Starting a Local Fibre Co-Op?

swordsaintzero wonders: "I have seen several articles mentioning local co-ops implementing fiber. I am moving to a smaller town to take a position as a Solaris Administrator for a large university. After calling around, I found out the fastest bandwidth package available is half the speed of my previous package. For all of you Slashdot readers, who have worked on getting fibre implemented for your town through a co-op, what was involved in presenting it to the city government? What would be the best way to get the ball rolling on getting fiber for home use implemented?"

Comments

Re:Could you provide a link to the articles you re

[aminorex]

If the city were funding it, it wouldn't be a co-op, would it?

Another out-of-the-box answer to the question suggests itself, since the poster missed the other 50% of their former bandwidth: Get 2 lines and aggregrate.

Anyhow, if you want to share fiber to defray installation costs, just start talking to your neighbors about it. If you can get contiguous propery owners to collaborate, no right-of-way is needed, and it becomes much more practical. It's also a good way to get to know your neighbors. Probably, wireless point-to-point links will be a lot cheaper, however. Then suddenly you're a wireless ISP. Lots of folks are doing it.