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Remote Massachusetts Towns Welcome Broadband's Arrival
New submitter arnoldjm writes: This story from the Boston Globe tells of the effort to bring publicly funded fiber-optic data transmission capabilities to Western Massachusetts. The Globe Reports: "The network, financed with state and federal stimulus money, will extend broadband to 45 isolated towns where 40 percent of homes have no Internet access... Leverett [one of the towns involved] has contracted a private company to provide Internet service, which will cost subscribers $65 a month. That's about same as Comcast and Verizon FIOS customers pay in Greater Boston, but the speeds in Leverett are about 10 times faster."
Nearby communities are not far behind in bringing broadband to their residents; they see high-speed Internet as an economic boon akin to rural electrification in the 1930s, one that could bring higher home values, better business climates, and easier access to the modern economy.
I've been saying that for a while. First was electrification, then telephonication, now internetification. High speed internet has become a basic service and necessary baseline for habitability.
If you're buying a house, you don't need to ask whether it has electricity, phone service, water, and sewage service. The last two might be self-service in the form of a well and septic system (hopefully not too close together) but you can be pretty sure they're in place or the home wouldn't be on the market. But you can't count on high speed internet. (Satellite and other services metered in 10s of gigs per month don't count.)
Last year, I picked the region where I wanted to semi-retire but I had to cross the entire area off my list because I couldn't get decent internet access unless I lived right in the middle of one of the little towns. Other areas were "up to" 6 meg DSL at best. I could have got 100mbit cable if I lived in town but, if I'm going to live in town, I'll live in a town with a Walmart, Home Depot, Best Buy, etc. A realtor said the first thing people ask is what kind of internet access they can get but, when I asked him what kind of internet access I could get, he had no idea. "I guess you could go ask one of the neighbors." Oh, sure. "Hi, I'm some random stranger. Can I come in and run some speed tests on your internet connection? I promise I'm not a serial killer."
So, instead of buying a cabin in the woods, I'm on the outskirts of a city within the sphere of influence of a cable company. As the rest of my generation retires in large numbers (in 20 years or so), those areas are going to continue to get passed over if they haven't got decent communications infrastructure in place.
And it's even more critical than electric/water/sewer. These days, it's possible for an individual to provide their own power. Solar panels, batteries, inverter, backup generator. Water can come from a well, sewage can go into a septic system. But creating a terrestrial internet connection 10 miles to wherever the local ISP is located can't be done by an individual.
My young kids don't even ask for the TV - they only want the tablets. We sometimes reflexively put something on TV for them, and they often ask if they can't watch it on the tablets instead.
It 's a different focking World.
I used to imagine how my own version of "two miles to school uphill both ways barefoot in the snow"" might go. I used to think it would be, "We had to get up out of our seat to change the channel."
Now I realize that it may well be, "We had to watch a program at a regularly scheduled day and time to see it each week."
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Your sarcasm aside, from TFA it looks like the town in question borrowed ~$1900 per person (NOT per household) to put in the system. They'll get that back with taxes eventually, but it's not clear whether the taxes will be on the locals or Statewide. Assuming a five year note, average household size of four, and the costs paid entirely by the locals, that should about double the $65/month that is the nominal cost of the system.
It says it's a town of 1900 people at the top, 800 premises so an average of 2.4 per household. They're borrowing $3.6 million which works out to $4500/household, but five years is generally too short. Most estimate that a buried fiber will last 30-40 years, if we say 20 years then it's an extra $20/month in taxes. Seems like a fair price, near my cabin they're building out to ~1200 premises for $5.2 million with a mix of government funding and extra sign-up fee, though the most part is covered by the fiber company who'll profit for decades to come. Still, if all goes according to plan I can get gigabit there at the end of the year and "only" 100 Mbit at home...
I work for an ISP. You're wrong on almost every point.
Most infrastructure repair costs are for what we jokingly call the "Backhoe disconnect"
We're talking upwards of 90% of our repair costs are construction related. And before you say it, no, they don't pay us back for it. It's almost always the city that cuts the cable, they can't afford to pay us, and if we tried to make them they'd issue a press release the next day stating "We're laying off 1 police officer and 2 kindergarten teachers to pay off your Nazi ISP, sorry" and we'd be driven out of town with pitchforks.
Further, Fiber does have a lot of longevity, you are correct there. But what doesn't have a lot of longevity is wired internet service as a whole. By 2025 we'll start seeing the first 5g cellular plans they'll offer 1gig+ service for a lower price and using less spectrum than 4g. When that comes along, the residential side of my industry will die. The financial people have to plan for that, and would be idiots if they approved infrastructure projects to invest in that part of the buisness. We'll still have a lot of business services, and we are, of course, the trunks between those cellular towers. But the industry as a whole has been exiting the residential market lately. It's becoming less and less profitable. Even televisions services are a losing proposition. The tiered television services ensure that TV is VERY expensive and the only people getting those profits are the channel executives. This is why all the cable companies are trying to merge now... they want to be big enough to fight those big content providers like Viacom.
Long story short, focus your ire on the cellular industry. They will be your ISP in 10 to 20 years and you'll have forgotten all about us.