Citywide Fiber Project Challenges and Goals 200
aLAW writes "Who wants to receive fiber at their home? Vermont's queen city, Burlington, is planning on running fiber to each household in the city. 'It hardly seems possible, but by the end of 2007, all Burlington residents will be able to pay just one bill each month for their home phone service, broadband Internet connection and cable television channels. And they won't be making the check out to Verizon, or Adelphia.'"
Huzzaaaa (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Huzzaaaa (Score:1)
Not possible. The litigious American public will sue if this happens. Who will determine what is appropriate and what isn't?
On a side note, it is hurting to see that in a land that encourages free private enterprise (read USA), the proponents of this idea do not even seem to see that what they are proposing goes against this fundamental ideal! Are pundits involved here?
Re:Huzzaaaa (Score:2)
Re:Huzzaaaa (Score:2)
Re:Huzzaaaa (Score:2)
Re:Huzzaaaa (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Huzzaaaa (Score:3, Interesting)
There are Bay Area cities in California that already provide many of these kinds of utilities, sometimes even for free. There's no sense in having capitalist-style competition for certain things. Basic home utilities strike me as one of those things that might be better provided by single city-based services.
I don't know about you, but I am not that keen to have my water controlled by private enterprise. I feel little differently about phone lines, etc.
BTW, if the city runs the utilities it might
Re:Huzzaaaa (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Huzzaaaa (Score:1)
What about? (Score:2)
Re:What about? (Score:2)
Re:Huzzaaaa (Score:3, Insightful)
As opposed to a private company. Either way, someone is in control of your access to the Internet. Sounds like a good reason to get interested in politics then...
Having said that, they're planning to lease out the line to others to provide services so it must be fairly open, you could probably VPN to pretty much anywhere and everything you send over the local fiber would be encrypted.
I wish this could happen in Utah. (Score:1)
I see only one drawback, it puts the government in control of what you can see and do online
There is a way other than commercial or governmental, cooperative. It may be possible to get a group of people together to form a coop to provide access.
FalconRe:Huzzaaaa (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Huzzaaaa (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Huzzaaaa (Score:2)
Re:Huzzaaaa (Score:2)
I'm not worried about that happening. If they really want that, Comcast, Verizon, and most of the other providers will hand them all of that they want quickly and with no questions asked, anyway.
I would welcome and encourage any effort to create public bandwidth. Around here, even though I live in a populous area, Verizon refuses to install the equipment to offer DSL or anyth
Re:Open your eyes, it's already happening (Score:2, Informative)
Are you serious? Do you even know what you are talking about? Here, let's get back to the basic points at hand that interfere with what you're thinking. (Note that if you read anything about Utopia virtually anywhere it's been marketed, including it's own website, you'd know most of these things.)
Re:Open your eyes, it's already happening (Score:2)
Not justified but serious.
Odds are pretty good the poster has never been to Utah or knows anybody that is LDS.
Now Utah does have some issues. Someone that is not LDS moving to Utah will be in for a big shock. I can not think of anyplace else in the US where one church holds a majority. If you are not LDS I can see how it could make someone feel uncomfortable. Not only that but some people in Utah are not all that friendly to none members that move there. At least that is what I heard
Time to move... (Score:1)
I almost bought a townhouse in Minnesota that had fiber being run to every unit. I thought that was pretty neat, and was almost a selling point for me (I went through Pulte, who gave me a new 42" LG plasma).
Re:Time to move... (Score:1)
Doh, I shouldn't be trying to post comments while talking on the phone (at work, to say the least)...
No fair!! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:No fair!! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No fair!! (Score:2)
Re:competition (Score:2)
No, eliminating the competition is supremely capitalist.
What's the major improvement? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:What's the major improvement? (Score:1)
Re:What's the major improvement? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What's the major improvement? (Score:2)
Maybe people are starting to realize that it is all the same thing.
Re:What's the major improvement? (Score:2)
Read TFA carefully: "all Burlington residents will be able to pay just one bill each month". Not "have to", but "be able to". It'll still be up to the user who they get service from (granted, it depends on which companies agree to provide service over the network).
Personally, I still trust copper-wire POTS over VoIP, though the article doesn't say anything about whether they're going to leave POTS in place.
Re:What's the major improvement? (Score:2)
Ditto for cost savings on # of bills sent out ect. It can add up to 50$ or more of savings a year.
