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."

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fat pipe, please

[Fux the Penguin]

The article points to the sluggish economy as a hindrance to this sort of deployment in Utah, as well as other municipalities, but I think it may actually help the project.

When you look at the vendors, their pricing has just dropped because they are hungry. So, you can get incredible pricing for the equipment, the electronics, the fiber, all the things you need. Because the economy's down, interest rates are down, so that's going to help financing.

And because they don't just have a free flow of cash in the telecom world, there are companies that are very interested because they don't have the capital riding on somebody else's network. You take that all together and the timing actually is pretty darn good.

As far as municipal involvement in this, the genie is out of the bottle in my opinion. Municipalities across the country are either going to do the retail or the wholesale, but they're going to do something. And they're not satisfied to just sit and wait when an incumbent or some private sector company decides that they're big enough and it's worth their while to come in to build the networks.

Re:fat pipe, please

[JBatch]

This is only half about a faster connection. The residents of Utah are so sick of the aboslutely aweful customer service provided by the only two substantial high-speed(and telecom) providers in the area that we want another option.* A smaller city in the area has recently done this same thing and it has been an overwhelming success. *I realize public utilites don't always have the best customer service either, but at least you could switch everytime one or another provider pissed you off so you can feel better about your situtaion.

Re:fat pipe, please

[Beatbyte]

what if we had companies called "water" companies? and you had to pay Sprant or BT&T for your water? then the government steps in and gets it for you, faster, and better, because (for a small part), the government is you/us/we.

well they should do the same for television and internet and etc. these companies have been jerking us around with shitty service and slow speeds in their profit margin interest. (and I work for one of them)

bring it on. I'll pay an extra 500 bucks a year ($150 more than what they're asking) for fiber internet, telephony, and "cable" television.

Re:fat pipe, please

[TopShelf]

If there aren't private companies offering services, why is the government stepping in?

To provide a public good that is in the best long term interests of the community. Businesses likely wouldn't undertake such an endeavor because once the competition comes in, it wouldn't make the investment worthwhile. What the government is doing here is to provide infrastructure for many companies to come in and offer services, which will not only stimulate economic activity but also help develop the area's human capital...

Re:fat pipe, please

[Threni]

>Also, when was the gov't supposed to compete with private businesses? How would you
>like it if the government set up a business to compete against you?

I don't really care about how the businesses which aren't providing a decent service would like it - i'm more concerned with whether or not the millions of taxpayers out there are able to get cheap broadband. If it costs less in tax that in would cost you privately to buy a service, and it's something most people want and can use, such as libraries and hospitals etc, then it's a good use of public money. In my opinion.

Re:fat pipe, please

[RevMike]

Also, when was the gov't supposed to compete with private businesses? How would you like it if the government set up a business to compete against you?

Government does it all the time. The US Gov't built the interstate highway system, which all but destroyed the railroad business. The Gov't provides tax breaks and financing for Ford to build a new factory in some town. Doesn't GM get peeved that Ford is getting some deal that they arten't getting? Gov't takes these actions for two reasons:

1. Promote the development of the economy overall
2. Provide jobs for voters

Re:fat pipe, please

[Beatbyte]

telephony is going to be on the fiber optics. and the internet, is just as, if not more needed than phones for a lot of people. and the demand is growing.

compare the number of e-mails, web site visits, IM's you do a day compared to the number of phone calls.

Re:fat pipe, please

[wandernotlost]

Exactly. This is just how things should work with respect to such things.

Internet access is a business that inherently forms monopolies because of the very nature of it---one can only run wires down everyone's streets a few times before the poles get crowded and ugly, and other problems start to arise. The government or some regulated non-profit should run and control the pipes, giving private companies access on a wholesale basis. You get the best of both worlds: cheap, efficient infrastructure combined with choice in the marketplace, enabling companies to compete on quality of service, features, etc.

This seems to be what they're doing in Utah, and what they should be doing in the rest of the country.

Re:fat pipe, please

[Catbeller]

"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.

Re:fat pipe, please

[wtansill]

It's not in the same ballpark though. Broadband connections and high-speed access to the internet is critical to the burgeoning information economy. Having a Burger King, McDonald's and Wendy's in the same town is not.

