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Why Municipal Broadband is Good
batageek writes "An excellent interview with Jim Baller (muni-telco-lawyer) concerning the growth and efforts of municipal broadband providers and the fights they go through with the incumbent providers and state legislatures." If you're wondering why you don't have fiber-to-the-home yet, read this.
That one day, all houses will be made with fibre straight to the door, and bandwidth will be just another amenity, much like electricity, or gas, or telephones are now. And then all the local bandwith companies can fight over our business, and offer us lower and lower rates.
Get your own free personal location tracker
to my home that is.. who do I call about this?
He could talk in something APPROACHING soundbites, like most politicians do.
Not to say that everything needs to be a "soundbite" but, DAMN, look at those full page paragraphs...one after another
There are DEFINITELY thing that need to be explained in infinite detail, but come on, not EVERYTHING
---"What did I say that sounded like 'Tell me about your day?'"---
Broadband access is becoming the new extended basic utility.
Just like Gas, Electricity, Water, cable, etc. Instead of Cable coompanies having a monopoly on access, and being about to set there rates as they see fit, I'd welcome a utility regulatory group be put in place.
"This must be a Thursday, I never could get the hang of Thursdays."
The article is kind of long and boring, but here's the key paragraph:
FTTH [fiber to the home] networks are a good case in point. At present, cable can make more money selling relatively modest cable modem services over their Hybrid Fiber Coaxial (HFC) networks, and telephone companies can make more money selling DSL over their copper-based networks, than they can make by investing huge sums in FTTH networks that would allow them to offer substantially more robust broadband services. To wring every last dollar out of their existing systems, the cable and telephone companies are also working hard to persuade Congress, state legislatures and the FCC to allow them to close their systems to Internet Service Providers, CLECs and other potential competitors. Until these conditions change, the cable and telephone companies will simply not invest in FTTH networks. Instead, they will continue to try to convince us that we really don't need more bandwidth than they're offering. At the same time, they will try to block municipalities from building FTTH systems that could disprove these claims.
So it's the usual story. Corporations looking out for their bottom line. Using money and power to prevent competition from organizations that might act in the public interest (and thereby cut into corporate profits).
"If I could live to be several hundred
I could take a walk and really wander, really wonder."
I was an employee of a company that ran fiber throughout several blocks of the downtown city (if you could call it a city) area and connected quite a few locations directly. The problem turned out to be need. People could already get cable modem or DSL, and even though the prices were incredible (I think it was $40 for a 10mb 2-way connection), nobody saw the need for that kind of speed.
Granted, Lock Haven, PA is hardly the technological Mecca that some other places in the country are, but you'd think that for $40 a month, with no download or upload cap, and no monitoring of any kind, someone would want it... but as it turns out, not so much. It's still successful enough to keep the company from going under, but it's hardly the money-maker they anticipated it would be.
The project itself was called Lock Haven Electronic Village, and was started by KCnet (Keystone Community Network). They're an educationally oriented ISP that was started by the school district and gets grants from the government for education-based projects. If memory serves, they did the first phase for around $250,000.
"It's better to have a gun and not need it than need a gun and not have it." ~ Christian Slater, True Romance
Here in England, we actually have a choice of broadband providers. You can get either Cable or DSL (that is, via your phone service or cable service), and this healthy competition tends to keep the prices down a bit.
until I get electricity and running water out here in NEW Mexico, broadband is the least of my worries.
/sarcasm
"Facts are meaningless. You could use facts to prove anything that's even remotely true!" -- Homer Simpson
Electricity is required for a minimum standard of living. If municipal water & sewer is not available, they can be handled with wells and septic tanks. Arguably, telephone service (wire or wireless) is necessary for emergency 911 service. Broadband internet, like cable television, is a luxury. The government is plenty big already without getting into the entertainment business. How much easier is it for big brother to monitor you if they are providiing the access?
I have the choice of cable, DSL from several vendors, satellite, and dialup. The private sector is handling my business just fine.
But see-riously, wasn't one goal of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to increase access in rural areas? Needless to say, that's not what happened. Baller's comparison of broadband access to the situation when the Rural Electrification Act was passed is valid. But telcos & electric companies are going where they get the biggest return for the least investment. Even "rural" EPAs tend to concentrate on small towns & suburbs these days -- services in the really rural areas are not much better than they were 40 years ago.
