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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'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
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.
... 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.
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
Well, as one who does pay and does use the 407, I may grumble about the price increase, but at least (IMHO) I get what I pay for. I drive the 407 about 30km each way to/from work. Rarely is there traffic congestion (usually due to rubberneckers at an accident), and when it snows, its salted and plowed almost immediately. You break down at the side and those 407 trucks are right there to help out (if the OPP doesn't stop first.)
:)
They're always adding to it, expanding lanes and lengthening it and stuff.
Its a privately owned highway... if the government wanted to restrict rate increases then it should have been included in the terms of the sale.
re: reasonable timeframe. heh. you're always free to get up that hour early and take the 401.
No, reelly I don't!
The telecom companies are less progressive than any local government. They've made trillions of dollars over the years overcharging for analog lines and are fighting desperately to preserve their monopoly.
I'm from Missouri, home of SBC's (then Southwestern Bell) "We're sorry we invinted several non-existant charges and charged you for years...If you let us keep it we will use it to wire up fiber to the home.." That was 1992-1993? What fiber?
Sorry guys, no fiber here! Either do it, or give the people of Missouri their money back + all the years of interest.
Competitive? Ha. At least the government as slow as it moves can complete a fiber network. The phone company isn't going to get any sympathy here. Hell, SBC hasn't even started! 10 years from now they will still be talking about their "just around the corner" same song and dance and no results.
Okay, SBC -- Show me. Do it. You promised it 10 years ago, I want it hooked up to my house and everyone else in my neighborhood by the end of next month. You want to be competitive? That's competitive. Until then -- save your "unfair playing field" whine. Stealing billions from your customers is a pretty "unlevel" advantage as well.
Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.