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Companies, Government and Community Fiber Rollouts
hype7 writes "Wired is running an interesting article about a number of communities which are dissatisfied with the present communications infrastructure that they are being offered, and are deciding to do something about it. However, many of the corporates who had previously been offering services to these communities have resisted this, with Pennsylvania going so far as to draft law to prevent competition for the communications providers. What is most interesting is that in the communities where the roll outs have taken place, the incumbent providers have "dropped prices to be more competitive ... while not changing rates in areas where it continues to have a monopoly". What I don't understand is why can't a public utilities company provide a public utility if their rate payers want it? What's wrong with additional competition? And why should legislative bodies protect telecommunications monopolies?"
Deregulation of trucking and oil began under Carter.
Reagan's deregulation included the Savings and Loan industry. That one only cost the taxpayers $700 Billion.
I agree with this post 100%.
However, the problem with your post is that it assumes there is a competitor (the slightly better ISP) that is available. Where I'm at, my one and only choice for broadband is SBC DSL. I'm not all that happy with the service only because the reliability is hit or miss. It may stay up for 10-12 days at a time and then suddenly fade in and out for the next week. The speed is great (average of about 4.5Mbps) but I can't host anything because I don't know if it will be up when I need it.
The bottom line is, I have to stick with it. I would love to go to a competitor and try to get SBC to make something happen to keep my business, but there are no competitors. Which I believe is where the article poster was going as well.
Proudly supporting the Libertarian Party.
do some basic math. This UTOPIA project, the largest and most ambitios, will cost some 340million to deliver service to 140,000 consumers. That's a cost of $2,500 per customer! That's static start up cost, assuming that it all comes in on budget, on time, and you still haven't considered coninuing maintenance and upgrade!
No wonder their are no companies leaping to do this. Someone has to pay for this. You really think your going to get 1.5Mb fiber to your house for $40 a month?
Look I think it's a sleazy as it gets bribeing the gov't to keep competition out of the market. But one does have to ask the questions:
Q:Why isn't their more free market competition to start with?
A:Telecom is a nasty, expensive, buisness. And now that it's been wrapped up with the computer industry it's a moving target. If your crystal ball get's foggy for just a little bit, your out of buisness.
These services will get to consumers, when they can be practically and effectively deployed.
I would rather be ashes than dust!
Basically, the approach is to minimize the monopoly. They do the monopoly from the block level greenbox to the house. That's it. They also allow up to a hundred different providers into the greenbox.
The interesting thing about this approach, is that a company like Disney could use it to get into the cable industry and break the monopoly. Since the FCC allowed the merger of Comcast/ATT, my prices have shot up (1.5 with another hike coming that will double it), and service has plummeted (I had an out about every 6 months, now it is weekly). I would love to get off them. But the alternative is qwest dsl. Both Comcast and Qwest vie for the distinction of being the 2 worse companies out of all bandwidth providers.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
But show me a wildly successful corporation that lavishes it's customers with their every desire
Apparently you've never been to a Nordstroms. Lavishing customer's every desire is central to their success. I had a foul-up flying to Seattle once (where I had to change plans in Chicago due to weather issues and United couldn't get my luggage off of my original flight and onto the Seattle flight). A call to Nordstroms in Seattle and some descriptions of my clothing sizes was all that was needed for me to have a complete outfit for the next day (suit, shoes, socks, tie, shirts, even undergarments and misc. things like a shaving kit stocked with stuff) waiting for me at 4AM when I finally got into the hotel for the meeting at 7AM! I *know* Nordstroms doesn't sell anti-perspirant, but they had everything in the kit for me.
Understand there are numerous approaches a company can take to being successful. Some are customer service-centric, such as Nordstroms. This works for some businesses where customers value paying a bit more for the service and get taken care of. My Nordstroms experience saved my butt, but it also took $2K out of my credit card.
Another strategy is to be efficiency focused. McDonalds is probably a good example. Do you have any clue how hard they work to make all french fries they sell around the world taste the same? Do you have any idea how difficult this can be (variables of thousands of different fry cooks and different potatos)?
Then there's a strategy of being the first out with a new technology - first to market - and staying ahead of the pack.
There are also nuances of these strategies; many companies identify who their best customer is. Comments like As long as they can provide the bare minimum required to keep the money flowing into their coffers just illustrate that the poster is probably inexperienced professionally and has a significant emotional block that prevents him/her from looking at things objectively. (Don't feel bad - one of the US political parties is filled with people all the way to their top candidates who feel this way).
All of these strategies address different kinds of consumers and different markets. You don't do this if you don't care about a consumer (hint: if you don't care about your customer, they will fire you in time).
Suggestion for people who feel that corporations are evil uncaring monsters:
o many of you actually have a rather mature perspective on "the government" (recognizing the government is not some abstract borg-like anonymous, uncaring machine, but a composition of people - our neighbors, families, friends, etc. - that are working on our behalf). Use this same maturity to understand a corporation is no different. Just as it is absurd for a conservative to pretend the government is a conspiratorial, all-controlling secret society thing, considering corporations as places of smoke-filled board rooms with Dick Cheney look-alikes planning to take over the world and kill children is equally inbalanced and irrational.
o learn what a corporation actually is (a basic accounting course would explain this) and why it is formed. It facilitates easier access to investor capital (since you can create and handle many owners). Can you think of an alternative structure that allows for this?
o recognize that some things take scale to do (like the airline business, railroads, ship construction, power generation) and some things don't. Don't assume something is evil because it is big - if it is big and successful, it is probably because that size is required to be efficient.