The high-tech redneck,
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
JakCrow asks: Why aren't the phone and cable companies addressing the reasons for the municipal push? Municipal broadband is developing because people are tired of the bad service, high prices, and lousy coverage, yet the phone and cablecos would rather spend money using propaganda to fight municipal projects than fix their own problems.
Jim Baller: I believe that there are many good people working for cable and telephone companies who would like to deliver good products at reasonable prices and also offer good service. Consider, for example, an article in the Tacoma News Tribune on May 19, 2003, in which Comcast spokesman Steve Kipp said that competition with Tacoma's Click! Network was a good thing for all concerned, including Comcast. Specifically, Mr. Kipp was quoted as saying that: "It's that competition that has really spurred the additional investment in cable and customer service." (link). Think of where we would be if Comcast, as a whole company, acted as though it really believes this. Unfortunately, as a company, it does not.
Explain to me how Comcast has competition? DSL is NOT competition for Comcast Internet services (this is not an arguable point BTW). Comcast is THE only option for broadband where I live (no DSL and wireless access is cost prohibitive). They took over ATTBI and immediately raised the rates (which have yet to take effect but I am sure that (based on previous practices) will be "noticed at a later date" and corrected by charging for the back months in a single bill...)
Competition for Comcast IS good but it doesn't exist. I seriously believe that Muni's that run their own broadband service would actually be helping the community and THEMSELVES.
Force the "natural monopolies" (their words, not mine) to compete instead of taking over and doing what they want.
1. Is this a fact???
3. Do this guy cares if that's truth????
Answer:
Niyyaa....
1. No sig. 2. ???? 3. Profit!!!
If you think private telco monopolies are bad, you haven't seen anything yet until you've seen government-owned monopolies.
Our electricity monopoly here is government owned. I am overhauling my house right now, and a friend of ours, who works for the electricity company, mentioned it'd make his job a lot easier if the meter was in a box on the outside of the house, rather than inside (meaning the meter reader can read the meter at his convenience, rather than when I'm available to let him in). I agreed.
The first hurdle was trying to acquire the plastic box to put the meter in. We went to the Manx Electricity Authority shop and asked for one. We were told to fill in a confetti-like shower of forms, and we'd have to wait a couple of weeks for it to show up. The guy behind the desk wouldn't budge. He had them in stock, and available, but no, he couldn't give us one. He terminated the argument by announcing, "Well, we ARE the government, you know".
Finally, we get the box. I did all the work myself to install it (cut the hole in the wall, secured and set it in the wall, concreted the hole etc.) at my expense. All we needed was to have the MEA move the meter from its present position to the new box. We fill in yet another form to tell them what we want to do.
A couple of weeks later their guy shows up and says, "Nah, I can't do that, you need a jointer to do that. And you need to fill out these forms".
Yet more forms. We had already told them exactly what needed doing, and they sent the wrong type of person out.
"Oh, you're on a six-week waiting list for a jointer" they then said, after filling out yet more forms. I escalated the matter, and had a long debate with a guy about it and told him all our woes. He tried to wriggle out of it.
"What electrician's qualifications do you have to do the installation?" he asked, trying to pry open an "excuse hole" he could exploit.
"It's a plastic box set in a wall. You are telling me you have to be a qualified electrician to cut a hole in a wall, put a plastic box in, screw in the supplied screws, and re-render around the hole?"
"Well, what about all the cabling?"
"There _IS_ no cabling! That's the point! This is why we've been filling out a confetti-like shower of forms to get your guy to come out, move the meter, and recable!"
Finally, sensing he was on a loser (and about to receive a LARTing) he gave up on that tack.
We first asked for the meter box in January. It is now late May, and the meter STILL hasn't been moved. We are only doing this to benefit the municipal electricity company, and at our expense. I keep explaining this to them but it doesn't seem to make any difference.
Even Texas-New Mexico Power was never that bad.
Government is almost NEVER the answer. A government monopoly is orders of magnitudes worse than a private one in my experience.
