[IP] more on Public Broadband Hits Political Speedbumps
Begin forwarded message:
From: "Robert J. Berger" <rberger@xxxxxxx>
Date: July 17, 2005 3:38:10 PM EDT
To: Randall <rvh40@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Cc: Dave Farber <dave@xxxxxxxxxx>, Dewayne Hendricks
<dewayne@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: Re: [IP] Public Broadband Hits Political Speedbumps
I am personally not against Municipalities that want to attempt to be
a service provider (i.e. manage and support Layer 2+ services on top
of a Physical Plant (layer 1).
But I believe that it is much more difficult and more prone to
failure than just running a Layer 1 service (I.e. Dark Fiber). Dark
Fiber is primarily a physical deployment and maintenance issue. And
it does map to the same kinds of capabilities and economic
mechanisms as roads/water/sewers/power. You just have to make sure
that the roads/sewers/power is built and flows. The technology and
capital costs of the physical layer generally move on the decade scale.
The technology and capital costs, of layer 2+ services move on a 2 -
4 year cycle and the support and operations costs are something that
most Municipalities are totally unprepared to handle.
Also if the Municipality is the application layer service provider,
it can lead to the same problems of monopolization as having an RBOC,
or CableCo be the monopoly. Less choice and stifling of technical
innovation. If the Municipality runs it as an open access layer 1
offering, then innovation and markets can bloom.
Almost all the examples of failed Municipal broadband is where the
municipality tried to be an end to end service provider.
Unfortunately, we don't have too many examples of municipalities that
have tried to do layer 1 only (Stockholm, Sweden is one shining light
of a positive example though)
On Jul 16, 2005, at 3:14 PM, Randall wrote:
On Sat, 2005-07-16 at 14:22 -0700, Robert J. Berger wrote:
The Municipalities should not be service providers. Lighting the
fiber
and delivering content is the right place for competitive,
primarily commercial providers. These competitive providers would
gain access to the dark fiber or the routers operated by other
competitive service providers who light fiber, collocated at
Municipal
Exchange Points where everyone can collocate equipment on a cost
plus,
open access basis.
Why should municipalities not be service providers? Here in Kentucky
the city of Glasgow owns the CATV provider; they have the lowest cable
TV rates in the state. Our third-largest city, Owensboro, owns
Owensboro Municipal Utilities, which provides electricity, gas, water
and sewer service at a lower rate than any private providers does to
other cities in the state.
The city of Louisville owns the Louisville Water Company and the
Metropolitan Sewer District. The former company is run on a
profit-making basis, with the profits being paid as dividends to its
sole shareholder, the city. Water is cheaper in Owensboro than in
Louisville.
---
Robert J. Berger - Internet Bandwidth Development, LLC.
Voice: 408-882-4755 eFax: +1-408-490-2868
PGP Key: http://www.ibd.com/html/rbergerPublic.gpgkey
http://www.ibd.com
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