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Cities Building Own Fiber Networks
cmburns69 writes "It's been posted before that some municipalities have plans for building their own networks (such as Utah's UTOPIA). There are many people who don't want that to happen. But despite that, CNET News has coverage of some success stories regarding 'a growing number of municipalities, state and county agencies, and local governments that are building their own networks.'"
I'm not sure which is worse...the government having control of my line or the cable companies having control...
A previous ISP that I worked for in a rural location in Canada did this with the local town to split the costs. Its not that interesting, but I thought i'd try for first post :)
You create your own reality - Leave mine to me.
Bran Fiber!!
These communities are fueling the future economy...one where the corporate media cannot control all of your information. I just wish I could be involved in this in my own city. Multi-megabit pipelines for pennies on the dollar. Everyone needs to support this.
im wondering how they will manage to put all that fiber in place with all the copper that's around.
Why not use (buy) all the Dark Fiber everyone cries about from the Telecom Boom in the 90's?
Hell, I'd even be happy with clean drinking water!
Let's go cities! YAAY!
This has the potential to take the power of broadband away from the cable and phone companies, and treat it as a utility. This is a great idea, and I don't know about you guys, but I sure as heck wouldn't mind some of my dollars going towards movements like these. Monopolies over broadband are sickening, and growing more and more. Currently, I pay $100/mo for 512 sync, because my ISP is the only ISP in my small town.
Bored? Why not join a decent mess
How can a company compete when the playing field is not level?
Today the cities will build fiber networks.. next they'll start paving the roads.. building sewers.. maintaining bridges..
Sad thing is that there are enormous quantities of dark fiber here in the US literaly doing nothing. Enormous increased bandwidth is immeadiately available and it is being kept off to create an artificial shortage. If telcos wont make their fiber available at reasonable rates to the people of the US, than the cities have to do it for them.
We here in the US are NOT at the top of the world when it comes to bandwidth available to the masses, I believe top would be South Korea. The whole thing is absolutely deplorable, were squandering our once high tech lead in the name of greater profits. By the time the powers that be finally realize it, it will be hell to catch up.
I've wanted my city to do this for a long time now. All the complaints I hear involve taxpayer money, privacy, and government abuse of such a system.
Honestly, I'm sick of paying $45 a month for Comcast. If the city would be willing to offer the service:
They could partner with an existing provider.
Keep fees very low.
Use the revenue from that service to maintain the service, expand and even pour it back into the city's budget.
I don't know the actual numbers, but consider the Comcast (and others) monopoly-type situation. This is not something to complain about, it's something to push for and watch closely enough to keep it safe.
has had a network like this in the works for a couple of years now. It is supposed to be finished within the next year I think.
Chaos will always win out over order because chaos is more organized
Another decade or two and the majority of the country (if not the world) will be wireless-capable. Think of wireless repeaters in all public buildings, all major stores, gas stations, even in cars. Then they install the RFID tags in your skull while you sleep, and even the tin-foil hats won't save you from Big Brother. They'll find you. They'll get you. They know where you live, they know when you sleep. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you.
Check out the best P2P sharing website: MEDIACHEST.COM
So, um, aren't public companies meant to be less efficient than private ones?
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I hadn't truely thought about it in this context, but why shouldn't all houses/apt's/condo's etc get net connections like a water line or a sewage line(yeah, that analogy isn't lost on me either). It should just be. You would then get actual services(mail, web, etc) through external providers. Seems to me like this is really how it should be.
dimes
With wireless mesh technology, it would seem simple enough to set up a community internet without any central government or corporate provider at all. Besides, if the city controlls it, then it is only a matter of time before they monitor it, you should see the list of restrictions that most city libraries impose if you want a taste of whats to come.
some municipalities have plans for building their own networks ... There are many people who don't want that to happen
I'm usually in agreement with complaints about monopolies but in some cases they have their uses. This is one of them. Rather than several companies all running their own cables everywhere in town, it is a LOT more cost effective (and therefore more likely to get done) to have ONE set of cables. Note that this cuts down on construction (digging up the streets for buried cable) and/or clutter in the sky (poles and cables strung along).
As citizens, instead of private consumers, you have to use the apropriate weapon in case you are unhappy with the service (for whatever reason). In the case of a government owned service, use the vote.
So given that one provider is more efficient than multiple providers in this case, consumers have a choice. Do you want a government sponsored company to run it or a private one? Keep in mind there are plusses and minuses on both sides.
I hope we see more of this kind of thing in the future.
Here in Sacramento, Surewest Broadband offers 10mbit Fibre (to your home) for about 50 dollars a month, if you live in a neighborhood with Fiber in it. A little over a year ago they bought out the company who was originally providing it (I can't remember their name), but they had been around for a year or so before that. The fiber is still slowly being laid around the city, and hopefully I'll be getting it pretty soon.
e nt ial/internet/
http://www.surewestbroadband.com/products/resid
Efficiency is measured mainly by the company's revenue, not by the quality and quantity of services it provides. Therefore a private company can be more efficient then the municipality, with the later being the users' choice.
MoFscker
Where the heck does this huge disparity in the price quoted in these kinds of articles come from? What part of the network is doing the gouging? Or is it really just an unspoken agreement between the phone companies (DSL) and cable companies to charge what they do?
