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Citywide Fiber Project Challenges and Goals

Posted by Zonk on from the we-control-the-horizontal dept.

aLAW writes "Who wants to receive fiber at their home? Vermont's queen city, Burlington, is planning on running fiber to each household in the city. 'It hardly seems possible, but by the end of 2007, all Burlington residents will be able to pay just one bill each month for their home phone service, broadband Internet connection and cable television channels. And they won't be making the check out to Verizon, or Adelphia.'"

20 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. Huzzaaaa by UberGeekEdward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I wish this could happen in Utah. I see only one drawback, it puts the government in control of what you can see and do online

    --
    Talking to geeks is like eating jello with a chainsaw, interesting, but painful.
    1. Re:Huzzaaaa by Colin+Smith · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "I see only one drawback, it puts the government in control of what you can see and do online"

      As opposed to a private company. Either way, someone is in control of your access to the Internet. Sounds like a good reason to get interested in politics then...

      Having said that, they're planning to lease out the line to others to provide services so it must be fairly open, you could probably VPN to pretty much anywhere and everything you send over the local fiber would be encrypted.

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      Deleted
    2. Re:Huzzaaaa by Superfreaker · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Utah is a different planet. They have been trying to pass internet monitoring and restriction bills for some time now...

    3. Re:Huzzaaaa by Sj0 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Why do Americans think that only government can repress them? :P

      --
      It's been a long time.
  2. What's the major improvement? by moz25 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I'm sorry, but what is the improvement in paying just 1 bill? Personally, I prefer having my service providers separate so it's easier to have higher granularity in choice. I'd rather have the infrastructure independent of the actual providers.

    --
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  3. It's always nice to see government compete by nidarion · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I've always liked it when there was the option of a private or a publically run service for phones or suchnot, there are drawbacks and advantages to either system.

  4. Who would you rather pay? by 1000101 · · Score: 1, Insightful


    'It hardly seems possible, but by the end of 2007, all Burlington residents will be able to pay just one bill each month for their home phone service, broadband Internet connection and cable television channels. And they won't be making the check out to Verizon, or Adelphia.'

    I would much rather pay a company than the government. At least I have the option to invest in that company if I have the desire. I really don't understand why so many people put so much faith in the Government.

    1. Re:Who would you rather pay? by dzarn · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I really don't understand why so many people put so much faith in the Government

      Because they're taking the initiative & doing it? Qwest can't give me DSL because there are load coils on my line, even though I'm only about 5,000 feet from the CO. And I have to get about 50 neighbors to request DSL with me for them to remove the coils (which isn't easy when there are 50 people within about a square mile around me). Comcast will give me cable, but at $80/month, plus a few hundred to 'install' the cable (drop 100' feet of cable on the ground).

    2. Re:Who would you rather pay? by Profane+MuthaFucka · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Question: If corporations are so great at rolling out the fiber to the masses, then how can a government possibly be able to do it first? The corporatist response to Vermont's fiber proposal isn't to hurry up and provide service first, it's to complain about government being the first to provide something that "in theory" a company is more efficient at providing.

      Another question is therefore suggested: "Where's the beef?"

      --
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    3. Re:Who would you rather pay? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I don't think it's a matter of "faith". I think it's a matter of people are tired of waiting for industry to get off their butts and deliver this service.

      I see a lot of companies arguing against this type of thing and trying to get laws passed to prevent this type of competition from occuring. The thing I don't see is companies making much effort to do this.

      Sure, both cable and telephone companies are offering each other's services now, but none are willing to spend the money to significantly upgrade their infrastructure to do something like bring 100Mb connections to the home. Or have made promises to do so, only to later change their tune.

      So, in the end, most people don't care who they make the check out to, as long as they get the services they want. And if companies can't/won't offer it, I see no reason to prevent people( whom the government represents) from delivering this infrastructure on their own.

  5. Re:No fair!! by mobby_6kl · · Score: 3, Insightful

    No, they'll complain that it's against competition to have unnecessary services provided with the money everyone, including them, contributes.

  6. Still Planning? by bergeron76 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    is planning on running fiber to each household in the city

    So they're in the planning stage now, but they expect to have it out to every home by 2007? That's less than a year and a half away.

    I predict this one will be off schedule.

    --
    Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
  7. there goes creative bill paying... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

    the bad thing about one bill for everything is it puts the hurt to those who live from payday to payday where, if necessary, they can be late on one small bill and pay the others. If they are late now, they would have everything turned off at once.

    Also an earlier comment is very valid, since it is the government, the government will know everything and since it is part of the government, this info may be included in the national database created with the new national id card (yea they say new state driver license requirements but...) thats currently going through congress.

