wierdo
join:2001-02-16
Tulsa, OK Reviews:
 ·Cox HSI
 ·T-Mobile US
| The point isn't just residential The point is to attract businesses of the type that require cost-effective access to bandwidth. It makes your life a lot easier if you have cheap access to high-bandwidth crosstown connectivity. Especially so if your city is large enough to already have IP providers with POPs there. If you've ever priced a several mile OC-3 from the telco, you'd understand how it makes it much cheaper for a business to locate somewhere that they can get to the service providers more cheaply.
Additionally, it fosters competition in the content markets, especially in small business. Again, the bandwidth cost to be an IP provider, for example, goes down. The cost of the network for you goes down, not because of predatory pricing, but because you, the video provider, the phone provider, the security services, and the companies taking advantage of high-speed data site-to-site within town are all paying for the one network, not a bunch of seperate networks.
Beyond the data provider, the video provider market can multiply, both by rebroadcast agreements with other multichannel video providers along with some of their own content, or by completely new cable companies, much as the wireless cable industry sprang up for a time. More competition in these markets is a significant benefit to everyone but the video providers already in the market. The government fostered competition first by defining a video standard, and by opening new frequencies to TV, and then licensing the spectrum for DBS. What's wrong with a little competition? The existing providers are free to use the network, after all.
Phone providers can also multiply in a similar manner. Look at the explosion of voice providers caused by the government's forcing of the Bells to open their local lines to lease by other companies. This can only increase in a situation where there is an impartial entity controlling a network for many CLECs to use (and the ILEC, if they like). Rather than the lackadaisical attitude often taken by ma bell employees towards fixing CLEC problems, all will be treated equally, rather than having one pig be better than the rest, as it were.
And it helps attract high-tech companies to town.
Seems like a hard to lose situation, for the low cost involved. After all, Southeast Colorado Power did this over a much wider area than any municipal build four or five years ago back when fiber prices were much higher. Surely you don't expect to bankrupt the town with midsize towns building fiber networks in their cities. |
| Good point. The Lafayette FTTH plan is actually a FTTH/B plan. People have a tendancy to drop the Business part off because they are more pationate about the home aspect. A major driver behind this has been the business community looking for lower prices on bandwidth and alternatives to phone service. Most don't really care about the TV services available in their business. |
