Comments on: Minnesota Court Rules Broadband is a “Utility,” Not Just Something ‘Nice to Have’

By: preventCAPS

preventCAPS — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 16:34:41 +0000

A follow up article Want 50Mbps Internet in your town? Threaten to roll out your own

By: Lee Drake

Lee Drake — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:21:55 +0000

Ontario county = forward thinking and technology oriented
Monroe county = backward thinking politically controlled, constantly battling with the City and beholden to large companies such as TWC and Frontier. MC will never put up a competitive alternative to big companies.

By: Dane Hettrick

Dane Hettrick — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:23:18 +0000

I think it is best for the public if broadband internent is considered a utility, even if it bankrupts private companies.

By: Dan Lapoint

Dan Lapoint — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:46:43 +0000

I have lived in Jackson, TN for the past three years. We have municipal fiber broadband here via the energy authority, JEA (www.jaxenergy.com)

They provide speeds up to 10mbps in packages, with higher speeds available upon request. They also provide digital cable / HD television. The service is amazing, never slow, excellent pricing, no port blocking, no caps, no equipment to rent (direct from pole -> ONT -> RJ45 jack in your wall)

JEA’s internet service is not tax-funded at all, it’s 100% paid for by the subscription cost. The interesting thing is that Charter and ATT (formerly Bellsouth) have not done anything to try to compete with it. They still have the same high prices and rubbish service which they have always had, and they still get a fair amount of business. So, the notion that a municipal ISP would drive out private sector ISPs is complete nonsense, JEA has been providing fiber internet here in Jackson for some time now, and this has not happened.

Incidentally, I lived in Rochester before I moved to Jackson. Yes, Time Warner and Frontier are both nothing more than bad jokes as far as Internet service is concerned. Some tough competition from a proper service provider would, I’m sure, be more than welcomed by the residents of Monroe County.

The big telco’s whining regarding municipal broadband is proof positive that they do not care one bit about the consumers paying for their services. All they are concerned with is maximum profit via minimum effort, to hell with the consumer.

As for FiOS in Rochester, it really will never happen. Frontier has some sort of buyout/whatever deal with Verizon DSL to end any competition, so you can bet your salary that this also precludes FiOS from ever arriving there. A shame, really, I had FiOS when I lived in Dallas, and it is absolutely amazing.

By: Uncle Ken

Uncle Ken — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 03:29:39 +0000

“Verizon is not going to arrive in Rochester because they don’t care about this market and opening the battleground to invade it.” I don’t know maybe I would make a bad CEO but if I ran Verizon this is exactly the kind of fight I would love to fight. There is always going to be someone else willing to pick up the rural business. Fairpoint did. As CEO I would love another dense population area that has money. This is such backward thinking. Once Frontier or fairpoint buys a section it becomes their problem not Verizon’s. And frontier can not even come close to the money and power Verizon has. It’s an old worn out phone company. Rochester telephone anyone.

By: Uncle Ken

Uncle Ken — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:56:09 +0000

Rob: There is an informational question I would like to ask about your thoughts. “You say Monroe County should be moving forward with their own plans” Were you talking about fiber or something else? Has any good size city and county ever done this or tried to do it? If you’re not talking about fiber that would mean Monroe county would have to basically take over TWC’s wires. Another approach would be the county tells TWS to get their foot off the brakes and forget the cap ideas. Both would be in the courts for years. If you were talking fiber does the county have the ability to put in this structure with no real experience in the field? No doubt there are plenty of LOCAL people with the skills to do the job but would take some massive training to bring them up to speed. Even the service people working on the poles do such a fine job because of the experience and little tricks they have honed over the years. Some of these installations can get very dicey. And because this is Rochester every politician and their brother is going to want some of the action even if they had nothing to do with the project. I like your forward thinking and we could sure use the jobs.

By: KP

KP — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 02:05:11 +0000

Quote: “Are we going to create a cycle of “we need municipal broadband” to “private sector is doing better” to “private sector is doing us a disservice” to “we need municipal broadband” over and over again?”

And the problem with such a cycle is…..? Why so fearful? Life’s like that, it goes in cycles. We used to be a pragmatic people who usually did whatever worked and ditched what didn’t. If we are simply going to stop change at an arbitrary point in the cycle, who’s to say where that point should be? Apparently, many of us are so hung up on the ideology that “government isn’t the solution, it’s the problem” that we ignore any evidence to the contrary.

Try balancing your fear of what might happen against what’s actually happening before your very eyes.

By: Mike

Mike — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:47:39 +0000

Isn’t Ontario County building a fiber “ring”? I don’t know all the details, but I believe the plan is to build out the infrastructure and lease it to any company willing to provide service on it. If so, that would be a great way to reduce the barrier to entry for prospective broadband providers and bring in some much-needed competition.

They also seem to be planning ahead for possible expansion of the network into neighboring counties, so maybe getting a municipal network set up isn’t quite the daunting endeavor it appears to be.

By: preventCAPS

preventCAPS — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 22:10:57 +0000

I fully agree that municiple broadband will initially cause a great competition for the private companies. I’m just fearful that the broadband utility will deterioriate to someone elses definition of “good enough” or “sufficent” and not necessairly something excellent. I envision scenarios where a municipality creates a broadband initiative, and it intially rocks and causes good copetition with another private provider. The private provider then deploys a new technology and producess an even better broadband service. Then the municipality asks for tax dollars or crazy rate hikes and the citizens go, “why pay for technology we already have from “private company”?” and the municiple broadband falls behind the times and slowly becomes irrelevant and here come the “water restrictions” to hobble along.

I guess my main question now is where is the incentive for municiple broadband to compete with private companies if the private companies are providing better services?

Are we going to create a cycle of “we need municiple broadband” to “private sector is doing better” to “private sector is doing us a disservice” to “we need municiple broadband” over and over again?

By: Michael Chaney

Michael Chaney — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 21:32:57 +0000

1) Water restrictions occur because of shortages of water. Water truly is a finite resource……there’s only so much of it available at any given time and sources must be maintained at sustainable levels. Power is the same way. the electric grid can only supply so much at any given time.

The same is not true for Internet bits. There’s no content supply shortages and as such there will be no usage restrictions or “rolling blackouts” of Internet service.

2) Read up on Wilson N.C. and the 9th paragraph of this story, “…the project does not rely on taxpayer funds…

Municipal services are rarely subsidized by tax payers. Instead they rely on bonds to raise the startup cash, and subscription revenue for continued operation.