Chicago Proposes MAN (Metropolitan Area Network)

stumble writes: "This article lacks many details, but the idea is that Chicago wants to bring broadband to the masses and is accepting proposals to design and build a Metropolitan Area Network (MAN): 'The project, called CivicNet, is aimed at bringing a broadband network with integrated data, voice and video capabilities to every nook and cranny of Chicago over the next 10 years.'"

Comments

Already Outdated

[fobbman]

I hear that the Powers That Be are working on the successor to M.A.N., tentatively called W.O.M.A.N, or Wireless Omnipresent Metropolitan Area Network. One of the last known remaining bugs is a few days a month performance is a bit tempermental, to say the least.

Public Ownership of the Infrastructure...

[Bonker]

I see this as the way the net is going to go. It's too much like the road and highway system rather than the electrical system or TV delivery system like cable or DSS

People go 'to and fro' on the internet and don't necessarily turn to one provider for the majority of the service like they do for other utilities. Sure you can use pay-routes to get online, (ISP's) just as you can use toll-roads and turnpikes. The most-used routes to get online will probably be supported via tax dollars in the near to medium future.

This has up and down sides. The up side is that public ownership of the internet will mean that it will be subject to more stringent quality controls and pricing regulation. The down-side is that any public resource is inevitably over-used and abused. It will also be more subject to content regulation if it's truly perceived as a 'community' resource.

NAN - Neighborhood Area Network

[abischof]

So.. if you create your own NAN (Neighborhood Area Network), are you sticking it to the MAN?

More information about the project

[regen]

The Metropolitan Planning Council has information about this project from the initial RFI's.

Well, it may work, it may not...

[irregular_hero]

A lot of cities have tried to do this, most of them by setting up interconnections in the local Metro area. For example, in Nashville, Tennessee, the city government actually funded an initiative to interconnect all businesses in the city at a site they co-owned with BellSouth. The goal was to centralize and provide a faster "lane" of access to local citizenry for area businesses.

It worked like this: a business with an existing Internet connection would be provided another one at a very low cost by the city. The city also provided interconnections to various local ISPs (Sprint, BBN, local ISPs). Then when the user dialed in to the local POPs in each location, each local business would be only 2 or 3 hops away. Interesting idea.

It failed. Turns out, local city businesses with the desire to operate large Internet business could care less about the access speeds of the communities in which they were located. They dispised the extra complexity the initiative forced upon them, even though part of their "backup line" costs were underwritten. And most of them felt that the government wasn't up to the task anyway. ("It took 4 months to repair the sidewalk in front of my house, and you want me to peer with you? Hah!")

The second part of the plan was to offer Internet access. But that plan was shot down by a multitude of ISPs that didn't want to compete with a city government that was intent on taxing them anyway. They went to court, and now the whole effort is a distant memory.

So although it sounds nice, having a city government -- many of whom collect sales taxes from ISPs -- competing against their tax base. Well, it never tends to work out to benefit the citizens in any meaningful way.