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Telco Sues Municipality For Laying Their Own Fiber
unreceivedpacket writes "Ars Technica reports that a company called TDS Telecom is attempting to sue the town of Monticello, Minnesota for deploying their own fiber network. Shortly after the town voted to lay the fiber, TDS Telecom filed suit and notified the town that they would be deploying their own fiber network. The telco has recently responded to Ars Technica, saying they only sued to save Monticello from itself, apparently feeling that the municipality is unprepared for the onerous costs of maintaining such a network, and would lack the expertise to do so."
Expect to see the telecom draw out this lawsuit as long as they can possibly take it (think SCO here) and deploy their own network in the meantime, then sue the town again if they try to lay their own network thereafter for tortious interference with business practices or other such legal BS (IANAL and don't know what statutes they could use).
Craziness. I hope a judge knocks this down quick, but I'm not optimistic.
It's basically the company telling the town, "Stay the fuck out of our business or it'll cost you dearly. It's our monopoly, dammit."
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
My boss lives in a town that has had their own utilities for over a century and they have stellar service and prices are lower than the crappy monopolies provide. It started with their own power station and over the years they added phone, cable, and fiber internet services. If they need service they get local people that actually care about fixing their issues and local students can get internships that teach them marketable skills. All this and they pay much *less* than the government granted/privately run monopolies in most surrounding areas. A good example of the non-financial benefits this has provided include the fact that they were one of the few communities to have power during the great NE blackout of 2003. Basically it comes down to the fact that there is a certain cost of building and maintaining the infrastructure, and if you let a monopoly private business run it you have to pay those costs over time plus the profits that are expected by the owners of that company.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
From what I understand, maintaining fiber networks isn't all that hard. In many cases, it's lower maintenance than existing infrastructures.
Switching from copper to fiber is a big deal in heavy manufacturing and especially in electric plants. Most electric plants are heavily wired with copper. Problem is that copper is more prone to interference. When copper fails, it can be quite difficult to isolate the failure. Copper is also several orders of magnitude lighter (weight wise) than copper and a lot less bulky. Vendors usually quote a "50%" cost reduction from copper.
In the building trades, fiber only construction saves a good amount of space and labor. I've read that medium size office buildings can sometimes shave $300,000 off their construction costs.
I can't recall exactly, but I believe most new airplanes are being built with fiber. It's much easier to install and maintain than the copper it replaces. I remember reading years ago that some lab at MIT (I believe) developed a device to allow fiber optic cable to directly replace the copper wiring coming out of the instrument panels. I am afraid I can't remember reading if this was ever implemented.
I'm not an expert, but I think the rational for this lawsuit is rather weak. I don't know what else their town is working on, but I doubt they expect their parks and recreation staff to maintain their fiber network. They'll hire a subcontractor, probably the same people the telcos were going to hire and be done.
Good for them.
You don't have unregulated capitalism. That would actually be a good thing. While there is a government there is no unregulated capitalism. without a government this wouldn't even be an issue.
It works rather differently here in outlying parts of Los Angeles County, and I'm sure this isn't unique:
The local water companies charge $15k to hook up to the water network, plus a monthly usage bill.
However, they've lately taken it a step further: If you live within one of these private water districts, drilling your own well is now prohibited (even in very rural areas). In fact, if you have an existing well and it is shut down for ANY reason (even something that would normally be temporary) -- you are prohibited from restarting your well, and you MUST hook up to the water company's system.
Needless to say, this gov't-enforced enhancement of their busines model makes the little local water companies delerious with joy.
Now, if you're starting from no water at all, they're not a bad deal compared to a well -- their water usage rate costs about half what pumping it yourself does, and the hookup cost is about 1/3rd of the price of a new well. But if you have an existing well, and are forced to switch over, you just got robbed of the $40k+ it cost you to drill it, plus the $15k charge for new hookups.
(And no, this isn't hearsay; it's straight from a conversation I had with the president of a local water company.)
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I agree that government should play a role in infrastructure but if they're going to do it at all, then they should spend the additional money to make those channels as large as possible. If they need an eighteen inch channel, then maybe they should do a twenty-four inch one, and so on. If they're planning to spend the money to dig up streets, create utility vaults, and so forth, then let them spend the money to do it right the first time and create a right of way that will then be available for other services. The more space they put in now, the less money they'll have to spend later on and the easier it gets to do maintenance without digging up the streets again.
If it were up to me, municipalities all over the place would be putting in precast, modular component tunnels under major streets that would be big enough to stand inside and to carry telecom lines, electrical lines, gas lines, and so on, all on top of water and sewage lines. This would cut monopoly power waaay down and massively decrease the cost, likelihood, and problems related to breakdowns, not to mention make things like greywater processing much more practical.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.
If this were just about fiber to private homes, then maybe I would agree with you. But first of all, this system is planned to start out with fiber for schools and other municipal users. Secondly, what about commercial users? 25 million for 12,000 private homes is Sarah Palin territory. Huge debt for minimal gain. But since Monticello is home to quite a few office parks, we're talking about, at the least, several hundred business users, each of whom should and hopefully would bear some of the tax burden of this as well as getting much of the gain.
Now, if we're thinking about this as a business, which is a distortion but I'll run with it, it's normal for telecom companies to spend as much as a couple thousand dollars to acquire business customers. So if we assume five hundred businesses, then we're talking about just acquiring that business being worth about a million of that money. If we assume 700 children of school age who would use that service, well, buying computers for that many kids would last nowhere near as long and would cost over a million bucks, all things considered.
It all comes down to numbers, though, doesn't it? Do we compare this to a sewage system, which will deliver value for a hundred years or more, or do we compare it to a wireless network which will need to be rebuilt every five years or so?
How many years of service would this proposal provide?
How much of this money goes for short-term equipment like routers and how much for long-term infrastructure like fiber and putting in channels?
Who will own that city-provided infrastructure?
How many customers will use this?
Of what types?
Will they billed for this and if so, how?
I don't know. And afaict, neither do you. You've got interesting and useful things to say about the contract type and such, for which I thank you. But as for total net value, unless you've got answers to most or all of the questions above, you might want to get off your high horse a bit and cut them a little more slack.
It's all about the information. And what we do with it.