Re:fat pipe, please

[orangesquid]

Restaurants are a luxury, not a utility. Cities traditionally provide utilities (or help to provide utilities) for their residents.

Re:fat pipe, please

[GoofyBoy]

>The demand is obviously being constricted by the dearth of cheap pipes.

No, its not obvious.

Its hard to find justification for HDTV and this is at minimum 5 times more bandwidth than that.

> If we wait for the "demand" to grow enough to justify private investment in FO to the home, it will never happen.

And sometimes it shouldn't happen. But how do we know? Should we spend a huge amount everytime something comes up that perhaps might work out in the future?

>The present setup is just dandy for whomever is selling pathetic connectivity. They will not roll out replacements for their current cash cows.

Wrong, they did. Before the only thing available was dial-up. Then cable/telephone companies built the infrastructure for broadband.

>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.

Actually the big thing is that water is needed for the basics of life. Broadband isn't. You shut off water to a city, it become a emergency. With broadband, it might get reported in the local newspaper.

A better analogy is resturants. I don't need to go out and eat but its very nice when I do. Do you think its the function of the city to build and operate the biggest resturant in the state when there are multiple resturants already? Do you think that is wise use of money when they have to do road repairs?

>If they had been provided by the free market, we'd be metering water like champagne

Like electricity, gasoline, phone lines and garbage collection? They do cost, but not at huge insane prices.

Re:fat pipe, please

[leshert]

We're just on the cusp of broadband not being a luxury.

Do you consider it a luxury to have electricity and running water? My grandparents considered it so up until the mid-twentieth century, and if yours did not, you don't have to go back more than a generation to find ancestors who did.

Re:fat pipe, please

[SubtleNuance]

THANK YOU!

There is *no* reason a public utility cannot provide better, cheaper, faster service.

Horray! Finally, not everyone is so damned convinced of this ultra-capitalist myth that Public Companies are absolutely incapable of 'competing' w/ public.

I personally like the idea of transparent, non-profit co-ops being regulated into the marketplace. Not just government utilities, but co-ops that have open/auditable books... *that* defends you from big-fat cat plutocrats robbing the masses.

Co-ops and non-profits provide an answer to the usual Capitalist rants, because they provide choice and competition. They also allows non-users to opt-out.

Re:fat pipe, please

[Cramer]

Electricity was a luxury for a long time. Back then, people had been without it all their lives and thus used nothing that depended on it -- wood stoves, oil lanterns, horses and oxen, ice boxes, etc. Fast forward to today and everything runs on electricity. I'd bet a fair number of homes in the US don't have the materials to even start a fire without electricity. Shit, even lighters employ electricity -- piezo element striker (there's nothing to ever wear out like a flint.)

Just like everything else, once everyone has a thing for long enough, they don't know how to do without it. I grewup (well half way +/-) in a world without the computer -- in the 70's computers where the size of builds. I've worked with computers for ~20 years now; I wouldn't know how to function without them today.

HOWEVER, "broadband" is still a luxury and will remain so for many years to come. 56k modems (53k/48k/whatever) are perfect usable, but time consumingly slow. 128K ISDN/144K IDSL is quite sufficient for what 90% of the world does (legally) -- email, web browsing, IM, any number of games, etc. I used 28.8 dialup for ~5 years, and ISDN for ~7 years. I switched to an Earthlink cable modem about a month ago because it's 1/5th the cost -- yes, cost not bps was the reason and earthlink because they provide dialup for free when I'm out of town. (the increase in speed is a nice bonus, tho' :-))

[1981 first introduction to a computer -- Tandy TRS Model I, 1984 first computer of my own -- Tandy Color Computer 2.]

Re:fat pipe, please

[JBatch]

It may be true of Eagle Mountain as well, but I was specifically referring to Spanish Fork. Spanish Fork originally built their own infrastructure becuase no private company thought it would be profitable to build it themselves. As it turned out, the number of subscribers has been so significant that several private companies have offered to buy the network from the city.

Re:fat pipe, please

[FreakWent]

How do you think the telephone, cable, rail, and airport infrastructure got built?

In many parts of the world this is done by Government borrowing money to fund the construction, then maintaining it as a public asset, often raising profit from it either directly, or as a result of more economic activity enabled by the service. In the end you have a debt paid off and an additional public good.

