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Municipal Networks as Alternative to Commercial Broadband?
"Universally, it seems, people get better service and prices when such networks are implemented. It also forces telecom companies operating in the area to offer better service and prices as well, in short, to compete. But it's also increased companies' lobbying efforts against such municipal activity and it's not hard to see why such companies like AT&T Broadband, Charter Communications (controlled by Microsoft), and Qwest don't like it."
Not many municipalities are saavy enough to think about deploying this sort of infrastructure, however. For those in that situation, what kind of lobbying efforts must a municipality put together before village/town/city officials will take notice? If the government does notice, what kind of arguments should be made to convince them that it might be worthwhile to make such an undertaking?
It's all to do with it being made by a company called Microsoft. Microsoft was founded by a businessman that goes by the name of Bill Gates. This man sold his soul to satan in order to gain control over 90% of the world's computers, through this "Microsoft" company. The only real drawback (aside from selling his soul) was that the company name had to reflect the constant state of his genetalia. Thank you.
You've got mail. Pattern baldness. - Crow
Charter Communications fucking BLOWS and SUCKS. Their website says I can get 1.5Mbit cable. I called them up and they said it's not available here. But their god damned website says plainly it's available in my town. EAT SHIT, CHARTER.
This might be the only way to get broadband out there faster. The way it is today, service providers are stuck in a corner. They know the demand is out there for broadband. People DO want it, for the most part. They also know that broadband (DSL, for example), has certain requirements like distance which can hinder performance.
So if I live too far from the main DSL switch building, too bad for me! Also, broadband is dependent on the physical characteristics of a customer zone. If I live in an area with old cable networks and nasty phone lines... that just adds to list of what must be upgraded.
So the service providers must be content for now in offering to the few. (I live in a very snazzy community with a lot of money. All of them would buy broadband, yet nobody can get it. So even with guaranteed customers (and hundreds of them), it still might not be profitable!)
Having municipal networks would really bring broadband out. I'm all for it. If we let the markets do it themselves, it'll take years. Not that municipal networks would suddenly spring up overnight, but they would guarantee more broadband (significantly so) and would guarantee a standard and central office from which others could branch themselves.
Having government doing stuff private businesses normally do can have very good effects in certain situations...
The next comment I write will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and see it early!
Right after I read it I was really excited about this idea. Get out from under Verizon? You betcha!
But, during the (10 second) interval it took between when I clicked "post comment" and when the textbox finally appeared, I rethought. Provide to whom? As a gov't service they can't discriminate. Which is great for us Linux users--no more crappy DHCP/VPN-disabled junk. But pretty sucky for the administrators who have to have configs available for everything from Win98 to VMS to OS2 to BeOS.
Of course, in actual practice they'd only provide service for the "popular" OS's. Which defeats the whole purpose of having a public utility in the first place.
For the love of God, Covad, run a damn line to my house so I can get Speakeasy! Or at least give me a estimate of when you CAN do it so I know how long the wait will be.
324006
Is anyone already using this?
. days
I wonder if they'll let you run a server unlike AT&T / @home / whatever.the.hell.theyre.calling.themselves.these
Karma...what's that? I just speak my mind.
They shouldn't do this for the same reason they shouldn't be installing cable tv services, or telephone services, cell phone networks, or movie theaters: these are non-essential services which the private sector is willing and able to provide, and which governments have little experience or expertise with. The only thing governments should be providing for us are public goods which the private sector cannot or will not provide us.
Further, I have little confidence in the ability of a municipal or other government to provide efficient, inexpensive Internet (or other) services, and I can think of many more things I would rather have them provide or improve. If the government really feels a need to provide their citizens with connectivity I think it is best done with a limited number of Internet kiosks at places like libraries, city halls, etc, but I would vote against anybody who would suggest that providing more than this is the job of our government.
The city of Lebanon, Oh has had great success using their system. It's run by the city's Electrical department for Cable TV & reading electric meters. They added high speed internet access - that's working well also. Of course, the local cable companies hate it - prices are only slightly cheaper, but profits go to the city to improve the service. The City is also looking into offering local phone service as well.
Envy my 5 digit Slashdot User ID!
I was thinking about this last night. Internet access is pretty much ubiqitous in our lives, and (at least for me) is absolutely essential in order to function. Certain resources, like gas, electricity, and telephone service are considered essential, and the gov't sets standards and requires availibility of these services. These services are required to be availible all the time. However, IPS's can get away with spotty QoS, ninexistant customer support, and can just close up shop when they go broke. Shouldn't internet access be provided, subsidized, or regulated by the gov't as is any essential utility?
Right now in many areas ISPs must be in bed with the local Bell monopoly, or use a DSL provider who may not be around tomorrow. If the county I was in provided such a network for any two points in the county to talk to each other (read not internet connection) then I would tunnel to my local ISP for my internet connection. This could also let people telecommute by tunneling to the company they work at (if you work in the same county you reside in, or the adjacent and they have an agreement).
Sounds like a win to me. Especially since the local Bell monopolies won't loose anything, just not get control of another market. Sign me up!
It will be built with tax payer dollars, and when the local government needs more cash they will sell it off to the highest bidding private corporation.
Technology is only a vehicle. People are the ones that drive it.
I can remember voting for Holland Michigan to install a state of the art fiber optic ring around the city and it was supposed to be this great thing. Well, it's about 3 or 4 years later and you still can't get any kind of cable modem or digital cable in the city limits. Unfortunately I live in the city limits. So the city has a MONOPOLY on the digital access. Except DSL which sucks in it's own way. I have DSL anyway. I think there are businesses on the system but no public access. I believe that it was my/our tax dollars that created the system but I have no way to use it. Holland BLOWS! At the end of last year I believe that the city and ATT Broadband had finally come to an agreement about sharing the lines but the ATT tech I talked to said it would be at least 18 months before we would see anything.
"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." Pablo Picasso.
"The only thing governments should be providing for us are public goods which the private sector cannot or will not provide us."
Maybe downtown Seattle has a lot of choices, but out here near the sticks I have exactly one broadband choice: Verizon. People actually IN the sticks have zero options.
324006
Plus, the US Gov't doesn't have the greatest track record on building things on-time or on-budget, nor on keeping things in shape.
I'd rather see more Gov't incentives for private companies to build private infrastructure and Gov't regulations to insure consumers are protected.
Karma: Bored. (Thinking about resurrecting the "Anyone else is an imposter" joke.)
dumb post yesterday. I am hesitant to post again so soon. but her it goes...
For speed and price, it very much makes sense for communities to roll out there own high speed internet. They should be able to do so more cheaply than the big companies because of less overhead and more quickly because they should be more driven to serve themselves.
My concern would be over local control of content which is allowed in. No doubt some local communities would try to filter out "bad" speach and writings just as they do with libraries and some cable networks. Also, what about privacy?
The *only* way to have a decent broadband system is to have a public utility installed. California learned this the hard way when it came to its power system. If you expect that you'll get competative service from the multinational communications giants you're kidding yourself because it's only a matter of time before they'll all be one giant bloody company anyway.
God help us, indeed ... and those words don't come easily for an atheist.
:wq
Maybe you don't know what you're doing. My NT servers stay up for months.
I envy my brother tremendously. He lives in Evansville, IN; I live in the Louisville Metro area (about 10 times the population as his town). His electric company runs a broadband ISP service. They just showed up with a box and it works! He is nearly computer illiterate and has not had a problem. IP as commodity; I like it. ISP as utility; great idea.
Be careful what you wish for...
Where your treasure is there is your heart also...
We read recently elsewhere about people buying cheapo 802.11b kit and simply plugging it in, essentially giving their neighbours [sic] a free leg-up on to the Internet. How does this compare with what you're proposing, that local municipalities deploy a public service style network?
I would think that a public sector MAN would be somewhere between the two extremes that we currently have. On one end, corporate cable provided by the usual suspects, and on the other extreme the so-called "parasitic grid". What would happen instead if a local county council (or US equivalent) subsidised cheap 802.11b receivers / transmitters? The expensive bit would be for the up-link which could potentially be a cost shared more equally across the community. For instance, your electricity shouldn't cost more simply because you live further from the power station, so why not employ a similar equality scheme for 'net traffic?
Personally I can't help but think that the ultimate direction for all this is for the "swarm effect" written about in the lamented Rapidly Changing Face of Computing, where personal transmitting devices effectively become a collosal wireless network.
Aegilops
The experience with municipal power indicates that this is not beneficial in the long term. The municipal power systems grow to be more expensive, lower quality, poorer service than commercial power. This effect is also seen in things like the Post Office vs UPS or Fedex. At the beginning, they may be quite good, but it becomes a bureaucratic entitlement operation. Also, politics is a poor way to make strategic technology decisions. The local telephone company strategies were controlled by politicians and regulators for decades, and look how they dealt with innovation.
Much more effective is changing the regulatory and licensing cost structure so that there can be several alternatives. It is presently very expensive to get the licenses to install systems. Only the very high value streets (like office parks) are worth the cost. Elsewhere, it is limited to retrofits to pre-existing systems (cable, electric, etc.).
In my area, it is the towns with multiple alternative providers that get the best service. This has the unfortunate side effect that the towns with only one provider get the least investment and worsening service. For a while, this will widen the difference between the towns rather than reduce it. The same effect happens with monopoly municipal offerings.
