Slashdot Mirror
Houses With Tails
nnfiber writes "What if home owners could also own their Internet connection? Tim Wu, of New America Foundation and Derek Slater, Google's Policy Analyst, say this can be a new effective way to encourage broadband deployment — an important issue in 'America's economic growth.' In his post, Timothy B. Lee says: 'That might sound like a crazy idea at first blush, but Wu and Slater do a great job of explaining how it might work. The key idea is "condominium fiber," an arrangement in which a number of neighboring households pool their resources to install fiber to all the homes in their neighborhoods. Once constructed, each home would own its own fiber strand, while the shared costs of maintaining the "trunk" cable from the individual homes to a central switching location would be managed in the same way that condominium and homeowners' associations currently manage the shared areas of condos and gated communities.'"
This will explain to all how dumb of an idea this is indeed:
Where my parents live is covered by an HA. The townhouses come with decks installed, with short fences surrounding them, nothing special, just a 4' high fence with 1.5" spindles, a 2x4 railing and 4x4 supports. The decks are not attached to each other, nor are they shared, and they are separated by at least 10 feet on either side. My parents wanted a little bit more privacy, but understanding the HA wouldn't want them to raise the fence, they bought wood lattice and tacked it to the inside of the fence, cut so it fit neatly under the railing. It doesn't look bad, although IMHO, it's pretty pointless.
Anyways, within a month, they received a letter from the HA advising them to take it down immediately or be fined as it's against the agreement. They fought the HA, saying it doesn't state you can't install anything on the inside of the deck. In the end, after several months with lawyers and lots of money, now the agreement is modified to have a special "no lattice" clause. My parents lattice has been grandfathered in, and nobody else has it.
Just a sidenote: When my parents moved in they asked me what I thought. I said it was a horrible place because it has an HA. They said they were going to will the house to me so I could live there. I said "Great, but I won't live here. Hopefully it'll sell quickly before the HA comes after me for condo fees, otherwise I'll have to rent it." They thought I was being rude then.
Now they think I'm sensible. :-D
So, apply that thinking process to broadband internet and imagine what you have.