For example, a phone system such as Australia's telecom (before it was sold) gave the government a big revenue intake without some of the practices that led to the breakup of the big US Telcos.

With something like a bus service that often loses money, there is still an advantage in the lower pollution, fewer car crashes and so on, but you'd need to crunch the numbers to estimate total loss/gain

Further, government funding of public infrastructure often allows society to function in a civilized manner -- the idea that poor people should simply be excluded from transport and so on will only create a subclass who never vote and hold no respect for their fellow citizens.

Of course, all this public investment in public infrastructure is only a good idea if you have honest, capable, well-meaning Government, which is why so many governments are selling their assets, and even the assets of other countries which aren't theirs to sell...

Re:fat pipe, please

[mutewinter]

What happens when the well runs dry because they were using more than they needed? Or, what happens when competing technologies (wireless maybe?) never come about it the next 50 years because the government artificially priced the market and competitors are forced to take a much greater loss than they could afford?

Just what I want, a government monopoly on the internet. Forget that before I had an option between two broadband isps, both with weakpoints, and a cheaper dial-up. Now I'm on the government's terms of service without zero options.

Don't be misled and believe that the government just builds stuff for free either. The resources are now being misdirected from something consumers didn't demand (voters demanded it, but they themselves didn't have enough money to foot the bill.)

Last I checked no one was dieing because of lack of an ultra-fast internet connection. Educational value? Sure, but the people who are going to get the most out of it are going to go the extra length to get connected. If your really poor, dial-up is more than enough. I lived on dial-up for a decade and I suspect broadband would just have meant I spent more time playing games rather than reading things such as slashdot.

But who decided that? The businesses. Who speaks up for the consumer of water? The government, which they own.

Last I checked, it was businesses and special interest groups that owned the government.

Can we ever have too much Capacity?

[ericspinder]

The speeds to be provided "are way more than what most consumers need in their home," Mr. Fenn said, adding, "Why provide a Rolls-Royce when a Chevrolet will do?" As I see it, the project is more like building an 8 lane bridge when a 4 lane will do just fine. Of course, I think Salt Lake is very very wise for making the decision to do it. Getting everything on one large "pipe" is what most cable companies are already planning. Hell if telephone companies thought that they could push TV over twisted pair they would be talking about it too. A few "watchdog" groups are a little worried about the spending, and I don't blame them, exp after the tech boom bubble burst. However, I am not sure of the price of rolled fiber cable, but I think it's a safe bet that it's better than it was 3 years ago.

Re:Can we ever have too much Capacity?

[Krondor]

NO! We can never have too much Capacity! This is obviously a really expensive project to undertake, and when you design something for the public with tax dollars you want it to last a LONG TIME. When do you think they'll get the millage passed to rebuild it for more capacity later.

Look how the Internet is growing, it's only a matter of time before multimedia content pushes the limits of even modern broadband setups. They are building capacity for the future, as well as for increased longterm demand.

Look at the rest of the industry, are you hard drives too fast, is your printer too fast, can you ever be too fast (besides playing old games and some emulators)?

Re:Can we ever have too much Capacity?

[ERJ]

Hell if telephone companies thought that they could push TV over twisted pair they would be talking about it too.

Actually, telephone companies are already looking into this using vdsl. Hardware such as this TUT Sytems can be used to send out several tv channels, internet, phone and more.

Re:Can we ever have too much Capacity?

[RevMike]

As I see it, the project is more like building an 8 lane bridge when a 4 lane will do just fine.

That analogy is not a good one to use because roads and bandwidth don't compare well. Network bandwidth can be used for more than one purpose while the roads are pretty much pigeon-holed.

There are lots of applications that "could be" if only the bandwidth was there to support them.

Actually, I think it is a pretty good analogy. A larger road has more bandwidth, and so can support more uses than a smaller road. For instance, if you had a factory, and your margin was very small, a four lane road might mean that your trucks need to sit in traffic for a substantial part of the day. That lost productivity could erase your margin. A larger road might mean that can deliver twice as much product in the same time, which enables you to stay in business.

Saying that roads are "pigeon-holed" because they can only move vehicles from point A to point B is the equiv. of saying that fiber lines are "pigeon-holed" because they only move data packets form point A to point B. It is the payload that matters.

