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I'm Swedish. Have family in Berlin, so I have some exposure to that reality too. Trying to figure out how things got kinda right here and kinda wrong there. Th

by tpmx 6y ago

I'm Swedish. Have family in Berlin, so I have some exposure to that reality too. Trying to figure out how things got kinda right here and kinda wrong there. The 90s was a while ago. The way I heard and remember it: it started with someone really, really prescient in the Stockholm water/sewage department figuring out that it would be kinda smart to lay some dark fiber when they were digging up the streets for maintenance, anyway. This would probably be like 1994-1996 or so. Then this continues to happen in smaller cities, etc etc. I'm probably missing some critical steps. It was a weird bottom-up-thing happening. Would love to get a deeper understanding from someone who was there.

mongol 6y ago
There is some history here (PDF) https://www.stokab.se/Documents/Nyheter%20bilagor/Stokab_eng.pdf https://www.stokab.se/Documents/Nyheter%20bilagor/Stokab_eng... "One important part of Stockholm’s modern ICT history is the company Stokab, founded by the City of Stockholm in 1994. The deregulation of the telecom market, which had taken place the year before, was the reason for establishing the company. Despite proposals by a number of national parliamentary parties to divide up what was then the Telecommunications Admin- istration into an independent, neutral infrastructure organisation and a service organisation, it remained intact and instead became the company Telia. Stockholm’s politicians believed that a neutral stakeholder was needed who could provide basic IT infrastructure to all on equal terms in order to generate competition, diversity and a range of choice within telecommunications and data. To achieve this, the IT infrastructure company Stokab was formed through a political consensus. The company’s mission is to build, lease and maintain a passive fibre-optic network to help foster favourable conditions for IT development and the positive development of the Stockholm region."

by tpmx 6y ago

mongol 6y ago

There is some history here (PDF) https://www.stokab.se/Documents/Nyheter%20bilagor/Stokab_eng.pdf https://www.stokab.se/Documents/Nyheter%20bilagor/Stokab_eng... "One important part of Stockholm’s modern ICT history is the company Stokab, founded by the City of Stockholm in 1994. The deregulation of the telecom market, which had taken place the year before, was the reason for establishing the company. Despite proposals by a number of national parliamentary parties to divide up what was then the Telecommunications Admin- istration into an independent, neutral infrastructure organisation and a service organisation, it remained intact and instead became the company Telia. Stockholm’s politicians believed that a neutral stakeholder was needed who could provide basic IT infrastructure to all on equal terms in order to generate competition, diversity and a range of choice within telecommunications and data. To achieve this, the IT infrastructure company Stokab was formed through a political consensus. The company’s mission is to build, lease and maintain a passive fibre-optic network to help foster favourable conditions for IT development and the positive development of the Stockholm region."