I mean, be honest, have you ever heard of an instance of any gov't endeavor being cost effective and timely?
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I'm a Network Admin for a school district and we are in the start of a project to link up all of the schools and libraries in our county and the neiboring two counties with fiber. If things go well, we will open up some of the unused space to local business to lease from us. No home users, though. For us this is a great thing. We get to share some resources with other schools in our area and will be able to do more with video streaming and virtual classrooms. As for my district in particular, this really isn't upping our bandwidth too much (already had fiber connect all of our schools), but this is bringing many of the schools up from dial-up.
...look up the municipal fiber history of Anaheim, CA. In the late 90s they tore up a bunch of streets streets burying their own fiber. They were going to provide data, video, even telephone service. They set up a NOC, had miles of fiber run all through the city, set up a telephone switch... and then they shut it all down. They used hacksaws to cut through the ends of the fiber rather than disconnecting it as they ripped out the switch and other equipment in the NOC. Last I heard, a nearly broke ISP had taken over the space where the fiber all terminated, and was using the tail end of bundled fiber sticking out of the wall, dark fiber that feeds all over the city, as a peg to hang spare CatV cables.
www.albertasupernet.ca
Ashland, OR was one of the first cities to roll out a municipal cable internet system. For years I had been calling the cable company and asking when cable internet would be available. Then the city decided to create its own network. Within a few months the cable company had the entire cable internet system working. The two systems now compete with each other, with many people choosing the city owned provider over the faceless corporation because they prefer to help out their community.
The lesson is simple: Without competition, the current cable/phone companies have no incentive to make things better.
This will lend an interesting spin to the American concept of democracy. The candidate who makes the biggest contribution to the local governing authority or network contractor will have the best spots in internet advertising. In years to come as a greater percentage of the overall population migrates from television and radio to the internet this will have increasing impact. Nothing really changes. Money rules and those who control it rule by proxy. Only a fool believes the pretty propaganda that is heard in public speeches. It is meant to appease the blissfully (and often vehemently) ignorant.
Voting in one form or another is among the oldest traditions known to man. Rigging the vote is the most obvious bald-faced secret.
+++ATHZ 99:5:80
Most bigger cities run their own water and sewer facilities for better or worse.
This is just about the same thing. You should save a significant amount but it's not incredible. Eventually the city will have to hire corporate managers to run the service as a business so it is self sufficient.
They will charge what it takes to stay in business and a little more to pay for "expansion."
I guess the upside is that this will encourage adoption of newer technology instead of the rusty pipes they're using now. C'mon, DSL? Twisted copper is so last century.
> So, um, aren't public companies meant to be less efficient than private ones?
(I'm assuming that by "public companies" you mean companies owned by the government.)
No, that's just one of those stories corporations keep telling to keep ownership of businesses like utilities in private hands. You can run any public business well, or run it poorly; it all depends on the management, just as in the private sector.
The folks defending private ownership like to raise the threat that any government-owned business doesn't need to watch it's bottom line, because they can always get a bail-out from raising taxes. What they appear to forget to mention is that any major business of enough impact to the local or national economy can always get the same deal by twisting the right arms. Sometimes management can get direct or indirect subsidies for their company even if they aren't in danger of going out of business; they just have to start hinting that they are likely to move operations elsewhere.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
I'm located in Simcoe County, Ontario, Canada and we have a county-wide fiber network that's called SCBN (Simcoe County Broadband Network). It was originally started to provide interent access to schools, local hospitals and Georgian College (where I go to school right now). Recently, it was opened up so that business could get in on the fiber internet... for a fee. Apparently (this is from a sales rep at SCBN) it costs about $3000 to $5000 for installation and about $100 per meg/s per month. In addition, they won't service residental areas (which sucks... imagine a 5 meg fiber line at home ;)). They're owned by Hydro One Telecom and other various Hydro companies.
There's no place like localhost
He think it's a good idea and reminds people it's a perfect example of a natural monopoly, except in this case, citizens own the infrastructure, not a private organization. Go local fiber runs!
the folks living and working in the rarefied atmosphere of Palo Alto (CA) have been working at it for a few years. They also have a city run Utilities dept. and relevant experience. The trial has been very successful (i remember $90 for a fibre drop to the home) with a limited number of customers and now they are pushing for a bond-like measure to build and operate a city wide fiber access utility. As expected, the incumbent network operators (SBC in this case) is out spreading FUD at most city council meetings and with the decision makers. I hope it succeeds so we can move to a model where the road-builders are city/govt regulated and I can have my choice of service providers on the city owned/operated fiber network. Some discussions that I attended bogged down because the proposals defined fiber-to-the-home as a requirement and wasn't exactly friendly to other means of last-100ft access including wide-band wireless, ultra-wide band wireless, or copper operating at >10Mbps.
I don't know about wiring our whole town, but a campus-campus fibre line is starting to look very inviting to our municipal network. Our current ISP is offering DS1 service, but it's been having problems for two years, and they aren't addressing the issues. Currenty we're getting about 128K of bandwidth our of a full T1. Since we are a will-pay town for Universal Servicecharges^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hs, we get pittance in return for the amount our residents pay into the Al Gore Tax. We had one competitor to the local telco, but they went under. When we presented the local cable company with our requirements, they said a collective, "Huh?" Our local telco quotes the next level of digital service at three times the current rate, and the bandwidth ain't that great. Wireless is out of the question because of the hilly geography.
