The users, not the tax payers, are paying for this. Had the other providers upped their speeds this would not have been necessary.
Yeah. Just like health care costs. If only the doctors had charged less, we wouldn't be facing Health Care Welfare today, right? The Hillary would have changed her mind about a fascist take over, left health care alone, and supported our free market system. (not!).
If only the parents would have been more supportive of their children's education, the liberals wouldn't have taken over the public school system. The radicals would have never entered the schools, and the children would be learning nothing but academics today. (not)
If only the banks would have given cheaper housing loans. If only the car companies had lowered their prices for the poor, if only.....if only...
Good thing the government got involved in all these things. Imagine the horror if the free market system were allowed to control all this. Oh, the horror, the horror. Thank goodness they're getting their hands on the computers, right? They'll save us from ourselves.
“The users, not the tax payers, are paying for this. Had the other providers upped their speeds this would not have been necessary.”
You 100% sure of this? Really?
Because this is the 2nd time I’ve seen it posted I’m throwing the BS card. Wherever this is starting it’s hogwash.
I work for a large networking company, that being said I know very well what it costs to run networks. And I can tell you all right now, that the equipment required to drop Fiber into a home plus running the Fiber (Installation, labor, and terminations) is not cheap. Depending on whether it’s aerial or underground ranges from $20,000 per installed mile to as high as $500,000 mile if in a major metro area because of permits right of way management etc.
But Gosh... guess what it’s government and they don’t have to worry about right of way... seems fair already!
Add to this the cost of gateway devices to be attached to each home, the switch/router to be installed, plus the termination point this will be going to and we are easily in the range of between 2.5-3k per port/drop. What is very nice about this from a vendor perspective is I know I’ll be selling more gear every 5-7 years as it gets End-of-support so now we have a churn of equipment.
Now we get a “Public” company who is issuing bonds (What are bonds? and how are they paid back to investors?) to build a project. This project will hopefully cover 47,000 people... of course the take rate so far has been around 15% oh and it looks as if they are providing 24/7 manning of a NOC, so that pretty much means what minimum of 10 full time bodies for a 3 shift service? Add to this that not everyone uses the internet, I know shocking but very true. It’s not a trivial amount of people either, and Granny sitting at home knitting just doesn’t care. This can be between 30-40% of the population. And now evaluate what has been said...
“Will my taxes go up because this project is so expensive?
No. The funds for constructing the fiber network come from bonds issued by the City of Wilson. Tax revenues are not being used to fund this project in any way.”
How do they compute that it will generate enough income to payback the bonds hmm?? I’d love to see the business plan. Because I know another municipality who tried this same crap. (Zipp Fiber optic) and they are so far in the Red it’s spilling over everywhere, and why? Because they magically planned on a 100% take rate for service!
Gosh, I bet Time Warner would love that type of take rate!
Even if you take the equipment that will be necessary to build the NOC, provide for minimum of 10 full-time Customer Service people, and not to mention the other government goons who will be apart of this and what to you think the annual cost of labor will be? I’m going to throw a dart... Government workers I’m thinking around $18.00 - $26.00/hour. I think it’s pretty safe to say around $50k, maybe not quite but it will be more because it’s a government job. So benefits will be swell, and maybe even a nice city pension! So 10 bodies * 50k, plus a manager, plus a coordinator, plus a supervisor + + +... Easily Easily $1,000,000/year. That’s just to start with the support and management. Then you have a team to INSTALL the gear...
It’s all fraud. The government doing a project like this is simply wrong. If the business case was there don’t you think a competitor would have come in? I mean think about it. It’s because the government can lie about the business case and no one will hold them accountable because they’ll have moved on by the time the rooster comes home to crow. Then it becomes all of the constituents problem.
Sorry, I’m off the soapbox now, I’m a firm believer of “Government stay the hell out of my way” so know where I am coming from.