Rural deployments present an entirely different problem of geography. I suspect the dark fiber model I advocate for is appropriate for 80% of the population from large cities to small towns; but for the 20% in truely rural areas it doesn't work and there is no cheap option as far as I can tell.
Why do you want a muni to put in fiber but not light it? Wouldn't it make more sense to simply put in fiber runs and let company's lease space? Trenches don't really degrade over time and there is a lot less of a requirement for cooperative troubleshooting and far less blame game.
Which is a big part of why I want municipalities to finance it on 10-30 year government bonds, rather than try and have BigTelco and BigCableCo raise capital on wall street to do the job.
I certainly sympathize with wanting independent connections but most cities have their own budget concerns and doing a bond on a fiber network they can't or don't light is a harder pay back on one that they do light. I'd suggest either layer 2 sharing (ethernet with per sub VLANs) or trench sharing as above.
-- Leo Bicknell - bicknell@ufp.org - CCIE 3440 PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
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