SlashDot’s post links to an interview with Jim Baller (muni-telco-lawyer) concerning Municipal Broadband Battles and the “fights they go through with the incumbent providers and state legislatures.”
At the turn of the last century, when electricity was the great new technology of the age, the private sector focused first on electrifying the major population centers and literally left most of America in the dark. Recognizing that electrification was critical to their economic development and survival, thousands of communities that were not large enough or profitable enough to attract private power companies created their own electric utilities.
It’s deja vu all over again.
Consider the competition that Tacoma’s publicly-owned Click! Network provides. SBC and Comcast successfully mounted a massive and disgraceful campaign of disinformation against Chicago’s Municipal Fiber to the Home plan.
Smart Communities include Multimedia SuperCorridor (Malaysia), Hong Kong Cyberport (Hong Kong), Infoville (Spain), Bayern On-line (Germany), Ennis Information Age Town (Ireland), Kenniswijk (Netherlands), Indonesia Cybercity (Indonesia), Arab Urban Development Institute(Saudi Arabia) Connecting Canada and Ottawa Smart Capital. Canada, has double the broadband penetration rate of the United States and fosters the development of world-class Smart Communities.
Regional fiber networks include Benton PUD and Grand County PUD which currently offer hundreds of IP-TV channels and 10Mbps to the home. They lease fiber stands from BPAs NoaNet Washington and NoaNet Oregon. Other regional fiber networks include FTTH, a Minneapolis area Integrated Communications Provider and Utah’s UTOPIA project, the largest FTTH and FTTB project in the world. Texas-size community clouds may be next big thing.
Phone companies may trot out VDSL using twisted pair to deliver video. But DBS satellite is far cheaper. VDSL is costly and short range. It’s fiscally irresponsible. Coldly cynical. A dead end.
So expect announcements soon. Then say goodbye to local phone service. Forever.
[Thanks: Dat]
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