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.'"
Lesser of the evils (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:4, Interesting)
For other states, it may be the "right" time.
Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:3, Insightful)
In that respect the original drafters of the US constitution may have been right*.
-I now make it impossible to underestimate my fellow citizens...
*(read up on why the electoral college was there to begin with)
Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:5, Funny)
100 on the Evil Overlord list [eviloverlord.com] is "Finally, to keep my subjects permanently locked in a mindless trance, I will provide each of them with free unlimited Internet access."
IMarv
Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:5, Insightful)
Think of the road system. You maintain your connection to the system (driveway), while the government maintains the entire system. You provide your means of access (car, which you also bought from a corporation), while the government keeps the roads suitable for your use (more or less).
This way, the government can't restrict use of the roads for any reasons other than monetary ones (toll roads are legal, keeping people off the roads because they might be breaking the law usually isn't), and greedy corporations can't control the roads (pay me for a license, pay me a monthly access fee, pay me again for joining the flow of traffic just now, now pay me some more at a rate of n-per-mile... plus tax and environmental fees).
Everything is a world of ends. The infrastructure lets us get from one end to another. Roads, telephones, the internet, power, water, sewer... It should all be maintained the same way - the government should facilitate the ends coming together... a public square. Their reach should not extend beyond that, nor should they allow anyone to encroach upon the public square.
And I didn't even get into the hierarchical breakdowns of government and infrastructure. It's not evil. It's just common sense.
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, 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:Lesser of the evils (Score:4, Insightful)
Ontario's government abdicates management of highway 407 to one those aforementioned greedy corporations, which employs untility-like, estimation-based billing methods because checking actual usage rates is expensive. This greedy corporation then raises rates and restricts access, which leads to the conclusion that the government should not be trusted to manage infrastructure.
Um... could that be revised to 'The government can't be trusted to privatise infrastructure'?
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.
Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:5, Insightful)
The New York City metropolitan area was the first urban area to have an integrated highway system. The results were clear after about ten years: more highways spawn more traffic. Of course the person behind the New York system, Mr. Robert Moses, made it exceedingly difficult to see the NY highway system as anything but an unqualified success.
Had the powers that be in Los Angeles built a responsible combination of expressways and public transit rather than hundreds of miles of unmaintainable highways, Los Angeles wouldn't be the posterchild of urban sprawl that it is today.
The telecom companies are less progressive than any local government. They've made trillions of dollars over the years overcharging for analog lines and are fighting desperately to preserve their monopoly.
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.
Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:3, Insightful)
Like basic mail service, like the streets that connect our houses, our LOCAL governments, which do tend to be accountable, should provide LOCAL network service to our houses. Backbone service is different, and for that there should be competition... rather like the mail (commercial airlines carry airmail, in fact that's how they got started).
The networks should be managed by law under common carriage.
Blockbuster or WalMart is what happens when a monopoly imposes it's ideology - no naug
Re:Lesser of the evils (Score:2, Informative)
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
We did this (Score:4, Informative)
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.
for more throughput ... (Score:5, Funny)
This is the future... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is the future... (Score:2, Interesting)
Would we really want to replace that with the government controlling all of our information?
Re:This is the future... (Score:5, Insightful)
This could be a good thing, this could be a bad thing, one thing it requires is the public pay attention to who runs these things and what decisions (arbitrary or what) they exercise over them.
From the article:
That's struck a nerve among incumbent carriers, like the regional Bell operators, that are serving these areas. Not only do these carriers lose customers when people decide to build networks themselves, but many local governments, municipalities and educational institutions that build networks for their own use wind up selling services as well, thus becoming competitors to the regional operators.
Where the municipality is a competitor... Wasn't this the sort of thing that have some depression era things struck down ERA/WPA/CCC because effectively private companies taxes could be funding the government to compete with them? A shame, really, as some of these structures and works still pay off 70 years later, guess we shouldn't let that happen again.
Running a telecommunications network is not a sure thing, as many private competitive providers have already discovered.
Particularly where executives overstating profit and taking huge compensation are concerned.
Where I worked we were quoted a few times, massive amounts for running a fibre network and finally elected to do it ourselves, despite dire warnings of us not having the properly skilled people and tools to do it ("Too delicate, too sahn-se-tahv") We did it anyway for about 10% what we were quoted and it worked fine.
lastly, I've always favored the municipality putting in these kinds of infrastructre, then leasing it out to the phone/cable/internet/CCTV, what have you. More competitors make for a better market, right? But where I live there's only one company for high speed internet and one company for cable, forget any other choices. Having the public involved, assuming good people are overseeing it (and you don't usually know they aren't good people until it's too late) can guarrantee far better service than the private sector (milk every last cent you can out of that copper, baby!) can really do.
