Why Municipal Broadband is Good

batageek writes "An excellent interview with Jim Baller (muni-telco-lawyer) concerning the growth and efforts of municipal broadband providers and the fights they go through with the incumbent providers and state legislatures." If you're wondering why you don't have fiber-to-the-home yet, read this.

I have a dream, brothers and sisters

That one day, all houses will be made with fibre straight to the door, and bandwidth will be just another amenity, much like electricity, or gas, or telephones are now. And then all the local bandwith companies can fight over our business, and offer us lower and lower rates.

That is a pipe dream

and bandwidth will be just another amenity, much like electricity, or gas, or telephones are now

Yeah, right.

Ever since so-called "deregulation" of gas and electric in Michigan (where I live), all of these have gone up. In the case of gas, wwaaaaayyyyy up. My broadband (cable) is $45/month and I only get one provider to choose from. When it becomes another "amenity", it may go up to $60.

Please pardon my skepticism, but it seems to me we will always be paying inflated prices for the sins (one of which is greed) of the telcoms, utilites, and Lord knows what else.

Re:That is a pipe dream

NG prices went up because nearly every new power plant being built is gas fired. Insert obligatory rant about environmentalist wackos preventing nuclear power plant construction. (Yes, wind and solar when practical, but we'll still need nukes.)

Like pumping highly explosive gas through residential neighborhoods is safe.

Re:I have a dream, brothers and sisters

That one day, all houses will be made with fibre straight to the door,

why?

a single fiber serving 4 square blocks is plenty, then split off to a technology that is easier to terminate and cheaper to work with.

Have you ever put a connector on a Fiber? using the cheap route it's a major pain in the ass and takes quite a bit of skill. the easy way is to cut a jumper and fusion splice it on to the incoming fiber.. the fusion splicer is a cheap $35,000.00US and can be destroyed easily.

fiber into the home? dont want it.

Municipal Infrastructure? ok, I'll take that. if your local city owns the fiber on the poles, the nodes and the drop to your home. THEN your dream might be possible. but even then it is very unprobable. you will simply see that infrastructure multiplied on the pole 3-5 times... one for each company.

Re:I have a dream, brothers and sisters

a single fiber serving 4 square blocks is plenty

..so is 640k...or so I hear.

Re:I have a dream, brothers and sisters

the fusion splicer is a cheap $35,000.00US and can be destroyed easily.

But most of that cost is for the flux capacitor, which is usually salvageable. Anyway, if you use reasonable care selecting fusion fuel, you probably won't ruin your splicer.

Re:I have a dream, brothers and sisters

Good god, man. The whole article is about the state of Fibre to the Home in the US. Besides, do you really want Americans to know where your country is on a map? That's the first step to liberating the hell out of it! Otherwise we could care less about other countries.

But yes, the system of lot and block numbers to designate chunks of real estate is a US invention, IIRC created by the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which was created to regulate the implementation of westward expansion/Manifest Destiny. Now if you will excuse us, we have to get back to carving up Iraq. ;)

Re:I have a dream, brothers and sisters

What is so Americo-centric about an idea that goes back to ancient times?

"Ancient civilizations occasionally planned new cities or major additions to existing settlements. The most widespread plan was a rectangular or grid street pattern that allowed considerable flexibility in the size of blocks while maintaining a clear visual order. Noteworthy examples of this type of city plan include Kahun (Egypt, c.1890 BC), whose workers' quarter is separated by an internal wall from the wealthier districts;" - From Google's cache [216.239.51.100] of the University of Melbourne's History of Urban Planning [unimelb.edu.au]

Or Roman planned cities [discoverychannel.co.uk]?

Or the Hampden Gurney School [bdp.co.uk] in London?

"Block" is not an Americo-centric term. Granted, many of our cities are layed out in a grid pattern, but a block is not a standard size from city to city - try defining a block in the heavily Spanish and French influenced layout of New Orleans or the sometimes quirky layout of Washington, DC.

As far as city-centric. So fucking what? I live in the country. There's nothing offense about someone expressing an idea in term of a relation to a block. It's a commonly understood *idea*. And if 'block' isn't a familiar word, then look it up. Several definitions I found used a quote from the London Quarterly Review as example usage.

I'm not getting enough fiber!!

to my home that is.. who do I call about this?

New Basic Utility

Broadband access is becoming the new extended basic utility.

