Citywide Fiber Project Challenges and Goals

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.'"

Comments

No fair!!

[Epistax]

Companies will complain that it's against capitalism to have competition.

Re:No fair!!

[mobby_6kl]

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

What's the major improvement?

[moz25]

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.

Still Planning?

[bergeron76]

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.

Re:Still Planning?

[NitsujTPU]

This is VERMONT.

Obviously you've never seen an episode of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Carson will be about there whipping those cable layers into shape in no time, and they'll be done in an afternoon.

Might seem like a good idea, but...

[Weaselmancer]

...having that many of your bills served by a single provider makes for a single point of failure, and that's not good. If the company falls on hard times, then all of your utilities they handle will get hiked.

A good example is Time Warner. They're serving cable and cablemodems to my area, and soon to add phone. And every few months, they jack their prices up a few bucks. Without fail. And that's why I won't fall for their "$39 a month (or whatever the price is) to call anyone unlimited!" deal. Based on past performance, I know it's bogus.

Remember that competition usually works to keep prices down.

This makes sense.

[Husgaard]

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.

This Should be the Future

[under_score]

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.

From a local

[snizfast]

Here is a google cache to a different article about the project http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:1NEgZD8tfMEJ: www.sevendaysvt.com/features/

The site is down (small newspaper hosted by a small local ISP) but I do have knowledge of this project. I am local resident and have been watching this since its inception. This project has had its share of problem like any government project some budget overruns, Verizon trying to stop it in its tracks, public saying this should not happen, etc. The most interesting objection I heard was that this (including telephone service) should be done from wireless. I would love to hear the screams when a thunderstorm disrupts 911 service. The initial budget was in the low 6 figures Burlington is a relatively small under 40k people.

So far the project is already getting some use. The city and schools are now connected together by a Gig connection (many were not doing much better than dialup). The company where I am the IT person is also their first (and only?) customer. We are getting a 1.5 Mbit through a local ISP. So far no one is making money but the ISP, http://www.sover.net/ is now able to sell to other in town businesses for cheap. I pay Burlington Telecom $200/month for as much bandwidth as the ISP will give me.

This in a city where Adelphia (soon to be Comcast) has a monopoly for many parts of the city this is a very good idea. Some may say that city government should stay out of this area but I disagree. The deregulation of utilities let them do whatever they want but also assumed that the market would help with prices and quality. How many choices do you have for cable TV?

Re:Let's see...

[digitalunity]

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.