Fwd: Rollup: Small City Municipal Broadband

Sun Feb 3 03:02:42 UTC 2013

This has been a fascinating discussion :)  While we don't quite qualify
as a small city, we do have quite a dispersion of coverage across our
residence halls and general campus.  There is an ongoing RFP process to
build out our own CATV distribution (or more generally, to avoid the
resident CATV provider charge monopoly). 

Initial competitors included incumbent cable (largely RF coax), new
providers (also RF coax), and content-only providers (either assuming we
do distribution over our fiber, or add another distribution component),
to IPTV solutions (using existing network). 

IPTV requires a "very co-operative" multicast distribution, which we
currently do not have (not exclusive vendor gear end-to-end); it needs
to be designed that way from the beginning as opposed to bolted onto the
end.

RF CATV (or HFC distribution) requires some unique fiber plant...
notably AFC terminations as opposed to the UPCs we have for data.  And
you have to consider one-way content provider network, versus two-way
feedback (and the associated set-top box complications we're trying to
avoid).

And throw in the phone for the other "triple play" component, and you're
generally talking PoE[+].

Even in a captive audience, the possibilities are challenging :)

Jeff