Manx Telecom (the private telecom monopoly we have) despite their faults are a joy to work with by comparison. They have even acquired a clue when it comes to running an ADSL network. We did a similar job relocating the telephone line, to have it run underground. No forms to fill out - we just asked them to lay a new cable and they did it when they said they'd do it - no waiting lists and no bullshit.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Around where I live, one can get a decent cable or DSL broadband connection for a fair price. However, to get optimal broadband, and I mean really optimal, you need to have a fiber-optic connection into every house. Think of how great that would be - streaming audio and video, ability to download whole CDROM ISOs in incredibly short amounts of time. (You really need that if you want to download RH8 and 9.)
The problem with this is that it's so darn expensive. Those fiber-optic connections have to be perfect. It's just too expensive to put that in on a mass scale. It would be great if the government could fund that. But you have to wonder whether society will really benefit from everyone having a super-fast connection. Would these fast speeds be used as a tool or as entertainment?
and bandwidth will be just another amenity, much like electricity, or gas, or telephones are now
Yeah, right.
Ever since so-called "deregulation" of gas and electric in Michigan (where I live), all of these have gone up. In the case of gas, wwaaaaayyyyy up. My broadband (cable) is $45/month and I only get one provider to choose from. When it becomes another "amenity", it may go up to $60.
Please pardon my skepticism, but it seems to me we will always be paying inflated prices for the sins (one of which is greed) of the telcoms, utilites, and Lord knows what else.
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
If you want municipality (aka citizen) owned fibre to your door then you better move to a community which already has it and is making it available under this scenario. Unless you do that you will likely die before the community you live in now, such as Eugene, Oregon, already flush with 192 strands of fibre, spends your tax money to bring fibre to your door in the scenario you paint.
Move your home to the fibre.
Next question, please? You, there under the chair with your crack showing... What's your question?
Internet service should be viewed as a utility, and should have a private and a strong public component. In addition, as the article points out, most of us are getting screwed on uploads by the ISP industry. We need fatter upload pipes, and being able to run Apache type servers from your home ( with some limit on bandwidth) is desperately needed. Allowing fatter uploads where anyone can cheaply setup a modest, personal web server would dramatically improve the internet for the majority of the people. Anytime an essential public service is controlled by a tiny number of companies, the pure capitalist model breaks down and needs wise government regulation. What would we pay for water, electricity, telephone, etc if there were no regulation. We would work all day just to pay those bills. PS, to Slashdot, it was nice to see a LONG ARTICLE full of information instead of short attention span theater bites!!!!
HenryJamesFeltus.com
I work for a city govt in Texas, and if anyone in our public utilities customer service positions treated someone that way, they'd be fired in short order... but only if you actually bothered to prepare a formal complaint to the department. If the complaint is factual, well documented and is not a lunatic ranting, it is taken *very* seriously here. We've even had citizens bring their complaints (well prepared and "educated") before the city council as initial complaints, not going thru the normal departmental channels first, and let me tell you doing that usually gets investigative results FAST. It is a municipal employee's worst nightmare for a citizen to voice their complaint first to the council, so we make it well known at the service counters that if someone has a valid issue with a city utility, that they get priority attention from us, the staff.
>Even "rural" EPAs tend to concentrate
on small towns & suburbs these days -- services in the really rural areas are not much better than they were 40 years ago.
They now have electricity and phones don't they?
The best example is the electric power generation and distribution in Québec (Canada). Since the early 1960's, electric power generation has been nationalized in Québec, and the result is the lowest electricity rates in the world, all the while paying-off the northern native communities on whose land the dams have been erected so well that, on the whole continent, they are the better-off natives (that's "indians" for you non-PC types).
Even with all this, it manages to pour billions of dollars in the government's coffers (that's so much taxes we won't have to pay).
Much of the revenue is made through exportation, and this is thanks to the hydroelectric nature of the generation system: unlike a thermic or nuclear power plant, a dam can be turned-off during off-peak times. So, during the night, we close the dams, and buy surplus power from the US at 2, while during the day, we open the whole shebang and sell our surplus at 4...
By contrast, Hydro-Ontario (which had been owned by the province for a century) has been privatized and the market "opened-up", just like in California. The result is a complete fiasco, as small businesses face 500% electric power cost increases (for electoral reasons, consumers have been guaranteed - at government expense - a lower fixed rate).
