Quincy could become one of the first communities in the country to have a fiber optic network installed throughout the whole city.
The city’s Department of Central Services recommended approval of a pilot program to allow United Kingdom-based i3 America to install 1,300 feet of fiber optic cable in municipal sewer lines along South 46th Street. The proposal now heads to the City Council.
WASHINGTON, August 27, 2010 – The United Arab Emirates plans to have a fully fiber network by the end of 2011. The Pyramid Research group is reporting that this new network is expected to provide the nation with a growth of $1.01 billion by 2015.
Hussam Barhoush, a senior analyst at Pyramid Research, said, “Du, the smaller and newer of the UAE’s two operators, initially took the lead with fiber deployment, notes. However, Etisalat has already caught up and surpassed its new rival in terms of fiber rollout: Abu Dhabi, was the first capital in the world to be all fiber, as Etisalat connected the city to the ‘elife’ FTTH network.”
“The next major opportunity for vendors will be LTE, which we expect both Etisalat and Du to deploy within the next three years,” Barhoush added.
Article Continued on BroadbandBreakfast.com…
SARASOTA – A British company plans to soup up a number of U.S. cities — including Sarasota — with ultra-high-speed fiber-optic Internet networks.
The discussions have been going on for several months, according to Rich Swier Jr., founder of the Sarasota think tank known as The Hub and a member of a recently created Sarasota broadband task force.
“They were following the Google fiber effort and we connected with them during that campaign,” Swier said.
By Craig Settles
Image via CrunchBase
Municipal broadband networks may the fastest way for smaller communities — and those in areas without much competition — to bring better broadband to their businesses and residents. These networks aren’t generally popular with incumbent communications providers, which have a history of suing to stop them. However, their tactics have changed.
In 2005, the main goal of large incumbent telcos and cable companies was to try for an outright ban on municipal networks. As the public vigorously fought back, incumbents switched to creative assaults on communities’ ability to find or use money to pay for networks. Eighteen states have restrictive muni network legislation (see map) that makes building a community-owned network impossible or difficult, especially when it comes to funding them.
Image via Wikipedia
According to my friend who blogs for www.freshloan.co.uk – the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) announced Wednesday that an $81 million broadband stimulus grant and a $35 million government backed loan to Springfield-based Vermont Telephone Company (VTel).
The $35,166,081 loan and $81,664,754 grant to VTel Wireless, Inc for their Wireless Open World (WOW) project is one of 49 broadband infrastructure projects announced nationally. The broadband investments will give rural residents in 29 states access to improved service that will expand economic, health care, educational, and many other opportunities to underserved rural communities. Today’s announcement is part of the second round of USDA broadband funding through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Recovery Act).
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Although I agree with Jack Mazzola in theory, he does not understand the reasoning behind the city’s actions and he is over dramatizing the impact of the utility’s proposed network. Mr. Mazzola has it correct that selling communications services is best left to private enterprise. The government should not be in the business of providing telecommunications services. It could provide the last-mile infrastructure to service providers that want to offer voice, video, and data services, because building such a network for a single service provider is cost prohibitive. The city should facilitate competition for private enterprise by providing a utility that a single provider could not afford to build on their own.
I am sure that the city would collect franchise fees from multiple service providers other than Charter, but the economics are not viable for Charter and other providers to build multiple networks. Once again I return to the fact that building a broadband network costs a bit over $1,200 per home passed in small communities. Divide the market in two and the cost doubles which extends the time for a positive rate of return to over 3 years. Too much for public companies.
The city is wise in its intention to amortize the cost of building a fiber network across different uses. The fiber has the capacity to support multiple services and applications. By apportioning the cost based on bandwidth used by a service or application, electricity customers will pay much less than if they had to foot the bill for the whole fiber network; negating the “rate hike” Mr. Mazzola mentions. Higher value and bandwidth services would pay their fair share which would increase the revenue to pay for this endeavor.
Mr. Mazzola’s arguments of over regulation and loss of freedoms/privacy are a little overstated. There is the potential for citizens to apply pressure on the utility to restrict certain types of “information” that Mr. Mazzola refers. Providing an open-access infrastructure is the way around that problem because the city is not involved in the actual content of the services.
I admire Mr. Mazzola’s principles in an age where so many of the principles of which this nation was founded are being discarded, but he needs to be a bit more constructive in his thought. If he would like to see free enterprise flourish and receive innovative services then he should support the city building an open-access fiber infrastructure to be used for the smart grid and competitive communication services. These goals can be achieved with the privacy and financial transparency his group is questioning. Opelika citizens head to the polls in about a week. If the ballot measure is approved, then citizens like Mr. Mazzola should remain involved and shape the network to achieve their goals of free enterprise and free flowing information.
By Donathan Prater | Staff Writer
While many expect Opelika voters to give the city the nod when they head to the polls on Aug. 10 for a referendum that would create a city-owned telecommunications company, that feeling isn’t unanimous.
Some opponents plan to attend the public hearing in the Opelika City Council chambers Tuesday to voice their concerns.
Technically I agree with Mr. William’s assertion that broadband services (Internet access and video services) are not a necessity…currently. Sending and receiving e-mail or posting the satisfaction of your latest latté are not necessities nor are they guaranteed in our Constitution. Then again neither is health care, but it now considered a human right so the current administration saw it fit to make sure that every citizen has it.
Electricity was not considered a necessity at the beginning of the twentieth century, but many communities saw its utility to stimulate their economy. Now electricity IS a necessity because there are several life-sustaining devices that require electricity to operate. Citizens subsidize the rates of the poor and elderly to provide them electricity. Telephone service suffered the same fate. It transformed from being a luxury to a matter of public safety; thus, the Universal Service Fund.
Now we are undergoing the same debate on broadband services. We are at the point on the adoption curve where it is going beyond a toy for nerds and geeks to playing a vital role in the economic vitality of a community. The economic and social benefits of broadband services are well documented which bring it beyond the point of being called a luxury for the rich. Communities should decide on the local level whether they would like to expend funds to build a broadband network if they feel that the incumbent service providers are not doing a satisfactory job. Remember that much like water, roads, sewer, and electricity, the market for broadband services is not typically competitive in most communities. There are typically one or two different service providers in a community.
Many communities are struggling to keep businesses and citizens in their community. They seek ways to drive economic activity and a good broadband network is one way to accomplish that goal. The most successful communities in this endeavor are not actually providing services, but offer open-access to any service provider that wants to sell services in their community. The service provider purchases access from the municipality which supports the operation, maintenance, and growth of the networks. Some communities are even seeing a net positive flow into their general fund; therefore, building a broadband network can be done without wasteful government spending. Before you know it, broadband networks will be necessity for the health, eduction, and safety of its citizens.
WASHINGTON, July 29, 2010 – Speaking in a webcast by the Broadband Policy Series this afternoon, David Williams of Citizens Against Public Waste said that there “wouldn’t be any circumstances in which government should step in” where community broadband is concerned. According to Williams, even when local governments step in, there tends to be a centralizing process by which one locality wants the same services as another locality, thus evolving the process to a Federal level.
