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Name For a Community-Owned Fiber Network?
CleverMonkey writes "I'm a town representative to a newly created municipal group creating a new type of telco. This group has formed to build and operate a FTTH network, and provide both triple-play services and access to other providers, to over 20 mostly rural towns in East-Central Vermont. The project is novel because of the size of the network (a cable pass down every road within 600 square miles), the low-density of the area served, and the public-ownership/private-financing model that is being used. Some of the towns included in this group currently have nothing beyond 14.4 dial-up on a good day. This project began as a grassroots effort in a couple of towns and the name they chose was ECFiber — East-Central Fiber — or sometimes the East-Central Vermont Community Network. We hope that this network will grow beyond one corner of this state, and we would like a name that is both descriptive and flexible. What would you name a community-owned, cutting-edge, G-PON fiber-optic network covering every remote corner of two-dozen contiguous towns?"
Reflects the grass roots movement and that you're routing traffic down fibre (grass is a fibre!)
Heaven.
The Mothership
I would say CompuGlobalHyperMegaNet, but it's already taken.
How about CutCo, EdgeCom or Interslice?
How about this:
Vermont's Eastern/Rural Independently Zoned Open Network
I'm sure the name has never been used.
14.4k dial-up, wow... how about mobile broadband? Hey even GPRS is faster than this!
And when setting up a community network, I'm also quite sure there are reasonably fast and much cheaper wireless solutions. Not necessarily WiFi (but with strategially placed directional antennas that should do quite well too), but maybe even packet radio like solutions?
Why laying cables in this wireless age in the first place? Cables are expensive to roll out and very hard to upgrade, especially when you are talking about low-density rural areas.
Or what about wireless connections for the backbone, and only wire the last bits to the homes, assuming clusters of homes that you want to connect?
CommUNITY Network sounds nice, gets the point across, etc.
If you go with public ownership, you're going to run into the same problems many community wifi projects have run into. Interference from telcos at the state and federal government level. They will be all over you, and you will end up wasting funds fending off legal challenges, and lobbying the state government to not pass legislation that would destroy your project.
Instead I suggest the cooperative model that has worked for rural electric providers for over fifty years. A cooperative is a corporation that is owned by its customers. Using a cooperative organization will keep the government out, which I think will be essential to your organization's survival.
Good luck!
You don't really think that the incumbent telcos are going to let you survive to complete this, do you?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Grassroots Open Access To Serve East-Central Vermont
I hate you.
:D
Need a roomate?
You might be right. The city of Alameda tried it with traditional cable and failed miserably. It has a bond payment due soon and revenue won't even cover the interest.
Lowell, Michigan also tried and gave up in 2007 when it realized that the cost of upgrading the system to modern standards would far exceed the value.
Running a telecom service in an underserved area is more expensive and complex than many people think. Often, the area is underserved for a reason.
That said, maybe fiber will work. Or maybe it's worth it as a social value to the community, even if it's pricey. Fingers crossed for you.
Name it Metamunicipal: Get your fiber here.
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Toro