Test Selling "Last Mile" Fiber to Homeowners Under Way in Canada

Ars Technica is covering an interesting pilot program taking place in Ottawa, CA. 400 homes are being outfitted with fiber optic cables; however, the "last mile" of fiber is going to be sold outright to the homeowners rather than providing internet at a monthly fee. "In the future, it could become commonplace for homes to come with 'tails.' These customer-owned, fiber-optic connections would link them to a network peering point. Without the expense of rolling out last mile infrastructure to every home, many more ISPs could afford to serve a given neighborhood by running wiring to the peering point, leading to more competition and lower prices. Perhaps best of all, the growth of customer-owned fiber could make debates over 'open access' and network neutrality moot, as robust telecom competition should prevent the worst of the monopolistic behavior exhibited by telco and cable incumbents."

Comments

Re:I would be willing to do this

[lilomar]

Backhoes are more fun!

Re:I would be willing to do this

[Anonymous Coward]

Hoes is always more fun on they backs... DIG THAT SHIT!

Re:This would solve so many problems for us.

[MightyYar]

I dare you though - call up Verizon and tell them you want a peer agreement.

They told me it would cost 0.02 cents/kB.

Re:I would be willing to do this

[symbolset]

Maybe a bunch of us in my neighborhood could get together and arrange something like this. We could string fiber to all of the homes in an area, like on poles or something... Maybe, since we're putting up poles we could get electricity to the homes as well.

We need a name for something like this that expresses the general usefulness of it for all the customers in the area. I know... let's call it a "public utility district."

Now how to pay for it... since it affects everybody, maybe some sort of property tax.

nah, thanks to google TiSP...

[Tmack]

Does this mean that the street will be opened every week, when the next person in a neighbourhood wants fiber, instead of every month? ...

Nope! Thanks to the innovative people at Google, there is no trenching involved! With their latest beta release of TiSP, all the end user has to do is flush one end of the fiber down the nearest toilet, and wait for the plumbing techs to plug it in to the nearest node!

Tm

Re:They should partner with Google

[Creepy Crawler]

Boy, that's some SHITTY service :D

Re:I would be willing to do this

[ristonj]

Which ditch did the ditchwitch witch if the ditchwitch did witch ditch?

Re:I would be willing to do this

[Sentry21]

You know what they say... when all you have is a backhoe, everything looks like a quarry.

Re:I would be willing to do this

[Oktober Sunset]

I've never heard of a ditchwitch before, so I just googled for a picture of one, and I have to ask the question: Why on has no one thought to have the hero drive one of these things in a zombie film?

Re:I would be willing to do this

[oldspewey]

You know what they say ... once you've had a backhoe, you never go back yo.