Too little too late?

[devphaeton]

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).

Re:Too little too late?

[ponxx]

> 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.

I don't know, i see a lot of relatives with very little computing skills turning to broadband, just because it's easier and faster. They're all in the 50-65 age-range and i'm actually impressed at how far they've come in using the internet (3 years ago it was "can you explain the internet to me", now they do flights, shopping, maps, general info, tv listings, phone, etc. etc. and start asking me about cookies, ssl and such). Since getting braodband they use the internet much more and are generally happier about it...

I also know more and more families who have a network at home with a broad-band connection serving several computers, i think in a few years this will be the norm. I don't personally know anyone who has gone back to dial-up!

Then again, this is Europe (Germany and UK) so it might all be different where you are ;).

Ponxx

Re:Too little too late?

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in utah. The reason I think that this is a good idea AND not missing the mark is:
1-utah has a growing IT population and ANY improvement to public access will improve business access like a chain reaction. both from quality and price.
2-We have broadband here and it is OK but I know a lot of non techies that would purchase more if they could.
3-I hate the RIAA and MPAA so this is only better for file swapping.

Well, now I am also going to admit that life would still go on w/o this but I think and public information access projects is the only way to counter todays "anti-terrorist=anti-citizen" laws that govern information flow.

Re:Too little too late?

[wind]

I'm really surprised to hear that people are leaving broadband to go back to dialup, given not only my experience here in the UK (where the providers act as if they don't even offer dialup unless really pressed), but also talking to friends and family in the US.

There's lots and lots of content that really demands high speed access to be usable that isn't geek-specific at all. Heck - your average webpage these days practically requires high speed just to load in under a minute, what with all the various needless flash and java and such.

I don't think dialup is the wave of the future, especially as people come to see the internet as TV+ - offering lots of content for "free" that means they don't have to wait for snail mail (for say, family photos), or simply go without (how in the world did we function as a society before IMDb?)

In fact, the idea that at least some cities are coming to see the internet as something that should be supported by gov't (for good or evil) in the way that other basic services are or have been supported (roads, telephone, energy, gas, etc), indicates to me that we are on the verge of having the internet be as fundamental to our daily lives as these other services already are.

Re:Too little too late?

[AvantLegion]

>> I'm on the verge of returning to dial-up. Two reasons. #1 I don't have the time to goof off online and #2 my local cable company is a monopolistic blood sucking leech.

You got Comcast too??

Re:Too little too late?

[Triv]

I had broadband. I cancelled it a few months ago. Last week, I got it back and killed my landline instead and it's all because of money.

Dialup requirements:
Local phone service - $20/month plus 10c per call is approx. $35
Long Distance - approx. $15 at 5c a minute
ISP - $15/month TOTAL: $65

Broadband:
Cable internet access: $41/month

And that's it. I couldn't believe I was actually paying more for dialup when I did the math. Now I use my cell for calls. I have fewer bills to pay and don't now feel like I'm getting hosed.

Triv

Will they censor in the name of community mores?

[georgeha]

Remember, this is Utah, where Blockbuster is too risque, so they edit R rated films to PG standards. I wonder if they plan on running some sort of web filter on their connections, it would be local government reflecting the will of the people.

As long as this is being funded locally, great!

[Thag]

I just hope they aren't taking money away from everyone else in the state to pay for something that's only going to benefit the cities.

Jon Acheson

One phrase:

[GlassUser]

About damn time.

Well, it's a good idea in some ways, but isn't there major potential for DOS attacks? I mean against the local network, can't you monopolize pretty much all the bandwidth of the neighborhood fiber? I guess you can get into QOS metering and stuff, but that's a hassle.

This is really cool though in that it goes back to what the internet really is - peer to peer at its lowest level. Everyone is a client, everyone is a server, everyone has a public IP. No more of this corporate-shoved consumerism dreck. Very cool

hmmm

[selfabuse]

this seems all well and good, but what about local ISPs in utah? How are mom and pop shops expected to compete with the government? Hopefully this doesn't happen in PA, or I'd be out a job, and very very angry at my local government.

Re:hmmm

[shakah]

Actually, complaining about the "unfairness" of the government's ability to "sell below cost" is a bit of a red herring.

