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Reading your response as well as others' really illustrates to me how depressingly difficult this task is. I honestly have to give Google a lot of credit for Fi

by Inconel 10y ago

Reading your response as well as others' really illustrates to me how depressingly difficult this task is. I honestly have to give Google a lot of credit for Fiber, even if it ends up being a failure, in fact I now have a bit more respect even for the big telcos, its pretty amazing that such a convoluted system functions at all. I tend to be somewhat skeptical of large government programs, although not fanatically so, and even to me this situation seems like it could be much better handled if all, or much of the infrastructure, at least in terms of things like utility poles, would be municipal owned and then leased out to service providers. I wouldn't necessarily want the government running the actual service but if they owned the physical infrastructure and leased it out I feel like we might actually have much more private competition. Does anyone know how utility pole ownership by telcos or power companies came about in the US? It seems like some are municipal owned while others are entirely privately owned. Also, when people talk about municipal fiber in the US are they mostly talking about municipalities owning both the infrastructure as well as being the ISP? Are there examples of private/public partnerships were the gov owns the infrastructure but the service is provided by private industry? Regarding your last point about Google getting preferential treatment, I am not at all disputing this, but I believe even Google had to provide fiber to certain municipal or civic organizations. I could be misremembering that though. Edit: Apologies if some of my questions are unduly broad in scope.

rayiner 10y ago
In most places, it's the power company that owns the poles because it's the power company that builds and maintains them. In a few places, the phone company does it. In theory, though, they are supposed to offer non-discriminatory access to the poles. Re: preferential treatment, Google definitely didn't get away scott free. Building an ISP in any municipality means agreeing to a grab bag of concessions. Build out requirements tend to be the most expensive. Every house you pass that doesn't subscribe means you need to recover $500-1000 from a house that does subscribe. But any municipal cable franchise will be full of stuff like requirements to build fiber to government facilities and schools, payments to support public access TV, etc. Google did get a better deal, though. For example, in KC, it ultimately ended up paying half the pole rent Time Warner does.
- gm-conspiracy 10y ago
  Did Google Fiber use a municipal cable franchise agreement? Also, doesn't the FCC have the power in certain states to regulate pole attachment rates? So, where I live, on one side of the street, the electric company owns the poles, on the other side of the street, the phone company owns the poles. The franchise agreement does not have anything about payments to support public access TV, nor anything PEG related. In a neighboring municipality, the municipality owns the the electric company and thus the poles. I believe some of the original AT&T telegraph poles were placed by the Union army after the Civil War?

by Inconel 10y ago

rayiner 10y ago

In most places, it's the power company that owns the poles because it's the power company that builds and maintains them. In a few places, the phone company does it. In theory, though, they are supposed to offer non-discriminatory access to the poles. Re: preferential treatment, Google definitely didn't get away scott free. Building an ISP in any municipality means agreeing to a grab bag of concessions. Build out requirements tend to be the most expensive. Every house you pass that doesn't subscribe means you need to recover $500-1000 from a house that does subscribe. But any municipal cable franchise will be full of stuff like requirements to build fiber to government facilities and schools, payments to support public access TV, etc. Google did get a better deal, though. For example, in KC, it ultimately ended up paying half the pole rent Time Warner does.

gm-conspiracy 10y ago
Did Google Fiber use a municipal cable franchise agreement? Also, doesn't the FCC have the power in certain states to regulate pole attachment rates? So, where I live, on one side of the street, the electric company owns the poles, on the other side of the street, the phone company owns the poles. The franchise agreement does not have anything about payments to support public access TV, nor anything PEG related. In a neighboring municipality, the municipality owns the the electric company and thus the poles. I believe some of the original AT&T telegraph poles were placed by the Union army after the Civil War?