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Communications Government The Internet Politics

Citywide Fiber Project Challenges and Goals 200

Posted by Zonk from the we-control-the-horizontal dept.
aLAW writes "Who wants to receive fiber at their home? Vermont's queen city, Burlington, is planning on running fiber to each household in the city. 'It hardly seems possible, but by the end of 2007, all Burlington residents will be able to pay just one bill each month for their home phone service, broadband Internet connection and cable television channels. And they won't be making the check out to Verizon, or Adelphia.'"
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Citywide Fiber Project Challenges and Goals More

Citywide Fiber Project Challenges and Goals

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  • Huzzaaaa (Score:1, Insightful)

    by UberGeekEdward ( 857976 )
    I wish this could happen in Utah. I see only one drawback, it puts the government in control of what you can see and do online
    • >it puts the government in control of what you can see and do online

      Not possible. The litigious American public will sue if this happens. Who will determine what is appropriate and what isn't?

      On a side note, it is hurting to see that in a land that encourages free private enterprise (read USA), the proponents of this idea do not even seem to see that what they are proposing goes against this fundamental ideal! Are pundits involved here?

      • Apparently you aren't familiar with Utah.

      • Re:Huzzaaaa (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Superfreaker ( 581067 )
        Utah is a different planet. They have been trying to pass internet monitoring and restriction bills for some time now...

      • Re:Huzzaaaa (Score:3, Interesting)

        by mankey wanker ( 673345 )
        Jeez...

        There are Bay Area cities in California that already provide many of these kinds of utilities, sometimes even for free. There's no sense in having capitalist-style competition for certain things. Basic home utilities strike me as one of those things that might be better provided by single city-based services.

        I don't know about you, but I am not that keen to have my water controlled by private enterprise. I feel little differently about phone lines, etc.

        BTW, if the city runs the utilities it might

    • Re:Huzzaaaa (Score:2, Informative)

      by Detritus ( 11846 )
      The government is constrained by the Constitution and Bill of Rights, a corporation is not. You may be better off having the system operated by the government.

    • Re:Huzzaaaa (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Colin Smith ( 2679 )
      "I see only one drawback, it puts the government in control of what you can see and do online"

      As opposed to a private company. Either way, someone is in control of your access to the Internet. Sounds like a good reason to get interested in politics then...

      Having said that, they're planning to lease out the line to others to provide services so it must be fairly open, you could probably VPN to pretty much anywhere and everything you send over the local fiber would be encrypted.

    • I see only one drawback, it puts the government in control of what you can see and do online

      There is a way other than commercial or governmental, cooperative. It may be possible to get a group of people together to form a coop to provide access.

      Falcon

    • Re:Huzzaaaa (Score:2, Informative)

      by bornbitter ( 813458 )
      ...um... where are you in utah? Orem, Provo, and other cities in Utah County are part of the "utopia" project... there is already fiber laid down the center of several streets... I watched them put it in myself. Look up "Utopia" in utah county law and civil government sites... you might not be surprised that it is here, and Comcast and Qwest are doing their best to stop it. ...oh, by the way, the American Fork city network is fiber, up, and operational. 50mbs up, 50mbs down, unmetered, unmonitered, and only
    • I wish this could happen in Utah. I see only one drawback, it puts the government in control of what you can see and do online

      I'm not worried about that happening. If they really want that, Comcast, Verizon, and most of the other providers will hand them all of that they want quickly and with no questions asked, anyway.

      I would welcome and encourage any effort to create public bandwidth. Around here, even though I live in a populous area, Verizon refuses to install the equipment to offer DSL or anyth

  • That would be so great. I never released what a pain that working with 2 seperate companies for phone, internet, and cable is until I bought a house.

    I almost bought a townhouse in Minnesota that had fiber being run to every unit. I thought that was pretty neat, and was almost a selling point for me (I went through Pulte, who gave me a new 42" LG plasma).

  • No fair!! (Score:4, Funny)

    by Epistax ( 544591 ) <<moc.liamg> <ta> <xatsipe>> on Friday May 27, 2005 @06:38PM (#12660257) Journal
    Companies will complain that it's against capitalism to have competition.