So, it's not like we've exhausted all our alternatives. Building our own WAN is the only option that has a definite future, and it will pay off in the long run. I imagine that the case in many places.
-Fred
Wow. I hope you aren't thinking of ever going into education.
I'm all for a city fiber Lan where your specific city is responsible for maintaining it. However, I think the cities service should end at the city. If you want actual access to internet then you need to pay a larger fee for using the POP which would be provided by a major telecom. I don't know about the rest of you but I wouldn't want to loose all the funding that telecoms put into communities. Almost all of them give government buildings free service, which incluces libraries, police departments, city hall, schools, etc, and they employ local people to maintain the system.
Would we really want to replace that with the government controlling all of our information?
When you control the mail, you control information.
- Newman
Is it the role of Government to build a wholesale fiber network?
Yes, I believe it is infrastructure, similar to Roads. It does not make sense for each private service provider(FedEx, UPS, etc) to build it's own road to you house or company. Instead Government provides the road allowing the citizens to have cost effective access to private services.
Having the government provide a wholesale fiber network will allow for more companies to compete without the overhead of building a network. This will reduce prices, at the same time as improving what is available.
Well...in the case of the school I work for (which is just about to launch an initive to link all schools and libraries in 3 counties), any "profits" we earn from it are going towards offsetting our cost of setting up and maintaining the network. We are not planning on running any fiber to homes, and only some businesses, so there certaintly isn't any room to set up a profit sharing with school employees. While we are using as much pre-existing fiber as possible, and are trying to use whatever grants we can get to offset the cost, this is not a cheap thing to set up. There may be some schools out there that use this as a money-generating scheme, but in our case, and I suspect a lot of school cases, we are simply doing it in order to benifit our students.
That's right I said STUDENTS, not teachers. Schools don't exist to serve teachers, they exist to educate students. While it is true that a school can't run without teachers, let's not forget why the teachers are there in the first place. Sorry to go into an off-topic rant.
Today's "new" cities are planned, why not plan the bandwidth as well as the plumbing, water supply, roads. If anybody has ever been to Edmonton, Alberta you could see how a planned city works in so many ways. The streets are all numbered from the centre out (I think it's that way). Give someone your address and they know how to get there just by following the streets. Internet access is becoming just as important as streets nowadays. Unfortunately it has to be done by the governing body, the only drawback I see.
Stay tuned for new sig...
Here in Montreal, the government is barely able to keep roads and running water going... Draw your own conclusions.
They have had a dark fiber ring up and running for a while now and have just started offering free wireless service in the downtown core...unfortunately they are hitting the North-South streets before going East-West. Wonder if I can get any signal at my apt...hrmmm :)
Here's the project's website, not very up to date though.
http://www.e-novations.ca/
Spoken like a true authoritarian.
You don't care about the kids? Just the teachers. Reminds me of a few teachers I used to have.
Yeah, its all about the teachers getting a better apartment/house/car. Sure, that would make them better in their jobs.
Most Administrators, if you're talking System Administrators would know what kind of fibre it was. If you're talking about a school administrator, then you'll be waiting a long time for them to be paid the same as the school teachers. Maybe the MD does less work than his/her employees, yet they'll never get paid the same.
I fail to see why the increased income from this type of activity should result in a substantial increase in teachers salaries.
I also think it matters little what your politics are, the issues are generally more important than the party involved.
As regards to the "No Child Left Behind Policy", the idea is not to just put children in a higher grade, but to ensure they are educated enough to enter the higher grades. I also thought it was the children and the teachers doing the work, not just the teachers. No kid wants to be left behind. It is easily to give up on them though, let them slip behind.
Rather than give the money to the existing teachers, hire more teachers, then maybe they won't have to work so hard as you say and burn out.
The cable and telco that whine about unfair competition seem to conveniently forget that that their facilities were paid for under regulations that gave them monopoly status. Most municipalities that get into the broadband business do so because the incumbents have not provided anything but vague promises for the future.
....Bethanie....
I actually feel that a goverment based inferstructure would not be a bad thing. though I would also like to see indivduals set up Wi Fi equipment, (based on IPv6) to also lower price and up the compition agienst the cable and phone companies.
;-)
and those who want to build a faraday cage could put an antinna on there house to catch the wi fi signals and run a cable through the cage so you can still have good access.
Finally, someone listened! Municipal data networks make perfect sense. Many municipalities manage their local utilities, adding data services to that I think is the natural extension.
The pricate telephone companies are never going to outlay the cash for significant upgrades to a local telecom system. They would much rather stick with their relatively old lines and equipment and charge their customers and arm and a leg for them. When the cities and counties own the lines, they're going to get a better price on services because they can shop around. I'm not saddened by the stories of woe coming out of the local Bells. Municipal data networks are being built and proposed because there is a need for them that isn't being met by the current owners of the data networks.