Come have a look up here, and whenever someone says that government-ownership is bad, you can safely answer back "bullshit", and then ask him why the roads and highways aren't owned by private entreprise to see him bumble...
THEY know who they are. That is all that matters.
Back in 1995 or thereabouts, I read an article that said something to the effect of "T1 speeds in five years for $30? How does that bite you?"
The prediction is both true and false. True in the sense that you can certainly achieve T1 speeds easily for that cost and even less, but false in the sense that greed has both driven prices through the roof and service through the floor.
In Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, broadband cable costs US$30/month with effectively no caps (though egregious uploaders and downloaders do get flagged). In most of the US, the typical cable or DSL provider wants around $50/month for lesser service - even in lower-cost areas. I'll tell you one thing - when I was living in the US, it sure bit my ass.
The government doesn't have to be an ISP. I think they should be willing to help put in place infrastructure, like fiber lines, or whatever other kind of lines you want to use.
These lines can be used by any schmoe company to sell service. I used an example, in my previous posting, of roads. The roads are the infrastructure, whereas the actual service comes from Ford, Chevy, Toyota, or wherever.
The point of the whole story seemed to me to be that the telco companies aren't going to put up new infrastructure because at this point, (and forever at this rate) it's not profitable to do so.
If we have the government grant money to municiplaities to put the infrastructure in place, then they can sell to their heart's content all of the service they wish. In the end they would end up with a bigger customer base. How's that not good for business?
Speak for yourself.
This quote about "ultra-rural" Grant County PUD is somewhat misleading:
"In fact, in ultra-rural Grant County, WA, where users of the County's FTTH system have affordable access to speeds of 100 Mbps in both directions, bandwidth usage has jumped more than 600 percent and upstream usage actually exceeds downstream usage. Why? The County believes that small businesses are sending substantially more information to the Internet than they are downloading, and gamers are vastly increasing their real-time usage."
While it's true that the users are getting 100mbps access, they are *paying* for only 1mbps access. The PUD is simply too lazy (or incompetent) to limit the actual rates. Now that the PUD is running out of cash to continue rolling out the program they are still fighting any efforts on the part of service providers to actually rate-limit connections and use that to provide quality of service (and enough cash-flow to the PUD to pay for the program).
The other problems with public power doing broadband is their bureaucratic nature. These are not business people but salaried workers who are accustomed to a business model that does not include competition or the risk of going bankrupt. They have been tutored in a regulated monopoly environment in which the "bottom line" can often be whatever they want it to be. Here in Grant County they have apparently (it's hard to get a straight answer) raised the electric power rates to help cover the fiber rollout costs. This has enraged the agricultural interests who feel, with some justification, that those who will benefit most from fiber should pay the most to roll it out.
Additionally, the PUD here has entered into questionable contracts with favored service providers. There is at the present time an investigation into these dealings being undertaken by an "independent" Seattle-area lawyer. The word "independent" is in quotes because the attorney doing the investigation told me he is acting as the attorney for the PUD Commissioners with all the secrecy a client-attorney relationship can imply. Whether the results of this investigation, which could be politically damaging, will be released to the public is "entirely up to the PUD Commissioners", he said.
The Grant County PUD is hardly a shining example of local-control broadband. The PUD controls two hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River and will spend something over $200 million in their fiber project (no one yet knows the real costs). This is big money no matter how you look at it and allegations of sweetheart deals to special interests abound.
Broadband is expensive no matter who does it and no matter what a high-power lawyer in Washington, DC says. Trying to do it with a community effort might be successful or it might not be. There are many pitfalls and with so much money involved there is always the possibility of corruption and waste.
No one ever had to evacuate a city because the solar panels broke!
Unprobable? Hello, George W--is that you?
DJ
Sounds like you live in Grant County, Swedishchef. I do, and quite frankly, I LOVE THE FIBER!!! It really isn't that expensive for what you get. 1mbps? I have a friend who gets up to 30mpbs on bandwidth meters, and I get up to 500 kilobyte/sec uploads and up to 800 kilobyte/sec downloads from my home computers. It's capped at 1mbps if traffic gets too heavy, which isn't that often. I've read about the dirty dealings with the PUD, and I hope whoever did it gets put behind bars. And correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the funds for the fiber come mostly from the PUD selling power to California during the power crunch and making obscene amounts of money from it? As a result of a lower budget, the PUD has slowed development of the fiber (i.e., they're not laying it as quickly as they were). A user of the fiber pays a flat rate to the PUD, then pays for a private service provider.
