[173287] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Muni Fiber and Politics
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Chris Boyd)
Mon Jul 21 18:31:51 2014
X-Original-To: nanog@nanog.org
From: Chris Boyd <cboyd@gizmopartners.com>
In-Reply-To: <CAP-guGWjUeX8oVaRFbGY2ycNZy7kHyMHtX=YHBznbM3pT-pDAQ@mail.gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2014 17:31:05 -0500
To: NANOG list <nanog@nanog.org>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces@nanog.org
On Jul 21, 2014, at 1:38 PM, William Herrin wrote:
> The only exception I see to this would be if localities were
> constrained to providing point to point and point to multipoint
> communications infrastructure within the locality on a reasonable and
> non-discriminatory basis. The competition that would foster on the
> services side might outweigh the damage on the infrastructure side.
> Like public roads facilitate efficient transportation and freight
> despite the cost and potholes, though that's an imperfect simile.
I was planning on staying out of this debate, but.....
I was involved in an effort a few years back to legalize municiple fiber =
buildouts in Texas for a few reasons:
Lack of fiber penetration in smaller cities where pent up demand =
was not being met.
Lack of competition in high speed data services in all but a few =
markets in the state.
This being the heady days of WiFi, allow cities who chose to =
build out public access to do so without interference from any =
incumbent.
And locally, allow the cities that already had fiber built out =
to use that fiber to earn additional revenue by leasing capacity to any =
carrier who wanted it.
To put it mildly, the incumbents went off. Massive lobbying efforts. =
Astroturfing. End of the telecom world rhetoric. During the regular =
session, using a pro market argument that allowing open access to a city =
built fiber network would improve the comepetive landscape, we fought =
the anti-muni bill to a draw in the regular session. It was, of course, =
passed in a dead-of-night action in a follow-on special session. Cities =
were pretty well blocked from leasing fiber to others.
Now almost 10 years later, I'm finally seeing stirring of real =
competition on the utility poles in my neighborhood. ATT is hanging new =
fiber and advertisting new high speed service on uVerse, TWC has =
increased their service levels without increasing prices. The change? =
Google Fiber.
--Chris
