You'd be surprised at how many of these we are still using, especially in the far north or the desert areas where it is both flat and sparsely populated.
Most of those old legacy microwaves only go up to a DS3 though, which is 28 T1s or about 45 mpbs of encapsulated Ethernet traffic.
Now there is a new generation of microwave gear going in for Wireless ISPs and cellular backhaul. A lot of it already goes up to a gigabit I believe. I'm a fiber guy though so I don't know too much about them.

You understand why you get cash back though right? You get cash back because Visa/MC are charging so much extra they can afford kickbacks to the user.
By the same logic, CurrentC would be able to afford the same sort of rewards programs to get you to NOT use Visa/MC. Just because they haven't announced this doesn't mean they're not going to do it. If anything, I would expect more lucrative rewards programs because they're cutting out that middleman entirely.

He's not claiming a loss. He's listing Goodwill on his balance sheet. Since this is an 'intangible' asset it's taxed differently than a huge stadium.

To an ever increasing portion of the population, everything is about politics.

They are using technology developed for fiber optic communications. I expect the fiber they are using is standard single-mode G.652 fiber, and the device they are using to measure http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B... is an OTDR, which we use in telecom to measure fiber quality and locate defects/breaks.

The US system works exactly like the German system, as long as you are only dealing with voice or T1s. Unfortunately the laws have not been updated to apply to IP, Video, or cable and fiber delivery for that matter.

The safest car the NHSTA has ever tested, for one thing?

It's kW*hour not kW/hour. If a new battery powers my phone for twice as long does that mean it has half the capacity?

There is some shared medium in all the PON applications, but the segregation of traffic is handled within the PON implementation. All the customer and 3rd party service provider should see would be a transparent VLAN-tagged Ethernet pipe.
I'm not a PON expert so I don't know how security is handled. I don't know what would happen if I went out and bought my own GPON modem, plugged it into the fibers,and tried to sniff my neighbor's traffic. That's sort of outside the scope of the discussion though.

I do know if you look up all those acronyms and read the wikipedia articles, you'll know more about the future of telecom than most of the people who work in telecom. :)

Decrypt? I think you're inventing networking technology. In a utopian muni network, the muni would offer MEF compliant E-Access service over whatever GPON, EPON, WDM-PON solution they choose. The customers would appear as VLANs at a ENNI handoff at the local CO or the nearest NAP/IXC. This is how it already works in a wholesale/large enterprise market and it's easy to buy service from one provider through an access network run by another.
Another solution that would work would be to just provide plain unbundled IP service and allow the muni customers to buy voice and video services over the top. I'm sure 3rd party IPTV could be made to work over an peered access network.

Either way, I have no doubt this would be captured and squeezed and we'd sit around blaming $OTHER_POLITICAL_PARTY for the next 50 years.

Do they compete to offer services over it, or do they buy the mayor's nephew a new car? Instead of building an open fiber network, you might just end up building out Comcast's fiber network for them. I don't see this working out well, at least not in large swathes of the USA.

Less Spam vs Open Internet? That's an easy question for me.

I believe this is spot on. I also think that services stuck behind a NAT should not be sold as 'Internet' either. This seems like a perfect stick for the FCC to keep ISPs in line with. Do whatever you want, but if your product is inferior we won't let you advertise it as 'Internet'

I don't think you break up a monopoly by building Municipal fiber. You just create a new Monopoly. Maybe that monopoly is benevolent, or maybe you live in Illinois and it's a perfect blend of incompetent and corrupt. I think a better step would be to break up or limit franchise agreements which are a big reason there is so little competition in the last mile.
Kudos for spelling 'colo' right though.

I work for a large ISP. We love the Netflix and Google cache boxes because they reduce our network costs and congestion and improve our customer experience. But we also do not rely on video as a revenue stream like cable and FTTH companies...