On Jan 30, 2013, at 5:11 PM, Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com> wrote:
[ One of a batch of replies to today's traffic; I was busy yanking a 750GB drive out of the grave all day. --jra ]
----- Original Message -----
From: "Owen DeLong" <owen@delong.com>
[ me: ]
It rings true to me, in general, and I would go that way... but there is a sting in that tail: Can I reasonably expect that Road Runner will in fact be technically equipped and inclined to meet me to get my residents as subscribers? Especially if they're already built HFC in much to all of my municipality?
It doesn't actually matter. You don't necessarily need to be the only wholesale offering, you just need to be open to all service providers. This means that if Road Runner wants to pay for their own infrastructure instead of using yours, then that will increase their costs and likely make it harder for them to compete with ISPs (and other services) that choose to use your infrastructure.
It does actually matter, Owen, for the specific build I'm looking at, since *Road Runner already has the city built*; they can do GHz CATV with all the toys, and at least 25/5 cable modem, if not 50/15.
You don't think some small scrappy provider using muni fiber with good customer service couldn't come in and start collecting customers from Road Runner? I bet they could. Having muni fiber with an open access policy makes it pretty easy to stand up a local ISP without a lot of up-front investment. Having a single incumbent doesn't strike me as being particularly dangerous to the practicality of muni fiber.
That's pretty competitive, and already includes triple play.
Competitive by today's pathetic american standards, sure. You wouldn't be able to find a single taker in SE, KR, or many other parts of the developed world.
What sort of money a build needs to make is of course largely a question of how good a sales job you did to your city commission, but I shouldn't think a small, largely residential, community is gonna make it on *just* businesses and geeks.
No, but most such communities, given a choice, the incumbent wouldn't have too much difficulty losing customers to a competitor. Owen