Re:This is the future... (Score:5, Insightful)
In theory, I support the idea of municipalities developing networks in the hopes that subsidizing the costs will lower the current "barriers for entry" for non-profits, schools, etc. However, my fear is that a network managed by the government will have standards of use dictated by the government that will eliminate the social benefit it could provide.
Consider the radio airwaves ... a public, shared resource managed by the government. The FCC has guidelines for the content that can be broadcast over those airwaves in order to "protect" the public from content that they believe the majority of the citizens do not consider an appropriate use of that shared resource. A shared network infrastructure could be a significantly different beast, but only because the resource both is less scarce and more hidden from the general public. I can view the contents of a website without my neighbor knowing how I'm using their tax dollars. However, a concerned citizen could argue that they don't want their money used to support the viewing of certain types of web sites, and therefore that those sites should not be available over the municipal network. A similar argument has been made to coerce libraries into installing net nannies on their public computers.
These arguments are natural whenever the government is providing or subsidizing resources; if this resource is "owned" by the collective, then it should be managed according to their will. Fortunately, the free economy guarantees that if people want a network unfettered by government regulation, they will pay for it (see satellite radio and cable TV). However, in that case, the social benefits of a municipal network are lost. That means the only remaining benefit of a public network is to provide competition with the incumbent corporations ... and breaking the monopolies seems a much more cost-effective way to do that.
Re:This is the future... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, yes. ABC is a goverment controlled company. I'd say, companies are even more willingly following the public opinion (call of the buck) than governmental agencies.
IANAL, but aren't governmental agencies more strictly bound by the consitution and laws?
For example, you can certainly demand from a govermental ISP to publish all what you want, which is covered by the First Amendement, but I'd say you can't do the same with a commercial ISP.
> A similar argument has been made to coerce libraries into installing net nannies on their public computers.
I think the main argument was not the costs incurring due to such use, but more the public nature of the computers.
Arguing through the costs could backfire as the costs for maintaining such control is probably more expensive than the actual use of the net.
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 v
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.
Dark Fiber (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Dark Fiber (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Dark Fiber (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Dark Fiber (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Dark Fiber (Score:3, Funny)
That must represent an interesting maintenance problem. I heard somewhere that if your fiber doesn't get laid, your network may go down.
Re:Dark Fiber (Score:5, Funny)
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.
this is very good.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:this is very good.... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:this is very good.... (Score:2)
Re:this is very good.... (Score:2, Interesting)
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!
Re:this is very good.... (Score:5, Insightful)
A competitive and free market is still the best way to insure the best value for the best service over the long term. With telephone pole space limited, it seems unlikely that wired communications will ever truly be competitive, so perhaps government sponsored utilities are the way to go, but remember when ATT ran the show on behalf of the government... they wouldn't even let someone connect their own phone to the network let alone a computer. Government sponsorship often means government regulation of content and use. If this model became popular, then how long till those restrictions that are found in a Comcast customer contract, like not hooking up any "servers" or not having multiple computers behind a firewall, suddenly have the force of criminal law rather than just contract law. It is one thing when a company can stop doing busines with you, but quite another when they can throw you in jail.
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?
Like Memphis Networx (Score:5, Insightful)
How can a company compete when the playing field is not level?
Re:Like Memphis Networx (Score:5, Insightful)
Wow, I can't believe the people of Memphis haven't rose up and smited the local government for providing a service that the people seem to want. Unbelievable.
"How can a company compete when the playing field is not level?"
Bribe the representatives and get the legislation you want passed? Seems to work for many other businesses in the U.S. See "Eldred" for an example.
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.).
Who cares? (Score:3, Insightful)
There's nothing worse than people who are willing to suffer inferior service at bloated prices, just to conform to some ridiculous capitalist ideal.
Re:Like Memphis Networx (Score:3, Insightful)
You mean like ISPs that have to rely on the phone company to provide DSL and internet connectivity services? Especially when those companies are marketing the same services. How about when those phone companies charge the ISPs more per connection than they pay for themselves?
Local phone companies have all the benefits of having a monopoly on the market and now the entity that allowed them become one is tired of doing business with them. Where was the competition that was supposed to come about from ope
Can't run unchecked.. (Score:5, Funny)
Today the cities will build fiber networks.. next they'll start paving the roads.. building sewers.. maintaining bridges..
Re:Can't run unchecked.. (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, it's a beautiful dream, isn't it?
KFG
Sad thing is (Score:5, Insightful)
We here in the US are NOT at the top of the world when it comes to bandwidth available to the masses, I believe top would be South Korea. The whole thing is absolutely deplorable, were squandering our once high tech lead in the name of greater profits. By the time the powers that be finally realize it, it will be hell to catch up.