There is often a problem attracting vendors to small markets. A better approach than the monopoly municipal is a non-monopoly cooperative. If the municipality makes the licensing easy for everyone, a cooperative can be set up. If the market remains very small, the coop may remain the only player. But if the market takes off, the coop knows that it must remain responsive or a commercial vendor will enter the market. Coops have been highly successful in other markets, and they co-exist well with commercial vendors. When the government remains neutral the coops that continue to provide good service thrive, the commercial operations that provide good service thrive, and the low quality vendors fail.
In my job, I deal with goverment in a few states in the Northeast. The state of Michigan as a whole seems to be leading the way in bringing their state into the networked world. Michigan is ahead of the curve with legislation to allow offices (at least at the county level, which I deal with) to not only offer services over the internet, but also charge fees allowing them to break even doing so. In the end, it doesn't cost the tax payers much. (At least that is my impression) Many customers (counties) in other states have a hard time putting information on the internet, since there is no way to pay the cost of doing so. In many cases, the laws make it very cost prohibitive, either in the short or long term.
I bet this project will work because it is probably run like a break even business, instead of a government bucacracey (sp?) that most slashdotters would expect from government project like this. I would love something like this in my area, but the demographic is not well suited for it.
-Pete
Soccer Goal Plans
A better idea, and I would bet lower cost, due to less infrastructure, would be to set up a municipal wireless network. (Even ISPs should be doing this.) It's the only way to get around having to pay one of the monopolies for land lines.
It is great marketing if your a dot-com trying to sell something, but the fact is most people don't need broadband or even want it.
Government should stay out of it, if not, then they should be required to buy up ALL existing broadband before competeing with those private companies which spent money on it.
It seems that gamers and geeks are the primary wanters of broadband, and they make grandiose claims of the universal need for it without ever proving it. Just like the failed dot-coms, the lies is still there, not the need.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
The standards that are involved do not ensure the same QOS that we're used to with a standard phone or electrical system. When you pick up the phone, it's assumed that there will be a dial tone. When you try to get online (unless you have boradband like me!) you have to dial and try to get a connection. How many times have you been bumped offline? How many times have you crashed your system? How many times have other things happen where you lose your connection?
The fundamental difference with the phone and IT systems is that the phone system works on the basis that not everyone will wnat to use the phone at any given time and even if they do, it'll just be momentary. That's why telco's started to freak when "getting online" started to become popular with the bbses. Suddenly, they had many people making many calls at about the same and then holding the line for hours.
The tcp/ip standards has specific conditions on when it is to drop packets and degrade service for non-vital stuff because it can be re-transmitted later.
This is also why true convergence won't work between these two systems. One works on the basis of having dumb normally unconnected terminals that require incredibly high QoS (phones) while the other works on the basis that eventually the info will get through, but the order doesn't neccessarily matter and the connection could always be live.
Because it's really the same thing.
/. parlance.
The US has a postal system is run by the government and not the private sector in order to make sure ALL citizens get some degree of service, or "connectivity" in
Note how the Postal Service provides a "baseline" for all citizens, but doen't hold a monopoly. If you want to send a package faster, pay a little more and use UPS or a bike courier.
Having a government agency run the show guarantees that everyone can at least send a package somehow. There's no "sorry, your neighborhood just isn't rich enough for us to lay fiber / put in a mail route" going on.
Free markets don't always come to the socially optimal outcome, and they certainly can't be relied on to distribute resources equitably.
Sure, it won't be free, but if we really care about this "digital divide" then this will bridge it a lot faster than waiting for Verizon.
--
Long-term effects of Bush deficits
I am frankly a little afraid of this idea. I do not want government involved any more in my life then it needs to be, whether it be local, state, or federal. The type of government that provides services" to its people is called socialism. I like our democratic republic just fine and believe that if you do not like the way that private companies are acting, then you should work to change them. I know that leviathans like Verizon can see impossible to change, but they can be! First, if you want service in your area and know that upgrading is the problem but your area really wants the bandwidth, have every one right letters saying that you are willing to pay a little higher connection fees for the service for a few years after the service comes. Now obviously that does not sound like a fun plan, but it might work. If you think that you can do a better and/or cheaper job than the current provider, become a competitor. One thing that is true in the post is that competition will make the current system change. The problem with having government be the competitor is that they are not driven by profit so they can always under cut the competition. They also have an endless supply of cash to waste, yours!
A question you must always ask yourself is: "Is this really an area where I feel comfortable having a group of ill-informed non-experts wasting my money?" Remember it was the government that created AT&T and it is government that will rebuild it again if we do not fight it!
Have A Blessed Day and Pray for America.
British Car owners of this era loved to tinker with their cars, gapping the sparkplugs (or should that be sparking plugs), to make their own repairs in the back yard and to spend hours every weekend lovingly washing their cars. They apparently enjoyed maintaing the car more than actually driving it.
British car manufacturers responded as you would think. Quality was awful. Service intervals were unbelievably short. The car NEEDED frequent service or it would literally fall apart. There is a little ditty parodying the song, "There will always be an England",
"There'l always be an England,
An England strong and free,
'Cause when you switch the ignition off,
Their cars go running on.".
The result should have been obvious. Where are all those British car manufacturers now? Gone or merged with foreign companies!
Microsoft software follows the same principle. Microsoft weenie users love to tinker with Windows. It fills their hearts with joy to know that they are about to have to reinstall Windows. Reinstalling misbehaving applications fills them with ecstasy. They eagerly buy up books with titles like "Windows Secrets", Windows for Dummies", etc.
Tinkering with Windows gives the typical Windows weenie much more joy than actually using it.
Microsoft has responded as expected. Reboots, reinstalls, service packs that don't work, viruses, macro viruses, back doors, trojans, registries that can't be fixed by any mere mortal and on and on.
Now I only wish that they would go the way of the British Car Manufacturers!!!
Ashland Oregon has a population of about 20,000. The city was already in the utilities business with water and electricity when they decided to build the fiber network. While this probably won't make any money for the city its been great for the residents and local businesses. I've had a cable modem for almost a year now and its been very fast and reliable.
Having the government offer these services as a service to the community might not be the best thing.
I am more in favour of a mutual versus a municipal service. Before you go and knock it, think that some of the biggest financial services firms began life as mutuals. This would really be a case of a service for the people.
Should folk ever want to cash out eventually, they could demutualise the whole thing, and to be honest I would rather have one of these than have a politician tell me how he is 'doing' me good by providing this service. I would also be against either tax dollars subsiding such a venture, or conversely, profits from this being milked to fund other pork barrel projects.
What local authorities should do, especially in places like the UK where BT frustrates the competition while providing really shite service, is to give groups that want to do this as much support as possible.
That is the kind of stuff 'my local politician' should be doing for me.
Live today. Tomorrow will cost a lot more!
You think it's already too easy to throw a Carnivore box in an ISP's infrastructure? Wait until the Government is asking ITSELF if it's OK that they tap connections.
-Tom
-Tom
Hey folks, the professional community is already dealing with Nimda. What makes you think a municipality(aka red-tape land, everyone's favorite themepark) is going to be able to move on this? Now worry about state laws requiring public facilities to have filtering..... just a start.
I'm sittiing in my office in Stillwater, Oklahoma, a little college town of 40,000 residents, yet, while some may be connected via copper, I have 6 pair of fiber coming into the basement (2 are in use). Our city contracted with a small telco in Oklahoma, Chickasaw, to install a fiber ring in the city to connect the schools and municipal buildings to the Internet. After that was complete, chickasaw was free to sell access without the city's intervention. For a price that's too low to advertise, I have the equivalent of a full-duplex T-1 line. Our transciever gives us a 10mb connection to the central office where their router then packet shapes us down to the bandwidth we're paying for. Here's a ping from our router to our ISP over our fiber connection: *** Success rate is 100 percent, round-trip min/avg/max = 1/1/1 ms There's no way we would have this kind of connectivity without the city's help. I get to laugh as salespeople from Sprint, AT&T, etc. call and try to sell us ADSL or copper T-lines for more than we pay for our fiber connectivity. Not only do we have a fiber connection to our ISP, but we also ride fiber all the way to the Internet, so we get great throughput. Regards, Ben
Isn't this what the alberta supernet is about? Albeit, to government, and public facilities (and not to home... yet, although thats a viable future) - This being extended to the home I think is definately forseeable since while the Alberta government is footing a big chunk of the initial tab, its Bell Intrigna that will take it over - and the Alberta government has promised revenue streams to Bell for the next 10 yrs or so.
They shouldn't do this for the same reason they shouldn't be installing cable tv services, or telephone services, cell phone networks, or movie theaters: these are non-essential services which the private sector is willing and able to provide, and which governments have little experience or expertise with.
... often putting small businesses out of business in the process, so the argument that private enterprise isn't living up to basic, acceptable standards carries some degree of weight), but as for providing physical infrastructure I think there is no question that the private, pseudo-monopoly and ad-hoc regulation is an abysmal failure. Following the demonstrated success of the highway system (as opposed to, say, the struggle and arguable failure of America's private railway system, which only serves some population centers and has, during tough times, left entire industries and regions completely out in the cold, without any sort of rail service whatsoever) for the infrastructure and "last mile" makes perfect sense.
Au contrair.
This is exactly the kind of thing government should provide. Your libertarian visions of utopia aside, the private sector isn't providing reliable broadband to end users. I and my employer have both lost DSL service, with no warning. A colleague of mine has lost his DSL service twice, from two different, unrelated providors going out of business, again with no warning.
Internet connectivity has arguably become as critical as having a telephone, perhaps even more so (somewhere between as critical as having a road to your house and having a telephone for many people, myself included).