  • What's the major improvement? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by moz25 ( 262020 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @06:39PM (#12660264) Homepage
    I'm sorry, but what is the improvement in paying just 1 bill? Personally, I prefer having my service providers separate so it's easier to have higher granularity in choice. I'd rather have the infrastructure independent of the actual providers.
  • I've always liked it when there was the option of a private or a publically run service for phones or suchnot, there are drawbacks and advantages to either system.
  • Anyone have a mirror? Mirrordot seems to be as slashdotted as the site itself. And the post is only 3minutes old:P
  • and only 4 posts. Whee.
    At least the summary could have been better.
  • xiando Corp plans to do the same in Norway. We wish to cable the whole country and sell cheap 100mbit connections for 99 NOK (about $12). We just need to find investors who are willing to invest ten million dollars in our company.

    The new Ipv6 ready xiando Corp 100mbit European network is expected to be ready March 2010.
    • 100 mbit? That's pretty slow! I don't want to wait 10 seconds for every bit.
    • How are they doing it? A star of fiber 100mb switches or something like PON or a mix?

      There are a few people who make 100mb switches that can be put out in the curb but the lasers to go a distance at 1 gig for an uplink don't like cold or heat.

      The other thing is do you put the fiber in conduit or just bury it or a combination?

      Looking at how things are going now, I see that the limits of PON with delivering 622/155 shared over 32 users won't be enough and it requires very expensive equipment. For an area

  • 'It hardly seems possible, but by the end of 2007, all Burlington residents will be able to pay just one bill each month for their home phone service, broadband Internet connection and cable television channels. And they won't be making the check out to Verizon, or Adelphia.'

    I would much rather pay a company than the government. At least I have the option to invest in that company if I have the desire. I really don't understand why so many people put so much faith in the Government.

    • Let's see... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by absurdist ( 758409 )
      ...Union Carbide (Bhopal)
      Exxon
      Enron
      Haliburton
      and on and on...

      Oh yes, you can certainly reroute that misplaced trust in the govenrment to corporations. They're SO much more trustworthy.

      • Re:Let's see... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Let's see? Doesn't look like you're seeing much of anything at all.

        List your bad companies. Take your time, be sure to get a complete list.

        For each company you list, I can list a hundred that are trying to help humanity by making the world a better place. Even for the ones you list, there are many good people who worked there.

        So let's DO see. Do you want to choose between x number of companies, some of which may be "evil" in your eyes? Or would you rather have no choice, and take what the government give

        • Re:Let's see... (Score:4, Insightful)

          by digitalunity ( 19107 ) <digitalunity@yah o o . com> on Friday May 27, 2005 @10:54PM (#12661933) Homepage
          For each company you list, I can list a hundred that are trying to help humanity by making the world a better place.

          I don't need to list a hundred, but to support your case: I work for Underwriters Laboratories, Inc. [ul.com] I get to make the world a safer place and have a cool job. How many private companies can you think of that make that big of a difference in the world? Not very many, I assure you.

          Net go down? Call your representative. Can't get newsgroups on your pc? Better call the mayor. Geesh. That's JUST the ticket, sure. Next up, the politicians will be running on IT issues --"Vote for me, I promise OV-3 connectivity in every home!"
          Seriously. If a traffic signal goes down, do you call the mayor? No. I guarantee you, politicians will not be campaigning their promises of 'internet connectivity' for quite a while. They are still too busy lying to us about taxes and gerrymandering.

          Putting the system in charge of net connectivity would truly be the work of an idiot.

          Try substituting 'net connectivity' with 'traffic signaling' or 'road maintenance'.

          Putting the system in charge of traffic signaling would truly be the work of an idiot.

          Putting the system in charge of road maintenance would truly be the work of an idiot.
          Who sounds like an idiot now? You wanna know something? I pay over $50 a month for Comcast cable internet. Why? They want to make a profit, and they are charging me to provide media services I do not use. I don't want a friggin ISP! I don't want the 'value-adding services', I just want a gateway to the internet. Thats it. Do I have a choice? No. DSL is not offered in my neighborhood yet and Comcast is the only way to get high-speed internet(excluding Satellite, which sucks if you play games needing low latency). If my county or city goverment said 'Hey, want 10Mb up/down for $25?', me and all of my neighbors would pounce on it.

