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If the municipality lays the fiber and provides the internet service, the result may be poor. But that doesn't have to be the arrangement. The municipality can
by EB66 7y ago
If the municipality lays the fiber and provides the internet service, the result may be poor. But that doesn't have to be the arrangement. The municipality can lay the fiber and allow multiple companies to offer internet service over that infrastructure.
In Chelan County, WA they've blended the best of public and private. The government took on the large upfront costs and laid municipal fiber down all over the place. Literally cabins in the woods are connected up to fiber optics. Then they somehow facilitated the capability for multiple providers to sell internet connectivity over that fiber. I'm not exactly sure how they did that -- maybe they laid multiple fiber strands, maybe they leased a variety of wavelengths, etc -- but the end result is that residents of Chelan County with fiber have multiple ISPs to choose from, the prices are very competitive and the service is good.
In Chelan County, LocalTel offers 1000Mbps down and 100Mbps up for $74.95 per month. No performance issues whatsoever with all the COVID-19 related traffic spikes and when you call LocalTel with a tech problem, a real human answers the phone -- it's wonderful.
- mehhh 7y agoAll of those providers share the same non-redundant transport provider out of Chelan County FYI. City of Tacoma also has a similar setup, but they moved too early and are stuck with a cable network.
- sedatk 7y agoOff-topic but I loved visiting Lake Chelan during my attempt at Cascade Loop. Your comment suddenly sparked warm memories.
- Reelin 7y agoIn Washington state, this is only permitted in rural counties. The public utility district is allowed to lay fiber, but not to sell access to it directly to consumers. The law requires them to provide common access to the infrastructure at a rate that reflects their operational costs, but only to ISP companies. Someone wrote about their experience here (https://loomcom.com/blog/0098_fiber_optic_bliss.html https://loomcom.com/blog/0098_fiber_optic_bliss.html). Meanwhile, public utility districts in more populated counties (King, Snohomish, etc) are forbidden to offer network infrastructure at all. Tacoma has some weird public private partnership that seems somewhat dysfunctional and may predate these laws. Note that I haven't checked in a few years, so the above could potentially be out of date.
- threentaway 7y agoCan you link to the laws around this? I'd love to look into this more.
- Reelin 7y agoA summary: https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks/#washington https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadbloc... The law (there might be others though): https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=54.16.330 https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=54.16.330 It looks like I may have been wrong about populated counties? Not sure.