Cities Building Own Fiber Networks

Lesser of the evils by ImaNumber · 2004-03-01 07:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

I'm not sure which is worse...the government having control of my line or the cable companies having control...

Re:Lesser of the evils by Anonymous Coward · 2004-03-01 07:28 · Score: 5, Insightful

The government should own and maintain the infrastructure, while private entities should provide service that uses that infrastructure.

Think of the road system. You maintain your connection to the system (driveway), while the government maintains the entire system. You provide your means of access (car, which you also bought from a corporation), while the government keeps the roads suitable for your use (more or less).

This way, the government can't restrict use of the roads for any reasons other than monetary ones (toll roads are legal, keeping people off the roads because they might be breaking the law usually isn't), and greedy corporations can't control the roads (pay me for a license, pay me a monthly access fee, pay me again for joining the flow of traffic just now, now pay me some more at a rate of n-per-mile... plus tax and environmental fees).

Everything is a world of ends. The infrastructure lets us get from one end to another. Roads, telephones, the internet, power, water, sewer... It should all be maintained the same way - the government should facilitate the ends coming together... a public square. Their reach should not extend beyond that, nor should they allow anyone to encroach upon the public square.

And I didn't even get into the hierarchical breakdowns of government and infrastructure. It's not evil. It's just common sense.
Re:Lesser of the evils by duffbeer703 · 2004-03-01 08:04 · Score: 5, Insightful

The problem with Los Angeles is that real estate interests influenced the construction of the ridiculous freeway system to begin with.

The New York City metropolitan area was the first urban area to have an integrated highway system. The results were clear after about ten years: more highways spawn more traffic. Of course the person behind the New York system, Mr. Robert Moses, made it exceedingly difficult to see the NY highway system as anything but an unqualified success.

Had the powers that be in Los Angeles built a responsible combination of expressways and public transit rather than hundreds of miles of unmaintainable highways, Los Angeles wouldn't be the posterchild of urban sprawl that it is today.

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.

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Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Re:Lesser of the evils by cptgrudge · 2004-03-01 10:48 · Score: 5, Insightful

Are you sure? The school district I work for recently put in a fiber network to connect all our buildings together. It's less expensive in the long run to do that than pay for leased lines, and much faster as well. Now, a metro area might not see the same return on it that a school district would, but still. It's all about the ROI. We'll have made our money spent for it back in 5 years, and after that it's all saved money.

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Qualitas edurus commercium, nullus penitus net rimor, nullus deus beneficium

This is the future... by NeoTheOne · 2004-03-01 07:12 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

Re:This is the future... by ackthpt · 2004-03-01 07:26 · Score: 5, Insightful

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.

This could be a good thing, this could be a bad thing, one thing it requires is the public pay attention to who runs these things and what decisions (arbitrary or what) they exercise over them.
From the article:
That's struck a nerve among incumbent carriers, like the regional Bell operators, that are serving these areas. Not only do these carriers lose customers when people decide to build networks themselves, but many local governments, municipalities and educational institutions that build networks for their own use wind up selling services as well, thus becoming competitors to the regional operators.
Where the municipality is a competitor... Wasn't this the sort of thing that have some depression era things struck down ERA/WPA/CCC because effectively private companies taxes could be funding the government to compete with them? A shame, really, as some of these structures and works still pay off 70 years later, guess we shouldn't let that happen again.
Running a telecommunications network is not a sure thing, as many private competitive providers have already discovered.
Particularly where executives overstating profit and taking huge compensation are concerned.
Where I worked we were quoted a few times, massive amounts for running a fibre network and finally elected to do it ourselves, despite dire warnings of us not having the properly skilled people and tools to do it ("Too delicate, too sahn-se-tahv") We did it anyway for about 10% what we were quoted and it worked fine.
lastly, I've always favored the municipality putting in these kinds of infrastructre, then leasing it out to the phone/cable/internet/CCTV, what have you. More competitors make for a better market, right? But where I live there's only one company for high speed internet and one company for cable, forget any other choices. Having the public involved, assuming good people are overseeing it (and you don't usually know they aren't good people until it's too late) can guarrantee far better service than the private sector (milk every last cent you can out of that copper, baby!) can really do.