The "real" unfairness is the government's ability to compel subscription to (and/or investment in) the service via taxes, with which a private company truly can't compete.

However, insofar as the government is really just the unified voice of the people, as long as the populace consents to underwrite the service as a wise use of their tax dollars I don't see a whole lot wrong with it.

Now, there may come a day when Utahans (Utahites? Utahweenians?) will begin to question the application of their individual tax contributions towards high-speed Internet infrastructure projects (i.e. "Hey, my taxes just went up, and I don't even use the Internet! How about fixing the potholes on my street?"), but that's the normal course of government.

They need the bandwidth

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

With SCO in Lindon attracting tons of DoSes and continuous Slashdotting and getting millions of megs of subpoenaed documents in Word format, I bet they're putting a strain on the entire state's innurnet infrastructure.

Did you see that burn mark by the I-15 on Point of the Mountain? that's the fiber optic running underground to Canopy ...

Re:95 Mb downstream, 56K upstream?

[Anonymous Coward]

> upstream bandwidth

Upstream? Now that's just silly. Obviously, everyone only *downloads*, so uploading isn't an issue. A downloads from B, B downloads from C, and C downloads from A. It all works out in a beautiful Escher-esque way, each node feeding off of each other, downhill both ways...

Should the government really be providing this?

[TWX]

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.

Re:Should the government really be providing this?

[penguin7of9]

Is the job of the government to provide high speed internet service to homes?

The job of the government is to provide whatever we, the people, want it to provide. It's quite common to task governments with running businesses when the private sector has failed to deliver.

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.

Utah has the kind of government its voters elected. I don't like that government, you may not like it, but they do. As long as it's within the Constitution, they are free to do that.

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.

Well, that's exactly what you are getting when you leave those things to big businesses. Government-run services are preferable in my opinion. In fact, "government run" doesn't mean "centralized"--this kind of effort is an excellent candidate for being run at a city/town level.

I prefer government-run to big-business-run. At least governments are accountable to voters. The best situation is, of course, to have lots of little, independent companies. But that isn't always achievable.

AWESOME!

[aliens]

This is the best news yet!

Go back to your dial-up mere mortals. Leave us all the more bandwith to download the 1,001 Linux distro ISO's out there.

Most telling part of the article

[GoofyBoy]

The costs are substantial. Mr. Morris said Utopia would spend about $1,100 a home to run the fiber network by each house in the 18 cities involved, and an additional $1,400 for each home that decided to be connected.

What would you personally do with $1100 dollars? Would you spend it so you can have the potential of spending another $1400 and monthly fees to get more bandwidth than you would ever need right now?

Now how about enforcing that on every homeowner in your city?

Re:Most telling part of the article

[GoofyBoy]

>Private companies can't do this because they don't have the rights to the land.

They can get it. Its not easy, but not impossible.

>increases the economy because more companies will go to the area

Read my original question: How does fibre to the HOME increase the economy? Not to commercial sites, but to the home?

>municipal government does the job the citizens want it to do

Biggest thing for goverments to do by the majority of citizens? Protection and better fiscal responsiblity. Not faster broadband to the home. Do you think that anyone would get elected with the slogan "Fiber to every home!" Think I am wrong? Open up your local newspaper for the last year and see how important fiscal responsiblity vs. emergency services vs. broadband to home is in your city citizens.

Public subsidized MISTAKE

[dada21]

Leave this to the free market of competition -- any time the government enacts these "wonderful projects" it ends up costing bigger bucks than if it was done for profit. How many non-users will pay higher taxes so that the actual users can get a service they way? How many ISP jobs will be lost? How many useless government jobs will be added?

Is this what you want? The same bureaucrats who have ruined education, who have done nothing but porked their budgets out of control -- you want these guys serving your high speed data?

Development

[DarkBlackFox]

From the article:

Jerry Fenn, the president of the Utah division of Qwest, the regional telephone company here that provides its own high-speed Internet access, said there were few uses yet for the network Utopia plans to deliver.

The speeds to be provided "are way more than what most consumers need in their home," Mr. Fenn said, adding, "Why provide a Rolls-Royce when a Chevrolet will do?"


