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Ashland, Oregon did this many years ago. From what I've heard from people that live there, it's worked out well.

This is corporate money buying off politicians to protect their monopoly. It's to prevent nightmare scenarios like Ashland, OR, which in the year 2000 had public utility fiber optic to every home, and offers internet service starting at $9 a month.

Google reveals that besides the state senate passing the bill, the non-veto vote was likely illegally bought--and--paid--for a long time ago.

I think, ideally, the last mile would be municipally owned, and they then lease the lines to $small_ISP of your choice, at a flat rate. That's the only way I can see a bunch of ISPs working out.

The city of Ashland in southern Oregon does precisely this.

City of Ashland, OR has had this exact system for almost a decade. The city laid the fiber, you choose your TV company, ISP, and internet speed. http://www.ashlandfiber.net/

The city of Ashland in southern Oregon also offers 10mbps fiber to everyone in the city, but they don't run their own ISP - instead, they allow competing ISPs to offer service through their fiber network. Each ISP sets their own pricing, and they pay AFN for the connectivity.

Here was a price comparison from 2005.

And disengenous to say that they are saving the city from themselves. After 10 years, Here's how some citizens get their choices, to the chagrin of Charter.

The AP quotes a network security engineer at Google, Paul "Tony" Watson who says of Comcast, "It's their network and they can do what they want".

Well "their" network runs on the public right-of-way. This private interest tore up our streets and yards in order to make money hand over fist. In exchange for use of the public right-of-way Comcast agreed to certain conditions set by the relevant local governments. Unless the local government officials involved were hopelessly corrupt or stupid they extracted concessions like public access facilities and channels, and an annual franchise fee.

In return Comcast also got the exclusive right to provide cable services to an area. No competition. You'll never find two cable companies operating in the same area. It just doesn't make economic sense to have two separate entities digging two separate trenches down the same street to provide the same service - it's redundant and wasteful. That's also why in each city block there is only one entity stringing electrical wires, telephone lines and laying pipe for water mains.

According to anti-trust law and non-religious economic theory, monopolies should not be tolerated because they rob the public of the benefits of competition. But certain industries - like electricity, water, roads, telecoms - are called "natural monopolies" in standard economics texts. They recognize that it is impractical to try to introduce competition into these areas. So they recommend that monopoly in these areas be allowed to exist so long as they are either publicly owned or closely regulated to prevent them from abusing their sanctioned monopolies to shaft the public with high prices, shoddy service or other abusive practices.

I think impersonating the customer to prevent communications of which the company doesn't approve, while lying to the customer about it, falls under "abusive practices".

Comcast is a state-sanctioned monopoly, operating a network on the public right-of-way. As are the telecom companies that provide DSL. We bloody well can tell them what they can and cannot do with "their network". Congress should mandate network neutrality through explicit laws. Mere administrative regulations from the FCC can be too easily ignored or waived by lazy or corrupt officials (who then retire to take cushy jobs with Comcast).

If Comcast doesn't like it, local governments can turn the cable franchise over to another company who will abide by their rules and conditions or run it as a public service as the town of Ashland, Oregon has done for years.

This has been done in a small town about an hour from me, I think in 1999: Ashland Fiber Network The city got tired of being on the end of Qwest's lists for improvement, cause its small, spread out , and mountainous, and they did it themselves. Strung fiber all over town, you purchase your connection to the internet (and get to choose witch small town ISP to use for your email, support, and outgoing internet, etc) and choose who you want to get your TV from , and even which channels!

Very cheap, and blazing fast!