Just like Gas, Electricity, Water, cable, etc. Instead of Cable coompanies having a monopoly on access, and being about to set there rates as they see fit, I'd welcome a utility regulatory group be put in place.

Summary of the article in one paragraph

The article is kind of long and boring, but here's the key paragraph:

FTTH [fiber to the home] networks are a good case in point. At present, cable can make more money selling relatively modest cable modem services over their Hybrid Fiber Coaxial (HFC) networks, and telephone companies can make more money selling DSL over their copper-based networks, than they can make by investing huge sums in FTTH networks that would allow them to offer substantially more robust broadband services. To wring every last dollar out of their existing systems, the cable and telephone companies are also working hard to persuade Congress, state legislatures and the FCC to allow them to close their systems to Internet Service Providers, CLECs and other potential competitors. Until these conditions change, the cable and telephone companies will simply not invest in FTTH networks. Instead, they will continue to try to convince us that we really don't need more bandwidth than they're offering. At the same time, they will try to block municipalities from building FTTH systems that could disprove these claims.

So it's the usual story. Corporations looking out for their bottom line. Using money and power to prevent competition from organizations that might act in the public interest (and thereby cut into corporate profits).

Re:Summary of the article in one paragraph

Actually, I don't always blame the corporations. But in this case, they're apparently lobbying to prevent municipalities from doing FTTH. That's the downside of profit maximizing. Rather than creating "stuff" for the public good, they are spending money to control politics.

There have been some interesting economic studies of this phenomenon. To summarize, when companies start spending profits to secure more profits, rather than create new goods, the economy starts to go downhill.

Re:Summary of the article in one paragraph

If government let the market handle everything, there'd be no point to bribing government officials, so that money would go somewhere else, namely, to trying to stay ahead of the competition.

If we let the market handle everything, there'd be no need for bribing the government. Corporations would do whatever they wanted to, and we'd be working 12 hours a day for starvation wages. That's the problem with the Randite pipedream - it has as little to do with reality as Communism.

Fiber Run Throughout the Town

I was an employee of a company that ran fiber throughout several blocks of the downtown city (if you could call it a city) area and connected quite a few locations directly. The problem turned out to be need. People could already get cable modem or DSL, and even though the prices were incredible (I think it was $40 for a 10mb 2-way connection), nobody saw the need for that kind of speed.

Granted, Lock Haven, PA [lockhaven.com] is hardly the technological Mecca that some other places in the country are, but you'd think that for $40 a month, with no download or upload cap, and no monitoring of any kind, someone would want it... but as it turns out, not so much. It's still successful enough to keep the company from going under, but it's hardly the money-maker they anticipated it would be.

The project itself was called Lock Haven Electronic Village [lhev.com], and was started by KCnet (Keystone Community Network) [kcnet.org]. They're an educationally oriented ISP that was started by the school district and gets grants from the government for education-based projects. If memory serves, they did the first phase for around $250,000.

England

Here in England, we actually have a choice of broadband providers. You can get either Cable or DSL (that is, via your phone service or cable service), and this healthy competition tends to keep the prices down a bit.

That's great but...

until I get electricity and running water out here in NEW Mexico, broadband is the least of my worries.
/sarcasm

No thanks.

Electricity is required for a minimum standard of living. If municipal water & sewer is not available, they can be handled with wells and septic tanks. Arguably, telephone service (wire or wireless) is necessary for emergency 911 service. Broadband internet, like cable television, is a luxury. The government is plenty big already without getting into the entertainment business. How much easier is it for big brother to monitor you if they are providiing the access?

I have the choice of cable, DSL from several vendors, satellite, and dialup. The private sector is handling my business just fine.

Re:No thanks.

Re:No thanks. (Score:3) by Lumpy (12016) on Thursday May 22, @10:33AM (#6014949) (http://www.your-website-sucks.com/) Electricity is required for a minimum standard of living. really? so all those people in africa are dead then? you can live with much MUCH less. it's how many luxuries you want that requires your electricity..

How did this get modded insightful? It's fairly obvious that the original poster was referring to legal requirements, not absolute needs. Besides, it doesn't matter if you can live without electricity and running water - try it in the US and you risk having your building condemned.

Re:No thanks.

... many of the omish in northern michigan have very nice homes and lives and have NO ELECTRICITY...

You misspelled that: it's Ohmish, not ``omish''. Note that it's capitalized, as befits a proper noun.