Worse, the physical cable is an example of a so-called "natural monopoly," in which it is unfeasable and arguably counter-productive to have ten or fifteen competing cable/fibre trunks going to your house. Just as it is absurd to build ten expressways along the same corridor so they can "compete," or several canals along the same route of travel between lakes or rivers.
Whether or not government should provide full ISP services is I think an open question (there again, private ISPs are arbitrarilly disconnecting people based on allegations of wrongdoing with no due process, no standards of evidence much less proof, and no recourse
Private ISPs could use the existing infrastructure to provide higher level services (email, DNS, web hosting, USENET news, etc.), with each competitor gaining access to the public infrastructure under the same, fair, competetive conditions. Far better than having Ameritech own the infrastructure and manipulate ever increasing, and ever more complex, regulatory systems and their accompanying loopholes to drive competitors, who do not own the underlying infrastructure, out of business.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
Well, I have Covad (through CAIS, as I wanted to make sure to get a business class line, and be allowed servers and a block of IPs), and at this point, I'm just hoping Covad stays up.
I've had enough problems with GTE in the past, and even though I'm in what was a Bell Atlantic area, from what I've heard about Verizon, it's sounding more like GTE with their customer service.
So well, depending on how things go, you might get your Covad line out there just in time for them to fold...and watch your service get bought by Verizon.
I'm hoping that with the reported increase in teleconferencing due to the events of last week, that we'll also have more folks telcomuting, and helping to bring Covad out of the red, so this doesn't happen.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
What you are experiencing is likely the classic 'bait and switch.' I am experiencing something similar here in the Baltimore area with ComCast cable. Their website plainly states that cable broadband is available in my area, but when I try to order it, I'm told that their digital upgrade won't be finished until January, and their broadband for at least a month after that.
So what do you do? Cussing and whining about it on here won't help you a bit. Instead, take a screen image of their website, and print it out. Then write a (calm, logical, and objective) letter to your local and state public utilities commission complaining about their misleading advertising. Include the print-out of their website (make sure it has the date and time stamped on it, as well as the URL), and also include the name and (if they use them) service badge/number of whoever it was you talked to on their sales/support staff, along with the date and time of your call. With all the support services randomly taping the calls anyway, it's entirely possible that a record of your call exists, and this recording is admissible in court as evidence should the state (or a bored lawyer who's also getting the shaft) file suit. Again, you need to be courteous and respectful in your phone conversations. Being loud and obnoxious will get you nowhere.
I suspect that one of these choices is incorrect. Correct.
What ever happened to the idea that one day broadband was going to come to us across our power lines? Last I heard on it, things were working pretty well. The technology is there. The infrastructure is mostly there. The speed is high. The cost of implementation sounded like it would be low.
Why would a local municipality push for this when the local power company can accomplish similar goals, seemingly with more ease? Maybe there's some underlying reason I don't know about, which is why it isn't here yet...
-- Hi! I'm a
Both Bedford, VA and Muscatine Iowa pay my
little company to help them run their networks.
In Muscatine, the city IS the cable company,
so they offer both dial-up and cablemodem
service, and are the full-service ISP.
Bedford VA has fiber, and partners with the
local cable company to offer services, where
the fiber and the cablemodem systems are
integrated into a semi-cohesive whole. This
little project has been going on since 1995,
making this effort one of the first.
I'm sure that there are lots of towns and cities
that have done similar things.
Science is the art of infallibility, perpetrated upon non-scientists
This is working great in rural eastern Washington. Here is a slashdot story about it
I set up my father-in-law's office network and connected it to the ZIPP fiber network provided by the county public utility district. The connection speed is great, especially considering they are in the middle of nowhere. The connection is very comparable to my AT&T@home service, which I usually can get 400-500k/second downloads (from major sites, ofcourse).
It is really cheap, too. No installation charge, no monthly fee from the PUD. You just pay the ISP of your choice their going fee. Most are between $20-$30 for residential. Most of the ISPs in the county don't even have restrictions on the number of PCs, etc.
Over the same fiber you can get an awesome cable package with Video on Demand, for much cheaper than the local cable company (which offers less than 35 channels MAX). Telephone service as well. Check out more information at Grant County PUD ZIPP web page. I always get jealous. I am in Seattle and we have far worse connection options (it's down to Qwest DSL or AT&T@home).
Municipal and maybe higher governement authorities should really build these like if they where roads.
:)
As we are heading into recession the gov will have to take a larger part in the economy and building fiber networks up to the home would really help the tech sector
Maybe thoses 15 000+ job loses at Nortel etc... could give the gov a kick to finally MOVE and get on this obvious revolution and this money making machine.
As for what you can do right here right now , let's mail your alleged "representatives" about it
Do what you wilt shall be the whole of the law Love is the law, love under will Capital drives the will of mankind
Sorry, piecewise, I have to disagree. When government does stuff private businesses do, everyone pays for it, even the people who don't want it. That's wrong, and generally leads to political fights, which get ugly and waste time. It's better to form a private assocation -- a bandwidth cooperative -- to solve this problem, and work closely with government to get permission to run cables, use public rights of way, etc.
-russ
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
I would like to see governments regulating the Broadband internet service a little more tightly, and maybe even the local govt. providing such access, but I would hate to move to the type of setup that electricity utilities have here in the Southeast, where each company is a government regulated monopoly. There is no competition, and since the govt. regulates what prices they can charge, the service is about as poor as can be. I wouldn't like this, however something needs to be done about a lot of phone companies who are providing broadband because they are doing the normal phone company thing: sticking it to the customers because at this time they are the only ones who can provide it. The following story will show my personal experience with this:
When I first accepted my job here in Atlanta, GA (actually Lawrenceville, a suburb) I visited apartment complexes to determine where I would live. One of the most important factors in my decision was whether or not the apartments offered high speed internet access, of any kind. To my delight, the lady at one of the nicer complexes pulled out a brochure from BellSouth FastAccess about their DSL connections, and informed me that each apartment was "pre-wired for DSL with fiber phone lines!" The brochure had all of this great hype about how you didn't have to have a second phone line, etc, and showed the price of $45/month and a $50 connection fee, DSL modem included! As you can imagine, I was excited about such a nice connection to the net and so that along with the other amenities led me to the decision to live there. Well, when I actually moved in and started setting up my utilities, I was told that in order to get my DSL connection I would have to pay a $250 installation fee, even though the brochure said nothing about that. Well as you can imagine, as a computer literate person I argued that I could easily install whatever DSL modem they brought me and I could plug it into the wall and get my connection working, but they were adamant that I had to get a professional installation. I called about 10 times and spent about 12 hours total on the phone with different types of employees of Bellsouth, and all said that my apartment wasn't ready for DSL, that I needed the prof. installation. This didn't make any sense to me because when we learned about DSL in school we were told that DSL is just a protocol that comes over your 2 wire home phone line and "piggybacks" over the signal, not interrupting phone conversations, and this was not at all something that needed anything more than a phone line... Anyway, long story short, I finally gave in and the installer came to my house with "DSL modem" in hand. It turned out to be a 10/100 Ethernet NIC and the professional install was needed because he had to splice two lines together to make 1 ethernet cable that ran from the network hub in the complex to a phone outlet that I specified (limiting my mobility) where he installed a RJ-45 jack so I could plug my computer into the Ethernet Network. In my opinion I was lied to by not only the apartment complex (pre-wired) but also BellSouth (advertised DSL, installed ethernet.) It took them a month after doing the install to get the access working because apparently they didn't have the network routers in place to support my neighborhood, so after $300 and having billy bob come and install my "DSL" connection and tell me all about "that dad burn internet," I still had nothing. Eventually I did get access though, and it really is very fast and convenient, but it sure isn't the low cost DSL connection advertised.
My point: phone companies are bastards like other utility companies, so I'd like to see the government step up regulation, but I'd hate it to become the same thing as the electricity market.
~ now you know
The US Postal system is a good metaphor for people to see, in part because the US Postal system is self-sufficient.
It's run as a governmental department, but it's supported entirely by the sale of its services, just as a municipal ISP might be.
Concerns about spending city resources on this kind of thing ("Spend it on fire departments and street signs, not broadband networks!") seem less reasonable in that light, perhaps.
I live in a small town where all we can get is dial-up access. The phone company will not upgrade their network because they say it is too expensive. The local cable company (Charter) has been totally non-responsive to our requests for cable internet.
So we took the ball in our own hands and the city just received a large grant from the state to build a high speed wireless network that will connect the entire town to the internet. Our project team just met for the first time last night.
We are all convinced that if the private sector won't respond, then the public utility model is the best approach.
Cedar Falls, IA has a Municipal Electrical Company. The utility here was already familiar with fiber optics with their local generating plant. They also already owned telephone poles to hang the cable on because of the municipal power company. The Cable TV Commission was responsible for building a fiber optic network between all government buildings including the library, hospitals, police, and fire stations. In addition, it was responsible for supplying cable TV to the City.
Approximately 1 year after Cable TV was installed the city was demonstrating Cable Modems to the citizens. I believe that this was in 1995 or 1996. We had cable modem service in this town about 3-4 years before TCI/AT&T brought it to either Waterloo or Cedar Falls. A friend ran his internet company using the city's business cable modem service for several years before it outgrew his house. AT&T also dropped their cable modem prices in this market to compete.
I understand that several other area towns have now installed their own Cable TV & Cable Modem systems.