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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Re:This is the future... by scottay · 2004-03-01 08:07 · Score: 5, Insightful

Your point about oversight is essential.
In theory, I support the idea of municipalities developing networks in the hopes that subsidizing the costs will lower the current "barriers for entry" for non-profits, schools, etc. However, my fear is that a network managed by the government will have standards of use dictated by the government that will eliminate the social benefit it could provide.
Consider the radio airwaves ... a public, shared resource managed by the government. The FCC has guidelines for the content that can be broadcast over those airwaves in order to "protect" the public from content that they believe the majority of the citizens do not consider an appropriate use of that shared resource. A shared network infrastructure could be a significantly different beast, but only because the resource both is less scarce and more hidden from the general public. I can view the contents of a website without my neighbor knowing how I'm using their tax dollars. However, a concerned citizen could argue that they don't want their money used to support the viewing of certain types of web sites, and therefore that those sites should not be available over the municipal network. A similar argument has been made to coerce libraries into installing net nannies on their public computers.
These arguments are natural whenever the government is providing or subsidizing resources; if this resource is "owned" by the collective, then it should be managed according to their will. Fortunately, the free economy guarantees that if people want a network unfettered by government regulation, they will pay for it (see satellite radio and cable TV). However, in that case, the social benefits of a municipal network are lost. That means the only remaining benefit of a public network is to provide competition with the incumbent corporations ... and breaking the monopolies seems a much more cost-effective way to do that.

Dark Fiber by DanoTime · 2004-03-01 07:13 · Score: 5, Insightful

Why not use (buy) all the Dark Fiber everyone cries about from the Telecom Boom in the 90's?

Like Memphis Networx by darrelld2 · 2004-03-01 07:14 · Score: 5, Insightful

Memphis Networx is one that is owned by the city. They promised to only provide backhaul services to begin with, now they are competing with local ISPs. World Spice and Time Warner Telecom are really put in a bad position by cities doing these things.

How can a company compete when the playing field is not level?

Re:Like Memphis Networx by anonicon · 2004-03-01 07:22 · Score: 4, Insightful

"They promised to only provide backhaul services to begin with, now they are competing with local ISPs"

Wow, I can't believe the people of Memphis haven't rose up and smited the local government for providing a service that the people seem to want. Unbelievable.

"How can a company compete when the playing field is not level?"

Bribe the representatives and get the legislation you want passed? Seems to work for many other businesses in the U.S. See "Eldred" for an example.

Sad thing is by onyxruby · 2004-03-01 07:14 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

Why not like a Water utility?? by Dimes · 2004-03-01 07:19 · Score: 5, Insightful

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

Government vs Public by AshtangiMan · 2004-03-01 07:23 · Score: 5, Insightful

I love the quote from a telecom industry rep saying that the Government should not be allowed to do this. This being to build a public infrastructure. This type of action is in the best interest of Capitalism in its pure form. A public alternative that is lower cost will force the private commercial enterprizes to improve their business model and stop raping consumers. I would support this in this industry as well as power generation and other utilities and infrastructures. I know of some municipalities who have their own power generation capabilities to great economic benefit of the municipality and its residents.

I hope we see more of this kind of thing in the future.

Private vs. Public efficiencies by llywrch · 2004-03-01 07:30 · Score: 4, Insightful

> 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

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I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p

Re:Complaints?! by Sandor+at+the+Zoo · 2004-03-01 07:32 · Score: 4, Insightful

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.

Or, they could

see it as a cash cow and milk it for more than you're paying now, sinking the money into higher salaries for town officials
farm out the maintenance to the lowest bidder, who has 20 hours of downtime/week
outsource support to india
decide that 500kbps is fast enough for everyone
mandate Windows usage if you want to get on the net
any number of other stupid things

I'd rather see towns mandate multiple cable/DSL providers and let the market drive the prices down.

Government Role in Build Fiber Network. by RobertJLove · 2004-03-01 07:38 · Score: 5, Insightful

At a recent UTOPIA hearing the following question was asked by some in attendance.

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.

Re:this is very good.... by bigpat · 2004-03-01 07:38 · Score: 5, Insightful

I agree that this is a good thing at the moment, but city governments often don't act much better than commercial companies when they set themselves up as a monopoly. Eventually the tendency will be for those local utilities to compare their prices and services to other monopolies rather than the bottom line.

A competitive and free market is still the best way to insure the best value for the best service over the long term. With telephone pole space limited, it seems unlikely that wired communications will ever truly be competitive, so perhaps government sponsored utilities are the way to go, but remember when ATT ran the show on behalf of the government... they wouldn't even let someone connect their own phone to the network let alone a computer. Government sponsorship often means government regulation of content and use. If this model became popular, then how long till those restrictions that are found in a Comcast customer contract, like not hooking up any "servers" or not having multiple computers behind a firewall, suddenly have the force of criminal law rather than just contract law. It is one thing when a company can stop doing busines with you, but quite another when they can throw you in jail.

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Cities Building Own Fiber Networks

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