The Ohmish do without electricity because of their high resistance to the modern world. Their opposite, so to speak, are the Mhoish, or Siemenites, whose beliefs are quite conductive to amenities like electricity.

Re:No thanks.

then you don't live in an area controlled by broadband monopoly.

I moved from NW Ohio to Burnsville, MN in November (I am now 15-20 mins out of downtown Minneapolis). I moved from an area that offered a steady 300kB/s cable pipe (TimeWarner RR) to an area that offered a 1.5mbs pipe (about 220kB/s steady with ATTBI)...

Comcast recently took over the entire region and raised my Internet rates (without CATV) to 60.95 from 46.95... Not only that but now I have download speeds in the 180kB/s range.

More money, slower speeds, and the same crap customer service...

Re:No thanks.

Entertainment? Funny, I primarily use my broadband access for work. I guess that changes broadband access to a "Multiple-use" classifcation. Anyhow, your local/municipal government is already in the "entertainment" business -- they probably have a senior citizen's club, a little league team, some sort of recreation fields, maybe a new year's eve celebration...The list goes on. Just because you may only use your network access to play some poker game doesn't mean that other people may use it for other purposes.

As for the private sector handling your business, what do you think will happen in the next few years? DSL from several vendors will switch into Verizon DSL, and that's about it. All the other smaller providers will be muscled out, but that's another topic. You really only have the choice of two cable (most likely only one) providers, satellite is slow and is being phased out, and dialup is for webtv, or something.

The variety of choice for broadband is going to lessen over the next few years, so as i see it, it would benefit both myself and my community to have a network connection utility that would have to answer to the people (publicly run or regulated) rather than a private company whose main interest is profit.

As for big brother -- if someone wants to monitor you, they'll monitor you, whether you've got earthlink or anything else. Worrying about that is like pissing into the wind.

RIAA to dispatch field investigators to Grant Co.?

In fact, in ultra-rural Grant County, WA, where users of the County's FTTH system have affordable access to speeds of 100 Mbps in both directions, bandwidth usage has jumped more than 600 percent and upstream usage actually exceeds downstream usage. Why? The County believes that small businesses are sending substantially more information to the Internet than they are downloading, and gamers are vastly increasing their real-time usage. That's good news for rural communities that are looking for ways to keep their kids from leaving.

No doubt, the RIAA will be moving field investigators into Grant County within the week. Must be a hotbed of P2P ;-)

But see-riously, wasn't one goal of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 to increase access in rural areas? Needless to say, that's not what happened. Baller's comparison of broadband access to the situation when the Rural Electrification Act was passed is valid. But telcos & electric companies are going where they get the biggest return for the least investment. Even "rural" EPAs tend to concentrate on small towns & suburbs these days -- services in the really rural areas are not much better than they were 40 years ago.

The high-tech redneck,

interesting quote from Comcast...

JakCrow asks: Why aren't the phone and cable companies addressing the reasons for the municipal push? Municipal broadband is developing because people are tired of the bad service, high prices, and lousy coverage, yet the phone and cablecos would rather spend money using propaganda to fight municipal projects than fix their own problems.

Jim Baller: I believe that there are many good people working for cable and telephone companies who would like to deliver good products at reasonable prices and also offer good service. Consider, for example, an article in the Tacoma News Tribune on May 19, 2003, in which Comcast spokesman Steve Kipp said that competition with Tacoma's Click! Network was a good thing for all concerned, including Comcast. Specifically, Mr. Kipp was quoted as saying that: "It's that competition that has really spurred the additional investment in cable and customer service." (link). Think of where we would be if Comcast, as a whole company, acted as though it really believes this. Unfortunately, as a company, it does not.

Explain to me how Comcast has competition? DSL is NOT competition for Comcast Internet services (this is not an arguable point BTW). Comcast is THE only option for broadband where I live (no DSL and wireless access is cost prohibitive). They took over ATTBI and immediately raised the rates (which have yet to take effect but I am sure that (based on previous practices) will be "noticed at a later date" and corrected by charging for the back months in a single bill...)

Competition for Comcast IS good but it doesn't exist. I seriously believe that Muni's that run their own broadband service would actually be helping the community and THEMSELVES.

Force the "natural monopolies" (their words, not mine) to compete instead of taking over and doing what they want.

Makes me wonder...

providing their communities significantly better service at substantially lower prices than investor-owned utilities provide.