This is exactly the line of thinking that prevents projects like this from implementation all accross the country. Just because "it's more than we need" right now does not mean it won't be down the road. It's the chicken and egg situation of the tech sector- no one will build it until there is a need, but there will not be a need unless it's there for people to develop uses on. Sort of ironic coming from a society which prides itself in gas gussling SUVs and exhorbitant homes.

Even though I live on the other side of the country, I hope this goes through, if not for the geeks of Utah, but for the hopes that municipal (read not controlled by draconian corporations) communications infrastructure can be rolled out in other places too.

Hmmm... Maybe your employer is in trouble...

[GuardianBob420]

These are all for the USA -

From April 2003: Broadband adoption races ahead in US

A little older, 2002: More consumers hooked on broadband

I think you get the idea...

Kinda funny to see this in the news...

[Chibi Merrow]

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. :)

Re:Will they censor in the name of community mores

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm.... a small percentage of people here feel the need to pay some other company, most definatly NOT blockbuster, to edit out the "bad stuff" for them...

For the rest of us, there's nobody telling us that we can't go pick up a move that's rated "R" if we want to, or for that matter go to an adult video store with "XXX" videos, or get them on pay-per=view, or whatever... Sure, they've tried..but failed, since the majority of people figured out that it was a stupid idea to begin with.

So I can pretty confidently say that they won't try to force a filter onto people, we're not talking about China here!

I'll be the first to tell you that Utah has some oddities...especially when it comes to alcohol laws. But if you haven't lived here, (and I have, my entire 27 years), then forgive me for being blunt, but you don't have a clue.

Get real!

[sunbane]

Okay, ha ha... we are all a bunch of amish here. Whatever! Is there a market here for movies w/ the violence and swearing taken out? Sure. Can you still get the other R rated films as well. Yes. Would they force people to use censor'd net if they did have it? No. If anything they would just provide it as an option, which I am sure some people would appreciate, but you could still get the raw full of pr0n feed if you wanted it.

Of all the states in the Union...

[pope1]

...why did it have to be Utah?

Oh well, if it turns out profitable there,
maybe other areas will copy the idea and we can finally catch up to Canada and Malaysia in terms of
bandwidth per connected household.

Maybe this could also bring back the days of people running personal servers off thier home connections. I miss surfing the web at the edge of the network. With so many EULA's preventing servers period it has slowly started to mirror other content distribution systems.. all push all the time.

Big Brother is watching you

[ViolentGreen]

The local government will have access to logs of every site you visit, every email you send/receive will pass though it's network.

I'd have to do some heavy reading into their privacy policy before I signed up for this.

Headline Correction

[TrollBridge]

That should read "Utah Taxpayers To Provide High-Speed Access".

Re:Headline Correction

[leerpm]

As opposed to .. "Utah Taxpayers Paying Telcos/CableCos To Provide High-Speed Access".

I can't see it happening...

[rufey]

I live in Utah (no offence taken to those who would rather not live in Utah), and I don't see this happening anytime soon. In fact, this is the first I've heard of it (and I keep up with the news around here)

Given that Salt Lake City (where I live and work) is in a budget crunch like most everywhere else, I can't see where the money will come from to lay fiber everywhere. The cost of DSL is about $50 a month for 640down/256up, $40 for 256/256, and Comcast cable costs about $45 (without cable TV). While most peole I work with have DSL or cable, I don't see the masses demanding high speed.

There was another compnay based in American Fork (next to Lindon and SCO) that was a startup and was trying to implement something similar, but eventually found out the cost was just too high and not enough people were willing to pay for it.

Fiber could be laid to neighborhoods and then branch copper off from there to the actual homes, but even that's going to cost a bunch, not to talk about the maintenance.

And only $470 million to lay fiber directly to 248,000 homes? To me that sounds like an underestimate. What about the network equipment and customer support and..... to support those 248,000 homes?

Forget filtering...

[mcSey921]

Forget filtering... any decent lawyer would be able to make a constitutional case out of that Utah or anyway else.

Now what would scare me with government run ISPs is their complete compliance with the rest of the government (i.e. the judiciary). Is Utah's state run ISP going to fight subpeona's of their users traffic records? Of course not! The government and media are all ready so far under the covers together that handing one control of the pipe while the other controls the content is a Bad Idea. If you thought the broadcast flag was bad, wait till they set the evil bit on the state run routers.

