Houses With Tails 307
nnfiber writes "What if home owners could also own their Internet connection? Tim Wu, of New America Foundation and Derek Slater, Google's Policy Analyst, say this can be a new effective way to encourage broadband deployment — an important issue in 'America's economic growth.' In his post, Timothy B. Lee says: 'That might sound like a crazy idea at first blush, but Wu and Slater do a great job of explaining how it might work. The key idea is "condominium fiber," an arrangement in which a number of neighboring households pool their resources to install fiber to all the homes in their neighborhoods. Once constructed, each home would own its own fiber strand, while the shared costs of maintaining the "trunk" cable from the individual homes to a central switching location would be managed in the same way that condominium and homeowners' associations currently manage the shared areas of condos and gated communities.'"
Won't work (Score:2, Interesting)
The housing market is crap already, adding other overheads won't make things better. And I bet the cable companies/isp's would not like the idea of joe sixpack competing with them.
Silly to create the organization (Score:3, Interesting)
This is nice, but (Score:4, Interesting)
I really don't think that the average consumer is going to care about something like this.
For most, a 5Mbps cable connection is much much much more than they ever will (or can) use. The only thing that will drive high-bandwidth stuff like this is media. Websites like this [hulu.com] are certainly a step in the correct direction, but until we start seeing dedicated media appliances in peoples homes, it isn't going to happen.
On top of that, think of something (other than streaming media) that your average home-owning consumer is going to use that would require large bandwidth. There aren't many. Sure, some of us geeks use services like Usenet or (and I've never seen this in practice, only rumors of it) bittorrent that are capable of filling up our connection but, relative to the amount of joe-sixpack/plumbers there are out there, we are a small small minority.
Any devs wnat to make a "hulu" box with me?
Re:Yeah, and get flooded with "tech support" calls (Score:2, Interesting)
Your neighbor's resources=their money, your resources=your time and knowledge. You could possibly create a full-time and well-paying job for yourself running your neighborhood's network.
Re:Any real benefit? (Score:3, Interesting)
Part of your point, that telcos are lazy and negligent, is exactly why this is enticing. Maybe if the telcos didn't have to install new hardware on private property, the cost to roll out broadband would be cheaper. Of course, without the opportunity to gouge the customer on that new hardware, the enticement might be gone. This could also open the possibility of third-party bandwidth providers like WISPs, and not being pigeon-holed into one of 3 delightfully crappy plans.
oh, frickin' great, a wireowners association. (Score:2, Interesting)
some bunch of crabby little old twits meet at 3 am in a crack house to set new rules, with no announcement, and you get screwed.
yeah, know all about those condo associations.
Re:Won't work (Score:2, Interesting)
The housing market is crap already, adding other overheads won't make things better. And I bet the cable companies/isp's would not like the idea of joe sixpack competing with them.
This has been around forever and was quite possibly more popular back in the dial up days since T1's were the cheapest broadband connections back then. The isp's are getting paid for the fiber or T line so they don't care.
Re:how is this better then ISPs? (Score:3, Interesting)
No, your view is not flawed. HOAs can act as another form of government, but without the expected restraints because they are private organizations. When I am in the market for a home, a HOA is a deal killer. Restrictive covenants are bad enough. I will not live in a house where someone can tell me that my mower deck is set too high, or too low. When you have a person that will go around measuring the height of lawns, there is no end to the trouble they could cause with a network.
New acronym? HOAN?
Re:Won't work (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Yeah, and get flooded with "tech support" calls (Score:0, Interesting)
My best response is to demand an annoying chore in return. For example,
Neighbor: "My DSL isn't working...you got a sec to check it out?"
Me: "Sure! I'll get started after you have finished cleaning my gutters! You've got a ladder, right?"
They usually smile and think you're kidding at first. If you don't budge, you've either got a paying customer (via services) or one less knock on your door when you're trying to eat.
Re:Obviously never been to a condo assoc meeting (Score:5, Interesting)
This will explain to all how dumb of an idea this is indeed:
Where my parents live is covered by an HA. The townhouses come with decks installed, with short fences surrounding them, nothing special, just a 4' high fence with 1.5" spindles, a 2x4 railing and 4x4 supports. The decks are not attached to each other, nor are they shared, and they are separated by at least 10 feet on either side. My parents wanted a little bit more privacy, but understanding the HA wouldn't want them to raise the fence, they bought wood lattice and tacked it to the inside of the fence, cut so it fit neatly under the railing. It doesn't look bad, although IMHO, it's pretty pointless.
Anyways, within a month, they received a letter from the HA advising them to take it down immediately or be fined as it's against the agreement. They fought the HA, saying it doesn't state you can't install anything on the inside of the deck. In the end, after several months with lawyers and lots of money, now the agreement is modified to have a special "no lattice" clause. My parents lattice has been grandfathered in, and nobody else has it.
Just a sidenote: When my parents moved in they asked me what I thought. I said it was a horrible place because it has an HA. They said they were going to will the house to me so I could live there. I said "Great, but I won't live here. Hopefully it'll sell quickly before the HA comes after me for condo fees, otherwise I'll have to rent it." They thought I was being rude then.
Now they think I'm sensible. :-D
So, apply that thinking process to broadband internet and imagine what you have.
Re:Damned if I trust homeowner's assoc. with my pi (Score:1, Interesting)
Too late already here. They are already talking about it.
We already had something like that in Romania (Score:2, Interesting)
I had this (Score:3, Interesting)