1. Is this a fact???
3. Do this guy cares if that's truth????

Answer:
Niyyaa....

Municipal utilities are a double-edged sword

If you think private telco monopolies are bad, you haven't seen anything yet until you've seen government-owned monopolies.

Our electricity monopoly here is government owned. I am overhauling my house right now, and a friend of ours, who works for the electricity company, mentioned it'd make his job a lot easier if the meter was in a box on the outside of the house, rather than inside (meaning the meter reader can read the meter at his convenience, rather than when I'm available to let him in). I agreed.

The first hurdle was trying to acquire the plastic box to put the meter in. We went to the Manx Electricity Authority shop and asked for one. We were told to fill in a confetti-like shower of forms, and we'd have to wait a couple of weeks for it to show up. The guy behind the desk wouldn't budge. He had them in stock, and available, but no, he couldn't give us one. He terminated the argument by announcing, "Well, we ARE the government, you know".

Finally, we get the box. I did all the work myself to install it (cut the hole in the wall, secured and set it in the wall, concreted the hole etc.) at my expense. All we needed was to have the MEA move the meter from its present position to the new box. We fill in yet another form to tell them what we want to do.

A couple of weeks later their guy shows up and says, "Nah, I can't do that, you need a jointer to do that. And you need to fill out these forms".

Yet more forms. We had already told them exactly what needed doing, and they sent the wrong type of person out.

"Oh, you're on a six-week waiting list for a jointer" they then said, after filling out yet more forms. I escalated the matter, and had a long debate with a guy about it and told him all our woes. He tried to wriggle out of it.

"What electrician's qualifications do you have to do the installation?" he asked, trying to pry open an "excuse hole" he could exploit.
"It's a plastic box set in a wall. You are telling me you have to be a qualified electrician to cut a hole in a wall, put a plastic box in, screw in the supplied screws, and re-render around the hole?"
"Well, what about all the cabling?"
"There _IS_ no cabling! That's the point! This is why we've been filling out a confetti-like shower of forms to get your guy to come out, move the meter, and recable!"
Finally, sensing he was on a loser (and about to receive a LARTing) he gave up on that tack.

We first asked for the meter box in January. It is now late May, and the meter STILL hasn't been moved. We are only doing this to benefit the municipal electricity company, and at our expense. I keep explaining this to them but it doesn't seem to make any difference.
Even Texas-New Mexico Power was never that bad.

Government is almost NEVER the answer. A government monopoly is orders of magnitudes worse than a private one in my experience.

Manx Telecom (the private telecom monopoly we have) despite their faults are a joy to work with by comparison. They have even acquired a clue when it comes to running an ADSL network. We did a similar job relocating the telephone line, to have it run underground. No forms to fill out - we just asked them to lay a new cable and they did it when they said they'd do it - no waiting lists and no bullshit.

Take you case before the City Council...

I work for a city govt in Texas, and if anyone in our public utilities customer service positions treated someone that way, they'd be fired in short order... but only if you actually bothered to prepare a formal complaint to the department. If the complaint is factual, well documented and is not a lunatic ranting, it is taken *very* seriously here. We've even had citizens bring their complaints (well prepared and "educated") before the city council as initial complaints, not going thru the normal departmental channels first, and let me tell you doing that usually gets investigative results FAST. It is a municipal employee's worst nightmare for a citizen to voice their complaint first to the council, so we make it well known at the service counters that if someone has a valid issue with a city utility, that they get priority attention from us, the staff.

Re:Municipal utilities are a double-edged sword

The first hurdle was trying to acquire the plastic box to put the meter in. We went to the Manx Electricity Authority shop and asked for one. We were told to fill in a confetti-like shower of forms, and we'd have to wait a couple of weeks for it to show up. The guy behind the desk wouldn't budge. He had them in stock, and available, but no, he couldn't give us one. He terminated the argument by announcing, "Well, we ARE the government, you know".

That's because you are in England. England, you know, is populated by english people, and english people have that collective neurosis about the State being bad (this comes directly from the Magna Carta). It's a vicious circle: people believe that the State is bad, so no one wants to be associated with the State, so smart people don't go work for the State, and the State does stupid things, which reinforces the perception.