Just curious, but I know that my state (IL) has "no compete" laws that basically say that the government cannot compete in established industries. e.g. They can't open a donut shop because that would hurt Krispy Kreme's business. Do other states have similar laws?

utopia website

[mactoph]

you can read more about the project at their (unfinished website): utopianet.org It's mostly empty, but there is a list of cities and a good FAQ

Public Works and Utilities

[*weasel]

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.

Is the tide turning?

[release7]

Have we finally had our fill of the nonsensical "greed is good" and "government is evil" mantras? Did it take the recent corporate scandals to help us come to our senses on the issue of public vs. private?

Perhaps that's just wishful thinking on my part. Personally, I don't place myself in either camp. It all depends on the product being produces. Do I want a for-profit company making decisions about my medical coverage? Hell no! Do I want the government making my car? Of course not!

In this case, it only makes sense that a critical infrastructure like Internet service be provided by the state. Charging me $50/month for my broadband connection seems ridiculously high. Either the the cable company is terribly inefficient or they will be making money hand over fist far into the future.

We all know companies set prices where they will make the most profit, the public be damned, with no obligation to social justice issues. They don't care if nearly 33% of the population can't aford to shell out $50/month for broadband. All that matters to them is that it will make them more money if they gouge those who can afford to pay and leave lower income folks out in the cold.

Been there, done that...

[H0ek]

As a resident of Spanish Fork, Utah, I have already been getting cable Internet service for over a year now. Up to that point, I had been bugging AT&T and Qwest to get either cable or DSL to my house, to no avail. As soon as the city of Spanish Fork got the cable installed to my house, I cancelled all the other services and stuck with the city.

There are some minor problems. Technically, the staff of the city network need to gain a little experience. But overall, it has been a pleasant experience and I recommend it to everyone else.

It's about time the rest of the state catches up to us. Heck, we're just a little ol' cowboy town that barely knows how to find the 'on' button for our com-poot-urs.

The official site for Utopia....

[rufey]

.... is Here. Its gonna connect 250,000 homes to a 5.9 Tbyte switched network fabric.

A note about the funding for the project from the above web site:

The UTOPIA business case indicates that wholesale usage fees, charged to service providers based on their use of the network, will generate enough revenue to pay the capital investment costs, operating expenses, and debt service obligations associated with building and maintaing the network. No taxpayer money will be needed. However, in order to secure a competitive interest rate on the bonds that UTOPIA will issue to cover the cost of network construction, member cities may pledge to guarantee some of the debt.

So Utah tax payers (me included) won't be paying for this from our taxes. I can't wait, however, until ISPs in Utah start passing the cost of the whole thing onto me (the consumer). Sure I can get Gbit speeds. The "basic" package may cost $28 (probably at speeds comparable to current cable), but wait until you ask for a full Gbit/s. I can get a DS3 (45 Mbits/sec) for about $20,000 per month right now. No thank you. I'm happy with my 640k/256k DSL at $50.

Fiber is the next utillity

[Raindeer]

This project is interesting and is more or less the way people here in The Netherlands are thinking the future will be like. I have personally worked on projects like these and the general idea is like this.

1. The only worthwile infrastructure for the future is fiber. This is a statement of fact/religion. Wireless may be nice in your house, but as a shared infrastructure it doesn't work for high speed data services.

2. Having companies lay 2, 3, 4, 5 parallel fiber infrastructures to each house amounts to a huge investment which you can't earn back over time.

3. To save on the investment on the physical and datalink layer. The fiber and active components at the end of each street are owned by a not-for-profit organisation, this can be customer owned, owned by housing corporations, Public Private Partnership, public organisations or maybe even private organisations.

4. Routing is done in such a way that local traffic stays as local as possible. You can actually make local traffic free, because the fiber and active components have been paid for already (with a mild cap maybe to keep people from hogging bandwidth)

5. The whole network is hooked up to one or more central locations which act like Internet Exchanges. Here corporations hook up their networks. An ISP could expand its network to individual users via VLAN's. An end user just subscribes to a VLAN to get a service. This allows for easy access to end users for all suppliers and for easy changing of suppliers by end-users. At this central location you will also find bandwidth intensive services like video on demand. (Just like one builds an electricity intensive company next to a hydrodam)

6. It would be great if you could have indivdual vlans per device, so your IP-phone hooks up to a different vlan than your securitycam than your ISP-connection. This allows for easy access to multiple services without the nescessity to route everything through your ISP first. Power to the people.