      • Re:Let's see... (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Yackety-yackety-yack.

        Get back to me when Union Carbide or Enron kills 625 million people [hawaii.edu] like those "selfless" governments you trust so implicitly.

        I'd wager a large sum of money that you couldn't give a coherent explanation of what Enron did to save your life (and no, Google doesn't count). All you know is that it's a "corporation", and corporations are "baa-d".

        Stupid hippie.

    • Because they've lost all faith in big corps to do the right thing. Or maybe actually roll-out service to their side of the street when the other side has full service... or maybe they're just pissed the "unlimited plan" the big corp offered actually included a 5 gig/month quote with 70kbit capped upload speed. All for $85/month.
    • I really don't understand why so many people put so much faith in the Government

      Because they're taking the initiative & doing it? Qwest can't give me DSL because there are load coils on my line, even though I'm only about 5,000 feet from the CO. And I have to get about 50 neighbors to request DSL with me for them to remove the coils (which isn't easy when there are 50 people within about a square mile around me). Comcast will give me cable, but at $80/month, plus a few hundred to 'install' the cabl
    • In some ways government is more responsive to the needs of the community. Others have mentioned failure of broadband companies to build infrastructure, phone and cable companies going to court to prevent open acccess and similar tactics.

      IF a small town in Arkansas [conwaycorp.com] can do fibre or fibre/coax hybrid, why shouldn't they? Check out their rates too.
    • Question: If corporations are so great at rolling out the fiber to the masses, then how can a government possibly be able to do it first? The corporatist response to Vermont's fiber proposal isn't to hurry up and provide service first, it's to complain about government being the first to provide something that "in theory" a company is more efficient at providing.

      Another question is therefore suggested: "Where's the beef?"

    • Re:Who would you rather pay? (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I don't think it's a matter of "faith". I think it's a matter of people are tired of waiting for industry to get off their butts and deliver this service.

      I see a lot of companies arguing against this type of thing and trying to get laws passed to prevent this type of competition from occuring. The thing I don't see is companies making much effort to do this.

      Sure, both cable and telephone companies are offering each other's services now, but none are willing to spend the money to significantly upgrade thei
    • Let's see. You can pay the company so that they can pay their CEO $20 million or you can get it from your city for half the price. I think every frugal person would agree that the latter is a much better idea. I have municipal utilities and I couldn't be happier. It's much cheaper than what people in surrounding communities pay to PG&E. On a related note, I also switched from a for-profit bank to a credit union. Much lower fees and much more helpful service. I recommend it to everyone. So, I'm s
    • The fundamental reason is because the government is (assuming that it is truly representative and for the people) by definition not-for-profit, because any profit is simply returned to the people somehow. This means that in theory they have zero incentive to fleece you, and therefore they will sell the service for a fair price (ie, within a reasonable margin of what it actually costs to provide it). Many people believe that essential services, especially where there is little to no competition available, ar
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • I would much rather pay a company than the government. At least I have the option to invest in that company if I have the desire. I really don't understand why so many people put so much faith in the Government.

        Because this is slashdot. A place were people put faith in their government due to some twisted logic that they are elite and highly educated. Thus, government is always the best choice above and beyond the public sector.

        I don't know where this comes from, while some here believe in governm

    • Because you can vote out the government. You can't vote out a company unless it's publicly traded AND you can afford to do a hostile takeover.

      • RE: voting out govt. (Score:3, Interesting)

        by King_TJ ( 85913 )
        This might be true if we were talking about specific politicians holding a govt. office - but we're not.

        The problem I see here is we're basically asking govt. to perform another function normally left to private industry, under the assumption that there's no other way for it to get done efficiently and/or properly.

        That pretty much sums up why we have a post office and NASA handling space travel.

        But is "fiber to the door" really this type of issue, or is this more a case of people just getting impatient a
        • But is "fiber to the door" really this type of issue...?

          Yes. It's a natural monopoly.