It's always nice to see government compete (Score:2, Insightful)
Mirror? (Score:1)
Re:Mirror? (Score:2)
Site down (Score:1)
At least the summary could have been better.
Soon in Norway! (Score:2)
The new Ipv6 ready xiando Corp 100mbit European network is expected to be ready March 2010.
Re:Soon in Norway! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:100 mbit (Score:2)
Re:Soon in Norway! (Score:2)
There are a few people who make 100mb switches that can be put out in the curb but the lasers to go a distance at 1 gig for an uplink don't like cold or heat.
The other thing is do you put the fiber in conduit or just bury it or a combination?
Looking at how things are going now, I see that the limits of PON with delivering 622/155 shared over 32 users won't be enough and it requires very expensive equipment. For an area
Who would you rather pay? (Score:1, Insightful)
'It hardly seems possible, but by the end of 2007, all Burlington residents will be able to pay just one bill each month for their home phone service, broadband Internet connection and cable television channels. And they won't be making the check out to Verizon, or Adelphia.'
I would much rather pay a company than the government. At least I have the option to invest in that company if I have the desire. I really don't understand why so many people put so much faith in the Government.
Let's see... (Score:2, Insightful)
Exxon
Enron
Haliburton
and on and on...
Oh yes, you can certainly reroute that misplaced trust in the govenrment to corporations. They're SO much more trustworthy.
Re:Let's see... (Score:2, Insightful)
List your bad companies. Take your time, be sure to get a complete list.
For each company you list, I can list a hundred that are trying to help humanity by making the world a better place. Even for the ones you list, there are many good people who worked there.
So let's DO see. Do you want to choose between x number of companies, some of which may be "evil" in your eyes? Or would you rather have no choice, and take what the government give
Re:Let's see... (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't need to list a hundred, but to support your case: I work for Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. [ul.com] I get to make the world a safer place and have a cool job. How many private companies can you think of that make that big of a difference in the world? Not very many, I assure you.
Net go down? Call your representative. Can't get newsgroups on your pc? Better call the mayor. Geesh. That's JUST the ticket, sure. Next up, the politicians will be running on IT issues --"Vote for me, I promise OV-3 connectivity in every home!"
Seriously. If a traffic signal goes down, do you call the mayor? No. I guarantee you, politicians will not be campaigning their promises of 'internet connectivity' for quite a while. They are still too busy lying to us about taxes and gerrymandering.
Putting the system in charge of net connectivity would truly be the work of an idiot.
Try substituting 'net connectivity' with 'traffic signaling' or 'road maintenance'.
Putting the system in charge of traffic signaling would truly be the work of an idiot.
Putting the system in charge of road maintenance would truly be the work of an idiot.
Who sounds like an idiot now? You wanna know something? I pay over $50 a month for Comcast cable internet. Why? They want to make a profit, and they are charging me to provide media services I do not use. I don't want a friggin ISP! I don't want the 'value-adding services', I just want a gateway to the internet. Thats it. Do I have a choice? No. DSL is not offered in my neighborhood yet and Comcast is the only way to get high-speed internet(excluding Satellite, which sucks if you play games needing low latency). If my county or city goverment said 'Hey, want 10Mb up/down for $25?', me and all of my neighbors would pounce on it.
Re:Let's see... (Score:1, Informative)
Get back to me when Union Carbide or Enron kills 625 million people [hawaii.edu] like those "selfless" governments you trust so implicitly.
I'd wager a large sum of money that you couldn't give a coherent explanation of what Enron did to save your life (and no, Google doesn't count). All you know is that it's a "corporation", and corporations are "baa-d".
Stupid hippie.
Re:Who would you rather pay? (Score:2)
Re:Who would you rather pay? (Score:2, Insightful)
Because they're taking the initiative & doing it? Qwest can't give me DSL because there are load coils on my line, even though I'm only about 5,000 feet from the CO. And I have to get about 50 neighbors to request DSL with me for them to remove the coils (which isn't easy when there are 50 people within about a square mile around me). Comcast will give me cable, but at $80/month, plus a few hundred to 'install' the cabl
Re:Who would you rather pay? (Score:2)
IF a small town in Arkansas [conwaycorp.com] can do fibre or fibre/coax hybrid, why shouldn't they? Check out their rates too.
Re:Who would you rather pay? (Score:2, Insightful)
Another question is therefore suggested: "Where's the beef?"
Re:Who would you rather pay? (Score:2, Insightful)
I see a lot of companies arguing against this type of thing and trying to get laws passed to prevent this type of competition from occuring. The thing I don't see is companies making much effort to do this.
