Municipal Battle Wired News takes a peek Wired News discovers something we've been talking about for years; namely the effort by hundreds of communities to provide their own broadband, and the efforts being made by the major providers to stop them. In it they quote Tom Lenard of the "Progress and Freedom Foundation" (a Bell funded lobbying group), who states: "All the empirical evidence has been that they (Municipal Operations) are losing propositions." In reality, well planned muni-operations make a profit, bring significant competition (resulting in lower prices), often force incumbents to upgrade outdated networks, and even have brought economic aid to many areas.
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 | | I want local broadband d@mnit!!! I wish someone would set up some local broadband service with good prices and speeds. That would really get the cable and dsl companies to start offering some decent service for once. | |
|  |  korymGo Wisp'sExMod 1999-03
join:1999-12-23
Richmond, VA | Re: I want local broadband d@mnit!!! Just have someone build a WISP in your area or a wireless hotzone. 
Regards,
Kory
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WISP & Wi-Fi Hotspot Industry News | |
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| | Ma Bell + Orwell "Progress and Freedom Foundation"
geez is it possible to MORE Orwellian? A bunch of shills for a corporate monopoly putting progress and freedom in their name?
Someone should sue them for fraud. | |
| JohnSJ
join:2004-08-14
Lafayette, LA | Habitual Lying The Wired story contains a revealing lie. It occurs right after the quote from broadband reports article:
"All the empirical evidence has been that they are losing propositions," Lenard said. He said case studies of fiber-to-the-home projects in Ashland, Oregon and Lafayette, Louisiana, show that "telecom is a tough business" for private ventures who have more expertise than municipal agencies. The problem here is that Lafayette does not have a fiber-to-the-home project for there to be a case study of. We'd like to have fiber in place but the plan is not yet finished.
Now I know Lenard and PFF come to any muni project with the certain preknowledge of its failure. Its revealing that he is so confident that this is true that he apparently doesn't distinguish between his beliefs and reality. But really, you just have to wait until fiber is deployed, for, oh, a week, say, before you can trot out your misleading "case study" that "proves" it has failed.
More on this at: Lafayette Joins the Ranks of Cities Misrepresented by PFF an article in the blog for Lafayette Pro Fiber a website supporting a publicly owned fiber network in Lafayette.
Both I and another local blogger complained about the inaccuracy to Wired yesterday; we haven't heard back. | |
| | | | Re: Habitual Lying You know John, SBC says Palo Alto has a failed FTTH deployment as well.....and it hasn't gone to referendum yet. It may never go to referendum. Of course let's hope Palo Alto doesn't go to referendum and just builds their FTTH network with something other than G.O. bonds and their council sees the true value in what these networks bring to a community and just builds the darn thing! After all, the network will be used for so much more than just offering the triple play, and if people don't see that than they are missing the larger benefits that muni broadband has to offer communities.
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It's muni-licious! »www.tricitybroadband.com | |
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