You know, there's all this stuff going on, but believe me when I tell you, the users hardly notice it. They're happy as hell to have high speed internet. Do you know what the other options are besides fiber? T1, ISDN, or wireless satellite, all of which are !#$!@% expensive. Ther is NO dsl or cable internet in town. I had been praying for something like this for years, and it finally came!
I doubt the RIAA is going to dispatch anyone to Grant County. What are they going to do? Go to everyone's home? Heck, I have a friend who started up a Hotline server (ftp client) out of his home! I'm hosting a website with digital video right out of my home without a noticeable hit! You know what? In the end, the fiber has been MORE than worth it. FAR more. I would recommend that other counties get on the ball!
Even if you could rarely use the 100 mbit speed on the internet just being able to us it in town could attract companies to a town. Cheap VPN to and from offices and employee homes could be very useful.
Wish we had it here.
I live near Kutztown, PA, a university community of about 4000 people which is running a muni fiber network to downtown homes and businesses and planning to bill users for it along with water, sewer, etc. I called and asked the local govt folks if they would consider putting Wi-Fi broadcast antennas on top of the local "mountain" (big hill, really - couple hundred feet high) to reach outlying areas. I already have a DirecTV dish - one more wouldn't be a problem The fellow I spoke to said they'd really love to do something like that, but Verizon and other private broadband providers were heavily lobbying state government and threatening lawsuits as it was; they needed to tread very lightly just now and couldn't risk expanding the planned service area, which would be seen as a provocation by the private providers.
It is not true that many people can afford to have a powerful server, even though everyone that has a decent computer and net card has the hardware to run one. By carefully controlling the upload bandwidth, big business keeps the cost ordinary people using the net to create content artificially high. As for DOS attacks and such, that is a problem because it is not treated as the serious crime it is. Human garbage destroying the internet should be treated the same as someone blowing up a dam, cutting the power or telephone lines, etc. There is little difference except method.
HenryJamesFeltus.com
Sometimes corporations act in purposes cross to the public good. The robber barons of this century are going to be the technology ogopolies. When a company take the position of manipulating public policy to limit or stifle the availability of technology in order to increase its profitability there should be public outcry.
Quack, quack.
I just moved into a community where the only option I have is 28.8kbps dialup (no copper, no cable, and satellite is just too damn expensive). I'd love to have a choice of ways to link up to the internet, but unfortunately I don't. Where I used to live had DSL, Cable, and even Ricochet (remember them?). Oh well. :)
Bubba aint a world traveler. But I have read South Korea has some of the best and most affordable internet service. Bubba has also read that one major factor in its success is the wise intervention of the South Korean government. Anybody knowledgeable first hand about this???
HenryJamesFeltus.com
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The answer is, "If they had electricity & phones in 1960, they do now. If they didn't then, the odds are they still don't."
"Obviously, I'm not an IBM computer any more than I'm an ashtray" (Bob Dylan)
They now have electricity and phones don't they?
Not necessarily. Believe it or not, plenty of people do not have electricity or phone lines going to their homes in the US.
I, for one, would seriously consider moving to a town that I new had FTTH that was run locally. Is there a list of such towns/services?
A bit OT I know, but the above post is one of the one's I allude to whenever one of the "Techies out of work" stories are posted on Slashdot, and someone comes up with the brilliant "You should take any job you can" advice. We point out the ill wisdom of companies that have poor business plans, while not seeing the contradiction in advising Techies to adopt a poor business plan i.e."Work at McDonalds".
Accepting a unfair price for what your offering i.e."You turned down a job that pays money!?"
Going ever deeper toward bankruptcy because one couldn't cover cost.i.e."Work at MCDonalds and Burger King, now one can afford the interest on their student loans"
Compounding the situation by trying to make up the shortfall with desperation tactics i.e." Work two or three jobs...one of them as a spammer"
We now return you to the regularlly scheduled disagreements already in progress. Thank You.