I don't understand why they don't work with the munis on these projects. Instead of whining about competition they should offer to manage the networks. They can get the management dollars without the outlay for construction. I suppose they don't like to play games where they don't make up the rules. If they're concerned about municipal networks competing for commercial services it because the market is the telcos' to lose. There's plenty of areas of the country that have a lot of cheap office space and a high standard of living. They do not however have the sort of data infrastructure that many businesses are looking for and are thus avoided by larger businesses. Building competitive data networks can draw a lot of business to an area. The Bells want to focus business in particular markets where they have a lot of leverage while a municipality wants to move business where it is.
It's sad that the telcos are so successful in their lobbying to prevent municipalities from reselling excess capacity. The money an RBOC makes it not going into local communities. The money Bumkiss county makes however does go into the community. In Georgia where the schools stand to make money the situation is even worse. The school districts could generate cashflow by selling something they're not using and wouldn't miss. At the very least it would be possible for their network to break even an essentially give the county schools a free 10Gb data network. At best they could put money back into that county's coffers. Even if those dollars don't go directly back into the school system the schools could still benefit. Hopefully the legislature in Utah and the SC in Missouri's case will see the telcos are whining about having their uncompetitive monopolies taken away and side with the municipalities.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
I read an interesting article lately about a company in Vienna, Austria, which has developed a machine called "cable runner" that can deploy fibre cables in sewage tunnels. This eliminates the need for digging. It mentions though, that this is not meant for a wide network but rather for point to point connections. Oh, here's the company's website.
Looked like an interesting idea to me.
Despite the ranting of laissez-faire ideologues, many communities have municipal utilities of various sorts and in general the public seems to be satisfied. This shouldn't be considered such a great big deal.
There's every reason for a town to provide its own services if the magic of the marketplace isn't doing the job.
The town of Norwood, Massachusetts, population 40,000, not a hotbed of socialism by any means, has town electricity, and a few years ago added town cable TV and internet access: Norwood Light Broadband. It coexists with (and competes with) private offerings.
People I know who live in Norwood are generally happy with the town services. Compared to neighboring towns, the perception is that the electric service is somewhat more reliable than that provided by Boston Edison. And it is slightly cheaper. The municipal light department has been in operation for, oh, many decades and I wouldn't say people swear by it, but they certainly don't swear at it.
Norwood Light Broadband is newer, but it is competing successfully with private companies, and again, people who use it seem to be happy with it. This is particularly relevant, because before town cable, there was a succession of cable companies (Adams-Russell, Cablevision, MediaOne, Comcast... I think I've left at least one out) that came and went and merged and a long succession of unreliable service and unresponsive customer service. Each one disclaimed responsibility for the broken promises of the previous company and, in turn, made and broke promises of their own.
Naturally, I have to take a midterm that night:
/. editor is allegedly here in the People's Republic of Ann Arbor, what the heck...)
The Quixotic Quest for Universal Broadband
Rich Wiggins
Overview and Bio
Wednesday, March 3, 2004 7:30 PM - 10:00 PM
Ann Arbor IT Zone
330 E. Liberty
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
Description
It seems broadband will cure whatever ails you. Economic developers for villages and states claim it's essential for business growth. Comcast and SBC claim their broadband offerings will transform your Internet experience. A Carnegie-Mellon professor promises 100 megabits/second to 100 million homes.
Yet there isn't even a universally accepted definition of "broadband." You may have a semi-fat pipe to your house, but we still don't have end-to-end quality of service. Universities invest billions in campus networks but struggle to keep MP3 downloads from consuming all the bandwidth. This talk explores the crosscurrents and pitfalls in the quest for universal broadband.
Presenter Bio
Richard Wiggins is an author and speaker specializing in Internet topics.
Wiggins writes for national publications such as New Media, Searcher, and Internet World. He serves on the editorial board of First Monday, a peer reviewed e-journal about the Internet.
He is author of the first book on Web publishing, The Internet for Everyone: A Guide for Users and Provider (McGraw-Hill, 1995) and is writing a new book called A Guide to the Literature of the Internet (Libraries Unlimited, 2000).
Wiggins is executive producer and co-host with Charles Severance of a television program, "North Coast Digital," which explores Internet topics as well as broader coverage of digital developments. Wiggins and Severance previously hosted "Internet: TCI" and "Nothin' But Net," seen on cable systems in Michigan and in various systems across the United States.
Wiggins has interviewed numerous Internet pioneers, including Vint Cerf (inventor of Internet Protocol), Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the Web), David Lytel (first White House Webmaster), Brewster Kahle (WAIS, Alexa), Michael Mauldin (Lycos), Larry Wall (PERL), and Sherry Turkle (MIT professor and author).
(I wasn't sure if this is related enough to the topic at hand to post, but since at least one
... of about 100K population in Texas. We're installing our own fiberoptic lines for a couple big reasons. First of all, using WAN links that are operated by commercial 3rd parties does not pass muster with the Homeland Security goons for law enforcement and other public safety related network traffic. Something about being paranoid that the phone company's Middle Eastern technical employees might tap into, or deliberately disrupt the service in times of emergency.
