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Utah Cities To Provide High-Speed Net Access
Instarx writes "The New York Times reports that Salt Lake City and other Utah cities plan to install an ultrahigh-speed optical network as a public utility project starting next year. The network would provide internet access [for about $28 per month] in direct competition to slower commercial offerings. The network would be capable of delivering data over the Internet to homes and businesses at speeds 100 times faster than current commercial residential offerings. It would also offer digital television and telephone services through the Internet."
Perhaps Utah is different from where i live...
But as a d00d working in an ISP that offers both high-speed wDSL and dialup, i say they missed the mark by about 5 years.
Sure there are geeks like us that demand high-speed inet, but for the most part, i see people leaving high-speed in droves to go back to dialup.
It appears that even though broadband is cheaper than it has ever been, there are enough people still trying to justify the cost to check their email a few times a week.
The Internet Craze Is Over(tm).
do() || do_not();
Is the job of the government to provide high speed internet service to homes? As much as I like the sound of inexpensive bandwidth, if it's directly the government's service, there is a large potential for filtering or other restrictions on access, and a much greater threat for logging one's activities. I do not like this idea.
The government does not provide phone infrastructure, it instead regulates the companies that provide telephone service. I wouldn't want my telephone, television, newspaper, radio, or internet access to come from one extremely powerful group who would have a significant interest in manipulating information for their own benefit.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
I work for the Local Government in Lafayette, Louisiana and we've been rolling out fiber for years now all over the city... Businesses and residents can buy access through numerous resellers which all specialize in different things... Including one or two that specialize in delivering high-speed wireless access to your house. :)
Of course LARGE cities end up in the news for mentioning they'll be rolling out fiber someday now, while us smaller cities that have had a fiber network for a couple years never get mentioned.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
I personally think this is the appopriate way to move forward with public infrastructure. The community pools together resources from taxes to pay for its own infrastructure - and then allow service providers to pay for access (to help defray up-front infrastructure costs) and actually compete for consumer dollars.
Create a municipal digital network, and allow cable/telecom companies to actually compete. If anything, people should have learned their lesson -- when Comcast offers to build your infrastructure 'for free', its monopoly is going to cost more than the upfront cost to have done it publicly.
Similarly with power lines and water/sewer. There is a basic conflict of interest between a corporations who are focused on profit above all else, and the public good which is focused on dependability and quality above all else. for example: consider the power transmission infrastructure.
sure, if the consumer cares about quality and dependability, the free-market should bear out those providers who manage such standards. However, the shared infrastruture -punishes- companies who invest (all its competitors benefit from the increased quality, only the investor takes the financial hit and then has to charge -more-, pricing itself out of the game).
The logical step is simply taking jurisdiction of the local lines back on the local level, and the long-haul lines on the federal level (think US highway/road system).
it's not like our infrastructure couldn't use a nice big upgrade anyway. and the telecom industry could certainly benefit from some public works projects to bid on.
// "Can't clowns and pirates just -try- to get along?"
"When the demand is more than phones, then work on it. Do not try and predict demand."
The demand is obviously being constricted by the dearth of cheap pipes. If we wait for the "demand" to grow enough to justify private investment in FO to the home, it will never happen. The present setup is just dandy for whomever is selling pathetic connectivity. They will not roll out replacements for their current cash cows.
Think of it this way. Pretend that, instead of bandwidth, the "scarcity" is water. An imperfect analogy, 'cause water is finite and bandwidth is infinite... though the difference actually helps the argument.
Anyway. Pretend that we all lived in a area with no water lines, 20 years ago. People got their water from wells, and toted the water to their homes on their shoulders. Not a scarcity situation, for people got all the water they could drink.
Now pretend that someone invented a water pipe that piggybacked on existing equipment, and that water was found to be a resource that could simply be manufactured and shipped. People discover that they can use water not jusut for drinking, but for cooking.
Then someone discovers that they can build giant sluices that enable the supply to be increased twenty-fold to each customer. But, instead of the government building the infrastructure, a hundred thousand businesses compete to supply the water using products from vendors who try to maximize profit.
Imagine that the orignal well owners insist on covering their original invenstments + maintenance + cash to buy lots of other companies.
A state of balance eventually occurs when the businesses find their sweet spot financially. Instead of gallons of water per minute, people pay a reasonable price for a trickle of water, enough to wash their face and take the occasional shower. They don't NEED all that water, really. And who wants to put all the pipe companies out of business?
An artificial scarcity is maintained, with the vendors of the pipes and the providers of the water maximizing what profits they can.
Now, what if the government simply had built the pipes and the water could go sluicing down the pipes for practically nothing? Suppose the government, as the main supplier, could dictate terms to the piper manufacturers, forcing the equipment prices down?
One could say that the government wasn't necessary to supply water, because the trickle was enough, and the businesses needed to make a decent profit.
But who decided that? The businesses. Who speaks up for the consumer of water? The government, which they own.
The government could have supplied the water from the beginning, at orders of magnitude lower cost.
If you don't think this is possible, I point you to municipal water supplies in the real world. If they had been provided by the free market, we'd be metering water like champagne.