Exactly! As soon as the government quits pork-barrelling Babcock & Wilcox pressurized water reactors and LETS private industry build Process Inherently Ultimately Safe reactors we'll GET cheap power and the tree-huggers will shut the ##&($# up. We DO need nukes - the fossil fuel is going to run out - and then we'll be totally screwed. (not US us...but.. you know what I mean.)
and it rocks. It is part of my HOA (Home Owners Association). Sure other things might be better but so far is is cheap (because everyone in my development has it) and fairly reliable (if hasn't gone down much, some but not much).
its safer then you think. House-supply gas out here is run at an extremely low pressure. THe local gas company trains the fire fighters to put out active gas line fires. It's pretty tame apparently - they take a 12" pipe running at way higher PSI than the residential lines run, then they cut a giant hole in it, light it on fire, and then have fire fighters go put it out.
:)
The gas supply in your neighborhood is nothing, comparatively. Additionally, the gas concentration in the atmosphere required to be combustible rather than flammable is such that you would be choking to death before it would have a chance of exploding.
I'm not entirely disagreeing with you - i think environmentalists are generally alarmists fools, and im 100% in favor of nuke plants. I just wanted to point out that NG is a great residential energy application. I've personally done the additional piping work in my home to put in a gas dryer, tankless hot water heater, and gas stove. I can't tell you how nice infinitely long showers are. Yes, there are electric instant water heaters, but the flow -rate is usually substandard and more over the basic model typically takes 3 40amp 240v circuits - 60% the load capacity of a modern home electrical service.
If the task is "make something hot", gas usually does a much better job than electricity.
Also, your wife will seriously thank you if you get a gas clothes dryer
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.
I'd do anything do ditch my ISDN service, but it's all I can get. They don't even have DSL yet out here, and forget about cable modems.
Someone named an OS for me.
Hello! Cost of Infastructure is the reason why! Say you can get a good deal on Long range fiber transceivers at 100$ a pop (This still completely Leaves out the Equipment this will still be needed to be hooked up to.).. you need 1 on each end... So your amost at 1/4 of a million dollars just for lasers.. No equipment to hook up yet at all... Just to light up the fiber.. Cost of recovery... if your broadband provider can cut more than 15$ a month in profit they are doing VERY good... so lets just say they have a profit of 15$ a month on 45$ It will take just over 13 months to do cost recovery Just on the Lasers required... and lasers will end up being the cheapest item on the list... If you can get fiber dug in the city for less than 75$ a foot Your smilin... and overhead is 35$ a foot or more... Thats just for Installation.. not including the medium.. (which is Virtually free compared to the installation cost).. Then you have Termination equipment.. You would be lucky to be able to terminate for 300$ a end.. I really doubt you could end up with less than 1000$ a house to terminate both ends of the fiber... and at 7.5 years untill there is profit to be made... How many of todays Investors are willing to wait that long to see a return on thier investment.. Practically 0...
Who needs WiFi when we can have Packet Over Sheep! http://datacomm.org/PoS-InternetDraft.txt
In my city ,ottawa , we sort of have this . For $995CAD/month ( the city owned power companies broadband division will deliver 1m through fiber to almost any where in the city. The bandwith is 100% UU net and they provide a full commit for the 1 mb. I can then burst 10mb if no one else is using it . The only problem from my pov is that I can get 3.5m (admitedly not burst 10 service) for $90/mo over dsl .If the city could bring there prices down a bit (by not using 100% UUnet that stuff is pricy!) and going for a mix of bell nexxia , uunet , and posible a connection to onet I would probably connect . As it stands I can rent good office space , get two 3.5m connections for cheaper than my city . Now If any one elses city provides broadband I would love to know what bandwith providers they use and how much they charge .
municipal broadband links.
Sorry about that , ment to hit the preview but hit submit instead. In my city ,ottawa , we sort of have this . For $995CAD/month (http://www.telecomottawa.com/english/services/bis .htm the city owned power companies broadband division will deliver 1m through fiber to almost any where in the city. The bandwith is 100% UU net and they provide a full commit for the 1 mb. I can then burst 10mb if no one else is using it . The only problem from my pov is that I can get 3.5m (admitedly not burst 10 service) for $90/mo over dsl .If the city could bring there prices down a bit (by not using 100% UUnet that stuff is pricy!) and going for a mix of bell nexxia , uunet , and posible a connection to onet I would probably connect . As it stands I can rent good office space , get two 3.5m connections for cheaper than my city . Now If any one elses city provides broadband I would love to know what bandwith providers they use and how much they charge .
