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.'"

Comments

Re:Silly to create the organization

[gurps_npc]

It gets tricky when problems occure. Everything is simple when things are going well. But the second some idiot with a back hoe cuts through your cable, then what? Or your routers get hacked because, hey, you're just a guy doing it on your own, not a professional being paid. Then there's making sure all 100 people pay. Even when their house is in foreclosure. Or after they die, dealing with the estate's poorly done finances. Or simply when some new guy buys the house not udnerstanding what he is getting or what he is paying for.