• Ashland Fiber Network http://www.ashlandfiber.net/ (Ashland,OR) is shared by all utilities in Ashland (population @ 21k) -- it is community owned
• The Portland,OR metro still doesn't have fiber access
• Verizon FIOS is not planned to be installed in the Portland metro for quite some time (no ETA)
• World Wide Packets business model is to provide the infrastructure for ISPs to provide fiber to the end user, but they don't work directly with end-users
• 6 years ago [Beaverton,OR], I had Telocity SDSL for $20/mo @ 802/802
• 3 years ago [Beaverton,OR], when I tried to sign up for 1.5/768 Verizon DSL, we found out (after they set us up and started charging for said speed) that the best we can get is 384/384 for $60/mo ($40 Line[Verizon] + $20 ISP [Aracnet]) because of a 26-gauge wire between me and the C.O. They also stated there is no intention to ever upgrade that line unless it is damaged. Of course, they wouldn't tell me where it was.
• A few months after talking with Speakeasy about the last bullet point, they sent me a letter saying that they could get me 6MB/768 over their fiber network without using Verizon's phone line. When I called them, they said that they couldn't because it still has to go over Verizon's line. Of course, they still wanted me to try to set it up, without installing a replacement for that 26-gauge wire.

The town I used to live in (and hope to move back to very soon) built a city-wide group of fiber links (22 nodes for a town of 20,000) that is working out rather quite well - you can get teevee if that's your wish - not mine, but hey, scifi is cool sometimes - or DOCSYS to the curb for 5 megs down or so... the upstream used to be one until the college kids saturated the network with p2p and the admin responded by capping upload. Cost for your 5 meg connection is about 30 bucks a month depending on which ISP you choose.

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, 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

Malachi

Check out the Ashland Fiber Network. Ashland, OR.

http://www.ashlandfiber.net/

Sasha

My hometown similar pop, university, implemented a city-wide cable internet system.

Ashland Fiber Net

The city now offers TV, Internet, and hosting at around $40/mo.

Travis

I'm not sure I agree with you. Not sure I disagree, either. One point of note: Where I live, the city utility built out it's own set of fiber loops, which you can then either gain acces to directly (if you gots the dough), or buy secondhand through a local ISP, which hits your door via DOCSYS cable modem. Still and all, I get 5mbps download for under thirty dollars a month, and ain't complaining. One point of note, though: we still get our outbound via Qwest, who, as most everyone knows, are a bunch of faragin bastiches!

Moral of this story? If your city is at all together, they can do really neat stuff with fiber, but it will cost a buttload of initial startup cost, and will still rely upon a monopolistic juggernaut with monopolistic partners.

They also used the fiber to provide cheaper, better digital cable for everyone in the city as well. Future plans included adding 802.11b to the whole city so cable modem users could be online anywhere in the city for one low fee. For a town of 20,000 people in Southern Oregon that only has a Shakespeare Festival and a University, it's a pretty amazing network. The city also has their own power company, so you can get everything locally, it costs less (when their was a power shortage, the city was still fine), the city gets all the profits from it, parks and roads improve, and there is high bandwidth everywhere. Almost makes me wish I was still going to college there instead of living in Seattle where my DSL line the same speed costs almost $100 a month.

In Ashland, Oregon the city is running a broadband access network (with cable modems) and faster fiber optic connections for those who want to pay up.

We certainly didn't mind, as it spurred Charter (cable company) to speed up their service deployment so we actually have competition for cable service - what an interesting concept.

On the other hand, the City of Ashland also owns the water and electric utilities... and has put the "telecommunications" (the internet & tv business) as a part of the electric utility... check out the Ashland Fiber Network, and the City of Ashland.

I pay $25 per month, and am certain to get at least 3000kbps down and usually no less than 900 up. Usually, it's more like 5000/1000, but who's counting? No bandwidth limiting, either. But that's what happens when Big Government buts in where business can clearly provide more service for less money.