Secondly is that all that dark fiber that's laying dormant all over our city will likely stay dormant forever because the phone company does not want to sell it unless they can make a killing off of it. When we approached them about leasing some, the dollar signs just lit up and rolled in the salesmen's eyes. They came back with a price quote that was utterly ridiculous and didn't really want to hear what we were asking for... they instead came back with basically double the quantity and bandwidth links we'd asked for. Remember that cheesy Computer Associates television commercial with the thin cardboard software salesman that keeps saying "Great!!! 500 units is is!!!" when the customer only wanted 25? That's what it's like dealing with these maroons. They don't want to sell their dark fiber to anyone, or else they'd price it according to the market.
We did the math and the cost of installing our own fiber to the various municipal buildings across town will pay for itself in under 5 years, plus since it is securely owned and operated, it satisfies the tinfoil hat guys.
well... I'll take my chances on government, I guess, since the cable company maintains its content-control by refusing to wire the neighborhood.
Besides which, at the rate media companies are growing, it's going to be hard to dif governmnet and cable
[this sig has been trunca
I live in a city that has had its own fiber network for a few years now ( in fact it bills itself as the Most Wired City in the Country which is super funny considering all the meth labs we have around here). I was on there service for a while, and while it wasn't nearly as crappy as most of the other government services I've encountered, it wasn't great either. So no I'm back with my friendly local conglomerate.
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
We just had an 'eLAN' (sDSL of some sort on Winnipeg's fibre loop) connection setup in one of our Winnipeg locations - 2.3Mbps bi-directional full network connection ot the internet - I only wish we could get as good of a deal here!
The town I used to live in (and hope to move back to very soon) built a city-wide group of fiber links (22 nodes for a town of 20,000) that is working out rather quite well - you can get teevee if that's your wish - not mine, but hey, scifi is cool sometimes - or DOCSYS to the curb for 5 megs down or so... the upstream used to be one until the college kids saturated the network with p2p and the admin responded by capping upload. Cost for your 5 meg connection is about 30 bucks a month depending on which ISP you choose.
On the education front, the school district which I work for has 6 locations in three different municipalities. We were linked together by T1 lines that really were pretty terrible - bad connections which were weather-sensitive (not such a good thing in Oregon!), and slow even when they were running at full speed. We were approached by a local (and reputable) company which offered to build out and give us 2 dark fibers to each location and a pair of fibers to our upstream provider (thereby giving us glass all the way to the NOC), all for the price we were paying for our T1 line. Sounds too good to be true? Nope. We put out an RFP, the guys who made the original proposal won the bidding by miles, they did all the hanging from poles, trenching, etc, gave us our glass, we put media converters in, and voila! we've got screaminig connection between locations - all for the price of that cruddy T1 that we were apparently paying too much for.
The moral of this story? I guess there isn't one, except to say that what they're talking about in the lead story is real, and works. As a slashdot-friendly aside, Paul Allen, in his role of higher-up for the local cable pigopoly, swore to the City Council that he'd do everything in his power to sink the fiber project since they weren't using his Borg-infested kit to do it, preferring instead to use local people and companies. This threat occurred about 5 years ago, and the fiber network is still doing OK. Sorry, Paul =P
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
This is a metropoliton network covering most of the Greater Manchester area, using optic fibre (not crude copper) and the ATM protocol.
The fact it is using ATM (a point-to-point system) is significant. It means that lines aren't shared.
The GMING system was developed out of a project by the three main Universities of Manchester and the regional computer center, and was targetted at businesses who wanted a secure, fast system to connect to other businesses in the region.
The early talks focussed mainly on getting as many businesses as possible to buy-in. However, the ability to upgrade was also discussed. Essentially, optic fibre can support any speed you like, provided you have enough frequencies to play with. GMING was, right from the start, designed with the idea that businesses could simply buy faster connections at any time by swapping the end-points over. The only upper limit was what existed on the market.
It didn't catch on to the point of revolutionizing Manchester - a pity, as the concept is excellent and the implementation far better than any other broadband service - in the UK or any other country.
Nonetheless, it deserves the title of success. It has been adopted and is in use to the point where it is self-supporting.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Currently the local telephone company has been running fiber optics down every backlane and underground tunnel in the city. By the end of 2005 every house in Winnipeg will have Fiber Optic to their backdoor.
It started out with them going to a building owner and saying "if you give us $10k install fee, we'll cable you up and you can have Ethernet for almost nother per month". Then, move on up the street to the next building. Repeat a few times and you have a wired city at almost no capital cost.
This has been going for something like ten years now.
It's been done by the local Hydro Company, and has slowly expanded outwards
http://www.fibrewired.com/
Point me to the right place to discuss this, then.
Why not make an FCC ( s/FCC/whatevergoverningbodyyouchoose/g ) rule that states that when the government ( city/county/state/fed ) trenches to place fiber, they're required to give the locally competing telcos a 15 day advance notice, and let them lay pipe with them. This would give the telcos a better chance at upgrading their networks, and allow them to get to all the same places that the gov is going ( without paying for the trenching ).
It's not more cost effective to the public to have one set of cables, nor should an offer of monopoly protection be granted.
Consider a town with no services installed. Any person can consider making a large investment in installing a set of cables and selling a service. But after they build their network, the cost of entry into the market is just as high as it was before. So consider a potential competitor who is thinking of entering a market. They're only going to enter the market if there is enough money for two companies to be profitable. If there's only enough money for one company to be profitable, the first company to enter the market doesn't need to worry about competition.
