[ 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 cablemodem, if not 50/15. That's pretty competitive, and already includes triple play. 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. Cheers, -- jra -- Jay R. Ashworth Baylink jra@baylink.com Designer The Things I Think RFC 2100 Ashworth & Associates http://baylink.pitas.com 2000 Land Rover DII St Petersburg FL USA #natog +1 727 647 1274