at the 405, 105, 10, 60, 5, 210, 134, 2, 91, 710, 605, 110 freeways. Of all those, I know of two areas of "construction" (maintenance) in the last few years: repaved the 5 for about 10 miles through Burbank, and they added about 30 miles of new highway and called it the 210 (from Glendora to San Bernardino). The rest is a torn up collection of pot-holed, congested asphault. Not exactly what I want the internet to resemble in a few years.
Avast, me harties. Yo ho! (Score:5, Interesting)
The pricate telephone companies are never going to outlay the cash for significant upgrades to a local telecom system. They would much rather stick with their relatively old lines and equipment and charge their customers and arm and a leg for them. When the cities and counties own the lines, they're going to get a better price on services because they can shop around. I'm not saddened by the stories of woe coming out of the local Bells. Municipal data networks are being built and proposed because there is a need for them that isn't being met by the current owners of the data networks.
I don't understand why they don't work with the munis on these projects. Instead of whining about competition they should offer to manage the networks. They can get the management dollars without the outlay for construction. I suppose they don't like to play games where they don't make up the rules. If they're concerned about municipal networks competing for commercial services it because the market is the telcos' to lose. There's plenty of areas of the country that have a lot of cheap office space and a high standard of living. They do not however have the sort of data infrastructure that many businesses are looking for and are thus avoided by larger businesses. Building competitive data networks can draw a lot of business to an area. The Bells want to focus business in particular markets where they have a lot of leverage while a municipality wants to move business where it is.
It's sad that the telcos are so successful in their lobbying to prevent municipalities from reselling excess capacity. The money an RBOC makes it not going into local communities. The money Bumkiss county makes however does go into the community. In Georgia where the schools stand to make money the situation is even worse. The school districts could generate cashflow by selling something they're not using and wouldn't miss. At the very least it would be possible for their network to break even an essentially give the county schools a free 10Gb data network. At best they could put money back into that county's coffers. Even if those dollars don't go directly back into the school system the schools could still benefit. Hopefully the legislature in Utah and the SC in Missouri's case will see the telcos are whining about having their uncompetitive monopolies taken away and side with the municipalities.
using sewage tunnels for cabling (Score:4, Interesting)
Looked like an interesting idea to me.
Re: Lesser of Evils (Score:4, Interesting)
Besides which, at the rate media companies are growing, it's going to be hard to dif governmnet and cable
Re:this is very good.... (Score:4, Interesting)
DSL here is 640/160 IIRC. Cable here is 3000/256. DSL is $59.99/mo (plus phone service) where Cable is $42.95/45.95 (own modem/their modem plus cable service) or 60.95/63.95 (own modem/their modem no cable service).
Ok, so we have Cable where I live (no DSL available at my particular residence). If Burnsville, MN decides to setup a Fiber access for the town and offers something identical in speed (I don't care about "extra services" like email and webhosting) I would see that as a reason for Comcast to drop the price.
What real competition does Comcast have when I can't get DSL and even if I could it would be about 1/5th the speed?
Re:Government vs Public (Score:2, Interesting)
The telecoms are insinuating that this is somehow legally nebulous. How? Because the telecoms are going to use "grassroots" organizations to sue local governments for misappropriation, most likely. If it comes to that, which I certainly hope it doesn't.
Winnipeg is there (Score:2, Interesting)
Citylink, Wellington New Zealand (Score:2, Interesting)
It started out with them going to a building owner and saying "if you give us $10k install fee, we'll cable you up and you can have Ethernet for almost nother per month". Then, move on up the street to the next building. Repeat a few times and you have a wired city at almost no capital cost.
This has been going for something like ten years now.
Re:Wi FI to the masses (Score:1, Interesting)
But still. Not trying to be rude, and maybe you were just being funny. In that case, sorry I missed the joke.
On another note, I have a friend who has built a neighborhood mini ISP with a cable connection and wifi equipment. It is a very cool way to eliminate the "Big Guys" from the equation, although in order to pay for the wireless equipment, you had better have some pretty cheap shared rates. I run a Wireless ISP and the going rates for solid, combination 18db antennas and WiFi/Ethernet converters is around $300.00 vs. $80.00 for a cable modem.
A voice is missing... (Score:2, Interesting)
I've heard from people from School districts and other local municipalities, but I haven't heard any from a Teleco company. Does anyone here work at any SBC Baby Bell company and tell us why this high and mighty gajillion-aires don't care about us and throw us a bone after a zillion people complain. You want to know why we want to burn you in effigy? Look in the mirror and read our complaints!!