        • Almost a very good point. The benefit you get out of the USPS is that they do door to door, every single day. While this is in part by law (e.g. they're the only ones who are allowed to), you can imagine the cost of running a parallel network -- twice the expenses if two organizations are doing such. I'm pretty sure at .37 / letter, the profit margin doesn't exist for that to really work....

    • As other posters say, a large part of it is because the companies are sitting on their asses while the government is actually doing something. But also keep in mind that this is local government, not national government. There is a difference--local governments are (in general) much more in tune with their constituents, simply because there are that many fewer people they need to listen to, and thus are usually more deserving of trust.

  • I would prefer WiMax to fiber, even if it means slower speeds.. Dont have to re-wire my house Of course, that would be different if I am hosting a site in my residence.. and I dont plan on doing it, right now.. .

  • Still Planning? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bergeron76 ( 176351 ) * on Friday May 27, 2005 @06:43PM (#12660304) Homepage
    is planning on running fiber to each household in the city

    So they're in the planning stage now, but they expect to have it out to every home by 2007? That's less than a year and a half away.

    I predict this one will be off schedule.

  • All your cable are belong to us

  • there goes creative bill paying... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    the bad thing about one bill for everything is it puts the hurt to those who live from payday to payday where, if necessary, they can be late on one small bill and pay the others. If they are late now, they would have everything turned off at once.

    Also an earlier comment is very valid, since it is the government, the government will know everything and since it is part of the government, this info may be included in the national database created with the new national id card (yea they say new state driver
  • Here in Sacramento, CA we have SureWest and they deployed fiber service straight to the home in several parts of town. We've had the service for about a year now and love it. It's very nice to have everything on one bill. I pay around $120.00 per month for phone, internet, and television combined. My upload and download speeds stay around 10 Mbps. I'm going to miss it terribly when we move.

  • Might seem like a good idea, but... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Weaselmancer ( 533834 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @06:51PM (#12660357)

    ...having that many of your bills served by a single provider makes for a single point of failure, and that's not good. If the company falls on hard times, then all of your utilities they handle will get hiked.

    A good example is Time Warner. They're serving cable and cablemodems to my area, and soon to add phone. And every few months, they jack their prices up a few bucks. Without fail. And that's why I won't fall for their "$39 a month (or whatever the price is) to call anyone unlimited!" deal. Based on past performance, I know it's bogus.

    Remember that competition [wikipedia.org] usually works to keep prices down.

    • There will still be other service providers in Burlington though. If people don't like their single provider, they can switch to another one, or split up their services among multiple providers.
    • So what do you think the citizens of Burlington will be more able to control - the democratically elected officials of a small government entity like the City of Burlington (staff 400 people, FY 2005 budget $200M) or Adelphia Communications (2003 numbers 14,300 people and something like $4G)?

      Or differently still - there are good arguments that these kinds of services are a natural monopoly (which might well explain why almost no one in the US has them, BTW) - in which case you may have the choice of one un

  • Inevitable? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by FlyByPC ( 841016 )
    I think something like this has to happen eventually. I think that eventually, all data-centric services to households will come over a single IP-based connection to the house. VoIP is only the first step towards convergence; next will be the delivery of entertainment services on demand to the house. Wouldn't it be great to be able to watch exactly what we wanted, from the entire library of available programming, rather than compromise on watching just those programs that are popular enough to justify sendi
    • VoIP is only the first step towards convergence; next will be the delivery of entertainment services on demand to the house.

      Emm, here in the UK the digital cable services have been around for five years and they are over IP. The same wire goes into a Y-splitter off to the cable modem for access, but some folk have ethernet ports on the back of the cable TV box that they use for internet. The digi box itself is fully capable of two way communications, but the UI is a bit slow at times, old tech I guess, m

      • Emm, here in the UK the digital cable services have been around for five years and they are over IP.
        do you have a reputable source for this? it sounds like bs to me. Why would they use something as complex as ip multicasting when what they are sending is broadcast tv?

        sure the internet is ip that doesn't mean that everything that runs over the same cables has to be ip.