All in all given an investment of about 1100euros per household this would amount to about 15 euros per month for 15 years. This would generate a total revenue of about 2700 euros for 15 years. That would about cover for organisation, maintenance and new kit every 5 years. On top of this the end user would get a service bill where each service gets indidually charged.

So all in all: Physical and datalink layer are a utility, all higher layers are not a utility and need to be payed for one way or another. Though local traffic could be free.

Ruralites are Screwed

[bigkahunafish]

Once again, people that live outside the cities are screwed. I dont like this idea for the simple fact that some people will pay for it that wont recieve any of the benefits.

Personally I dont think we need to focus on this yet. Rural people like me (in indiana) rely on poor dial-up service (max of 40k), and we already are talking about people in cities having fiberoptic, while, yes, ruralites have Can we focus out side the box of city limits?

Ask slashdot: Why is bandwidth still so expensive

[dougnaka]

What gives? Why does it cost $300+ per MBPS?

The only possible reason I see is price fixing.

Anyone else see a different logical reason for it?

Municipals

[scoove]

Municipalities across the country are either going to do the retail or the wholesale

Many have been, and in spite of the track record and sufficient demonstration of their inability to operate as a professionally run telecom entity, many still aspire to do things more interesting than running their local water plant.

What is important for any consumer (and citizen, in the case of a municipal considering getting into commercial enterprises with your tax dollars) is to understand the dynamic of motivation in any operation.

In Utah, the complaint is being made that too many commercial entities are ignoring the demand for broadband. Being one who provides this to a third of a fly-over country state, I can tell you that the claims of interest in broadband (even at 60% comperable city cable modem prices) is far less than the claims. I've had communities present us with petitions with over 200 signatures, only to discover that less than 20% of that number were actually prepared to pay for the service when it was finally provided. (It wasn't price or competition - but rather a large majority of parties signing it to pad the numbers in the hope they could bring something good to their community - without they themselves actually having to purchase it!)

And we're motivated by the consequence of failure being of significant disinterest (forget about making great profits at this point - broadband in rural America is being operated exceptionally well if you're breaking even) . Contrast that with a municipal. They are used to 8:30 to 4 work hours, not twelve-hour days, expect to sneak out early Friday and never work weekends. They're typically overstaffed with undercompetent people and solve problems by throwing more bodies at the problem, or (god forbid), hiring and believing consultants.

Their motivation? It's typically prestige and recognition. Failure isn't a possibility, as they will quickly transfer moneys from their monopoly operations (water, sewer, etc.) either legally or illegally (watch out for those creative loans from the monopoly that get "forgiven" and wiped off the books a few years later, or the illegal transfer "loaning" of assets, including employees, vehicles, equipment and office space that is billed to the regulated monopoly but actually put to use within the broadband operation).

The result: you end up paying the highest water, sewer, electric, etc. rates in the state. One municipal in our region, who decided to offer broadband (in spite of three - yes, three - other broadband offerings) has an electric and water rate over 40% higher than anything remotely close in the region. That and creative accountants.

Worse yet, the municipals simply do not understand the telecom business. They're used to product life cycles of 5 to 10 years and don't understand capitalizing something that'll be obsolete in 12 months. They don't understand that core business means you need to have expertise on the subject - they'll hire consultants to an extent that ensures their project will never be profitable. This leads to unfortunate purchasing decisions - e.g. buying proprietary equipment from a company that goes bankrupt and leaves the municipality with an investment in junk (this happens more than you'd think - in fact, one of the proprietary near-line of sight vendors in our business that has the most success with municipals is a breath away from chapter 11 or 7, but they nail the municipal process by building their confidence up in the sales process about how easy this broadband stuff is - "heck, this stuff sells itself and is nearly self-installable!").

Now you're really in trouble, as a consumer of the water/gas/electric from the municipal. Consider for a moment - what would you do if you disagreed with paying 50% or more for your utilities to subsidize a pathetic broadband operation? Have you evern looked at how you can get rid of your municipal management? They're very hard to remove - most are unaccountable to the political process and report only to a w