| Gosh these forums are inhabited by too many hostile people. Either that or you work for AT&T.
Actually, if you look at Greenlight as an example the city of Wilson paid to install the fiber. However, all users of the system pay a subscription fee for the service. It is not as if Grandma jones is going to be paying out the wazoo for something she doesn't want or need. For that matter with collections of subscription fees the system will eventually pay for itself and most likely make money. For that matter, any business that is attracted to that area as a result will eventually pay off.
These days broadband is quickly becoming very important. Perhaps still not as important as Gas, Water, Electricity all of which are provided by the same city by the way and the citizens who have it pay monthly fees as well.
Why should people have to wait on AT&T or VZ to decide when and how something is deployed if the city itself as a majority decides that it can provide a service in an area on its own that the incumbents won't touch and most of the people in the own obviously want.
I don't think thats such a bad thing. The bills that have been presented into the general assembly in NC to protect the incumbents were bad legislation.
I can understand if you own a lot of stock in AT&T or VZ, etc that you might feel threatened. However. it is the job and the responsibility of the executives and the board of directors of those companies to provide a profitable business model so that there is a good ROIC for the investors. It is not the government's job to help insure a company's business model. Neither is it for the government to prevent competition.
However, the bills that were introduced to the state house were mostly crafted by industry representatives and for the benefit of the incumbent to protect themselves from competition in this case from a local municipality. That is not market economics at work. Nor am I an idiot as I just graduated with BSBA from App state.
By the way, you wouldn't happen to be from Asheville originally or lived there? |
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