If you're wondering what the heck I was talking about on Thursday night when I brought up "municipal fiber" with regards to internet access, here's Chattanooga,TN, for example, that did just that. And here's their mayor and their network CEO doing an Ask Me Anything on reddit.
I'm not saying it's the answer, but I think we should talk about it.
1 comment:
one of the problems of "high speed fiber" is that what constitutes "high speed" changes so rapidly
A decade ago 1.5Mps (megabits per second) , the speed of a T1, was high speed. And a T1 was reserved only for small companies with multiple users
Two decades ago the best speed you could get on a dial up Internet connection was 56k ( 1/14th a T1), so have a T1 speed to your house in the early part of the Millenium was pretty awesome.
Nowadays cable companies claim (but to really prove it you have to go to other sites to test your speed) to have speeds of 30-120 Mps ( equal to 24+ T1 lines or what is commonly referred to as a "T3")
Everyday folks get their Internet from 3 main sources in Worcester: Charter (the Internet near monopoly, Verizon (a piddling 3 Mps or a phone carrier)
What's revolutionary about all things Internet now is how many useful tools you can get on your single Internet connection: a phone line and TV feeds like Hulu and Netflix
What's bad is how Big Cable is quickly getting gobbled up to be one giant entity (Comcast) and thus limiting competition and, thus, choices for citizens.
What free Wifi in the down town section of Worcester would do is save folks a boatload of money on cable. Early adopters like techies and college students will jump on it.
One question I ask is: If Worcester makes that investment, how can we make the investment pay back? In a word, advertising.
Use free Wifi to promote community in the City of Worcester. Use free Wifi to build up the community and to young academics and engineers positive things about Worcester.
Create a social networking system to show off how hip Worcester is and use it to get these future high earners to STAY in worcester and live here and put their money and their families here.
Big Cable doesn't give a rat's patootie about Worcester's future, but a homegrown, locally based electronic communications system would do just that--no matter if it is provided by cable or wireless.
"elmparkblogger"
August 3, 2014
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