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

Obviously never been to a condo assoc meeting

[sunking2]

Just because you live near each other doesn't mean you play well together. Especially when money is involved. How could you possibly do this and not have someone ticked off for paying more than they think they should. Should my mother who doesn't even own a computer be subsidizing everyone elses usage? Or what happens when someone who believes in the RIAA moves into your neighborhood and then starts enforcing his beliefs on you. Sounds crazy, but how many people get fined a year because they have too much crap on their condo deck, or some other abserd thing. Oh, the arguments may or may not be rational, but that won't stop them. Especially in a neighborgood that spans a large age group. Instead of get off my lawn, it'll be get your porn of my internet.

Re:Obviously never been to a condo assoc meeting

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Won't work

[Have Brain Will Rent]

Have either of these guys ever owned a condo? I made that mistake once - never again. Years to get simple repairs done, friends of the condo board getting repairs long before other people and often before people who requested needed repairs first, etc. etc. ad nauseam. Owning a condo is a good way to see some of the worst traits humanity has to offer. Let an organization like that control the quality or even existence of my net connection? No way.

Re:Yeah, and get flooded with "tech support" calls

[nabsltd]

Of course you can't live on goodwill and scotch alone.

You also need blackjack and hookers.

Re:Won't work

[Lumpy]

And I bet the cable companies/isp's would not like the idea of joe sixpack competing with them.

nope. there used to be a thing called "community TV" a neighborhood would buy a lot, set up a big tower with antennas and wire all the homes with "cable tv" and everyone paid $25.00 a year to it's upkeep and upgrading.

Cable Tv companies came up with "franchise fees" when they entered into a market. They used this along with lobbying for legislation to make running a non profit free "community TV" system illegal. you had to be a business and pay franchise fees. This killed every system across America as the cable companies came in.

Nobody is willing to lobby state and federal lawmakers to make it legal for neighborhoods to band together and put up a community tv system legally anymore. We just bay like good sheep and pay out $55.00 a month Cable TV bill.