An interesting little tidbit: A small town in Minnesota is trying to borrow $25 million in bonds to install a fiber-optic network. But now a telco in the area, Bridgewater Telephone, is arguing that the bond issue may be illegal.
Regardless of whether muni fiber is or is not permitted by Minnesota law, it is a bad idea. It is sure to suffer from all the problems of muni wi-fi, such as (as I said in an earlier post) “the lack of need, large expenditures, tendency to lock-in old technologies, security risks, and sketchy public-private partnerships.”
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{ 1 comment }
Did you catch this claim at the end of it?
"When 74 percent of town's voters want to build themselves a fiber network, but the telco demands that they 1) not do it, and then 2) accept that the telco won't do it for years, either, the market (such as it is) doesn't appear to be functioning well."
I've been to Monticello a few times and drove through it a bazillion times. It's a small town. $25 million is a big chunk of change for a city that size. I suspect they already have DSL and cable available. How large of an improvement would fiber be over those two?
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