  • Verizon is currently installing the fiber infrastructre in neighborhoods around Portland, OR. We have not heard a peep from Verizon about just what services they will be offering, but I have assumed that it will be phone and internet at the very least, with the possible addition of cable TV (though it would be tough to jump into the cable market against Comcast). I am curious to see what sort of up/down speeds will be possible with Verizon's new fiber internet service, and for what price.
  • I like having several bills.

    That way I can decide what utility is getting suspended THIS month.

    With one provider, I take the chance of them ALL going off if business is slow for me.

  • Small-town midwest US (Score:3, Insightful)

    by jeremie ( 257 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @06:56PM (#12660395) Homepage
    Cascade IA has been doing this for a while now (small independent local telco), rings of fiber running throughout the sprawling metropolis (~2k population) and even out to within reach of all the rural customers.

    For a while now all new homes even have fiber run to the premesis... difficult to believe we're "ahead of the times" back here in Iowa but it seems to be true :)
  • ...will probably be a nightmare. Imagine having to stand in line (think "technical DMV") to have the password changed on your email account...
    • Yeah, I'll bet that if I called them up I'd have to spend forever on hold, only to talk to a surly rep in another country whose only idea of how to fix my problem is to tell me to reboot. Oh wait, that's my current ISP. Never mind.
    • I'm trying to imagine... but then I clicked this link [az.gov] to my state's official website. I can't remember the last time I set foot in a DMV office. (Here's the DMV [az.gov] link.)

    • Re:Tech support.... (Score:3, Informative)

      by Detritus ( 11846 )
      Actually, the DMV here (Maryland) is much better than it used to be. They actually care about customer service.

      As for Verizon, I recently terminated my cell phone service with them. They made it as difficult as possible. I couldn't do it on-line, even though they let you do almost everything else on-line. The local Verizon store said "We don't do that, call 611". After calling 611, and navigating through a bunch of menus, I was finally connected to some guy, probably moonlighting from his day job as a use

    • I dunno. I just had my driver's license renewed, and my number was called before I could even sit down. Took about 10 minutes tops from walking in the door to walking out. Driver licensing offices are government run.

      Now vehicle registration offices are subcontracted to businesses, often car dealers will run them as an adjunct to their business since they need to be licensed in order to do the vehicle registrations on the cars they sell anyway. Since it became possible to do vehicle registrations online
      • That entirely depends on where you are. Many states run registration, drivers licenses, and testing from the same facility. Many states have also started to clean up the messes their DMVs are run as. I rarely have to wait more than five minutes for anything where I live (central MA), but if I have to go into a city for something, it's pretty terrible.
    • Line? Vermont? You've never been here, have you?

      The DMV is a bit rediculous. They have different letters for different services, because their people are skilled at different things at different "windows". I get the intent, but I wonder about the value. Every time I've gone in, my number rings on the device immediately, and I spend less than 5 minutes there.

      There really aren't that many people up here. The supermarkets are up to 14 items in the express lanes because they didn't get enough business

  • This makes sense. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Husgaard ( 858362 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @07:00PM (#12660418)
    Creating a high-speed fiber network has the same economical effect as creating other infrastructure, like roads and electricity grids.

    Of course there is a risk that this could keep competing private enterprises out.

    TFA says: "The city is offering open access to its network -- anyone who wants to sell cable TV, Internet connectivity, or other information products will be able to use it, for a fee."

    So competitors are allowed access to this net. The only problem could be the size of this fee that competitors have to pay to use the net. The fee could be too high, and thus effectively blocking access for competitors.

    In Denmark where I live market-dominant enterprises (private or public) have to give competitors access to their nets for fees that cannot be higher than what is determined reasonable by a government office created to ensure fair competition in the telecom sector. This seems to work well: The market-dominant enterprises earn well by giving competitors access, but cannot set the fees high enough to keep the competition out.

    • So competitors are allowed access to this net. The only problem could be the size of this fee that competitors have to pay to use the net. The fee could be too high, and thus effectively blocking access for competitors.

      The article claims the City isn't interested in selling retail. So, no direct services to the customer, and the fees should be acceptable or the system won't be used.