So in general, utilities monopolies can only hurt the consumer and unfairly enrich the utility provider, even in cases where there is a large fixed infrastructure.
...And all of Grant County, Washington. It's the middle of nowhere, but our PUD made bank selling cheap hydro power to California during the crunch. Now I have a fiber optic connection run right up to my house. It becomes a 100Mbps Ethernet connection from there. And I get service for $30 a month! I've clocked downloads at over 4MB/sec before. The only problem is uploads. The fucking PUD is charging the service providers out the ass for the amount of upload transfer, the idiots. There has also been widespread corruption in the Grant County PUD. My upload speeds have been capped at a puny 256kpbs/sec! That's unacceptable, but the PUD has the service providers by the balls. I guess price gouging will happen whether it's run publicly or privately. Damn government. Grant county could become a major technology center for Washington. Cheap power, cheap real estate, and if we had cheap fatty broadband, we'd be set. But the fucking PUD is too busy jacking up the prices and taking kickbacks.
I think a mixed aprroach would be better. The government would be the owner of ditches, galleries, pipes and all those kind of infrastructures.
The telecom companies would be able to use the public infrastructure by paying some compensation to the government, but saving the costs of opening the streets.
This would create a good environment for competition and cost-effective deployment of service.
--
fpedraza
From all the talk in this discussion, the conclusion is that the Telecos won't move with fiber because they are trying to milk as much $$$ from other lower speed connections. They also have no incentive to give us what we want, which is VERY MUCh within thier power and ability, higher speed connections.
I've heard from people from School districts and other local municipalities, but I haven't heard any from a Teleco company. Does anyone here work at any SBC Baby Bell company and tell us why this high and mighty gajillion-aires don't care about us and throw us a bone after a zillion people complain. You want to know why we want to burn you in effigy? Look in the mirror and read our complaints!!
Companies don't need to compete. If the government can provide a service better than businesses, then they should. The public wins by getting better service at a lower price. What on earth could be wrong with that?
There's nothing worse than people who are willing to suffer inferior service at bloated prices, just to conform to some ridiculous capitalist ideal.
Personally, I'm in favor of the model that has the city building the infrastructure, and telcos (note the use of plural) handle the stuff in the pipes. ILECs seem fond of just providing enough service to get by, and spending lots of time protecting their turf from rogues who want silly things like modern telecommunications services. It's no bloody wonder that wireless carriers are wiping the floor with them. Like many, I use no services of the ILEC in my home.
I think that's great, as long as the municipalities don't bring their damn "morality" into it and provide it as simply an uncensored fat pipe AND they don't make a profit on it. Infrastructure should be built and maintained by non-profit entities because the temptation of "stealing" a penny from billions of people has proven to be to hard to resist.
Way to go on choosing an acroymn that already well used in the networking arena. If this thing runs ATM- it is gonna be even more confusing. What is Seattle gonna call theirs- SONET?
The justification for the FCC is that airwaves are publicly owned and therefore the public can control the content that goes over them. The FCC is supposed to represent the public.
If governments start to own significant chunks of internet backbone, do you really think they will decline to create an internet FCC or expand the current FCC to the net? Do you really think that a government power grab is worth it if you can get a cheaper broadband line (that will be paid for through taxes anyway)?
Intellectuals! Liberals! Peacemongers! IDIOTS!!!
a sewage line
HACK THE SPEW!!!!
why the hell can't i use lots of capitals? what lamer thought up these lameness filters?
Da Blog
you could have some kinda "internet".
I gotta go patent this!
While this all sounds great and I am all for sticking it to the RBOCs, one wonders how the government would operate such a network.
I wonder what sort of content restrictions they would enforce? Content blocking proxies, anyone? Blocking to prevent those nasty computer virus attacks? Etc.
Would this service squeeze competitors out of the market, leaving you with less choice?
Be careful what you wish for.
I believe estonia has a virtually equal population density to the USA, and yet they have two cellphone providers who literally blanket the whole country. I suspect their monthly incomes are also a lot lower than the US.
Why doesn't america have coast to coast digital cellphone coverage? Because cell companies would rather provide dozens of competing services in california, than one in rural arkansas.
I think the UK had some restriction on 3G bidders that required them to cover 90% of the population with X years of starting to deploy their network. Seems like a good idea.
Seattle has a municipal fiber net, linking schools, libraries, and community colleges. The ISP is a state agency. We've enjoyed a gigabit uplink - schaweeeeet! Since we own the fiber, we can lease it to the ISP agency for the cost of the ISP hookup, which they are cool with. They don't have to maintain and pay for T1s.
And Qwest has its genitals in its anus where they belong. Everybody hates Qwest. Verizon would rather pay more to set up a tower than lease some space on theirs. They wouldn't lease us space in a conduit that goes under a street to our facility (and nowhere else). There's a guy who used to be in charge of leasing this stuff. His job is now not leasing stuff.
Well if they brought back polygamy, I wouldn't need broadband Internet.
a few years ago my town of 1500 people here in Iowa ran fiber for everyone in town. The telephone system, cable television, and internet all go through it. It is insanely fast and it solved the problem with people losing cable reception from the aging wires. When they put it in they used a machine that vibrated the soil enough to semi-liquify it and they just sunk the cable in the ground like that.
