Qwest Sues 14 City Utah Fiber Project > Government has a place in providing infrastructure

reply to fiberguy

Re: Government has a place in providing infrastruc

Something that you (fiberguy) apparently dont understand is that the cities(government) are not providing any phone services, internet services, or any other service over the fiber.
You cannot sign up for Orem city phone service, or Orem city internet. You cant even sign up for Utopia phone, or utopia internet. You CAN sign up for xmission internet, AT&T and several other PRIVATE sector for profit companies. Quest, Comcast, and who the heck else that wants to provide services is allowed. So tell me where has the private sector been elimated that you're talking about? We dont have to use the copper on the poles anymore? We dont have to put our telecommunications future into the hands of a boardroom looking to sqeeze more profits out of less service?
Why is it so bad that other for profit companies can now compete with the incumbents for consumer dollars?

So, let me get this straight then.

These towns are pretty darn small right? From what I gather, not too many homes.

The group builds a vast fiber pipeline for an open architech for any company to come in and sell services across the delivery pipes.

I don't really see how this is going to lower prices to these people.

If I am right in my understanding lets say that 5 companies want to come in and sell services. They are not going to "resell" services right? So, they will all have to have head ends of their own filled with equipment to drive video services, internet service, and telephone services. A pretty big investment in equipment for all htose great toys that are required for delivering the services that fiber comands.

Now, each provider wanting to come in and sell has to have carriage agreements for video, buy backbone bandwidth for internet, and pay all the telco linkup fees and transport costs to carry calls.

Finally, back to the total population served. How much can these service providers expect or hope to get of this rather small area of homes each? Will there be enough to go around? Or, do some say it's not worth it and back out, (useless to sell in this small environment but not out of the question) or do some just fold? Then we are down to a provider or two. I am sure that Cable and Qwest both fail at this point becuase they can't and won't compete with fiber. The competition or choice becomes slim again and we are back to where we started only we have a fiber optics network with probably two providers.

Part of what drives competition is the ability to negotiate contracts on a national level. I really don't think major players in the industry (Cox, Comcast, SBC, Verizon, etc) would really want to come in to this environment..

so then what? Is this REALLY going to benefit the customer in the long run? I think all people see is fiber in their eyes - and fiber equals success.

I think these cities would have been better off working with both the cable companies and telephone companies to work together and build this backbone. Again, nother problem.

I just don't see this being the utopia that it wants to be.