Re:This is the future... (Score:5, Interesting)
You haven't checked in my neighorhood. We have two cable ISPs here, Comcast and RCN. Both have blocked incoming port 80 for several years now, and have no plan to open them.
Now, it's true that I can put up a web site. But you can't get to my port 80, so you won't see what I have to say.
Now, I can run a server on another port, that's true. And I do at times. But I did discover that there are browsers out there that don't implement the
Also, it says right there in the TOS in the ISPs' contracts (from both Comcast and RCN) that you aren't permitted to run servers. Period. No web servers. No mail servers. No ssh servers. No echo servers. Any server is grounds for termination. They can do a port scan at any time, and if they get even a single connection, they can legally terminate your service instantly.
Here in the US, governments can't do that. They are subject to the First Ammendment. But corporations have no such limit. They can legally terminate (or censor) your communications at any time, for any reason. They don't even have to tell you their reasons. The laws are similar in lots of countries.
So if you want to be able to use the Internet to communicate, the most reliable way (and the only way protected by law) is if the infrastructure is owned and controlled by the government. They have to let you talk; corporations don't.
Works great in Seattle (Score:4, Interesting)
And Qwest has its genitals in its anus where they belong. Everybody hates Qwest. Verizon would rather pay more to set up a tower than lease some space on theirs. They wouldn't lease us space in a conduit that goes under a street to our facility (and nowhere else). There's a guy who used to be in charge of leasing this stuff. His job is now not leasing stuff.
Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:4, Interesting)
For other states, it may be the "right" time.
Info highway vs real highways (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering that the [major] purpose of the internet is for infomation, do we really want control of our information consolidated into a single entity whether it be government, AOL, or Verison?
Big Brother aside, I don't think that state/gov agencies should be in the business of business.
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Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Funky Analogy (Score:2, Interesting)
Hmm, bits aren't aware of geography. You can't just group the Internet in with those things. Information is in a class by itself. For instance you list Telephones next to the Internet. That theory doesn't work when you're using the Internet to make VOIP calls. Toll roads on the Internet won't work because of it's global reach. We need an infrastructure tax instead that covers transportation of cars as well as information and other utilities. I'm not saying we need a new tax, just a simplification of current tax laws. I think we could include Education as a form of infrastructure if we're willing to look far enough ahead.
Why not? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why not this too? The trick is what will the fiber be hooked upto? I'd rather a commercial ISP than a government.
Tom
Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:1, Interesting)
If a company is interested in buying a public asset, it means that a) the government could be making a profit or b) the government could be doing it more affordably.
Links to several dozen towns with fiber (Score:4, Interesting)
Here's a page [fiberplanners.com] with links to most of them.
There are many more North American cities with fiber systems we didn't design. The weblog Community Broadband Networks [blogspot.com] has links to a number of them. The weblog also has a summary page [fiberplanners.com] with about 1800 article links you can skim. About half cover municipal broadband projects of some sort.
Re:This is the future... (Score:3, Interesting)
To start with, Ireland already has a huge amount of unlit fiber in the ground. At the hight of the boom, when Ireland was trying to sell itself as the "eCommerce hub of Europe," about half a dozen telcos laid down glass. The problem? The vast majority of it remains unlit, due to lack of demand.
Secondly, the fiber is mainly being laid to remote rural areas, to satisfy the political necessities of funding this sort of thing (rural communities have huge power here). Unfortunatley, the reality is that 70% of the population lives in three urban areas, and they probably own 90% of the computers. So the fiber is pretty much wasted.
Thirdly, the funding is almost all for stringing long-line fiber, and *not* for popping buildings. So it's likely that the fiber will end up running just too far from anywhere useful to be accessed.
The only people who are benefitting from it so far are the telcos themselves, who are using it for extra capacity in some regions where they had to previously use higher-cost leased lines. Small businesses (the stated intended beneficiaries) have seen little or no imrovements in price or service.
Basically, the Irish government has a longstanding policy of trying to stimulate the internet economy by stimulating supply, rather demand, of IP. Perhaps this is due to lobbying from telcos, perhaps not. Either way, it hasn't done much to help the development of broadband here.
Alex.
Re:If you want a great example... (Score:3, Interesting)
Were there any efforts made to see if someone else wanted to take it all over?
Makes Sense to Me (Score:2, Interesting)
Holyoke Gas and Electric (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.hge.net/ [hge.net]