By contrast, look at France where people TRUST the State. Working for the State is not demeaned, and people see it as an honour, and there are those prestigious Grandes Écoles (great schools) [polytechnique.fr] who turn-out nothing but extremely competent bureaucrats (those schools skim the cream of the crop of each schools in France - they accept only the best of the best students). The result is extremely efficient and well-run public corporations and utilities, say like the SNCF which operates the largest network of the fastests trains in the known universe.

Instead of whining against filling forms, why don't you do something positive like trying to fix those problems by, say, bringing more smartness to their process???

As long as the anglo-saxons will have that shit-for-brains attitude against the State, you will get the shitty public service you rightfully deserve.

Top-of-the-line broadband just too expensive

Around where I live, one can get a decent cable or DSL broadband connection for a fair price. However, to get optimal broadband, and I mean really optimal, you need to have a fiber-optic connection into every house. Think of how great that would be - streaming audio and video, ability to download whole CDROM ISOs in incredibly short amounts of time. (You really need that if you want to download RH8 and 9.)

The problem with this is that it's so darn expensive. Those fiber-optic connections have to be perfect. It's just too expensive to put that in on a mass scale. It would be great if the government could fund that. But you have to wonder whether society will really benefit from everyone having a super-fast connection. Would these fast speeds be used as a tool or as entertainment?

I'm glad he said it

"As I noted earlier, cable and telephone companies have invested vast sums in their HFC and copper infrastructures, and they have powerful incentives to maximize returns on these investments. Municipal broadband projects are very scary to them, even in small markets that they would otherwise ignore, because once the public sees what's really possible, the cable and telephone companies will find it difficult to defend their inferior products and services. In my opinion, that's good for the U.S. "

It was refreshing to see this statement made in plain english for a change

uhm

Cable & phone companies can't prevent the city from starting their own broadband services, the city grants the cable & phone companies the right to offer those services through their franchise agreements. If the city wants to compete with the cable & phone companies or get rid of them altogether that's their choice. Of course the current broadband service companies aren't going to run fiber to the home it's freaking retarded for them to do it right now. It costs far too much. If everyone was given a 10mbit connection to the internet the backbones would all need to be replaced with higher capacity systems. Yeah it all sounds good to have that kind of connection but @home went out of business for a reason, they couldn't turn a profit.

Municipal Broadband is BAD

Hello,

I'm from the future, a future where Municipal Broadband ruined the earth as we know it. Because of my Tempral Prime Directive, I cannot tell you how or why it ruined the earth; doing so would tear the fabric of space and time and distort the timeline between then and now.

Do not let Municipal Broadband deployment continue.

Well, of course!

A government-owned utility is of course more efficient. It is not burdened by the need for a short-term profit; hence it can invest revenues in a way that's conductive to long-term planning. Claims of inefficiency coming from the private sector is, of course, more FUD.

The best example is the electric power generation and distribution in Québec [hydro-quebec.com] (Canada). Since the early 1960's, electric power generation has been nationalized in Québec, and the result is the lowest electricity rates in the world, all the while paying-off the northern native communities on whose land the dams have been erected so well that, on the whole continent, they are the better-off natives (that's "indians" for you non-PC types).

Even with all this, it manages to pour billions of dollars in the government's coffers (that's so much taxes we won't have to pay).

Much of the revenue is made through exportation, and this is thanks to the hydroelectric nature of the generation system: unlike a thermic or nuclear power plant, a dam can be turned-off during off-peak times. So, during the night, we close the dams, and buy surplus power from the US at 2, while during the day, we open the whole shebang and sell our surplus at 4...

By contrast, Hydro-Ontario (which had been owned by the province for a century) has been privatized and the market "opened-up", just like in California. The result is a complete fiasco [google.com], as small businesses face 500% electric power cost increases (for electoral reasons, consumers have been guaranteed - at government expense - a lower fixed rate).

Come have a look up here, and whenever someone says that government-ownership is bad, you can safely answer back "bullshit", and then ask him why the roads and highways aren't owned by private entreprise to see him bumble...

Reminds me of IEEE Spectrum prediction

Back in 1995 or thereabouts, I read an article that said something to the effect of "T1 speeds in five years for $30? How does that bite you?"

The prediction is both true and false. True in the sense that you can certainly achieve T1 speeds easily for that cost and even less, but false in the sense that greed has both driven prices through the roof and service through the floor.

In Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, broadband cable costs US$30/month with effectively no caps (though egregious uploaders and downloaders do get flagged). In most of the US, the typical cable or DSL provider wants around $50/month for lesser service - even in lower-cost areas. I'll tell you one thing - when I was living in the US, it sure bit my ass.

