Salisbury, NC Proceeds With FTTH Build > This triple play pkg looks the best for Wilson,NC

This triple play pkg looks the best for Wilson,NC

The service area is the city limits from reading their web site or in an interview with the head of the project.

Here are some figures about the Wilson project. They borrowed $28 million wiki reports 18,660 household. That comes to about $1500 per household. The debt and maintenance load is $7.4 million per year or $396.57 per year or $33 per month per household. This is the cost if they get 100 percent take rate at each household. They are expecting about 30% take to break even or consider it a success. I have not read if they are above or below that rate.
They do have some advantages that a private company may not have. As far as I can tell the town electrical utility is responsible for the plant maintenance. I have not seen if they have to pay taxes like a private company but if they do not make enough in revenue the taxpayers will have to pick up the difference. I would guess the got a cheaper interest rate on the $28 million bonds. At this point I assume if you live outside the city limit you may or may not be able to connect to the service. The customers can choose Embarq, TWC or Greenlight FTTH.
I wonder how long the private companies can compete paying taxes on their plant and being required to provide service if a customer should choose to select them. Embarq is required to provide service outside the city limits at a regulated price even if they are losing money because they lost the customers in the Town of Wilson.
The cable and phone companies mainly wanted a level playing field that if a town wanted to go into the cable business they had to set it up like a private business just like if you or I started a FTTH in town to compete against TWC and Embarq. I think that would be fair. If a city run FTTH does not have to go before the planning commission, get permits, pay taxes, rent office space, borrow money cheaper and other hoops that a private company would have to jump through. Why not let a town or city compete with the your company what is the difference.

reply to WhatNow
Public utilities have go through planning commissions, do environmental impact studies, hold public hearings, and many similar things that private companies do. The biggest difference is that public utilities are required to do everything technically feasible to serve ALL the customers in their service area. Most communities attempting public utility FTTH had previously asked the local telephone company to build such a network as they were supposed to do and had promised to do. The Telecommunications Act had given them access to tax breaks and rate hikes that they promised were going to result in a nationwide 45 Megabit/second symmetrical communications network for over 90% of the businesses and residences of the continental United States. The telephone companies failed to keep that promise. And they would not partner with the public utilities or municipalities in building such networks. So the public utilities and municipalities have started the journey to build such networks, to serve ALL of their communities RESIDENTS AND BUSINESSES, on their own. The argument about taxes is illogical. Governmental organizations do not pay sales taxes to each other. If I purchase things for a Federal agency, the purchase is exempt from state and local sales taxes. If a local school board purchases items they are exempt from paying state sales taxes on those purchases.