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Hundreds of Cities Are Wired With Fiber—But Telecom Lobbying Keeps It Unused
motherboard.vice.com ^ | 6-4-2014 | Jason Koebler

Posted on 06/04/2014 4:05:55 PM PDT by Renfield

In light of the ongoing net neutrality battle, many people have begun looking to Google and its promise of high-speed fiber as a potential saving grace from companies that want to create an "internet fast lane." Well, the fact is, even without Google, many communities and cities throughout the country are already wired with fiber—they just don't let their residents use it.

The reasons vary by city, but in many cases, the reason you can't get gigabit internet speeds—without the threat of that service being provided by a company that wants to discriminate against certain types of traffic—is because of the giant telecom businesses that want to kill net neutrality in the first place. 

Throughout the country, companies like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, and Verizon have signed agreements with cities that prohibit local governments from becoming internet service providers and prohibit municipalities from selling or leasing their fiber to local startups who would compete with these huge corporations

Because ISPs often double as cable and telephone companies, during contract negotiations with governments, they'll often offer incentives to the government—such as better or faster service, earlier access to (their company's) cable internet for residents, and the like—in exchange for a non-compete clause.

To be clear, these are often strictly local agreements between cities and cable giants. 

In Washington DC, for instance, the country's first 100 Gbps fiber network has been available to nonprofit organizations since 2006—but not to any of the city's residents. During a re-negotiation with Comcast in 1999 in which the company threatened to cut off cable service to the city, Comcast agreed to provide some of its fiber access to the city for the government's "exclusive use." 

WATCH: Motherboard's documentary about the hackers trying to build a distributed network

"The 1999 agreement was conditioned in important ways," former Obama administration assistant and Harvard University researcher Susan Crawford wrote in a recent paper examining the city's fiber network. "First, the city agreed not to lease or sell the fiber. Second, the contract required that the city not 'engage in any activities or outcomes that would result in business competition between the District and Comcast or that may result in loss of business opportunity for Comcast.'"

Comcast never even made its fiber available to the city, but that agreement, and a future one with Verizon, has, in part, kept the city's DC-NET fiber network out of residents' homes.

“The intent was never to take the business away from Verizon or Comcast,” Anil Sharma, director of operations for DC-NET, told Washington City Paper last year. “Our target audience always was community anchor institutions.”

What happened in DC is not uncommon. According to MuniNetworks, a group that tracks community access to fiber nationwide, at least 20 states have laws or other regulatory barriers that make it illegal or difficult for communities to offer fiber access to their residents. Even in states where there are no official rules, non-compete agreements between government and big business are common. 

These are the cities and towns where residents can access community fiber. Image: MuniNetworks

What happens then are so-called "middle-mile" projects, where government buildings, schools, and nonprofit groups can be wired up, but expanded access to consumers is met with stiff lobbying opposition and threats from larger ISPs.

"A full fiber-to-the-premises model, on the other hand, might attract the attention of the entire national communications industry and related industries," New America Foundation researchers wrote in a May report called "The Art of the Possible: An Overview of Public Broadband Options." "That is because the competition enabled by a high-capacity fiber-to-the-premises infrastructure would be perceived as a direct challenge to the interests of incumbent players in the current market structure."

There are, however, glimmers of hope. 

Cities are beginning to see the importance of providing their residents with cheap, fast, and open broadband networks, and at least 89 cities and towns nationwide now offer fiber to their residents as a publicly owned utility. Patrick Lucey, one of the authors of the New America report, told me that the number of communities that actually offer fiber "doesn't capture the amount of conversations and attention that broadband infrastructure is getting."

Officials in Chattanooga, Tennessee, which offers gigabit fiber to more than 39,000 residents, said that they initially invested in fiber to "control their own destiny." Wilson, North Carolina, a city of 50,000 people, offers the fastest internet speeds in the entire state and has noticed a population growth and a marked increase in the number of businesses relocating to and forming in the city.

"A lot of these small communities have decided to make the decision to try to try to keep young people from moving away and have decided to invest in this," Lucey said. "It's not just about having broadband internet so you can watch Netflix, it's about making sure schools and first responders have the bandwidth capabilities they need. To have libraries and hospitals wired up and to give residents the chance to take advantage of it."

Fiber availability (from any company) for US residents. Image: US Broadband Map

Meanwhile, cities that are already wired up but don't have restrictive agreements with a major ISP are looking for ways to lease or sell it off to smaller, local ISPs—but, unfortunately, the business model appears elusive in many places. Despite the fact that this fiber often exists in the ground, it's expensive and cumbersome for a city—without the help of an ISP—to go the "last mile" to residents' homes unless it has already planned to do so (though dozens have decided to do it on their own anyway, and have had success).

