| This has happened several times before If you've been following municipal fiber projects you will know that this exact scenario has been played out dozens of times before. The ending varies, but the cause is always the same: The monopolies want to protect their monopolies. It makes perfect business sense, but it's not in the best interest of our nation. Qwest sponsored a bill in the Utah legislature that was aimed straight at killing the utopia project, which is a fiber network connecting (thus far) 13 cities across the state. The project is open to any city that wishes to join. The main difference between utopia and other municipal projects is that utopia would only provide the network, and not actually offer any services on it. Qwest didn't kill the project, only set it back a little, and dissuaded 3 (of the original 16) cities to exit the project.
Most opponents of the project have listed objections similar to those I've seen here (i.e. the government shouldn't be competing with businesses etc) however, those don't quite apply in this instance. You can think of the network like an airport, or the road system. It just doesn't make sense for a bunch of businesses to build all their own roads and then sell service to everybody, nor does it make sense to build multiple airports in the same city (obviously some large cities are an exception to that). The government does have a role in shared infrastructure. The telecom industry has proved that the current model does not lead to lower prices and innovation. Japan has shown us what competition in the telecom industry can do: they have 100/100mbps fiber access for prices similar to our current cable and DSL services. You can use the argument that Japan has a much higher population density, but New York is not that much less dense than Tokyo, and I don't see any 100 megabit services there...
Anyway, sorry for the rant, carry on.:) |