      It also claims the network is *leased* by the City and owned by a private company. It'll then be sublet by the City to oth
  • Sprint planned on bring single service phone, internet and pretty much any media you want over ATM to the house with their ION product. They where about 5 years ahead of their time and the project fell apart. It was a cool demo though.

  • This Should be the Future (Score:5, Insightful)

    by under_score ( 65824 ) <mishkin@be[ ]ig.com ['rte' in gap]> on Friday May 27, 2005 @07:05PM (#12660453) Homepage
    Common services that benefit from network effects and which assist people in the basics of life (transportation, health, communication, etc.) should, in my opinion, be provided as utilities that are at least partially accountable to the community. Usually, this means that the govenernment should have some control or ownership.
    • As long as this is limited to the city level, that is fine. Because that means as soon as the government in my city starts taking over where private companies can run things more efficiently, well, that's when I move to a different city.

      Have you seen a government organization ever run anything efficiently?
      • I'm not concerned only with efficiency. If efficiency was the only concern, we would live in a very unfriendly world. There are other concerns that are also important: equality, freedom, democracy. All of which would probably not exist if we were only concerned with efficiency.
  • hah! I fianlly feel justified for not leaving the state despite outrageous housing costs, low wages, an over-qualified (and VERY competive) workforce, and poor infrastructue. Now if I could only afford an apartment in Burlington...
  • The only cities in which municipal broadband can't get started are those where the commercial broadband carriers are lobbying for laws to prohibit it. If Verizon needs legal protection from cities, which have neither special expertise nor economies of scale, to compete with them, are they really competitive? Are they really capitalists, or "state capitalists", a form of socialism where the government protects inefficient corporations?
  • This sort of thing isnt really a new concept. Its in the process of being done in an entire county close to where i live. http://www.masonpud3.org/Telecom/Where/ [masonpud3.org]

  • From a local (Score:3, Interesting)

    by snizfast ( 763637 ) on Friday May 27, 2005 @07:24PM (#12660594)
    Here is a google cache to a different article about the project http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:1NEgZD8tfMEJ: www.sevendaysvt.com/features/ [64.233.161.104]

    The site is down (small newspaper hosted by a small local ISP) but I do have knowledge of this project. I am local resident and have been watching this since its inception. This project has had its share of problem like any government project some budget overruns, Verizon trying to stop it in its tracks, public saying this should not happen, etc. The most interesting objection I heard was that this (including telephone service) should be done from wireless. I would love to hear the screams when a thunderstorm disrupts 911 service. The initial budget was in the low 6 figures Burlington is a relatively small under 40k people.

    So far the project is already getting some use. The city and schools are now connected together by a Gig connection (many were not doing much better than dialup). The company where I am the IT person is also their first (and only?) customer. We are getting a 1.5 Mbit through a local ISP. So far no one is making money but the ISP, http://www.sover.net/ [sover.net] is now able to sell to other in town businesses for cheap. I pay Burlington Telecom $200/month for as much bandwidth as the ISP will give me.

    This in a city where Adelphia (soon to be Comcast) has a monopoly for many parts of the city this is a very good idea. Some may say that city government should stay out of this area but I disagree. The deregulation of utilities let them do whatever they want but also assumed that the market would help with prices and quality. How many choices do you have for cable TV?

  • Anyone from Richmond, VA? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by NoMoreNicksLeft ( 516230 ) <john.oylerNO@SPAMcomcast.net> on Friday May 27, 2005 @07:38PM (#12660732) Journal
    Or thinking of moving there?

    Check out my dumbest idea ever [24.125.77.17] (Cable modem)

    Or here [66.173.232.178].

  • I know these guys (Score:2, Informative)

    by djrok212 ( 801670 )
    I know alot of the guys who run this project. Used to work with all of them at PrimeLink in Plattsburgh, NY http://www.primelink1.net/>

    Two of the guys were direct reports of mine as a matter of fact.

    Anyway, servicing consumers in Burlington, is phase 2 of the plan. Phase 1 which has already been completed was to provide service to all the government agencies, which they have completed.

    Good group of guys, spread across, internet networking and telecom.

    If I had to guess they will meet their 2007

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