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Municipal Net Access: Unfair Competition?

Posted by timothy on from the or-just-common-sense dept.

ruvreve writes: "Net Economy has an article about how Los Angles is attempting to provide the ability for end-users to have a choice between multiple ISPs for high-speed bandwidth access, among other things. The article talks about how a city has an unfair advantage to offer such services. Unfair because the government monitors and regulates the cable and phone company but at the same time wants to compete for their customers. If it gets 100Mbit access to my front door it HAS to be good!" This issue's been raised a few times before, but the article raises some points worth thinking about.

3 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. Are you nuts? A Fiber Transceiver costs $159 by JM · · Score: 5, Informative

    Have a look at the D-Link DFE855 here.

    It translates a 100Base-FX fiber optic cable to a normal 100 mbps ethernet card.

    The drop can be up to 2 kilometers, and it's not affected by static, radio waves and you don't have to ground it, it's glass/plastic, so 100% pure insulator.

  2. Re:Who owns the roads? by FatRatBastard · · Score: 5, Informative

    Power is going the same way, as can be evidenced by the collapse of the California power grid. How long will the state pay for the power companies to stay solvent until the state becomes the primary power-provider? Phone will go too, IMHO.

    Power went haywire in Calif. not because of de-regulation in general, but California's "de-regulation" specifically.

    I love proof by single (usually simplified and incorrect) example.

  3. Better Service for less money? Sign me up by rbergman · · Score: 5, Informative

    I work for a Public Utility Department in the State of Washington. We have built a fiber optic system through out the county which we provide open access to for whoever want to provide services be it internet, video, or phone. I myself benefit from this with what is basically a 100MB link to the internet and a public IP address for only $45 a month. Until this project was undertaken, Qwest refused to run phone lines to some of the more remote residents of the county. Now that phone services are provided via fiber, what a surprise Qwest was out there running phone lines. Television via cable is still limited to 30 some channels while customer with fiber can access over 150+ channels. This is an idea whose time has come.