Sure, both cable and telephone companies are offering each other's services now, but none are willing to spend the money to significantly upgrade thei
Re:Who would you rather pay? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Who would you rather pay? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Who would you rather pay? (Score:2, Interesting)
I would much rather pay a company than the government. At least I have the option to invest in that company if I have the desire. I really don't understand why so many people put so much faith in the Government.
Because this is slashdot. A place were people put faith in their government due to some twisted logic that they are elite and highly educated. Thus, government is always the best choice above and beyond the public sector.
I don't know where this comes from, while some here believe in governm
Re:Who would you rather pay? (Score:2)
RE: voting out govt. (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem I see here is we're basically asking govt. to perform another function normally left to private industry, under the assumption that there's no other way for it to get done efficiently and/or properly.
That pretty much sums up why we have a post office and NASA handling space travel.
But is "fiber to the door" really this type of issue, or is this more a case of people just getting impatient a
Re: voting out govt. (Score:2)
Yes. It's a natural monopoly.
Re: voting out govt. (Score:2)
Re: private industry and utlities (Score:2)
I run into this all the time with people complaining that they still can't get a cable modem or DSL service in their area.
When you solve this problem by letting govt. take over and order *everyone* to be hooked up, you simply force all of your customers to subsidize the higher costs of connecting up the people in the rural locations.
Whether that's "good" or "bad" is
Re:Who would you rather pay? (Score:2)
As other posters say, a large part of it is because the companies are sitting on their asses while the government is actually doing something. But also keep in mind that this is local government, not national government. There is a difference--local governments are (in general) much more in tune with their constituents, simply because there are that many fewer people they need to listen to, and thus are usually more deserving of trust.
WiMax please, even if slower... (Score:2)
Re:WiMax please, even if slower... (Score:1)
Re:WiMax please, even if slower... (Score:2)
Still Planning? (Score:4, Insightful)
So they're in the planning stage now, but they expect to have it out to every home by 2007? That's less than a year and a half away.
I predict this one will be off schedule.
Re:Still Planning? (Score:5, Funny)
Obviously you've never seen an episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Carson will be about there whipping those cable layers into shape in no time, and they'll be done in an afternoon.
Re:Still Planning? (Score:2)
And Burlington says... (Score:1)
there goes creative bill paying... (Score:1, Insightful)
Also an earlier comment is very valid, since it is the government, the government will know everything and since it is part of the government, this info may be included in the national database created with the new national id card (yea they say new state driver
Fiber Service In Sacramento, CA (Score:1)
Re:Fiber Service In Sacramento, CA (Score:2)
Might seem like a good idea, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
...having that many of your bills served by a single provider makes for a single point of failure, and that's not good. If the company falls on hard times, then all of your utilities they handle will get hiked.
A good example is Time Warner. They're serving cable and cablemodems to my area, and soon to add phone. And every few months, they jack their prices up a few bucks. Without fail. And that's why I won't fall for their "$39 a month (or whatever the price is) to call anyone unlimited!" deal. Based on past performance, I know it's bogus.
Remember that competition [wikipedia.org] usually works to keep prices down.
Re:Might seem like a good idea, but... (Score:2)
Competition only works for some goods and services (Score:2)
Or differently still - there are good arguments that these kinds of services are a natural monopoly (which might well explain why almost no one in the US has them, BTW) - in which case you may have the choice of one un
Inevitable? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Inevitable? (Score:2)
Emm, here in the UK the digital cable services have been around for five years and they are over IP. The same wire goes into a Y-splitter off to the cable modem for access, but some folk have ethernet ports on the back of the cable TV box that they use for internet. The digi box itself is fully capable of two way communications, but the UI is a bit slow at times, old tech I guess, m
Re:Inevitable? (Score:2)
do you have a reputable source for this? it sounds like bs to me. Why would they use something as complex as ip multicasting when what they are sending is broadcast tv?
sure the internet is ip that doesn't mean that everything that runs over the same cables has to be ip.
Verizon (Score:1)
Just pay SOME bills...... (Score:1)
That way I can decide what utility is getting suspended THIS month.
With one provider, I take the chance of them ALL going off if business is slow for me.