When farmers earlier only had batteries and windmills it took a Fed Govt. program to get power out in the boonies where the PowCo deemed it 'unprofitable' to do so.
Having the local community install the fiber and provide access to it maybe the only answer for a lot of people. It is extremely hard to get people to invest money in small areas where there is a small population center. This problem should be viewed as an infrastructure problem. You can't attract industries without the proper infrastructure in place. More and more this means that not having broadband access will probably hurt your chances of attracting buisnesses esp high tech.
Just like the local community usually provides water, sewer, garbage, police, etc services, if they can't get industry to do then they'll have to provide broadband. Unfortunately, the state of Virginia passed a law making it illegal for city or county gov'ts to provide telecommunication services. The city of Bristol, Va, took this to court and won. They are planning on rolling out a fiber network that would serve the city.
Another community nearby, Abingdon, Va, has had fiber down their main street for a few years.The city provides the fiber and a connection while a local ISP NetAccess provides the bandwidth and manages the billing. (Congressman Boucher lives here by the way.)
most city governments are run by people who are not blessed with guru level knowledge. Most are AOLers. They get confused easily.
So if you have a larger group of geeks you can go in and take charge of this for the sake of the community. And of course, for your own benefit.
there is not a lot of motivation otherwise. They have a lot of other issues on their plate. Small things like taxes, etc.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Compare to electricity and phone service. Before the government stepped in, people outside of large cities were not serviced. It became apparent that eventually, most would be, but only at a high reletive cost. In the case of electricity, people formed coops that took advantage of special government loans. In the case of phone service, the government required phone companies to provide service to all communities in their territory.
So I guess what I'm saying is maybe a coop in which the city government is a partner or main contributer could work. The city would gain by being able to get better prices through volume for its own needs and by having happy citizens who get a service that nobody else will provide. In fact, I think I'll approach my city council and/or neighbors about this.
science is a religion
Hey, there's always http://www.hns.com/direcway/intro.htm . Only you have to deal with latency, Win9x/nt/2k boxes, and a goofy USB (?????????duh??????????) connection.
Wadsworth's Power and Cable division(NorthEast Ohio) has been providing cable modem service for over 2 years. Not only have provided affordable cable and data service to residents, the have forced their monoply provider to do the same. Many cities use the Wadsworth Cable System as a model for their own implementations.
Municipal systems can be bad or good based on the quality of the staff implementing. A good municipal system is a resource that adds value to the community the same as good schools and smooth roads. The promise of quality, affordable service is an excellent economic development tool.
On a personal note, my mother was on the beta rollout for the system. After two modems and new wiring, she has one of the stablest net connections I have ever seen.
âoeWho knew something as harmless as willful ignorance could end up having real consequences?â
we have municipal power and it works quite well... lower rates and fewer outages than in towns served by Boston Edison.
A succession of cable companies have delivered poor cable service and a succession of never-delivered promises of Internet access Real Soon Now.
The town has finally lost patience and has decided to provide its own cable TV service in addition to/in competition with private cable companies. This is supposed to be happening in the next year or so and is supposed to include Internet access. It will be interesting to see what happens.
Due to unavailability of cable Internet access and availability of Verizon DSL, I am a Verizon DSL subscriber. I'd give Verizon about a grade of D+ to C-. The actual Internet connectivity has been quite good, but as an internet SERVICES provider they are very poor--we keep experiencing LONG periods (weeks) during which email is unreliable or news servers are slow, to the point where I have stopped giving people my Verizon email address.
It will be interesting to see what happens. As I said, the Town is QUITE good in the sending-out-trucks and fixing-wires and accurate-billing department when it comes to lights, I don't think they can possibly be WORSE than the cable companies... and I think there's a very good chance they'll be better than Verizon.
There's no law of physics that says that government bureaucracies are ALWAYS inefficient and that private bureaucracies are ALWAYS efficient. I'm looking forward to municipal cable.
Coming from a Municipal background this is a really bad thing. Many local government officials are power-greedy idiots. (although every person in government is pretty much an idiot or thief) The last city council here wanted to outlaw saying anything "bad" about the council members. one councilwoman was quoted as "Free speech is dangerous, and we need to outlaw it".
It is exactly these types of self serving morons that get elected every day. Now give them control of something as complex as a data network?? They cant manage something as simple as Roads,water, ans sewer! You will not attract employees that are skilled to take care of it. (Working for the City really sucks if you are a foreward thinker and espically if you think out of the box.)
Nope, asking for a public network is like asking a thief to watch your wallet... You'll get your wallet, but all the content will be gone.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Not that I'm saying this is necessarily bad, but it conflicts with what you said.
The USPS has a legally mandated monopoly. It is illegal for anyone else to ship certain kinds of packages - and that helps keep USPS revenues up.
What kinds of packages? Packages which do not require rapid delivery. If it isn't time associated, you can't mail it any other way. You're not _allowed_ to undercut USPS on first-class mail, for instance.
Looking for freelance Actionscript (Flash/Flex) or ColdFusion work and/or freelance developers. Email me, put Slashdot
When I first heard about the power company deploying high speed networks I was excited. After talking to some people I found the real reason wasn't to give cheap high-speed access to the masses. What I found out was when TCI (local cable provider, later gobbeled up by at&t@home) was upgrading everything to fiber the city asked if they could use TCI's city-wide network to monitor power outages. TCI said no. Tacoma power then decided that they were going to deploy their own fiber within the city and directly compete with TCI.
Well now we have AT&T@Home, Tacoma Click, Qwest, Covad, and sattelite as options of high-speed access. Unlike AT&T who is your sole network provider, Tacoma Click will not sell access directly, and you are required to buy access from local ISP's. This results in Click's cablemodem access being no better speed-wise than good Qwest DSL!
Another downside to Click is the inability to leave city-limits.
I don't really mind double posts on
The reason businesses don't want to build out their networks is that once they do, they're required to allow other companies to use their infrastructure. The company that builds spends all the upfront money, and ends up with no advantage over its competitors. Everybody's best strategy is to let the other guy take the risk.
The city of Bloomington, IN is currently in the process of running conduit all over town for 1000BaseLX fiber. The press release from last year is here.
irb(main):001:0>
...and then voice over ip will shut the majority of phone companies down.
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
It seems that smaller communities need to do this as a utility. Comercial companies won't take the time to install the infrastructure since they percieve the risk too high. They don't want to take the time to do the research to determine if it could be profitable.
At the same time it is cost prohibitive to enter the broadband market as a small company, so we don't see small companies offering broadband (not just in small towns but anywhere). This makes it very unlikly that you will get much competition for small communities and it will be years before a large company decides to take the risk.
The other issue is the infrastructure and right of way issues can be a hassle to deal with and are more easily done by a goverment.
So small communities have both unknown market risk, and a scale that doesn't encourage compition so it seems like this makes sense.
So I would definitly say in a small community lobby for municpal Internet and use linking all the goverment buildings together as the basis of the network ring.
Of course if you get too small then your municpality won't have much advatage of scale.
"His[Mankind's] heaven is like himself: strange, interesting, astonishing, grotesque." -Satan "Letters From Earth" Mar
The postal service *does* have a monopoly. If you don't believe me, try starting up a first-class mail delivery service. You'll find police at your door to shut you down.
Notice that the USPS and FedEx do deliver to practically any place. You just have to pay more if you live in Alaska or Hawii. This is, it seems to me, as it should be-- if you choose to live in a place that's hard to deliver to, you pay the extra societal costs of getting mail. It's not like someone's going to go bankrupt from paying an extra 10 cents per letter for their mail.
The post office should be privatised. All this would really require is to repeal the laws making it illegal to compete with it in first-class mail. Then, when the private sector kicks the USPS's ass and takes away most of its customers, the government can either disband it or turn it into a truly private company that would have some incentive to modernise.
The problem with cable/DSL is that most cable and local phone companies are government-created monopolies. You generally have to get permission from the city council or county zoning board or whomever before you can lay cables. And not surprisingly, once one company has done it, they lobby hard to prevent any other company from laying competing lines. Result: monopoly.
I'm not sure what the exact solution is, but this is certainly not a market failure. What's needed is more genuine competition, not a government takeover of the industry.
Also, it seems to me that there are far more pressing societal problems than the lack of fast internet. I have it and love it, but I'm a middle-class yuppie college student. For your average American, having to dial in with a modem is an extremely minor annoyance. So there are more important things that governments should be doing, like plowing the streets and putting out fires. Let's get them to do a good job of that before we load them up with more responsibilities that rightly belong to the private sector, eh?
Not only would this get high bandwidth out to everyone; but
it would allow the local cities to offer incredibly high
bandwidth between city residents; so local 'net radio and
local video-on-demand is a real possibility.
Oh well, at least they are doing it now somewhere.
This is my signature. There are many signatures like it but this one is mine..
I saw a post a while back with an idea that I loved: have the infrastructure be built publically, but let ISPs compete to administer and provide services over the network. Not as in "bid and we'll create a contract and let you be the only business to do this and pay you" but as in "Hey, wanna provide services to people in our area? We'll rent you rights to provide it over our broadband network".
This could work with other utilities, too... it'd be cool if we had a public power grid but could choose from several electric companies. Or if none of the telcos actually owned the phone network, but all had to vie within the same public network to provide the best services. We'd have truer competition, and presumably better service..... (maybe).
Tweet, tweet.
