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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.
Why not use (buy) all the Dark Fiber everyone cries about from the Telecom Boom in the 90's?
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
So, um, aren't public companies meant to be less efficient than private ones?
Worried you might not keep your virginity forever? Try new Linux(TM), guaranteed twice as effective as LARPing
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
MoFscker
...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.
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
> 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'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.
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.
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...
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/
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....
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
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.
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.
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!!!
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.
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.
-----
--- 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.
The USA is indeed a very large company - nice freudian :)
The size of the country doesn't have anything much to do with it.
The USA has a population density of 30.12 km^-2 and estonia's is 31.15 km^-2 so given that every cellphone tower covers a fixed number of square km, you'll need the same number of towers per head of population to cover each country.
Since you'll be deploying about 200 times more towers in the USA, you'll have slightly higher costs connecting them together - but that should be offset by the economies of scale.
Estonia has a GDP per capita of USD 11k which is about a third of the US GDP - that should imply that far more people can afford cellphones in the US so it should be even more cost effective.
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
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.
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)
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"
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/