Interesting article for me, being that I have no experience with the ISP industry in America at all. "The best solution, I think, is to lay fiber in all the mu

Interesting article for me, being that I have no experience with the ISP industry in America at all. "The best solution, I think, is to lay fiber in all the municipalities and have consumers choose their ISP, with service delivered on the municipal fiber lines..." This is exactly what has been happening where I live - Christchurch, New Zealand. A number of years ago, a city-owned LLC called Christchurch City Networks Limited (now known as Enable Networks[1]) began rolling out an extensive fibre network in the downtown/city-centre area. Initially, for about $700 (NZD) per month, you could lease a dark pair between your premises and your ISP of choice (or even directly between two arbitrary premises, plugging directly into your own equipment at each end, with no ISP involved). You'd then negotiate arbitrary speed/bandwidth/caps with your chosen ISP. We were paying something like $3000 per month for a 1000 mbit/sec internet connection with (IIRC) a 2TB cap. This was probably 8 years ago or something, it doesn't cost anything like this now. Latterly, they've been rolling out a GPON-based (passive) fibre network. If you are connected to this part of the network, there are highly standardised plans available from multiple ISPs. You can choose one of two speeds: 30 mbit/sec symmetric, or 100 mbit/sec symmetric. Different ISPs have different usage plans available. Any public (government-funded) school can sign up for a 30 mbit/sec plan, with unlimited traffic, for something like $200/month. Amongst home users, ADSL2+ and VDSL2 are both still popular choices (and our pricing there seems similar enough to the US, with stupidly low caps and high prices), but fibre continues to gain traction. [1] http://www.enable.net.nz http://www.enable.net.nz