I live near Indianapolis, IN, and the city recently signed an agreement with CityNet to allow them to run fibre optic lines through the existing sewer systm to connect buildings to the main fibre circuits for the city. This approach is already in use in Albuquerque, NM. Rather than ripping up our roads, a small robot travels along the sewer, laying the fibre. This is great news for those of us who drive through Indy, as there are already enough road construction projects clogging the streets.
How can I get my city to do this?
What about setting up a wireless broadband network? With some Lucent WiFi equipment, you can set up a network with a hi speed central point that communicates to wireless gateways around the city set up in neighborhoods, shopping centers, parks, and schools. I know that data security would be a problem since the WIFI encryption system would worthless but a https proxy caching server could be set up for secure data and the central point so users could simply log in to the server and browse the web from there (like anonimizer.com, only using https instead). Imagine, walking down the street with your PocketPC and being able to surf the net, chat, and place video calls. Bandwidth limitations would have to be implimented. Any suggestions? And yes, I know about the small time free networks on street corners and around cafes.
>The post office should be privatised. All this would really require is to repeal the laws making it illegal to compete with it in first-class mail.
>Then, when the private sector kicks the USPS's ass and takes away most of its customers, the government can either disband it or turn it into a
>truly private company that would have some incentive to modernise.
Perhaps a noble thought. But what about when a privatized postal service decides that rural mail pickup and delivery is no longer profitable? The reason the Post Office's monopoly in certain areas is mandated is so that they can afford to give 100% coverage. Let all of the more profitable parts get stripped away, and the outlying service would get even more expensive, since it would turn into a bunch of disconnected isolated routes.
As to why 100% coverage... The government *needs* some sort of secure communications channel with everyone, if only to take care of tax time in April. (By law the mail constitutes a secure channel, even if that may not be true in fact.)
The free market is a wonderful invention. But just like to a man with a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, one must not start believing that the free market can be the solution to every problem.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Excellent! I'm supprised by all the negative posts here by people who seem to want to criple themselves without reason. BASJE, for intstance, wrote, "Of course, there will be people whining they cannot run servers off that, or other other limitations. Those people should realize, that, as with all public services there'll be a certain service level for a certain price. If you want/need anything other, you'll have to pay for it yourself.", as if there's a real technical reason to limit bandwith uplinks and as if people can't chose to pay for good bandwith through a municipality. These arguments sound chillingly similar to the old comercial software trolls, "you only get what you pay for and giving me all your money is the best of all worlds." The net was designed as a collection of equal peers and changes weaken it. The web will only be a viable media for publication if it remains free and accesible. Do not surrender your rights to publish on this new media for the sake of a few companies profits!
But pretty sucky for the administrators who have to have configs available for everything from Win98 to VMS to OS2 to BeOS.
Well, what's the problem? Set up a standard for connections that's stable and works. If M$ wants to make things hard for their users, too bad. The post office does not teach you how to pack letters, do they? They simply have guidlines for size and weight. At some point some users have to do something for themselves, and it's no different from the inhomogenious world that admins have to deal with right now.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Check out Black Hills Power and Light's fiber optic SONET ring to connect a series of hubs within Rapid City and the Northern Black Hills communities as well as connecting its major customers directly onto its fiber optic backbone network. Black Hills FiberCom is a facilities-based provider that owns and manages its infrastructure. Another company DAKSOFT provides support for South Dakota organizations entering into the Internet space.
In places where this has worked, the municipality has often had public hydro utility, or GAS supply utility.
In both cases, they have a place where they can string fibre. Electrrical utilities were early users of fibre as it is immune from the noise problems that can be expected with low-votage signaling in a tunnel beside a high-voltage power line. The gas folks can also run fibre INSIDE the gas pipes, as their is no sparking hazard.
A utility is already sending bills, so billing is an incremental cost rather than a major project.
The cost of installing broadband is mostly in the cost of initial install of the infrastucture.
Another Wild-Eyed CANADIAN.
Having read many of the posts here, I find a great deal of mis-information being bandied about, as well as a general lack of understanding as to the current situation involving Muni nets.
First, the RCOC's (Regional Bell Operating Companies) have lobbied furiously against the creation of these networks. Cable has lobbied too, but cable companies have very little influence in statehouses and capital hill, as compared to the RBOCs, which weild enormous lobbying power, especially at the state level. As a result of this all-out lobbying effort, many states flatly prohibit municipalities from building any sort of network which will compete in any way against an RBOC.
Cities have fought back, however. Many towns, where broadband or even basic cable television service are sorely lacking or nonexistent, want to build these networks. There are several lawsuits right now seeking to overturn restrictive state laws by citing a provision in the Telecom Act of 96 which provides that no state may enact law which prohibits, or has the effect of prohibiting the ability of "any entity" from providing telecom service. The FCC, ever beholden to the RBOCs, ruled originally that "any entity" did not include municipal governments, as a sop to telcos who feared taxpayers might just say "screw this, lets build our own". However, there are strong signs that a federal appelate court will overrule the FCC, and force states to allow muni's to start building nets, if taxpayers (us) vote to do so.
The fundamental question is: do we have the right to decide to provide our own?
Municipal governments provide 90% of direct government benefits, to most citizens. The provide streets, street signs, trash pickup, water service, maintain zoning standards, handle legalities like deeds and property matters, and intercede on behalf of citizens in a great many matters. It is an incontrovertible fact, that municipal governments are the best, most effective, and most efficient segment of our democratic system of government here in the US.
Even so, very few people bother to take notice of what your local city government is doing (which no doubt contributes to their efficiency).
I've seen several people here state, that City Governments have no experience with IT, are clueless, incapable, etc. This is flatly false.
City governments are no different than any other large company these days, and all of them larger than about 30,000 population have IT departments. The people that work in those departments often face daunting challenges, as the perils of the annual budget year cycle, and requirements for "low bid" purchases, force them to try and operate non-homogenous networks. They don't have the luxury of saying "100% company X" on anything. IT people that can keep networks like that running, must have skillsets that span very wide areas of knowledge.
And what the RBOCs fear most: Muni's have experienced and expert people in the tough areas of network operation already in place. Consider this: Munis regulate every inch of right-of-way in the "last mile", because they own it. Their people are more familiar with it than anyone, anywhere. Munis also have experts on telco regulation on staff, to deal with franchise agreements, rate regulation, etc. Muni's have contruction inspectors, log-standing relationships with Contractors, and experience in utility location/colocation. And Muni's have strong IT staff, as a rule.
There's one last thing to consider. Are you pissed at the service you recieve from your telco or cable company? Whatyougonnadoaboutit? Answer: not much you can do.
But consider - if your local goverment were your provider, what could you do then? Vote. Run for City Council. Local politics is personal folks - and unlike national politics, your personal problems are likely shared by your next-door neighbor. You as an individual can easily effect the outcome of a City Council election. Think on that, as you consider whether you're likely to get better service from a Muni telco.
I have been a customer of both MediaComm/AT&T/@Home and Cedar Falls Utilities Cybernet (Cedar Falls, IA). My MediaComm service has been marginal at best; bad modems, crappy bandwidth, and work arounds to account to allow for my operating system of choice. :)
My service from CFU was a much better experience. Better technical support, when needed, OS freedom, and best of all, no 128kbs upstream cap.
I think having a local service rather than a national broadband mass of companies has several advantages both its customers and the internet in general. Small localize services can better control the amount of spam running through thier networks, do some preventative virus blocking and security checks while still providing all the web, mail, news, and IRC that you could hope for. And in my case, it's all put together in just one bill along with my water, tv, electric, etc. A small, but definatly side effect.
Now, if only my landlord had not signed a bulk contract for all his units to use AT&T.
cfu.net
@home
We, in Holland Michigan (Birthplace of Slashdot!), have been struggling with this for quite a while, as we have a City-owned fiber infrastructure, and a city ordinance that restricts commercial fiber build-outs. The local residents have suffered because the local cable company (now AT&T) has been very slow to provide enhanced cable services (read digital cable and cable Internet access) because of the restrictions. Currently the City cannot actively compete as a CLEC due to municipal law. They are trying to change that.
It's quite a battle here in Michigan with Ameritech. They will do all in their power to protect their Monopoly/Oligopoly. Lots of info available at Neil Lehto's page
The all-important, all-missing, Last Mile alternatives are what drives Municipalities to enter the communications infrastructure foray. Residents and resident business demand broadband, and can't get it (cost-effectively or at all) from their local communications provider. The advent of Broadband Cable and wireless, however, puts any Municipal infrastructure solution further down on the list for resolving last mile communications problems.
Truth in advertising kind of loses its importance when there is no competition. I'm sure they're setting up infrastructure as quickly as they can afford, and you'll get your broadband eventually. In the meantime, you don't lose more than a few minutes on the phone checking if it's ready yet. You're not getting screwed or anything.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
It is no coincidence that until now there hasn't been one succesfull case of a mutual cabling a whole city with fiber.
I live in Vienna, VA. Vienna is a fairly well-to-do suburb of Washington, D.C., arguably the most important city on earth.
I cannot get DSL. Verizon claims it's not in my area. According to DSLreports.com, I'm within the requisite distance to my CO, and Speakeasy, Megapath, and Earthlink should all be capable of selling me service. But when I tried to actually buy it, in the time between when the order was processed and when it was installed, I was told that I'm actually too far from my CO, and that Verizon had given them bad information.
I could get cable, but @home is one stale bean fart away from going under.
Some choice, isn't it? A significantly higher percentage of Koreans have broadband than Americans. Here's a product which everyone wants, which everyone wants to pay for, and which the various communications companies are seemingly unwilling/unable to provide.
