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Steam Heat to High Speed Internet
jrmski writes "Thom Greco, an astute businessman from the crumbling town of Wilkes-Barre is betting the future of its downtown on a new state of the art fiber optic network. He recently purchased the former Steam Heat Authority, and the underground pipes associated with it. The pipes provide clear advantages in connecting every downtown building with access faster than what's currently available in Philly."
This is actually a good way to get use of something that would otherwise just sit and decay.
:)
Having fast internet and reliable forms of connectivity are important things businesses look for when they come to towns. Hopefully what this guy is doing can spur some growth there.
I wonder what else you could do with a steam tunnels. Live in them maybe?
Dark fibre, the collapse of many companies that built these networks (and then had other companies buy them at pennies on the dollar), etc, then why do this?
Or maybe someone is thinking long-term; five-years, and maybe this will be a very valuable asset. Bah. Perhaps I need more foresight.
"Only good things can come from a tech visionary who purchases Old World infrastructure and is willing to run fiber to them."
I wouldn't call that an absolute. Look at the nightmare that Qwest Communications has caused. They're still using Pair Gain, in a city that is supposedly modern in design. We can't get DSL service in half of Phoenix that is within the copper distance needed to do it, and Phoenix was originally a US West Communications test city for the technology. I've had friends who couldn't get the phone company to install a copper circuit, and would not say who was responsible for Qwest's engineering decision to implement pair gain on every phone line.
So, I don't believe that companies usisng old-world, middle-world (not to be confused with middle-earth), or brand-new technologies are any better simply because of the tech. They have to actually provide service, not claim to be able to without delivering.
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Okay, so some guy gets the bright idea to run fiber through steam pipes . . . with how many miles of *dark* fiber out there already?!? And how many big telcos with the similar idea are already bankrupt or are about to go there (JDS Uniphase, anyone?)
This sounds like some idiot who thinks he can revitalize his city by "hookin' it up to that thar new internet thang. We done gunna make it real real real fast." They did the same thing in Washington with Tacoma. They even call it "The Wired City." And you know what? It's still a crime-infested shithole with no jobs!
Wake up, fellas. This was cool at the height of the boom whem Amazon.bomb sold for $400 and the lemmings bought it. But now that reality has set in, it's just another bunch of idiots buying into the Ponzi scheme - after it has collapsed!
For those who don't know where Wilkes Barre is:
Here's a map
Metropolitan areas can run fiber much more effectively through the sewer system than by digging trenches for a few hundred miles. They've already done this in Indianapolis recently:
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http://www.citynettelecom.com/newsroom/show_rel
"Steam to Heat High Speed Internet"?
If you've seen the episode of the Simpsons where Springfield gets a fancy monorail, you'll recognize immediately what this is really about. It's a con artist selling false hope using technobabble that probably sounds impressive to some provincial mayor in Amish country. Only a fool could think that all you need to bring in tech companies is a place for them to plug in. Luckily for these snake-oil-selling jerks, many of our leaders really are fools.
Anyone else read this too fast and envision a computer or router or something that ran on steam power?
For some reason, that notion made me think of an AMD Athalon system...
Wilkes-Barre was featured in a previous Slashdot article when they decided not to renew their maintainence contract with IBM and their AS/400 with all of their tax records crashed... in light of that whole situation, unless Wilkes-Barre has done a technological 180 since then, I can't imagine what they'd do with all of this fiber.
Being a resident of Pennsylvania in close proximity to Wilkes-Barre I've gotta say that it is not exactly crumbling. It may not have great downtown business at the moment, but neither does Bethlehem, which I think is worse off. This place has its own AHL hockey team too. It's not a big city, but definitely not crumbling.
"You tried your best and failed miserably. The lesson is...never try. Heh!" -Homer
1. Buy former Steam Heat Authority
2. Create a state-of-the-art fiber optic network using the steam pipes
3. ???
4. Profit!
At least the article doesn't really say more than that.
You're right. Between all the businesses coming in and giving us the bone by starting up and saying that they are the next greatest thing, then shutting down after a few months, and the generally inadequate infrastructure . . .
And besides. Everyone who knows anything knows that you don't run a business in Wilkes-Barre, the taxes are too high, and the regulations too cumbersome. You run your business in Plains. Same with Scranton. Why do you think all those buildings downtown are half-empty? Everyone is doing business up on Montage Mountain. Granted, the bigwigs never have to DRIVE in there, but that's another rant for another day and time.
The previous has been a secret message to my comrades.
It's not indoor plumbing, it's a distribution system for a municiple steam system. The pipes are probably huge, not some little tiny things like you'd buy in a hardware store. The bend radius from outer wall to outer wall of the pipe, touching the inner curve of a bend, is probably not that tight.
Where's the RFC for "A Standard for the Transmission of IP Datagrams on Low-Pressure Steam?"
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
That's why the Pittock Building in Portland, OR is one of the major telco central locations here --- it used to be a steam generation facility and there are pipes connecting it all over downtown that have been filled with cable for years now.
Hi!
The fellow who is promoting has a decent idea--albeit not an original one. The concept was promoted in Allentown (an hour south of Wilkes-Barre) almost two years ago. And prompted by some of the same ideas, the local power company (PP&L) developed a subsidiary to locate and light redundant fiber along some of its rights-of-way throughout northeastern Pennsylvania.
Two thoughts:
First, this is just a proposal--and a proposal that heavily depends (I'm sure) on state technology grant funding. Consider the last paragraph of the WNEP article:
Translation: Greco is fishing for a six-figure grant from the Pennsylvania Technology Investment Authority, and is hoping for support from the governor.
Second, just because he's fishing for a big grant doesn't mean that it isn't a bad idea. Several people have criticized this as a "build it and they will come" investment. Yeah, and so was the Interstate System. Which will go down in history as the single most tranformational use of federal government money in the history of our nation. (For fun--ponder the impact of building all those highways on the auto, steel, aluminum, glass, plastic, concrete, paint, and petroleum industries over the years.)
Using state economic development funding to develop IP-based infrastructure makes an enormous amount of sense. Adding another inch to the depth of pavement on a street in Wilkes-Barre isn't going to make a big dent in Luzerne County unemployment. But providing low-cost bandwidth might induce somebody to stay in town, rather than move his business elsewhere--or convince somebody in New York or Philadelphia to decide to locate his business someplace a lot saner (and safer), where costs are a low lower. In a sense, the question to ask isn't why they're doing it--the question should be, why haven't they done anything sooner?