Tag: "right-of-way"

Institutional Networks and Cherry Picking

Posted December 4, 2009 by christopher

My friend, Geoff Daily at App-Rising.com, has questioned the wisdom of running fiber to all anchor institutions.

There's been a lot of buzz around the benefits and relative viability of wiring all community anchor institutions (schools, libraries, hospitals, etc.) with fiber as the way to get the best bang for the broadband buck. But recent conversations with my fiber-deploying friends have led me to worry that doing this could be a big mistake.

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The reason is simple: if you build a network to serve community anchors, then those institutions won't be available to serve as anchor customers for a community-wide deployment. Without those community anchors as customers, the economics of deployment, especially in rural areas, becomes much harder and may actually make robust, sustainable broadband impossible in some areas.

This is a question I have wrestled with also, in trying to help communities understand the real impacts of decisions they make on whether to build their own broadband network.

My first reaction is on philosophical grounds - public institutions like schools, police departments, etc., do not exist to prop-up the business models of cable or telephone companies. Large entities like municipal and county governments should own their own network because it will save them money and expand their capabilities. When will the tea-party protesters start protesting government paying exorbitant fees to telephone companies for slow T-1 lines and the like? After all, these are our tax dollars and they should be spent wisely.

My second reaction is that I seriously doubt removing these institutional networks will impact the business model significantly. Maybe it would have last decade, but now we know that Comcast and probably many more have ">massive margins in their broadband operations. Losing the libraries and schools will do little to their bottom lines. Even if it takes a bit out of their profits, they won't go missing meals.

But really, the answer is more complicated. Many municipalities already get "free" services from their cable company as a part of the video...

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Verizon Against the Public Interest

Posted August 10, 2009 by christopher

In another example of how some private companies continue acting against the public interest, Verizon is again using FiOS as a weapon, threatening not to bring it to a New York town unless the town essentially waives some $12,000 in real estate taxes.

Communities maintain what is called the "right-of-way" - where utility polls are located or conduit is buried underground. Imagine if a cable company had to work out an arrangement with every resident who had a poll in their yard to string cable - what a headache! Instead, companies like Verizon negotiate with the municipal government for access to the right-of-way. In return, communities typically negotiate for things like a franchise fee, often a 3%-5% fee from television revenues that is used to fund local public access channels. The right-of-way is a valuable community asset and the community deserves to benefit from allowing private companies to profit from it.

In this case, Verizon wants to dodge the real estate taxes it owes by taking them out of the franchise fee - which would pass effectively reduce its public interest obligations required by using the rights-of-way. Yet another way in which companies put profits above the community.

Verizon must have some skilled accountants, they never seem to pay taxes. When they sold off their customers in New England to the failing Fairpoint, they also avoided paying taxes on the income from the sale.

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