San Francisco's average internet speeds don't even rank in the top 100 municipalities in the country, but, like many other places, most of the city is wired with municipal fiber that's used by government officials, police stations, and city colleges. In 2008, the city made some of that network available to low-rise public housing projects, but still doesn't offer fiber to its other residents. 

"We've met with them several times over the past three years, but they can't figure out how to work with a local company," Alex Menendez, who helps run MonkeyBrains, a small ISP based in the city, told me. "They don't run a business and can't figure out how to sell it, how to price it. We would love to do fiber to the home, but it doesn't make sense for us to use the city's at the current pricing."

Menendez told me that, after paying what the city wants to charge, he'd have to sell fiber access to customers at $200 a month just to break even. 

Instead, the company is trying a pilot program with the city to offer fiber to businesses in certain office buildings. The plan is to build an "island of fiber" in seven buildings in the city—but he doesn't see the company, or the city for that matter, offering up fiber to its residents. 

It's not for a lack of interest. I asked him if more people have signed up since the FCC offered up its plan to create an internet "fast lane."

"It's definitely picked up. It's been a steady flow—we have more business than we're staffed for, and we have more business than we can do," he said. "These folks care about net neutrality, and our customers like being able to call a number and talk to someone who really controls a good size of the business."

Unfortunately, those people—and millions of others around the country—will have to settle for Internet speeds that are relatively run-of-the-mill, while tons of unused fiber sits beneath them.


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government
KEYWORDS: internet; monopolies; telecom

1 posted on 06/04/2014 4:05:55 PM PDT by Renfield
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To: Renfield

Several years ago, ATT spent lord only knows how much money
to dig up all of the yards in my neighborhood and run fiber optic cable.
They connected the houses to the fiber optic line with two copper wires.
I never could understand the point of it all.


2 posted on 06/04/2014 4:09:29 PM PDT by Repeal The 17th (We have met the enemy and he is us.)
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To: Renfield
Crony capitalism.

/johnny

3 posted on 06/04/2014 4:09:50 PM PDT by JRandomFreeper (Gone Galt)
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To: Renfield
companies like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, and Verizon have signed agreements with cities that prohibit local governments from becoming internet service providers and prohibit municipalities from selling or leasing their fiber to local startups who would compete with these huge corporations

Smells like an illegal cartel. Since it's interstate, this is something to which the feds could legitimately put a stop I think.

4 posted on 06/04/2014 4:11:27 PM PDT by PapaNew
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To: PapaNew

Hah, Anti-Trust Laws, what are those?


5 posted on 06/04/2014 4:14:49 PM PDT by dfwgator
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To: Renfield

The US internet system is one of the worst in the world. Poor speeds, outrageous prices. It’s about to get worse.


6 posted on 06/04/2014 4:18:29 PM PDT by Dallas59 ("Remember me as you pass by, As you are now, so once was I, As I am now, so you will be")
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To: Renfield

Tax and rate payers pay for it but can’t use it. Not right.


7 posted on 06/04/2014 4:23:19 PM PDT by BipolarBob
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To: dfwgator
Dang, man. Whaddyasay we wipe the slate clean and start all over beginning with the Constitution. Wouldn't that be nice.

Someday. If nothing else, soon Jesus Himself is going to come and take matters into His own hands. Now THAT WILL be nice.

8 posted on 06/04/2014 4:25:20 PM PDT by PapaNew
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To: Renfield
Interestingly, we may get gigabit Internet speeds after all. Reason: Ultra HD television at 3840 x 2160 resolution, which will require a lot more bandwidth per channel even with the latest video compression schemes such as MPEG-LA's H.265 (HEVC) and Google-sponsored VP9.

The cable companies know this very well, and may have to light up a lot "dark fiber" to transmit Ultra HD broadcasts to the home.

9 posted on 06/04/2014 4:33:47 PM PDT by RayChuang88 (FairTax: America's economic cure)
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To: Renfield

THIS is why we do NOT want mega-mergers. Mega-mergers are NOT capitalism. It is trading Big Gov’t for Big Corp. Both are equally bad but at least with Gov’t you can vote them out (though we never seem to).


10 posted on 06/04/2014 4:38:54 PM PDT by RIghtwardHo
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To: RayChuang88

Governments have no business being in business. Leasing the fiber loop to startups is more than fair. ATT ran fiber to the neighborhood and can get a good tv signal as long as the copper to the prem is limited in length. Verizon ran it to the house for $5k a customer. Question is: Will the fish bite? We;ll see.


11 posted on 06/04/2014 4:42:32 PM PDT by DIRTYSECRET (urope. Why do they put up with this.)
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To: RayChuang88
The cable companies know this very well, and may have to light up a lot "dark fiber" to transmit Ultra HD broadcasts to the home.

