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."

Comments

Re:fat pipe, please

[mkldev]

This is a load of bull. As thousands of examples around the country have proven, temporary monopolies don't actually work. They almost always become permanent. Do you have a choice in local phone service? Really? Congratulations. You're part of only one or two percent of the country.

The fact is, those monopolies, incentives, and regulations are the reason that we're still paying the sorts of rates you'd expect from a line switching telco to long distance providers that do everything by packet switching. It's the reason that we pay a couple of bucks for our long distance provider to have "access" to our local telco to provide us with service (when, of course, there is absolutely zero actual incremental cost involved). It's the reason that our public telephone system is abysmal and our public internet triply so.

The government should run ALL utilities, or else those utilities should be non-profit organizations (either way works similarly, for similar reasons, though the latter tends to have less waste). Municipal power, water, gas, cable TV, telephone, and networking. Anything less gets you rolling blackouts, random cell phone disconnection, dirty lines that drop your DSL connection repeatedly, grainy cable service that looks like it has been split a thousand times, etc. Corporations are, by nature, profit-centric. That might be acceptable for consumer goods, but it is not an acceptable situation for basic utilities.