  8. Inevitable? by FlyByPC · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I think something like this has to happen eventually. I think that eventually, all data-centric services to households will come over a single IP-based connection to the house. VoIP is only the first step towards convergence; next will be the delivery of entertainment services on demand to the house. Wouldn't it be great to be able to watch exactly what we wanted, from the entire library of available programming, rather than compromise on watching just those programs that are popular enough to justify sending them over a broadcast/multicast channel (be it via satellite, cable, or over-the-air)? You could make up your own programming, and watch what you want when you want, like TiVO on steroids. Add to that the benefit of having IP connectivity available to everything from your toaster to your computer. You may laugh, but if the technology is there, people will find a use for it. After all, when the idea of radios in cars was first proposed, people laughed -- but few people these days would give up listening to some form of audio in the car.)

    --
    Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
  9. Let's see... by absurdist · · Score: 1, Insightful

    ...Union Carbide (Bhopal)
    Exxon
    Enron
    Haliburton
    and on and on...

    Oh yes, you can certainly reroute that misplaced trust in the govenrment to corporations. They're SO much more trustworthy.

    1. Re:Let's see... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Let's see? Doesn't look like you're seeing much of anything at all.

      List your bad companies. Take your time, be sure to get a complete list.

      For each company you list, I can list a hundred that are trying to help humanity by making the world a better place. Even for the ones you list, there are many good people who worked there.

      So let's DO see. Do you want to choose between x number of companies, some of which may be "evil" in your eyes? Or would you rather have no choice, and take what the government gives you? BTW, just how many governments do you have? If you put this in the hands of government, just how free and unencumbered is your choice going to be?

      Saying government is bad is like saying companies are bad -- both statements are overgeneralizations and easily disproven. However, free, unencumbered choice is always a good thing, even when bad things become of it. Giving government control over your pipe to the net sounds like the stupidest thing I could possibly imagine, but that's just my opinion.

      Net go down? Call your representative. Can't get newsgroups on your pc? Better call the mayor. Geesh. That's JUST the ticket, sure. Next up, the politicians will be running on IT issues --"Vote for me, I promise OV-3 connectivity in every home!" It's bad enough they can't agree on things like war and peace. Putting the system in charge of net connectivity would truly be the work of an idiot.

    2. Re:Let's see... by digitalunity · · Score: 3, Insightful

      For each company you list, I can list a hundred that are trying to help humanity by making the world a better place.

      I don't need to list a hundred, but to support your case: I work for Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. I get to make the world a safer place and have a cool job. How many private companies can you think of that make that big of a difference in the world? Not very many, I assure you.

      Net go down? Call your representative. Can't get newsgroups on your pc? Better call the mayor. Geesh. That's JUST the ticket, sure. Next up, the politicians will be running on IT issues --"Vote for me, I promise OV-3 connectivity in every home!"
      Seriously. If a traffic signal goes down, do you call the mayor? No. I guarantee you, politicians will not be campaigning their promises of 'internet connectivity' for quite a while. They are still too busy lying to us about taxes and gerrymandering.

      Putting the system in charge of net connectivity would truly be the work of an idiot.

      Try substituting 'net connectivity' with 'traffic signaling' or 'road maintenance'.

      Putting the system in charge of traffic signaling would truly be the work of an idiot.

      Putting the system in charge of road maintenance would truly be the work of an idiot.
      Who sounds like an idiot now? You wanna know something? I pay over $50 a month for Comcast cable internet. Why? They want to make a profit, and they are charging me to provide media services I do not use. I don't want a friggin ISP! I don't want the 'value-adding services', I just want a gateway to the internet. Thats it. Do I have a choice? No. DSL is not offered in my neighborhood yet and Comcast is the only way to get high-speed internet(excluding Satellite, which sucks if you play games needing low latency). If my county or city goverment said 'Hey, want 10Mb up/down for $25?', me and all of my neighbors would pounce on it.

      --
      You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
  10. Small-town midwest US by jeremie · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Cascade IA has been doing this for a while now (small independent local telco), rings of fiber running throughout the sprawling metropolis (~2k population) and even out to within reach of all the rural customers.

    For a while now all new homes even have fiber run to the premesis... difficult to believe we're "ahead of the times" back here in Iowa but it seems to be true :)

  11. This makes sense. by Husgaard · · Score: 3, Insightful
    Creating a high-speed fiber network has the same economical effect as creating other infrastructure, like roads and electricity grids.

    Of course there is a risk that this could keep competing private enterprises out.

    TFA says: "The city is offering open access to its network -- anyone who wants to sell cable TV, Internet connectivity, or other information products will be able to use it, for a fee."

    So competitors are allowed access to this net. The only problem could be the size of this fee that competitors have to pay to use the net. The fee could be too high, and thus effectively blocking access for competitors.

    In Denmark where I live market-dominant enterprises (private or public) have to give competitors access to their nets for fees that cannot be higher than what is determined reasonable by a government office created to ensure fair competition in the telecom sector. This seems to work well: The market-dominant enterprises earn well by giving competitors access, but cannot set the fees high enough to keep the competition out.

  12. This Should be the Future by under_score · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Common services that benefit from network effects and which assist people in the basics of life (transportation, health, communication, etc.) should, in my opinion, be provided as utilities that are at least partially accountable to the community. Usually, this means that the govenernment should have some control or ownership.

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