It's been done. The city of Ashland, Oregon has installed a fiber network all over the city. The city owns the network and also sells cable TV service over it, and independent ISPs sell net access. Result, cable internet around $20-$25/month. No reason to go dialup.

http://www.ashlandfiber.net/

Where I live, the city utility department has built fiber loops throughout the city. We get coax to the wall, and bandwidth is about two to three times what ADSL users are getting. Rather than hassle with administering the whole deal, they contract out to local ISPs for the residential users, and run a nice cable TV business on the side. It's put the local giant @home creeps on their heels, as they can't possibly hope to compete with the utilities department. IMHO, this is the way to go: keep money and benefits local. Our tax dollars happily at work. I recognize that this makes me some neo-socialist fruitcake to some here, but how much do they pay for bandwidth? I pay $25 a month, and could do cheaper if I really needed to.

In my town, the city did just what the article mentions, and the result couldn't have been better. First of all, they forced Charter to bring down their rates to a more reasonable level. What the city is offering to residential customers is both television and data, outsourcing the data service through local ISPs. So, for twenty-five bucks a month, I get what often hits 5mbps download and a solid 1mbps upload. The local ISPs are making money (and keeping it local!), with the added benefit that Paul Allen is so pissed off at the local government that he wants to spit. (Some background: we hava a small but impressive Shakespeare Festival, and guess which software vendor is a primary sponsor) Fsck Paul Allen, anyhow.

My take is that as long as the work is properly planned, this is a good idea. And it is quite nice to be able to go to meetings at city hall to suggest changes in your cable TV lineup. Try doing that with charter :)

Ashland also provides their own power so they don't have to worry as much about blackouts this summer (we are 10 miles north of California), and everyone is wired. They are also working on a plan now to have wireless internet access through the whole city within a couple years so you can go downtown to the park with your laptop and still be working. The town is just under 20,000, and is home to a college (Southern Oregon University), but it has everything you could want in a town for internet access. It could use a decent computer store, though.

The way things work here is that fiber is run to "nodes" which then are translated to coax, which is then brought to your home. And at the bandwidth we get (3mbps down, 1 up) and the price (how's $25 a month sound), you'd probably be in for a better deal.
Of course, your telco would need to invest considerably for the hardware, but at the current price of fiber, they could almost certainly do better for less than any silly DSL hookup. My suggestion would be to contact someone at the telco who has a brain as well as decision-making authority (I know this might be asking a lot), and see if they're even aware of the concept. It's worth a try - at worst, they'll say no, and at best, you can show those DSLers what's up.

With that much bandwidth, Ashland is definitely worth moving to. Beautiful town too, with a shakespearean festival every year and some great white water rafting on the rogue -- also Mt. Ashland to ski/snowboard on.

It's rather nice (Ashland fiber Network)

There's a great example of open broadband net (and even CATV) here in my home town ( Ashland, OR)

The city decided it wasn't going to wait for the big broadband 'net-access carriers to get around to servicing this area, so they're laying Fiber Gigabit Ethernet throughout the whole town! (It's called the Ashland Fiber Network)

What they've got going with the local ISP's is this:

• The city provides the bandwith, but dosen't want to have to deal with the more labor intensive parts of the ISP biz, like tech support for computer neophytes, or keeping email servers running, so, they only deal directly with big users, like businesses, and uber-users. For them, they just bring the gigabit fiber to the door, tap off a 10 or 100Mbps Ethernet connection, and are more-or-less done with it.
• the 'regular' user population goes thru the ISPs. They basicaly just re-sell the city's bandwidth, and add services like webspace, email servers, and, importantly, tech support. (the 'normal' net users get a little lower bandwidth, as they bring that service to the door over a 5Mbps coax cable, using a standard cablemodem (presumably to save costs by reusing existing cables) Unlike regular cablemodem systems, tho, the coax only goes from your door to the curb, where it gets tied to the fiber, so yer not sharing it with your 100 closest neighbors)

There is another local broadband net provider around here, the local cable co, Falcon, has a internet service. It's interesting to note that the City competes w/ Falcon doubly. Falcon has it's Cable-TV infrastructure, which they also offer net service over, and the City has it's Internet infrastructure, which they also offer digital cable TV over.

So, we have both, the ISP's competing w/ each other and sharing the City's cables, and the City and Falcon competing with each other, each with their own cables.