I have been making similar arguments here for some time. But it needs to be noted that high speed Internet is more than just fiber optic cable.

The switching/routing hardware will surely need an expensive upgrade to provide increased bandwidth to homes. And, in many cases, I suspect that the fiber lays in the street and is not connected to the end user. More money and the question of who pays. And, as has been noted, this is all wrapped up in a package called Network Neutrality. It's all about who pays for the upgrades needed to bring us true high speed Internet.

12 posted on 06/04/2014 5:02:13 PM PDT by InterceptPoint
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To: BipolarBob; JRandomFreeper

I know this issue very well because a friend owns the largest privately owned metro area fiber optic system in the country (and probably the world).

Articles like this are written to stir up lefties with conspiracy theories. Please note the dreck in the article about so-called “net neutrality” and getting governments into the business of telecom.

The problem with gig fiber to the home is the cost of the connection and getting people to pay for faster speeds. My friend and I very much wanted to do fiber to the home limited partnerships to finance the cost of taking fiber to homes neighborhood by neighborhood. Unfortunately, we found that very few people care about the extra speed. Their existing DSL or cable modems is as much as they think they need, and getting them to pay a premium for gig fiber proved to be a deal killer.

Just to sketch a little of what is involved, running fiber above ground down streets is relatively cheap - about $10k-15k a mile for a basic geometry. If you want a system that is fail safe (”self-healing”), the costs might double. If the system has to go underground, multiply by about 3) The real expense is incurred when you connect to the home. Apart from the “drop, there is the cost for a gig switch, new cabling, set boxes, etc. If you can achieve a significant percentage of subscribers per mile, the business model works.

The difficulty is that people have to understand the value of having fiber, and almost no one in a typical, economically suitable neighborhood does. Moreover, given the present economics of fiber, far from all neighborhoods have the discretionary income to easily afford it. Chattanooga’s system was put in by the power company when it was replacing its power lines. Consequently, the marginal cost to that utility of running fiber was very little more than the cost of the fiber-optic cable itself. Penetration to homes and businesses, however, isn’t all that impressive. One reason is that a couple of years ago the cost for the fully loaded service was about $300/mo. Now they are offering a gig for $70/mo., but phone and cable TV are costs on top of that. In the case of Google, Google has almost limitless capital, and KC project was as much for getting free PR as it was about the system. I doubt that anyone is making money at the moment on gig/fiber to the home. I am a big proponent of this, but you can’t fight the market, and the market for the nonce says gig fiber is a solution to a problem it doesn’t recognize exists.

IMHO, the article is mostly leftist nonsense.


13 posted on 06/04/2014 5:20:45 PM PDT by achilles2000 ("I'll agree to save the whales as long as we can deport the liberals")
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To: Repeal The 17th

Copper performs well for short runs and is easier to connect than fibre. Reducing the length of the copper wire can improve performance dramatically; a 30-foot run can support gigabit speeds.


14 posted on 06/04/2014 5:40:03 PM PDT by Squawk 8888 (I'd give up chocolate but I'm no quitter)
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To: Renfield

In my city of Longmont, Co. we voted to activate our fiber. Work is proceeding apace.


15 posted on 06/04/2014 5:47:24 PM PDT by dljordan (WhoVoltaire: "To find out who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.")
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To: Squawk 8888

Bookmark


16 posted on 06/04/2014 5:47:37 PM PDT by publius911 ( Politicians come and go... but the (union) bureaucracy lives and grows forever.)
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To: Squawk 8888

“... copper performs well for short runs ...”
-
We switched over to the cable company and get 10X the speed via coax.


17 posted on 06/04/2014 5:58:16 PM PDT by Repeal The 17th (We have met the enemy and he is us.)
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To: Renfield

Stupid article and a complete lie.


18 posted on 06/04/2014 6:26:13 PM PDT by Vendome (Don't take life so seriously-you won't live through it anyway-Enjoy Yourself ala Louis Prima)
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To: Renfield

We’ve got fiber to the home in my small west TN city provided by the ratepayers of the utility company. Paid locally, up to 100 mbps right now and cheap by comparison to other places


19 posted on 06/04/2014 6:45:20 PM PDT by Figment
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To: PapaNew

“companies like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, CenturyLink, and Verizon have signed agreements with cities that prohibit local governments from becoming internet service providers and prohibit municipalities from selling or leasing their fiber to local startups who would compete with these huge corporations

Smells like an illegal cartel. Since it’s interstate, this is something to which the feds could legitimately put a stop I think.”

Too late in some places. My local publicly owned utility company did fiber to the home 10 years ago. The only competitor is Charter cable and they are only partial fiber and way more expensive and slower


20 posted on 06/04/2014 6:50:20 PM PDT by Figment
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