They are using the same equipment as the telcos. Could it be that most of the costs incurred by the telcos is for billing? (Admittedly, teachers are cheaper than union labor too.)
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
The tiny pacific island state of Niue has covered itself for wifi.
So CowboyNeal could sit on the deck of a yacht floating in the lagoon and read Slashdot on his laptop.
Sean
Community networks, like UTOPIA, could be one very potent response to the "Offshoring" of IT. In particular, it has the potential to open up low cost of living areas in the USA as Outsourcing destinations. Combined with cultural, legal, and quality of life advantages, they well be very competitive with offshore locations like India.
MTS drags their ass on everything. I have not seen them do anything that could be described as progressive or customer-friendly... Ever.
Considering that the [major] purpose of the internet is for infomation, do we really want control of our information consolidated into a single entity whether it be government, AOL, or Verison?
Big Brother aside, I don't think that state/gov agencies should be in the business of business.
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--- Just say no to negativity.
Roads, telephones, the internet, power, water, sewer... It should all be maintained the same way
Hmm, bits aren't aware of geography. You can't just group the Internet in with those things. Information is in a class by itself. For instance you list Telephones next to the Internet. That theory doesn't work when you're using the Internet to make VOIP calls. Toll roads on the Internet won't work because of it's global reach. We need an infrastructure tax instead that covers transportation of cars as well as information and other utilities. I'm not saying we need a new tax, just a simplification of current tax laws. I think we could include Education as a form of infrastructure if we're willing to look far enough ahead.
What if Digg added local news and a Slashdot inspired comment karma system? ---
http://houndwire.com
I mean the city plans and builds our roads, sewers, powerlines, etc...
Why not this too? The trick is what will the fiber be hooked upto? I'd rather a commercial ISP than a government.
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I find it interesting that according to the "conservative think tank The Progress & Freedom Foundation" government is supposed to "avoid entering markets where there are already private firms actively competing" yet in areas such as public education are expected to run more like businesses by controlling costs through program and staff cuts and so on.
C'mon now guys; you can't have it both ways. If you want them to act like businesses, you have to expect that they will explore "innovative options" like building their own fibre network and selling the excess bandwidth. That's just what a business would do in a similar situation, right?
Clark County School District (Las Vegas) is the fifth largest disctrict in the U.S. They just paid unbelievable millions to buildout a super-redundant fiber network...
That they wont own.
It will belong to Cox Cable. The school district will have a 7 year lease or something.
In Utah, incumbent monopoly telco Qwest's modest investment of $50,000 in campaign contributions and its' powerful lobbyists (one is the son-in-law of the State Senate President) may be enough to kill the UTOPIA 18-city initiative to build a publicly-owned FTTH (fiber to the home) system. A bill (openly crafted by Qwest) that would effectively outlaw city's financing the project sailed out of the Senate and threatens to become law. This action comes after 18 city councils have voted to join UTOPIA and 6 have already made financial guarantees . The UTOPIA system is based on an open-access model allowing multiple competing providers to offer voice, data and video services to subscribers.
m unityfiber_archive.html#107630357108945975
This comes as the Salt Lake City Tribune, a strong foe of the UTOPIA initiative, ran an article wondering why Utah is losing its' position as a major technology center.
There are more UTOPIA links at http://communityfiber.blogspot.com/2004_02_08_com
Al Bonnyman
Community Broadband Networks
Our company has designed fiber cable systems for about 60 power utilities, most of them municipally owned.
Here's a page with links to most of them.
There are many more North American cities with fiber systems we didn't design. The weblog Community Broadband Networks has links to a number of them. The weblog also has a summary page with about 1800 article links you can skim. About half cover municipal broadband projects of some sort.
Al Bonnyman
Community Broadband Networks
Okay, now I'm confused. The ISP's are complaining about the Gov't building networks and offering it to the public?
Isn't that what the Internet is? Isn't the Internet a Gov't built network and aren't the ISP's profiting from it's existence?
Can someone please clarify this inversely proportionate paradoxical contradiction?
Who's on first? What's on second?
Authority questions you. Return the favor.
You know, I was talking with my brother about the 407, and he pointed out something interesting. He uses it fairly often, and has never paid a bill. Every time he is asked to pay, he raises the same point:
/.land?
Under Canadian law, you cannot assume a contract exists unless the full price has been clearly stated - up front - and agreed to. From what my bro says, the toll on the 407 is not clearly stated up front.
Every time they threaten to sue him, he says, "Sure, go ahead - I'd love to see this in court." And he hasn't been sued yet.
Maybe he's just lucky - but somehow I think he's onto something. Any Canadian contract lawyers out there in
Corruptissima re publica plurimae leges.
In NYC, the I-Net municipal fiber network is guarded so tightly by its government administrators, that the City Council which oversees it has been regularly denied a map of the fiber paths, on the grounds of "security": terrorist red tape. If the cat weren't already out of the bag, subway maps would be covered by this policy, too. The security angle is also a smokescreen for keeping the City out of allowed competition with telcos for City government network services, already worth about $100M:year in Verizon voice service to City government desktops alone. How do we transfer to the express?
