I believe in municipal broadband, and problems like those in Burlington only cast such projects in a bad light, leaving even supporters to question their viability when the track record in some communities has not been good.

Of course, faith is the one thing private investors have when they risk their money. It’s an emotional, not always analytical belief in something that drives investors to risk a lot, hoping for a payoff. Obviously, public taxpayer money cannot be used to roll such dice (unless we’re bailing out certain investment banks who thought they were casinos), so the bar can and should be somewhat higher for these public projects.

Now that the entire affair has become political, the different parties are jockeying for position and the one in charge is finger-pointing and ducking. Vermont has three significant parties to contend with — the Republicans, the Democrats, and the Progressives. The latter party enjoys support in Burlington, something I’m sure the other two would like to change.

In the middle, inevitably, will be BT and its 4,000+ subscribers, who have to wonder what will ultimately happen to their service. The Republicans would be happy to sell the whole thing to Comcast and use it an example of overactive government. After a thorough independent review to ensure there is no more funny business, a better idea might be to establish some sort of authority that is beholden to the BT system and its subscribers and not directly to city administration and council’s political games.

Remember, the more information you do make public, the more Comcast and FairPoint can use against the system, so people should be looking for accountability more than every detailed number and business strategy.

I also think a partnership that provides either an equal split between the public and private participants, or at least clearly defines absolute requirements for BT to serve the public interest, if the administration is to hold a minority stake, are essential to consider.

BT could start by hiring HBC, or someone with a proven success story in muni-broadband as a consultant BT should have many more customers than it does today, and if they can manage it, today’s headlines can be tomorrow’s fish wrap.

That said, I think your comments on BT failing to really capitalize on its strong architecture are correct. They have done a poor job competing with Comcast. I think the solution is to spread the costs across a wider geography – allowing it to generate the revenues needed to pay its debts. But clearly, it also needs reform so the Mayor cannot hide the numbers from Council and lie about BT’s health.

Heck, if it’s required to stay solvent, switch all bandwidth to a gigabit of Hurricane Electric ($1500 + transport per month) unless they have long-term contracts with InterNAP and VTC, which would present a bit of a problem. Sure, latency will suffer but with a gigabit BT could raise internet speeds significantly and incur lower back-end costs, both of which are good things.

As for pricing of broadband, it should stay the same. However the 5/5 should be 15/15 to compete with Comcast’s 12/2 service and the 8/8 should be 25/25 to compete with Comcast’s 22/5 DOCSIS 3 tier, even if it’s not yet deloyed in Burlington. Additionally, a 50M symmetric tier should be offered for $100 or so, so power users have no reason to choose Comcast.

The bottom line is that the hard part of BT’s work (laying the fiber) is done. Now they just have to market it correctly. They don’t need to change prices. They just need to lower back-end costs and provide more front-end services. Here’s hoping that BT is successful despite these early problems, whether it ends up in public or private hands (as a right-wing/Libertarian I’d tend to prefer the latter but whatever works).

P.S. If BT had those prices and services in my area I’d sign up for the 8 Mbps symmetric tier right now. $70 is about what I’m willing to pay for internet and I’d love 8 Mbps up…

Why are we letting the people who failed New England now represent themselves as the people who will review and approve the proposed solutions?

Our earlier coverage on BT noted the politics between the mayor’s office and some of the political parties in the state all jockeying for a position of attack, or engaging in finger-pointing over who dropped what ball.

As to your point, I had to significantly simplify many of the recommendations regarding value-added services like co-locations and other business services that were highly technical. The broader point of the recommendation was that BT could be doing a far better job selling their excess capacity, if marketed correctly. I recognize BT has some interconnections and other arrangements, but one of the consultants indicated they were not aggressively leveraging their biggest asset – amazing capacity, as well as they could be.

I think the most useful recommendations come from the HBC Report (linked above from the text “HBC found” (in bold).

Hiawatha Broadband Communications — a company actually in the business of building and running fiber-based broadband networks, made recommendations that made up the bulk the “problems and solutions” part of my report.

For the record, I think municipal broadband projects can deliver success stories to communities left in a broadband backwater by their “just enough for you” incumbent providers.

But it’s critical for these networks to be planned realistically and they need to hire people who have direct experience planning, building, and running them. The problems at BT, which everyone agrees are real even if they disagree with the solutions, only feed the narrative that “government can’t run anything” and discourage other communities from considering municipal networks as a solution to intransigent providers.

Also, I find it humorous that an “independent” panel with a strong private telecommunication presence find that the service is financially nonviable, and then immediately suggest it be sold to a private telecommunication company. I wonder if there are other motives in play.