South Korea doesn't have FTTH, but it does have a very extensive braodband infrastucture. The government spent a lot of time and money investing in it and building it. The result of that is that S Korea is the most online community per capita in the world, above the US and Japan even.
You can usually choose between 6 different broadband providers there. Since there is so much competion, rates are cheap, and there are NO upload or download limits. When I try to explain the download caps we have here, my friends in Korea shake their heads and ask me why people stand for it.
Governments need to take bold steps like this because nothing will change if they don't. South Korea did it, and now they are reaping the benefits of great internet infrastructure.
This posting deserves 5 points!
A highly informative interview about the politics of municipal broadband. Solid opinion on issues that shapes the future of U.S. and aboard. An outline of an alternative to the pitiful service commercial companies are providing us today that called "broadband". This is a great read for anyone care about the future of our economy.
Why do we only get to moderate user comments? We should moderate article postings too and put great article above the mediocre ones.
Wai Yip Tung
I can choose high speed access between the phone company (DSL) and the cable company (cable modem), both private. My best experiance was with DirectTV-DSL (over phone lines), unfortunately they had a good product and went under. :-(
With the cable company I have twice (in two different houses, other the past 2 years) had them deny I had cable running to the house, when I could go outside and find it coming into the house.
The phone company service is horrible. I have to reset the dsl modem box daily because its DNS service locks up. When I call to complain all the support rep. knows how to do is say unplug everything and plug it back in. Well yea, but for $50/month (thats $600 a year people, more than I spend on the computers attached to the network), I should not have to reboot an "appliance" once a day.
I'll give a government compeditor a chance.....
Its not un-American to want something that WORKS!
I see some scary stuff on here.
People, please realize that internet access is not a necessity to live. Food, water, shelter... those are necesseties.
If a community or organization wants to figure out a way to provide internet access to everyone that's great, but it should never be government regulated or become a Utility.
Wonderful -- I think that's the wittiest thing I've ever read on Slashdot! Too bad I didn't get moderator points today!!
Jump back, alley cat! Government controls of public easement is one of the big problems. If just anyone could put their wires into those easments, you bet me and all sorts of others would be stringing the ugliest community WAN you ever saw tomorrow. The technology exists so that those ugly WANS would work together and replace conventional telcoms in less than a year. Boom, end of story. As it is, no one can touch it. Wireless is going to take it's place instead.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
See listing at http://www.tricitybroadband.com/city_owned.htm
http://www.tricitybroadband.com/city_owned.htm
Greets all,
I'm actually one of those lucky folks in Tacoma who gets their internet access from the City owned cable utility. That's right, here in Tacoma we can get high-speed internet from our municipal power company. Both the price and performance beat Comcast's product by a mile. I pay $29 a month (+$5 for an extra IP address) and get 1M down, usually clocks at around 1.5M, and 128K up. If I wanted to spend another $20 a month I could get 2M down and 256K up, static IP, and the right to run my own servers over the connection. A friend uses the higher capacity service for his computer gaming parlor. He's never complained of a lack of bandwidth.
It was interesting, before our power utility proposed building a City owned cable system. The then franchisee TCI was projecting that Tacoma would be one of the last of their cities to get upgraded to digital cable. At that time at least five years away. It was funny to watch all the spin that TCI's flacks and lobbyists put out trying to convince the voters of Tacoma that a Municiple cable system would bankrupt our power utility in short order. Well, the system has cost us more than was originally projected, but everyone agrees that Click! is the only reason that TCI moved Tacoma to the top of the upgrade schedule. The article somepody else referred to that quoted the Comcast exec is the only time I've ever heard something from TCI/ATT/ComCast that was different than their standard CLick! will bankrupt Tacoma.
-- Bob Honan I stand by the truth, which is why I never stand by Republicans.
even for private companies. We're doing it now in Bozeman, Montana: http://www.vividnetworks.com
High-speed Internet, Telephone, and Cable Television services all delivered via a fiber-optic PON network .
-- "Big Brother is Watching..."