Screw 'em. If I could get broadband like I get my water, I'd do it in a heartbeat.
Yes, Alberta Supernet is a great idea - we provide technical service to a school district, and they keep talking about how great the Supernet will be, and I believe them.
Of course, they've been talking about this for the last three years.
In the mean time, we've moved them from switch56 to IDSL/SDSL and VPNs (depending on the school - they're a BIG district.)
Supernet is a great idea, but at the moment, it's just vapour - and (at least to me) it appears that this isn't going to change for at least the next couple of years.
RIAA and MPAA sue Los Angeles county for copyright infringement. According to lawyers for the plaintiff, the Los Angeles country department of water and power allowed users to transmit copyrighted information over their facilities, causing great financial loss.
(6 Months Later) As part of the settlement, the rock band Rage Against the Machine has been granted ownership of the San Onofre nuclear power plant.
Lead singer for RATM was quoted as saying "I gotta run and grab about a ton of fertilizer and diesel fuel. We will show those orange county capitalist pigs to fuck me out of my royalty checks!
sigh.....
When I moved here five years ago Time Warner owned the local cable monopoly, and began about that time running fiber throughout the area. Before they finished, they sold to AT&T which promptly shelved the project. Dialup access is spotty at best because the phone lines here are very old and not getting upgraded, so forget DSL. The local community is mostly not interested in high speed access, so forget municipal help in any way.
I only hope that now that Comcast bought the local cable monopoly from AT&T, they will keep their promise and open up cable modem access next month. There is no other choice.
no big sig
and yet I still pay my taxes for it. Granted I don't buy stamps, but I have to drive in to town and take it to the 3rd party place, mailboxes etc. :(
The nearest post office is 40 mins away
Perhaps college students/recent grads are just one demographic, but those of us who have had a large chunk of bandwidth in the past miss it sorely when its gone. And that doesn't even touch on how nice it is to have an always on connection. I may be a gamer geek but I know a slew of people who aren't that want broadband. Maybe they don't need it in the strictest sense of the word, but they certainly want it.
If not now, when?
I live in Tacoma. Click began as the local electric company modernizing the way they manage their equipment. At some point they realized that if they were going to install a city wide optical network to all of the sub stations and transformers it wouldn't be much more of a leap to extend this to all of the homes. Now every house, business, school and government building is wired for DS-1 through OC-48 service. Govertment, Schools, Library are wired for free.
Check out their site:
http://www.click-network.com/
-Scott scott@surrealistic.org
I'm usually against the government getting involved in just about anything, because they do tend to screw things up a lot. But the things that I consider valid for the government are basic things that:
A) everyone needs
B)for which there can be little to no market distinction
C)has a costly infrastructure associated with it
One such case is vaccinations. A vaccine will either work or it won't, and every child has to have them before they begin school. Company A's brand will really differ very little from Company B's, and I'd hate to see what kind of disgusting commercials companies would produce to try to distinquish thier product from a competitors. ("See twisted knarled Eddy? He used the wrong Streptomiacin vaccine!)
Another good case is school systems.
I see internet service as being the same. Everybody needs or will soon need a connection if they want to exist normally in a developed nation. One pipe is nearly identical to the next, and it is starting to get ridiculous to have a twisted pair in the ground next to a coax cable next to a fiber optic line while there is a satellite dish on the house next door and a wireless transmitter on a tower down the street. A simple connection (as opposed to the things that the broadband services currently want to provide--they want to sell you 'services', ie. baggage you don't need) is not difficult to provide and puts everyone at a level playing field.
In my view, government run internet equates to government run roads. It's too expensive for everyone to build and manage their own.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Here in Provo, UT, the city implemented a munincipal cable network. Lots of people were against it. The only reason that I was for it was because AT&T was so against it. It even allegedly took some of it's business away from a local cable competitor (King Cable) because they were installing the Provo Cable network. They shud down after that.
The problem persists that still, there are areas of Provo that were supposed to be serviced by AT&T 2 years ago that still don't have any broadband access! Spanish Fork is worse. It's on a digital loop, so there is no DSL service. I was lucky to buy a house in a neighborhood that was built on fiber--Our spanish fork cable network is almost running Spanish Fork Community Network and I get my access at the end of October. Go figure. AT&T never showed an interest in us. Now they are sending flyers for digital cable, trying to lure us away. Anyway, should get pretty good pipe. This is tradtionally a farming community and there won't be that many people interested in real bandwidth. I don't think they are putting any bandwidth caps or download restrictions-there aren't any TOS that I can see. It'll be pretty interesting to see how this goes.
Anyway, it's good to see communities stand up to the big corporations. My local dollars pay for this along with the telecommunications act of 1996, which money mostly has gone to baby bells to install digital loops in local areas. So it's nice to know I've got an alternative coming soon that I won't have to fill the coffers of AT&T or Qwest.
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'
Not true... unless you experience it you may not know that you want it, but once you *do* experience it, then you never go back.
I didn't get my Adelphia PowerLinc cable-modem until dozens of non-geek friends and acquaintances told me how great their broadband was.
The problem lies within Bell Systems using unfair practices to hinder competition in the broadband maket.
Government is big and mismanaged, do you really want them running your ISP?
If competition in the market exists you will see lower prices, better services, and outreach to new areas because businesses will have to create these systems in order to remain in the market.
For more info check out http://www.competitivebroadband.org
85% of Americans think this signature sucks
(Sorry for the AC nick; don't have time to register) Just wanted to report that the city of Ashland, Oregon, pop. 20,000, 15 miles north of the CA/OR border on I-5, has a municipal network. It provides both cable tv and internet connectivity via cable modem. I don't know the exact speed but it's much faster than the DSL I had last year in Eugene, OR.
Ashland, BTW, is the home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, which has a regional/national reputation, runs 9 months out of the year and is the base for the town's economy.
Given that we accept that proposition, it might make sense for gov't to build communications infrastructure, which we have seen that private capital is doing slowly, if at all.
If they do this, I think tht they should then make the infrastructure available to any private outfit which wants to run an isp/telco. Ideally, it should be rented to several, which citizens could choose between.
Notice that the reason that we aren't seeing broadband made available seems to be as much due to regulatory difficulties as to high costs. The telcos have their network and monopoly as artifacts of the current and past regulatory environment. They can use this to chop the legs off of anyone who tries to compete using the telco system, and no-one can afford to build their own system when the telcos have an existing system which is at least partially amortized.
So, having started to ``manage'' our economy, we need more government intervention to ``fix'' the problems we caused.
See what I've been reading.
Access == Accumulate Copyright IP
Acumulate Copyright IP == Wealth.
99%,1% vs 1%,99% Wealth == Just plain EVIL(tm)
Therfore...
FCC == Just plain EVIL(tm)
Time to elect FCC officals directly.
There goes any shot for an amature radio licence.
Can't run local municipal Internet access my ass.
Novel theory: Modern Man evolved from psychopath
why shouldn't municipalities take it upon themselves to deliver service for their constituents?
Because the government (in America) is not in the utility or telecom business. Show me where, in the Constitution, it says that local tax dollars should be spent on any of this?
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
I'd be real interested if anyone knows of this being done by a homeowners association vice a municipal government entity, especially in Virginia (see post above about Virginia law). I'm about to have a house built about 50 miles outside of D.C., and right now it looks like dial-up only, despite all of Verizon's promises, and I wonder if it'd be worth approaching the HOA board with this......
Many neighborhoods, condos, and apartment complexes across the water in Sweden have gone ahead and installed their own network without waiting.
Can someone who lives over there tell a little more about it or point to some resources for ideas?
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
The city of Lowell, MI owns a hydro-electric damn. So they provide power to city residents. When cable came along, the same entity became the provider of cable TV to the city and sorounding areas. They are much less expensive than most.
2 years ago I bought my house because they told me I wold get cable modem RSN. 18 months ago they told me I would have it in Dec. 2000. I'm still waiting, and their answer has changed back to RSN. Their cable TV is great, but they seem to be lost when it comes to broadband.
When VPNs are outlawed, only outlaws have VPNs.
But it costs the same amount for me to send a letter from the post office to a P.O. Box somewhere as it does for me to send it from a really remote village to some other remote village. Even though it is more expensive to deliver the second letter, the consumer's price is the same. Subsidy!
This is exactly the point. The telco monopolies were formed with a similar policy: you paid the same rate for a phone line if you were downtown next to the CO or out in the sticks half way up the side of a mountain.
The same is true for FedEx and other private delivery services, more or less. It costs FedEx less money to deliver from Philadephia PA to NY, NY than it does from Tuskegee AL to Grass Range MT. They make the PA to NY customers "subsidize" the AL to MT customers -- because the service is more valuable that way.
What you are paying for in the case of the telephone and in the case of mail is simple and universal access to everyone, everywhere. You don't mind subsidizing somebody else's FedEx because you are paying to make sure the service is there when you do need it, and you won't need some complex algorithm to figure out what it will cost.
People have lost sight of the value of this because they take it for granted in places where it has already proven itself.
The Internet works the same way. I remember when I was young, the excitement of logging on to a machine in London UK from Cambridge MA over the ARPANET -- for free (well, paid from my parents taxes and my tuition I guess). If the Internet was designed using a connection oriented protocol such as ATM, we would probably be charged by the geographic barriers between endpoints (think local calls, LATA calls, domestic long distance, international long distance). There have been immense economic side effects of the design goal to make the network more survivable by routing each packet individually.
