Interesting proposal over at ArsTechnica - a potential way around the issue of net neutrality and the broadband access duopoly. In essence, an experiment with installing the "last mile" fiber drop on the property with the build and then simply selling it to the homeowner - as opposed to having a telco lease it out back to the consumer.

http://arstechnica.com/articles/culture/customer-owned-fiber.ars

Quote :

"The really long tail Last month, construction was completed on a pilot project that ran fiber optic cables to 400 homes in Ottawa. Stringing fiber optic cables isn't a big deal by itself—Verizon has been running fiber to millions of homes in the US—but the Ottawa project comes with a twist: rather than providing Internet access for a monthly fee, the company plans to sell the fiber strands outright to individual homeowners. This isn't how we're used to doing telecommunications infrastructure. Traditionally, a "last mile" copper loop, coax cable, or fiber strand has been owned by an incumbent telephone or cable company, and the customer has paid a monthly fee for telecom services. But, if the Ottawa experiment is a success, that could change. In the future, it could become commonplace for homes to come with "tails." These customer-owned, fiber-optic connections would link them to a network peering point. Without the expense of rolling out last mile infrastructure to every home, many more ISPs could afford to serve a given neighborhood by running wiring to the peering point, leading to more competition and lower prices. Perhaps best of all, the growth of customer-owned fiber could make debates over "open access" and network neutrality moot, as robust telecom competition should prevent the worst of the monopolistic behavior exhibited by telco and cable incumbents."

Thoughts? It certainly seems like a tantalizing prospect, although there are obvious difficulties that the author points out - like the high cost of installing the tail, and potential logistical difficulties. (For instance, this probably would only be practical in new installs and in serious overhauls - not in existing construction).

Another possible way, although one that rattles my libertarian sensibilities just a little bit - what if residential fiber were treated like a municipal utility? i.e., a neutral party in charge of the "last mile" transmission framework (obviously capitalizing on the availability of access to other infrastructure, like water, electric, and sewer lines), which does an end-run around the manifold problems we've had with shared carrier access to infrastructure (c.f., the 1996 telecom act, which required major telco players to share access to equipment and led to little but squabbling.)

That being said, it would at least represent a compromise to the notion of simply socializing the whole of the fiber/etc network, which some municipalities have proposed doing, and potentially mitigate the harms thereof.

Thoughts?

[Edited on August 7, 2008 at 4:42 PM. Reason : .]

8/7/2008 4:36:45 PM

Quote :

"Another possible way, although one that rattles my libertarian sensibilities just a little bit - what if residential fiber were treated like a municipal utility? i.e., a neutral party in charge of the "last mile" transmission framework (obviously capitalizing on the availability of access to other infrastructure, like water, electric, and sewer lines), which does an end-run around the manifold problems we've had with shared carrier access to infrastructure (c.f., the 1996 telecom act, which required major telco players to share access to equipment and led to little but squabbling.)"

i think this is the way to go for smaller municipalities

8/7/2008 10:39:56 PM