Small-town midwest US (Score:3, Insightful)
For a while now all new homes even have fiber run to the premesis... difficult to believe we're "ahead of the times" back here in Iowa but it seems to be true
Tech support.... (Score:1)
Re:Tech support.... (Score:1)
Re:Tech support.... (Score:2)
Re:Tech support.... (Score:3, Informative)
As for Verizon, I recently terminated my cell phone service with them. They made it as difficult as possible. I couldn't do it on-line, even though they let you do almost everything else on-line. The local Verizon store said "We don't do that, call 611". After calling 611, and navigating through a bunch of menus, I was finally connected to some guy, probably moonlighting from his day job as a use
Re:Tech support.... (Score:2)
Now vehicle registration offices are subcontracted to businesses, often car dealers will run them as an adjunct to their business since they need to be licensed in order to do the vehicle registrations on the cars they sell anyway. Since it became possible to do vehicle registrations online
Re:Tech support.... (Score:2)
Re:Tech support.... (Score:2)
The DMV is a bit rediculous. They have different letters for different services, because their people are skilled at different things at different "windows". I get the intent, but I wonder about the value. Every time I've gone in, my number rings on the device immediately, and I spend less than 5 minutes there.
There really aren't that many people up here. The supermarkets are up to 14 items in the express lanes because they didn't get enough business
This makes sense. (Score:4, Insightful)
Of course there is a risk that this could keep competing private enterprises out.
TFA says: "The city is offering open access to its network -- anyone who wants to sell cable TV, Internet connectivity, or other information products will be able to use it, for a fee."
So competitors are allowed access to this net. The only problem could be the size of this fee that competitors have to pay to use the net. The fee could be too high, and thus effectively blocking access for competitors.
In Denmark where I live market-dominant enterprises (private or public) have to give competitors access to their nets for fees that cannot be higher than what is determined reasonable by a government office created to ensure fair competition in the telecom sector. This seems to work well: The market-dominant enterprises earn well by giving competitors access, but cannot set the fees high enough to keep the competition out.
Re:This makes sense. (Score:2)
The article claims the City isn't interested in selling retail. So, no direct services to the customer, and the fees should be acceptable or the system won't be used.
It also claims the network is *leased* by the City and owned by a private company. It'll then be sublet by the City to oth
Re:This makes sense. (Score:2)
I am a bit confused by your posting, as I think I know the relevant danish laws in this area and don't know of any danish laws prohibiting a local power utility company to do this, even if the local power utility company basically has a monopoly on the local power distribution.
Please let me know if you have more
Sprint ION (Score:1)
This Should be the Future (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:This Should be the Future (Score:2)
Have you seen a government organization ever run anything efficiently?
Re:This Should be the Future (Score:2)
Yay Vermont! (Score:1)
Capital Cities (Score:2)
Not a new thing.. (Score:1)
From a local (Score:3, Interesting)
The site is down (small newspaper hosted by a small local ISP) but I do have knowledge of this project. I am local resident and have been watching this since its inception. This project has had its share of problem like any government project some budget overruns, Verizon trying to stop it in its tracks, public saying this should not happen, etc. The most interesting objection I heard was that this (including telephone service) should be done from wireless. I would love to hear the screams when a thunderstorm disrupts 911 service. The initial budget was in the low 6 figures Burlington is a relatively small under 40k people.
So far the project is already getting some use. The city and schools are now connected together by a Gig connection (many were not doing much better than dialup). The company where I am the IT person is also their first (and only?) customer. We are getting a 1.5 Mbit through a local ISP. So far no one is making money but the ISP, http://www.sover.net/ [sover.net] is now able to sell to other in town businesses for cheap. I pay Burlington Telecom $200/month for as much bandwidth as the ISP will give me.
This in a city where Adelphia (soon to be Comcast) has a monopoly for many parts of the city this is a very good idea. Some may say that city government should stay out of this area but I disagree. The deregulation of utilities let them do whatever they want but also assumed that the market would help with prices and quality. How many choices do you have for cable TV?
Anyone from Richmond, VA? (Score:3, Interesting)
Check out my dumbest idea ever [24.125.77.17] (Cable modem)
Or here [66.173.232.178].
I know these guys (Score:2, Informative)
Two of the guys were direct reports of mine as a matter of fact.
Anyway, servicing consumers in Burlington, is phase 2 of the plan. Phase 1 which has already been completed was to provide service to all the government agencies, which they have completed.
Good group of guys, spread across, internet networking and telecom.
If I had to guess they will meet their 2007
Re:Why not use plastic cups and string?? (Score:2)
Re:Two things come to mind: (Score:3, Informative)