Last but not least, understand that people that tell you things like "corporations are evil" may have a motivation that benefits from manipulating you. Many of them are glaring hypocrites (such as Mr. "Outsource them IT Jobs to India" George Soros, MoveOn.org's founder and funder) when you listen to their political message vs. where they get their money. Think for yourself and question everthing and everybody!
Take Australia, where Telstra is the monopoly supplier. They were charter bound to provide Telecommunications to outback [rural and remote] farming communities. Now that Telstra is being privatised, part of the legal restraints is a continuation of the same services. The government and the opinion forming people [voters at large] find it easier to think of this long standing monopoly as being reponsible for this service provision.
I see a lot of talk here on slashdot on the burden of providing 911 [000 in Oz, 999 in UK] access on VOIP. How would these startups feel about having to provide physical remote farm access 10000 KM away from the nearest city?
Part of the sweetener for carrying this loss making enterprise is a bit of fat on the other more lucrative sections.
2) When we put in fibre at a previous work, part of the road had to be torn up to lay it.
This inconvenienced motorists and the public. Sub-letting/dividing existing monopoly resource makes sense in this context. Fair access to this resource is a separate battlefield, along the same lines as this argument
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Uhm, you do realize that if left for the private sector, much of rural America would STILL be without power?
Here's an excerpt about the Rural Electric Administration: http://newdeal.feri.org/tva/tva10.htm
"Private utility companies, who supplied electric power to most of the nation's consumers, argued that it was too expensive to string electric lines to isolated rural farmsteads. Anyway, they said, most farmers, were too poor to be able to afford electricity.
The Roosevelt Administration believed that if private enterprise could not supply electric power to the people, then it was the duty of the government to do so."
Granted it was the Federal Government that did this and not a local one, but last I checked, the Feds were still a public entity.
I live in Chelan, Washington. Our PUD has put in fiber to Chelan, and many of the other towns and cities in the county. These fiber services deliver ATM-based telephone and data services, and may eventually deliver digital TV.
For my 2Mb/s down 640Kb/s up connection and a telephone line, I pay about $53 per month. The telephone line is not Voice over IP, but is circuit-switched. ATM provides the means to transmit both the voice and data channels down the fiber.
Now, our PUD doesn't offer these services directly. They only run the fiber network. My actual telephone and internet bill come from my provider of these services (Localtel). What the PUD has actually done is open competition by allowing the customer to choose any of a number of service providers using their network. If I don't like Localtel, I can go to NW Telephone, or Panda Computers, or Modern Networking...... The list goes on.
Now, it is actually interesting. Verizon services here suck, to put it mildly. Ok. Their residential services are OK. But they don't offer any reasonable business services. No fractional T1, no PRI.... So if I am implimenting a phone switch for a customer, I am stuck with analog lines. This means I have to deal with echo cancellation and other artifacts of 4 to 2 wire conversion.
Now, if I have my customer go to fiber, some of the service providers *do* offer fractional T1, PRI, etc. services over the fiber. Now everything works great and the phone switch is cheaper, more robust, etc.
Competition is a wonderful thing.
The problem is, from a telecommunications company perspective, that they are used to being monopolies because of the fact that they own the lines. Community-owned fiber networks are a good solution to this problem, but they need to be used to stimulate competition by allowing choice of service providers.....
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Was looking at this and decided to post my broadband experience. I live out in the country on the front range of Colorado. After getting tired of our 56k degrading in speed I decided to look for broadband service in the area. Qwest told me there was no way they would offer service, Cable companies told me the same (our area is swiming in fibre cable- odd ain't it?). Another odd fact is that we are verry close to I-25 (I-25 has the main fibre et all connections running under it), yet our 56k was being routed to a city 15-20 miles north of us and then to the I-25 lines.
After a while (and a lot of googling), I came up with nothing except for the remote possibility of a small local company. I sent an e-mail asking them if they could provide service in our area. After about 3 months (and all the local government requirements were met), they set up shop. I now get 1-5 Mbps (depending on the site or ftp I connect to), and only now has Qwest decided to provide wireless broadband here.Only costs $45 a month too!- considering it was going to be $120 a month to get ISDN from Qwest
Mesa Networks is a local company that their whole model is giving broadband service to cities and areas that are left out in the cold by the TelCo's. Not only do they provide a nice connection and speed- they are well known on DSL Reports for being a good company at tech support helping you get the most out of your line and any other quirks that hardly ever happen (none of the pay for more than X amount of computers on a line). People say its soo expensive for the larger telcos but when a small company comes in and does this- you look a little rediculous! Oh and if anyone is here in northern Colorado, and wants good broadband with GREAT tech support here is their site- http://www.mesanetworks.com/