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make install -not war
I honestly see the point being raised by the telco's regarding a public agency coming into the market. I too would be concerned if a mincipal, county or other public agency built out a network, and then started selling it's excess capacity in the space where I had to compete. Especially if that agency could undercut me because of subsidies (and it WILL be subsidised), and was not subject to the same regulatory oversight that my business was subject to. Mind you, I also think the telco's need a good kick in the ass, as they are notoriously slow to adopt new technology, and often their service sucks. So, if pricing were market driven, and made the telco's act smarter, then that would be alright.
We've had a hybrid-coax system in place in Tifton, GA since 1999. This has helped to keep the cable prices down in the area. In areas where the city hasn't put in a network, the cable prices from the same competitor are twice as high.
http://www.friendlycity.net
Oh yes, that's right, the government. The government formed the internet for military and academic useage. Then access to that network was handed over to private corporations in the 90's. Anyone who thinks that the government can't create a network infrastructure would be well-served by remembering who invented it in the first place.
How about asking your local Private Foundation for Infrastructure money?
We asked. We're about to get it.
$2M for Phase 1. If Phase 1 is done to their liking, Phase 2 will be built for a total of over $3M.
Phase's 3 and 4 are to involve the local community for the final build out, for a total of $7M.
Try it. You'll like it.
I recommend Thin Client's and Fat Fiber!
Palo Alto Utilities : $0.061 per KWh.
PG&E : $0.126 per KWh (and up)
The city already offer Dark Fiber Services and is running a trial project for FTTH. It's not clear yet whether Palo Alto could operate FTTH cost-effectively. It depends partly on being able to deliver TV over the fiber, and that means they would need to get channel providers to offer terms which are not substantially worse that what the big boys get.
Makes me laugh though when Conservatives and the Power Companies who support them complain about consumers saving money. How dare they save money!?!
Here in Australia, we have decent broadband service and a fair deal of choice.
Telstra (phone company, was government owned, now partially privatized) owns all the phone network and offers phone and DSL service over it. They are regulated by the government (which unlike in America, otherwise known as the United States of Big Corporations, actually has some teeth)
Also, other companies (and there are a fair number) offer DSL over the telstra wires.
And, guess what... Telstra is NOT the best provider in terms of service.
We recently signed up with TPG Internet and we are getting 512k down 128k up for AU$80 a month (not sure how that converts to $US).
We also have totally unlimited bandwidth with no caps.
Maybe I'm crazy but shouldn't the internet and the network its on be a utility like water? The city regulates that why can't they create thier own fiber? They have every right to compete as a start up does they just have a harder time of being bought out. Maybe Southern Bell should be getting into the education market?
Have fun, =Otto(matic)
There is that whole thing with the PATRIOT Act & Carnivore and who knows what else the NSA have up their sleeves... *takes off the tinfoil hat* that said, its about time someone put up a fight with those bastards. Monopolies have no incentives to provide service to the greatest number of people, merely to the highest paying ones. ie: the decline of power grids, contractors putting together shoddy municipal water mains and so on
Over the years, Federal & State govt's gave away a lot of freebies to corps providing basic services... BUT you have to consider the implications of having the gov't "facilitate" the way things come together. You either have government owned industries (Soviet Russia) or regulations (like in the US of A).
So lets see: water, roads, power (electrical and petrol based?), sewers, phones, the internet... All very important, now what about healthcare, food, housing.... where does it end? My only complaint is that the gov't has given away a lot of things over the years & they've created a tax setup where multi-billion dollar companies can pay little ---> no taxes.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Tacoma power setup their fiber network called "click-network" pre-2000, and started linking up smaller cities 2002. It's cable and internet access, and I have to say dispite the lack of legacy radio over cable that comcast still offers here (88-108mhz) i'm most pleased with. Users who want webtv style access may enjoy paying $8 monthly. Last I checked it was only like 512k/128k... but respectable considering the small fee. Full internet access starts at $30 monthly for 1.5meg/128k. $50 monthly depending on which isp gives you something like 2.5meg/384k which is a touch more reasonable.
While I was happy with the performance on comcast, they didn't really offer tiered speeds. It's nice to have some other guy offer a better deal, those users in my region who enjoy comcast can ask for a discount.
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
i live here in Tacoma, WA, and we have our own city-wide fiber optic network provided by Click-Network.. i must say, i love it MUCH better than comcast or any of the DSL providers around here. we have had the network ground layed out for several years, and everything seems to work just fine. the city doesnt offer the ISP themselves tho, currently there are three seperate companies offering internet access via this network. i'm guessing this fiber-op network is probably why the city has recieved the nickname "The Wired City"
Who wants a job pulling cable?
Are they connected to the internet? Or is it an intranet? Who pays for the interconncetion to the backbone?
The city of Holyoke, MA has municipal gas and electric. Like 8 years ago, when they were laying new gas pipes and electric cabling under city streets they decided to lay a fiber ring at the same time. For them, it's not the "last mile" that is expensive, it's literally the last 10ft. From the street to the edge of your building. Although I haven't worked with them since 2000, they used to do VLANs (Virtual LAN across town) for like $100 + $5 per location for 10mbit. And this came with a 10mbit internet connect too. We couldn't even get a T1 for those prices. Let alone the other locations.
http://www.hge.net/