The growth of municipal broadband networks

Sat Mar 26 01:43:44 UTC 2011

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Paul Graydon" <paul at paulgraydon.co.uk>

> I'm curious how the feeling is on NANOG about shifting such provision
> towards municipal instead of corporations? I guess a rough summary of
> the competing views I've heard so far are:

Oh, look.  A hobby horse.  My opinion is a third: that last-mile fiber is,
for several reasons, a Natural Monopoly, and having municipalities operate it,
and farm their residents out as customers to any comer to the meet-me room,
is the natural end-game ... and the sooner we get to it, the better.

The problem is that many states have made it *illegal* for muni's to do this,
encouraged, unsurprisingly, in many cases, by Verizon (who desperately needs
FiOS to fly, because they've cut-to-clear in their copper plant for so 
many *decades* now that it's unsalvageable).

Check the archives; I think I brought this up myself about 6 months ago.

Cheers,
-- jra