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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.
So it's the usual story. Corporations looking out for their bottom line.
<SARCASM>Oh those evil bastards.</SARCASM> Come on, enough business-bashing. Who here doesn't work for a company? Who here doesn't depend on profits to keep their paychecks coming? Why is it all-of-a-sudden unpatriotic to try and make some money? Isn't that the "American Dream"(TM)? When did "profit" become a bad word?
Of course it's about money. Right now, people are paying $40/month or so for ADSL and broadband connections. Sure, fibre would boost those speeds, but who'll be willing to pay increased fees for it? Would your Mom be willing to shell out $90/month for fibre when she's already getting megabit service for less than half that?
The majority of the customer base will not be willing to pay more than they're paying now. We're at a nice, comfortable equilibrium at the moment. It would cost BILLIONS to roll out a fibre-to-the-home network nationwide, and the only way to recoup that cost would be to raise rates. And the telcos don't seem too confident that there will be enough people willing to pony up the extra green to make it more profitable than the existing network.
It sure is easy to blame the "Big, Bad Corporations" though, isn't it. It's not quite that simple though. If you want to blame someone, blame the masses who are content with megabit service, and who aren't willing to pay more than $40/month for Internet (or phone, or cable, for that matter). People are used to the price they're already paying, and anything more than that will seem like a ripoff.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
What's a city block? I live in England.
Your answer is staggeringly Americo- and big-city-centric. Fibre to the door has been implemented in large parts of (say) Scandanavia, where it works out very well. Also, think about cable television. Certainly over here, that already *is* delivered on fibre to the door.
~cHris