Re:Sad thing is (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:It's population density that matters (Score:3, Insightful)
The size of the country doesn't have anything much to do with it.
The USA has a population density of 30.12 km^-2 and estonia's is 31.15 km^-2 so given that every cellphone tower covers a fixed number of square km, you'll need the same number of towers per head of population to cover each country.
Since you'll be deploying about 200 times more towers in the USA, you'll have slightly higher costs connecting them together - but that should be offset by
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:Complaints?! (Score:2)
Re:Complaints?! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Or, they could
I'd rather see towns mandate multiple cable/DSL providers and let the market drive the prices down.
Re:Complaints?! (Score:4, Insightful)
"Or, they could
* see it as a cash cow and milk it for more than you're paying now, sinking the money into higher salaries for town officials
* farm out the maintenance to the lowest bidder, who has 20 hours of downtime/week
* outsource support to india
* decide that 500kbps is fast enough for everyone
* mandate Windows usage if you want to get on the net
* any number of other stupid things"
You mean just like the private companies who do it now, charge more for their service, and provide less in return? Holy Crock-O'-Shit, Batman, I don't want to compete with that!
"I'd rather see towns mandate multiple cable/DSL providers and let the market drive the prices down."
Uh, one small but eternally permanent problem with that - towns, small municipalities, and other cities can't tell X Internet companies to "get your ass in here and compete, or else we'll do nothing."
Or were you referring to offering incentives to attract Internet-access companies? If so, thanks, but no thanks to corporate welfare.
Re:Complaints?! (Score:3, Insightful)
All of which, they could be voted out for.
Can you vote out your corporate provider?
Re:Complaints?! (Score:3, Insightful)
1) I think you might be confusing the installation and maintenance of cabling infrastructure with operating an ISP. These are two very different things.
2) Everything in your list can be (and is being) done by a private company. There's nothing special about governments that makes any of that more likely.
More detail:
If there is already fibre now with services runni
Alberta, Canada (Score:5, Informative)
$320k less a year, with *8000* times the bandwidth (Score:3, Insightful)
Private vs. Public efficiencies (Score:5, Insightful)
(I'm assuming that by "public companies" you mean companies owned by the government.)
No, that's just one of those stories corporations keep telling to keep ownership of businesses like utilities in private hands. You can run any public business well, or run it poorly; it all depends on the management, just as in the private sector.
The folks defending private ownership like to raise the threat that any government-owned business doesn't need to watch it's bottom line, because they can always get a bail-out from raising taxes. What they appear to forget to mention is that any major business of enough impact to the local or national economy can always get the same deal by twisting the right arms. Sometimes management can get direct or indirect subsidies for their company even if they aren't in danger of going out of business; they just have to start hinting that they are likely to move operations elsewhere.
Geoff
Why not like a Water utility?? (Score:5, Insightful)
dimes
Why have a central authority at all (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why have a central authority at all (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Why have a central authority at all (Score:2, 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.
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 mone
Government vs Public (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope we see more of this kind of thing in the future.
Re:Government vs Public (Score:2)
Sacramento has had that for years (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.surewestbroadband.com/products/resid
Its about time (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Its about time (Score:3, Insightful)
you are comparing apples and oranges.
The disparity (Score:2)
If you want a great example... (Score:5, Interesting)
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?
AFN (Score:5, Interesting)
The lesson is simple: Without competition, the current cable/phone companies have no incentive to make things better.
Political leverage (Score:2, Insightful)
SCBN (Score:2, Informative)
palo alto fiber net (Score:5, Informative)
City Lans (Score:4, Interesting)
Government Role in Build Fiber Network. (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it the role of Government to build a wholesale fiber network?
Yes, I believe it is infrastructure, similar to Roads. It does not make sense for each private service provider(FedEx, UPS, etc) to build it's own road to you house or company. Instead Government provides the road allowing the citizens to have cost effective access to private services.
Having the government provide a wholesale fiber network will allow for more companies to compete without the overhead of building a network. This will reduce prices, at the same time as improving what is available.
City of the future (Score:5, Interesting)
Fredericton, NB Canada has a project as well... (Score:3, Interesting)
Selective Amnesia (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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'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
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.
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.
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.
FCC for the net (Score:3, Insightful)
If governments start to own significant chunks of internet backbone, do you really think they will decline to create an internet FCC or expand the current FCC to the net? Do you really think that a government power grab is worth it if you can get a cheaper broadband line (that will be paid for through taxes anyway)?
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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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
Tacoma, WA (Score:4, Informative)
Holyoke Gas and Electric (Score:4, Interesting)
http://www.hge.net/ [hge.net]