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The "Center for Public Integrity" has collected some examples of the robocalls, direct-mail brochures and newspapers ads that are being used by telcos and lobby groups to encourage people to vote against municipal broadband initiatives in their area.
They emphasise the "government takeover of telecommunications" and "risking taxpayers money" aspects of these proposed municipal networks. I didn't see any mention of the far greater risk, which is that these networks might work out exactly as intended and therefore take revenue away from the companies who are sponsoring these "no" campaigns. But then again, the examples posted are not the complete brochures, so I can't say for certain this wasn't mentioned.
Does anyone have real life experience with municipal broadband that they can share? Should we be thanking these companies for spending their hard-earned money warning us of the dangers?
(Score: 4, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday September 02 2014, @07:14PM
A good technical read about fiber optics and limitations:
http://www.newport.com/Fiber-Optic-Basics/978863/1033/content.aspx [newport.com]
A more basic explanation including record speeds sent down a single fiber below it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-optic_communication#Bandwidth.E2.80.93distance_product [wikipedia.org]
Using WDM it is possible to get terabit speeds with todays fiber media over tens of km. A test back in 2011 by NEC yielded 101Tbps at over 165km on a SINGLE fiber. That is incredibly impressive, 1 gigabit per customer for 101,000 customers on a single run. Or ~2.24 million streams of 4k TV @45Mbps. So I am quite sure we are good for another few decades for last mile fiber. As the tech improves we change the endpoint hardware until the fiber can no longer carry any more data and we have better replacements.
(Score: 4, Informative) by AudioGuy on Tuesday September 02 2014, @08:57PM
Another factor that bears mention is that fiber is typically installed in ducts, and 'micro ducts'. If you ever DO need to replace it, you will not need to dig up the ground again, which is the largest expense.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by compro01 on Tuesday September 02 2014, @10:53PM
For the fibre rollout here, they're hardly digging up anything. It's practically all being done with directional drilling. They seem to only be bothering with digging in new-build areas, where it's all dug up for everything else anyway.