said by Uncle Paul:In Oneida TN, a more rural community in the mountains North of Knoxville, when an electric company wouldn't come, the community did a co-op... same with the main bank and several other services including the local cable company.
That little community had broadband internet before my town of easily over 3x the population. They had broadband internet before they had a McDonald's.
Many communities look at information services as a utility much like electricity or roads. If a company isn't interested in providing service, the citizens should be able to move forward. We all pay taxes on things we don't agree with or support. Cities make investments in infrastructure all the time and place the burden on it's populace. If the citizens don't like what the elected officials are doing, they can vote them out, run themselves, or move.
If I were a city interested in bringing in high tech jobs one of the areas I'd be looking at investing in is quality data connections, both to job areas and private homes as a business looks not only at what the capacity of the office space is, but what the city has to offer potential employees the company may want to hire in from the outside.
A Co-op is NOT funded by taxes. Co-ops are community-owned (community being the customers, via their bills). They pooled their resources and built the electric cooperatives with assistance from the federal government. However, these are definitely NOT tax or bond-funded.
