NYtimes article on public internet

[Sxotty]

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/11/17/technology/17utopia.html?8hpib

As to the price

Prices would vary considerably depending on the service, though basic high-speed Internet access is expected to cost about $28 a month.

The private sectors argument

The speeds to be provided "are way more than what most consumers need in their home," Mr. Fenn said, adding, "Why provide a Rolls-Royce when a Chevrolet will do?"

Well I don't know about you but I would like to have speeds "way faster" than they think I need for less than I am charged now how about you?



To bad I live in Texas

 

[MfA]

Utah is turning communist?

 

[jandar]

a lot of places are doing this in one form or the other.

Jacksonville, Florida (as well as surrounding communities) are laying Fiber Optics to everyone's home. Although it isnt turned on yet, the capacity is getting there.

Every new housing development in the area has Fiber buried under the sidewalks. (I have a box right in my front yard).

10-40Mbps with burst to 100Mbps when activated.

still about 2-3 years away though....

 

[DemoCoder]

Are you sure it's not just a smurf tube? Most new homes (I just bought one, but spent a year looking at many) have smurf tubes in the side walk and house. This allows someone to snake fibre optics through the tube in the future, but the tube contains no actual cable today.

 

[Sxotty]

Well whatever I thought it was pretty cool, we definitely need some competition to drive down costs and bring up the level of service, things like this can do no harm (unless you live in the city that backs it and it fails heh), but the rest of the populace will see $25.00 for DSL and go "Hey why don't we get good deals too" and maybe they will...

I love it when people say that the consumer doesn't need or want more for less...

 

[akira888]

The economics of this are, to say the least, suspect. 2500 dollars to install the lines, per home. A bond rating of (I'll guess) "BB" that gives them a 12% yield. That means that the interest payments on installation, per home, will be 300 dollars per year. Lets be optimistic and say 2/3rds of homes sign up. Thats 450 dollars per paying customer for interest alone. Then lets throw in the principal payments on the installation loan, it goes up to at least 550 dollars per year (on a rediculously long term loan). The actual cost of fibre is a relatively small chunk of any ISP's budget, but let's be kind and only double the annual cost per paying customer to 1100 dollars to cover all the myriad other costs. That around 90 dollars a month. Try getting 67 percent of the populace to sign up on those terms, when only 25 percent of America wants to pay ~35-45 dollars a month for broadband which is already faster than most everyone needs. Few people are as technically oriented as we B3D readers are.

The lesson here is that free, private markets generally tend towards optimal provision of goods and services given the resources available. Its foolhardy, after 80 years of utter socialist failure, to assume otherwise.

 

[pax]

I see no prob here as long as rate payers cover the public service. This is how we do this up north. Whether power or public auto ins... always been rate payers who covered the costs and its always been cheaper than private....

 

[jandar]

Are you sure it's not just a smurf tube? Most new homes (I just bought one, but spent a year looking at many) have smurf tubes in the side walk and house. This allows someone to snake fibre optics through the tube in the future, but the tube contains no actual cable today.

no, actual fiber.

The cable line is on fiber from the local node.
This area wants to become known as Silicon Beach. some older parts of Jax are smurf tubes, the rest are fiber being installed.

Where I live, its over 25,000 feet to the nearest CO, yet it is a planned community area of over 11000 homes. They would be stupid to have homes from 100K thru and over 2 million dollar homes with outdated phone lines. They are seriously doing some major work.

This all started when ATT ran the cable company to the ground around here and lawsuits started.