For example, I'm in Melrose MA, about six or seven miles from the Slashdot data center, which I believe is in Waltham, MA. I'm probably "subsidizing" your connection -- except that it would actually cost me more to "call" Waltham on a regular basis with some connection oriented system.
A high speed, free metropolitan network would facilitate businesses in the town, reduce traffice by enabling telecommuting, assist government, and improve property values -- provided that the means to use the network are universally affordable. Every household has a TV. A fairly decent computer can be had for about the same cost today, and probably as little as a hundred dollars in a few years.
Public investment is not the only way to do it, but the public entities have different agendas than the private ones.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
The fact that a municpal would have to increase the taxes of everyone in the city in order to provide a non essential service is a bit disturbing. What percentage of a city actually needs broadband? Are we now saying that broadband is on the same level as electricity, water, plumbing and plowing streets? How many people above 60 are willing to have their taxes increased so that a bunch of 14 year olds can play counterstrike.
All that you need to get from the net can be done over dial up. Broadband for the most part is a luxury that I would rather not have my taxes paying for. There are much better ways to spend my money, thank you.
..but a good way to whip a commercial provider into getting their shit together and actually carrying out the "provider" part. I come from a small town in the middle of nowhere that received cable from a company mostly interested in collecting bills and not providing much. Being in the sticks, it was the only company around for cable. So, the city council decides to build their own network using their own dish and equipment. Lo and behold, the outside company suddenly started offering great prices and service. Channels like HBO stopped cutting out intermittently. Complaints were answered.
Needless to say, a vast majority of the town signed on to the municipal network anyway, which has worked quite well to this day.
----- The dumber people think you are, the more surprised they will be when you kill them.
Just so: USPS competition would be great if it would provide the services everywhere, but as that won't happen (not profitable in many areas) you need a subsidy if you want to ensure that everyone gets service.
Now replace "USPS" with "universal broadband" and you have a case for gov't cabling. Of course everything hinges on the "if you want to ensure everyone gets service" part, but that is left as an exercise for the reader.
I live in Tacoma, WA and have the !Click network at my home. For half the price of @Home, I get four times the connection speed, no slowdown because all of my neighbors have the same service, and 24x7 connectivity and support. Their cable TV system is about half price too, for the same channels as AT&T's cable offering. Muni run cables systems? Hell ya! :)
~cwg
Theoretically, the Constitution only applies to Federal entities. Practically, speaking that's not always true, but doesn't push the argument in your favor.
More specifically, powers not explicity granted to Congress are reserved for the states (10th amendment). And municipalities (cities, counties) are generally charted by the state. Any limits I would imagine would strictly be in the interpritation of the state constitutions and the municipal charters.
Also, the feds have a long history of acting on stuff like this. AT&T had a federally authorized monopoly for decades. Finally, municipalities have a long history of operating utilities. Water, trash collection and electricity distribution are three examples. I fail to see why this would be much different.
--Humpty Dumpty was pushed!
Whether or not there is competition is irrelevant to truth in advertising. FWIW, there is competition in my area, in the form of Millenium Digital Media, another local cable company. But at least they say flat out on their website that they don't have broadband in my area yet, and it'll be a while before it happens. My decision to go with ComCast was based on the availability of broadband, which, unfortunately, was a sham. And that's why there are two letters of complaint now in the hands of Maryland regulatory officials. By themselves, they're not much. But with all the other letters people write, it speaks volumes. (Sorta like M$... it's not that they did one thing wrong, they made a habit of continuing to do things wrong. Just like ComCast seems to be)
I suspect that one of these choices is incorrect. Correct.
own metropolitan internet back in 1995. The telco's and cable companies lobbied the state legislature and passwed a law that prohibited municipalities in Texas from building, owning or subsidising data networks
Six years later some of us have DSL and roadrunner. But I think most folks still would have prefered the city services. Telecom regulation is a joke, and Southwestern Bell is operated by criminals, thugs and extortionists.
The key is making sure the large investors and executives get their cut of the government money. There is nothing wrong with subsidizing business, in fact in various ways (exclusionary trade policies, defense spending, sports stadiums, etc.) its done all the time here. If you can work out a way where the current owners and executives, within the public apparatus, can skim more money off of the top than they do right now as "private" companies it would be an easy sell to the business community and conservative establishment.
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
These laws may exist. But usually sending things USPS priority is FASTER than either UPS or FedEx Ground (not 2-day or any of that junk). So why haven't I been locked up for sending things UPS Ground?
"(Man) tries to live his own life as if he were telling a story. But you have to choose: live or tell." --Sartre
Adelphia in this region is total ass. Multi-minute packet-loss, high latencies, horrible tech support (to report problems between them and their providers), and it's almost worthless to try and e-mail them information.
However, the majority of the people in this region that use it are the same people that go to Staples and buy Compaq computers and sit and use ICQ all day, not play Quake 3 or write code.
The person you're replying to is either stupid, a troll, a stupid troll, or a stupid libertarian troll.
I need a certified electrician to interface my house with the public power. I need a certified plumber to interface with public water.
The power companies don't care what we do once we get it it, as long as it is standard at the curb. And they don't care about anything on your side of the curb, except that it meets code.
Does the city have a bunch of plumbers on staff, or electricians, to come take care of you? No, it is your responsibility. It is your responsibility to get the service to your house from the curb, it is your responsibility to make sure it is standards compliant. Just as it would be your responsibility to make sure you communicated with whatever protocol they told you to, in whatever fashion they told you.
To make a long post even longer, all they have to do is provide a wire, and if you can't communicate with it, they don't care. They aren't discriminating if you don't like the fact they require DHCP. They aren't discriminating if they don't let you run VPN's, those are just the standards you have to live with, and their system administrators don't have to worry about you, or your systems at all.
I can see independent network consultants popping up in these communities like crab grass.
...as long as no municipality decides to grant a coercive monopoly to their local Internet.
I have not yet seen anyone point out this fact about Tacoma's system: it was an add-on to a planned upgrade. The city-run public electric utility was planning to add some wires so that they could read people's electric meters without sending someone physically out to the house. They reasoned that running the extra wires to set up a cable system was a small extra cost, conducted some studies, and realized they'd make the money back very quickly.
Many posters' comments I've read are severely misinformed about public power utilities. Particularly in the Pacific Northwest, they are generally viewed as more efficient and more trustworthy. Certainly much more trustworthy than local broadband providers (Qwest and AT&T cable). Stories coming out of California during the energy crisis, where municipal public utilities (like LA's) had plenty of power, while customers of private companies like PG&E suffered rolling blackouts, only reinforce what it common knowledge on the West Coast: municipal public utilities are a good deal.
In a bond election for $5 million of bonds to create cable and broadband services, the current cable provider put up a very large fight - and lost. The citizens voted at an over 85% rate to create broadband/internet/cable as a utility.
The results can be seen at http://www.cfu.net/index.shtml . I get most of my mail from Cedar Falls with addresses ending @cfu.net.
My parents, in their 70's are happy to send and receive multimedia presentations, and to create web pages and mailing lists. They get no static about running Mac OS and other non win items.
I would be happy to switch to a municipal system here - that way there would be some public servant I could shake down when things are going poorly.
(My father-in-law, also in his 70's, ran into the street to beg the competing cable firm to wire him up. Customer satisfaction at its nadir.)
If one looks at the history of why the telephone system is so universal, I think there are 3 key points - first, a monopoly was granted to AT&T in order to guarantee its financial survival; second was the requirement that AT&T provide universal access (in return for the monopoly), and thirdly, that AT&T was forbidden to engage in "value added" services, an arena in which they could leverage their access monopoly to exclude innovation and competition.
Wouldn't it be nice if we could get this for the Internet? First, municipal level monopolies that provide universal access (this is how cable networks were until a few years ago). But a very important part of the deal is to restrict higher level services - i.e., the monopoly provides only *transport* - IP. Additional, this new carrier should be a "common carrier" - they can't discriminate either on types of customers or on whats in the IP packets. However, since the common carrier can't be responsible for content, an "internet driver's license" might be required of users of this network for which they specifically acknowledge their responsibilites.
Many ISPs are already evolving to not be involved with IP level processing - it gets outsourced to backbone providers and access wholesalers. So the model wouldn't change much for "retail" ISPs and their users. Instead, my proposal encourages the emergence of real IP access networks instead of stupid tricks with copper leftover from older days.
Of course, it'd be a friggin miracle if any of this really happened, given the total dominance of the regulators by the regulated. Perhaps we'll see this in other countries first, perhaps with newer technologies like IPv6.
See also my keynote from the Hot Interconnects conference at http://www.lyon-about.com/pres/hoti.[ppt,pdf].
This is trolling.
It oughtn't be encouraged.
Maybe some kind of private organzization should look into it.
Wal*Mart has lowered the cost of purchasing for the poor by starting out rich and using that money and the associated power to manufacture more poor. Steamroll mom and pop, put them out of business, then employ them in a demeaning greeter job for minimum wage; they gotta eat too, right? So they have to work somewhere, right? And where the fuck else are the gonna work when Wal*Mart has eliminated every other business in town?
And if you don't think the Waltons-or whoever owns the joint these days- (i.e. the rich) are winning (i.e. making money hand over fist with no regard for the wellbeing of *anyone* except themselves), then it is you, sir, who has his head up his butt.
Nice things are nicer than nasty ones.
Public utilities don't have the same enforcement powers as private companies over their own property. They can't concern themselves with content or abuse of their systems as closely as a private company can.