I think you guys are missing the boat here

Listen, to all of you compaining about big government:

The government doesn't have to be an ISP. I think they should be willing to help put in place infrastructure, like fiber lines, or whatever other kind of lines you want to use.

These lines can be used by any schmoe company to sell service. I used an example, in my previous posting, of roads. The roads are the infrastructure, whereas the actual service comes from Ford, Chevy, Toyota, or wherever.

The point of the whole story seemed to me to be that the telco companies aren't going to put up new infrastructure because at this point, (and forever at this rate) it's not profitable to do so.

If we have the government grant money to municiplaities to put the infrastructure in place, then they can sell to their heart's content all of the service they wish. In the end they would end up with a bigger customer base. How's that not good for business?

There can be problems with municipal systems too..

This quote about "ultra-rural" Grant County PUD is somewhat misleading:

"In fact, in ultra-rural Grant County, WA, where users of the County's FTTH system have affordable access to speeds of 100 Mbps in both directions, bandwidth usage has jumped more than 600 percent and upstream usage actually exceeds downstream usage. Why? The County believes that small businesses are sending substantially more information to the Internet than they are downloading, and gamers are vastly increasing their real-time usage."

While it's true that the users are getting 100mbps access, they are *paying* for only 1mbps access. The PUD is simply too lazy (or incompetent) to limit the actual rates. Now that the PUD is running out of cash to continue rolling out the program they are still fighting any efforts on the part of service providers to actually rate-limit connections and use that to provide quality of service (and enough cash-flow to the PUD to pay for the program).

The other problems with public power doing broadband is their bureaucratic nature. These are not business people but salaried workers who are accustomed to a business model that does not include competition or the risk of going bankrupt. They have been tutored in a regulated monopoly environment in which the "bottom line" can often be whatever they want it to be. Here in Grant County they have apparently (it's hard to get a straight answer) raised the electric power rates to help cover the fiber rollout costs. This has enraged the agricultural interests who feel, with some justification, that those who will benefit most from fiber should pay the most to roll it out.

Additionally, the PUD here has entered into questionable contracts with favored service providers. There is at the present time an investigation into these dealings being undertaken by an "independent" Seattle-area lawyer. The word "independent" is in quotes because the attorney doing the investigation told me he is acting as the attorney for the PUD Commissioners with all the secrecy a client-attorney relationship can imply. Whether the results of this investigation, which could be politically damaging, will be released to the public is "entirely up to the PUD Commissioners", he said.

The Grant County PUD is hardly a shining example of local-control broadband. The PUD controls two hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River and will spend something over $200 million in their fiber project (no one yet knows the real costs). This is big money no matter how you look at it and allegations of sweetheart deals to special interests abound.

Broadband is expensive no matter who does it and no matter what a high-power lawyer in Washington, DC says. Trying to do it with a community effort might be successful or it might not be. There are many pitfalls and with so much money involved there is always the possibility of corruption and waste.

No Muni Broadband for Me, Courtesy of Verizon

I live near Kutztown, PA, a university community of about 4000 people which is running a muni fiber network to downtown homes and businesses and planning to bill users for it along with water, sewer, etc. I called and asked the local govt folks if they would consider putting Wi-Fi broadcast antennas on top of the local "mountain" (big hill, really - couple hundred feet high) to reach outlying areas. I already have a DirecTV dish - one more wouldn't be a problem The fellow I spoke to said they'd really love to do something like that, but Verizon and other private broadband providers were heavily lobbying state government and threatening lawsuits as it was; they needed to tread very lightly just now and couldn't risk expanding the planned service area, which would be seen as a provocation by the private providers.

I'd welcome choice

I just moved into a community where the only option I have is 28.8kbps dialup (no copper, no cable, and satellite is just too damn expensive). I'd love to have a choice of ways to link up to the internet, but unfortunately I don't. Where I used to live had DSL, Cable, and even Ricochet (remember them?). Oh well. :)

So where are these municipalities with broadband

I, for one, would seriously consider moving to a town that I new had FTTH that was run locally. Is there a list of such towns/services?

Hello? Anyone Home?

