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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!
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.....
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