Muni Fiber and Politics - ENDGAME

Tue Jul 22 16:29:51 UTC 2014

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Aaron" <aaron at wholesaleinternet.net>

> So let me throw out a purely hypothetical scenario to the collective:
> 
> What do you think the consequences to a municipality would be if they
> laid fiber to every house in the city and gave away internet access for
> free? Not the WiFi builds we have today but FTTH at gigabit speeds for
> free?
> 
> Do you think the LECs would come unglued?

Of course they would.

But the real problem is *this shit's expensive*.

You can assume $8-1200 per passing, if you fiber the entire town at once
(my example was 12000 passings, 3-pr, in 2.3 sqmi).  Then you're going to
have to operate the core, which will take power and at least 5 people to
man it 24/7.  And finally, figure on at least 4-6 multi-10GE uplinks,
and those things don't exactly grow on trees -- there's no sense in
providing 1G/1G if people can't actually use it.

So there's a bunch of sunk cost, and a bigger bunch of recurring costs.

And where's that money come from?  Yup: local taxes, mostly property.

So you're charging everyone anyway; TANSTAAFL.

Cheers,
-- jra
-- 
Jay R. Ashworth                  Baylink                       jra at baylink.com
Designer                     The Things I Think                       RFC 2100
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