Hello! Cost of Infastructure is the reason why! Say you can get a good deal on Long range fiber transceivers at 100$ a pop (This still completely Leaves out the Equipment this will still be needed to be hooked up to.).. you need 1 on each end... So your amost at 1/4 of a million dollars just for lasers.. No equipment to hook up yet at all... Just to light up the fiber.. Cost of recovery... if your broadband provider can cut more than 15$ a month in profit they are doing VERY good... so lets just say they have a profit of 15$ a month on 45$ It will take just over 13 months to do cost recovery Just on the Lasers required... and lasers will end up being the cheapest item on the list... If you can get fiber dug in the city for less than 75$ a foot Your smilin... and overhead is 35$ a foot or more... Thats just for Installation.. not including the medium.. (which is Virtually free compared to the installation cost).. Then you have Termination equipment.. You would be lucky to be able to terminate for 300$ a end.. I really doubt you could end up with less than 1000$ a house to terminate both ends of the fiber... and at 7.5 years untill there is profit to be made... How many of todays Investors are willing to wait that long to see a return on thier investment.. Practically 0...

Community broadband

In my city ,ottawa , we sort of have this . For $995CAD/month ( the city owned power companies broadband division will deliver 1m through fiber to almost any where in the city. The bandwith is 100% UU net and they provide a full commit for the 1 mb. I can then burst 10mb if no one else is using it . The only problem from my pov is that I can get 3.5m (admitedly not burst 10 service) for $90/mo over dsl .If the city could bring there prices down a bit (by not using 100% UUnet that stuff is pricy!) and going for a mix of bell nexxia , uunet , and posible a connection to onet I would probably connect . As it stands I can rent good office space , get two 3.5m connections for cheaper than my city . Now If any one elses city provides broadband I would love to know what bandwith providers they use and how much they charge . [http]

municipal broadband projects . a short list.

municipal broadband links. [google.com]

South Korea got it right

South Korea doesn't have FTTH, but it does have a very extensive braodband infrastucture. The government spent a lot of time and money investing in it and building it. The result of that is that S Korea is the most online community per capita in the world, above the US and Japan even.

You can usually choose between 6 different broadband providers there. Since there is so much competion, rates are cheap, and there are NO upload or download limits. When I try to explain the download caps we have here, my friends in Korea shake their heads and ask me why people stand for it.

Governments need to take bold steps like this because nothing will change if they don't. South Korea did it, and now they are reaping the benefits of great internet infrastructure.

Slashdot need moderation for posted articles too!

This posting deserves 5 points!

A highly informative interview about the politics of municipal broadband. Solid opinion on issues that shapes the future of U.S. and aboard. An outline of an alternative to the pitiful service commercial companies are providing us today that called "broadband". This is a great read for anyone care about the future of our economy.

Why do we only get to moderate user comments? We should moderate article postings too and put great article above the mediocre ones.

Wai Yip Tung

I actually have Municipal Broadband

Greets all,
I'm actually one of those lucky folks in Tacoma who gets their internet access from the City owned cable utility. That's right, here in Tacoma we can get high-speed internet from our municipal power company. Both the price and performance beat Comcast's product by a mile. I pay $29 a month (+$5 for an extra IP address) and get 1M down, usually clocks at around 1.5M, and 128K up. If I wanted to spend another $20 a month I could get 2M down and 256K up, static IP, and the right to run my own servers over the connection. A friend uses the higher capacity service for his computer gaming parlor. He's never complained of a lack of bandwidth.

It was interesting, before our power utility proposed building a City owned cable system. The then franchisee TCI was projecting that Tacoma would be one of the last of their cities to get upgraded to digital cable. At that time at least five years away. It was funny to watch all the spin that TCI's flacks and lobbyists put out trying to convince the voters of Tacoma that a Municiple cable system would bankrupt our power utility in short order. Well, the system has cost us more than was originally projected, but everyone agrees that Click! is the only reason that TCI moved Tacoma to the top of the upgrade schedule. The article somepody else referred to that quoted the Comcast exec is the only time I've ever heard something from TCI/ATT/ComCast that was different than their standard CLick! will bankrupt Tacoma.

FTTH _is_ available now, and profitable..

even for private companies. We're doing it now in Bozeman, Montana: http://www.vividnetworks.com [vividnetworks.com]

High-speed Internet, Telephone, and Cable Television services all delivered via a fiber-optic PON network .

Re:Wow, well he could learn SOMETHING from gov't

Aren't full paragraphs a good thing? I understand that soundbites are what the media needs, but still.