I know that private companies suck at this too, but when they get off their butts to fix an abuse problem, like a spammer, they can kick them off. "We reserve the right to refuse service." Public utilities can't do that as easily because they're public, especially when it turns into an 'essential service.'
Is there a way for a publicly owned operation, like a municipal ISP, to enforce a set of terms of use? If so, I'd like to see something like that hammered out. I also seem to recall some cities are run by a 'corporation' (such as the Corporation of Richmond, British Columbia) and they're effectively a 'privately operated city.' These guys might have an easier time operating a municipal ISP because they are 'private' and can enforce a set of terms.
Use Evolution instead of Outlook? Bewa
No, I don't think you should "clog up" any network, private or public. What do you have in mind, pray tell? It's very difficult to clog things up with original content shared with friends.
What I want is for people to co-operate and build networks. FREE networks that you can do what you want with to compete with the current crop of TOS gimped cable companies and DHCP dial ups. Bleh! Sure, it will cost money but public utilities are almost always cheaper than unregulated monopoly franchises like we have now.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Let the censorship wags have their own range of IP addresses. Call it "family-friendly", "hate-less", or whatever they want. But the rest of us will just keep on calling it "content-free".
Why shouldn't local governments solve the problem? Yes, they should! Oh, local governments CAUSED the problem. Oops.
Let's review why your RBOC has a monopoly. It is the only one that can connect twisted pair to your home. It has the right of way, the only right of way in most cases to connect. AT&T is trying to break that monopoly with coaxial cable connections, but with at best limited success.
Your local government could just allow a private company to bypass your RBOC and go ahead and do it instead. Or more than one.
Local government created the monopoly. Then it presented itself as the only solution to the monopoly it created and allows. Then, it tries to skim its own cream by pricing itself not at a market price and providing market services, but parasitically pricing itself very near the monopoly cost.
Gee how generous.
- I like the comparison: in fact I like it a lot, with one caveat: most communities are willing to cut behind-the-scenes deals to larger businesses in order to their employees, etc. into the tax revenue base. So what's to stop the same biased pricing structures, etc. to be inflicted on the little guys, aka the citizens of the community.
- Similarly, do I pay for how much bandwidth is used by others in the muni that are browsing my content? Outside the muni-? What kind of monitoring? I mean, if a city says you used $xxx dollars in water, you pay it or they do nasty things like putting tax liens against your property, etc.
- Most communities also have certain standards over what you can put "down the drain" so to say, and polluters can face heavy fines.
- Reversing the last point: what kind of monitoring of the content that a user is browsing, and who protects any rights to at least a semblance of privacy on a quasi- governmental network? Would a person browsing certain kinds of sites my internet use subject me to police scrutiny, for example, based on the type of sites I browse?
I guess that most if what I am thinking about is that what I do with the water coming down the pipe is my own private business so long as the water I return to the system isn't unduly polluted. But nothing about my Internet usage isn't remotely monitorable by a city-run ISP. Let me know what y'all think...However, what if a person had the ability to ran a server on my broadband connection to the muni- network to distributed adult porn, hate propoganda, or other forms of speech that are currently "protected", i.e. not against the law but that most people would agree are morally questionable? Could the muni legally punish that person for "polluting" the local broadband?
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
Wellington, New Zealand, did this around four years ago with CityLink, and it has worked really well for the city, fostering quite a lot of internet connectivity in the days before the telcos really had their act together.
My company have bootstrapped ourselves into the whole area of developing and serving dynamic content, and using this was the first step that we needed to take three years ago. Without it we wouldn't be where we are today.
I'm not so sure if it is quite as needed now, although on a different scale I guess it has a lot of value. I also do some work for a small-town ISP who provide connectivity at special rates to schools and so forth, subsidised by the commercial providers.
The experience with municipal power indicates that this is not beneficial in the long term. The municipal power systems grow to be more expensive, lower quality, poorer service than commercial power.
Excuse me? I've got three letters for you, honey: DWP. Where Pacific Gas and Electric and SoCal Edison are either already bankrupt or teetering on the brink, the LA Department Of Water And Power has been providing us world-class service at low costs for years and years. Rolling blackouts? Not in DWP territory. We haven't had blackouts anywhere else in CA either, but we've had freaky weather this Summer and the relatively low temperatures have spared us the promised power crisis.
"Deregulation" has fscked up most of California's grid to no end. But not in Los Angeles. Thanks, DWP, you rock.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Government intervention in a capitalist market should take place only when a good or service being provided is monopolized. Monopolization is certainly possible where physical medium is layed at great expense; whoever owns the cable can then dictate how it is used. This is why AT&T was broken up. When a good or service is not monopolizable, then the government has no business sticking its nose into the situation. It can only make things worse in this case.
The real question at hand is whether or not this particular service is subject to being monopolized.
An unjust law is no law at all. - St. Augustine
According to Information Week article, starting last month most of the USPS Priority and Express mail is being hauled by FedEx for the USPS in exchange for having FedEx drop boxes for returned goods at post offices across the US.
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I am not so sure this is a great idea. A few people have made mention of AFN (Ashland Fiber Network), http://www.ashlandfiber.net and how pleased they are with the service. But has Ashland even come close to breaking even on the project. I suppose they could raise taxes (or fees) to cover the missing revenue. (Ashland already has a 5% meal tax.) also EWEB (Eugene Water and Electric Board), http://www.eweb.org has scaled back their plans to run a fiber network in the city of Eugene. Don't get me wrong I don't think many of the cable companies are making much money right now either. (I think @home closed at .37 cents today.) But they can really only raise rates, or take a loss, but the City could tack on an extra dollar or two to your next Happy Meal to make up the difference.
Also do you not run into a bit of a conflict of interest when a city gets involved with something like this? Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't the city charge some pretty hefty fees to the cable companies in order for them to be able to provide services. (I suppose the city is exempt to those fees.)
This is bad to have communities build their own networks. The good thing is have the fiber laid down. The bad thing is to have the municipality run it. It just takes too much resources. What would be better is to have the municipality lay the fiber down and have ISPs/backbone providers connect to it. Then the Municipality will get revenue from the ISPs who needs to use the backbone to supply DSL, Dedicated and Dialup pools for the community.
Municipalities can cause havok both in the business world and the IT world as it does not have the resources let alone the knowledge to properly manage a vast network.
Having municipalities Rent out the fiber strands to ISPs would be smarter as the Municipalities would NOT need to buy extremely expensive routers to manage it. All they do is become the fiber provider while the ISPs manage their own equipment or pool together to share routers and switches for these types of networks.
Would you like your money to be lost in an infrastructure where individual municipalites are managing? They would not have the software and hardware neccessary to control illegal activity, DoS, and manage quality of service (QoS).
Having the ISPs take control of the fiber with a rule that they MUST share the costs of the equipment with others who connect to it would be a better decision.
*Headline News* censorship shuts down the Internet! More at 6PM!
Granted, this is focusing on the Richmond, Va. right now, but the uniqueness of the model is flexible enough to consider other regions starving for broadband services. The spin on the model is to sell broadband access and equipment (either via fixed wireless, frame relay, whatever) to businesses, such as coffeeshops, restaurants, and any other entity which may benefit from having a wireless public access point in their facility which may be used by anyone with a laptop and their own radio card.
There are many Freenets around but they all base their models on turning around and giving away their providers' access, which is commonly a violation of the providers' TOS agreements.
There are many issues to think about with this particular model, i.e. security, configuration, compatiblity, etc., but I truly believe it could be very successful, IMHO.
On the same day as the "municpal network" article, the WSJ featured an article on the Grant County PUD's network. Grant County PUD is in the process of rolling out a Gigabit Fiber-to-the-home network. Zipp. Zipp should be to (most) everyone in the county in seven years. The rollout began about three months ago and there are currently around 500 customers that are hooked up or in the process of being hooked up.
- de c01/powerpays_7-16.html
The PUD isn't directly providing services, rather they charge 'providers' an access fee for using their fiber. They are restricted, by law, to providing wholesale access to their telecommunications infrastructure (fiber).
Currently, there are about seven ISP's and three companies darn close to offering cable television on Zipp. Phone service should be ready sometime next year. All this is happening in place that would, otherwise, be waiting years before getting broadband internet access.
The Internet access is tremendous. Speeds are in the neighborhood of a 1.5 Mbps, both up and down. The prices range from $21.95 to $25.95. File sharing on fiber rules. Cheap.
With fiber at my home and a router, I could run an ISP from my closet. Cool.
The cable companies are going to be providing cable/internet packages. Cheap as well. $39.95 for basic cable and 'high-speed' Internet access.
When a person signs up for service through the PUD's Zipp network, the PUD will install a Gigabit fiber switch (a World Wide Packets unit) on the the customers home. That's their point of demarcation. They are not charging any setup fee. In fact, your network card is free. The switch breaks off into 8-10/100 Ethernet ports. Sooo much bandwith. Most 'folks' in Grant County can't fully appreciate it. The businesses can, though. The gamers love it. File sharing is nuts.
So what is my experience been with municipal networks been? Great. I love it. I'd been living in Seattle for five years since graduating from high school in Moses Lake. School at the U of W. I first heard about the network a year ago. Now I've been home for the last nine months and working for the PUD for the last six. It is very exciting. If things pan out, it will be a tremendous opportunity for the County. Cheap power, cheap land, cheap bandwith. No, I'm not trying to sell it, it's the truth.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/environment/july