Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
I don't know what people are actually paying. No one that has their service (a few do) will tell me. Maybe they're all free to show people on it? *shrugs* - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com - Original Message - From: Dennis Burgess dmburg...@linktechs.net To: af@afmug.com Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 9:32:11 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Can’t you argue that is not a fair rate, take it to the FCC now ! IF they are charging 29.99 or 59.99 for residential and they want you to pay 90 bucks a month just to get the drop in?? Dennis Burgess, CTO, Link Technologies, Inc. den...@linktechs.net – 314-735-0270 – www.linktechs.net From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Mike Hammett Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 1:47 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Assuming they have reasonable rates. Our county is charging $90/month for residential drops (just the customer side of the drop, you still need to pay for your aggregation port, transport, transit, support, etc. Oh, yeah, and they didn't pay for it, either. BTOP grant. - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com - Original Message - From: Dennis Burgess dmburg...@linktechs.net To: af@afmug.com Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2015 8:25:28 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Another stance could be to tell them that they have to open it up for other players to ride their fiber.. Think if you can come in and go, for xyz install, and you supply the bandwidth, you can charge what you want, and deliver xyz bandwidth. Now you are riding their fiber, and deliver to your customers, if you bulid it now, and convert them to fiber when it comes then you are good, they are bearing the cost of the fiber installation (the most expensive part) and you are just paying for transit.. If and when their business model goes kaput, you would be in a great position to buy it for pennies on the dollar as you already have a vested interest in it. Just another thought. Dennis Burgess, CTO, Link Technologies, Inc. den...@linktechs.net – 314-735-0270 – www.linktechs.net From: Af [ mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com ] On Behalf Of Ken Hohhof Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 8:00 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? The common assumption is that Internet prices are greatly inflated due to lack of competition, and if there were more competition, a price war would ensue and prices would drop dramatically. Not sure if this is true, but if so, the likely result would be covering just the operating costs, or even not that if other people’s money is being used to cover the losses. Eventually you end up with infrastructure that has not been properly maintained and upgraded, like has happened with the copper infrastructure. OK, fiber might need less maintenance and upgrades than copper, but I’m sure they would find a way to let it fall apart due to neglect. If nothing else, people seem to keep cutting fiber, accidentally or on purpose. I find it interesting that around us, we typically have 4-5 WISPs fighting over a sparsely populated rural area, not to mention satellite and mobile broadband plus DSL and cable in town. Yet I don’t see a race to the bottom on prices among the WISPs. And the ones that try to price a little lower tend to have oversubscription and reliability problems. I think there’s a realization that while you could compete primarily on price, you wouldn’t bring in enough revenue to build/maintain/upgrade a quality network, and your service would suck. If not immediately, then over time. So the competition tends to be more on service and who has a tower with LOS to a particular customer. Other people’s money (federal, municipal, or outside investors) alter this thinking, but eventually you have to pay the piper. From: Lewis Bergman Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 7:03 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? 100% agree with Brian. This seems to be the path for about 99% of the Muni WISPS out there. Keep your eye on it, get to the know the staff. When the pain seems to get to much for them to bear offer to step in. The only thing you will have to deal with is the customers who think you should charge, or give for free, with the same structure a tax funded entity couldn't make work. That won't matter since those socialists can't understand logic there is no use explaining it to them. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 10:06 PM, Brian Webster i...@wirelessmapping.com wrote: My suggestion would be to just wait it out. Let them build it and lose money. Eventually they will realize that they have no idea how to be an ISP, the customers will not deal with slow government response times to complaints
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
They've picked up 2/3 of a customer (farm that shared a business account, but two of the three locations have moved to Syndeo). - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com - Original Message - From: Ken Hohhof af...@kwisp.com To: af@afmug.com Sent: Saturday, July 11, 2015 5:32:10 PM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? The Blagojevich theory of pricing. I’ve got this thing, and it’s f***ing golden, and I’m just not giving it up for f***ing nothing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf9X6C0c-70 Actually I don’t think it matters what their price is, since it seems impossible to get hooked up to that network. Have you called Syndeo and tried to get a quote and an installation schedule? They seem happy with that network being just for the schools and libraries. I don’t think they want your business. I think the whole purpose was to get the BTOP money, the fiber network is just a relic of that. Geez, do we really have to sell service to people if they ask? That sounds hard. It was more fun getting paid prevailing wage to bury the fiber. From: Mike Hammett Sent: Saturday, July 11, 2015 5:09 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? I don't know what people are actually paying. No one that has their service (a few do) will tell me. Maybe they're all free to show people on it? *shrugs* - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com - Original Message - From: Dennis Burgess dmburg...@linktechs.net To: af@afmug.com Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 9:32:11 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Can’t you argue that is not a fair rate, take it to the FCC now ! IF they are charging 29.99 or 59.99 for residential and they want you to pay 90 bucks a month just to get the drop in?? Dennis Burgess, CTO, Link Technologies, Inc. den...@linktechs.net – 314-735-0270 – www.linktechs.net From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Mike Hammett Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 1:47 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Assuming they have reasonable rates. Our county is charging $90/month for residential drops (just the customer side of the drop, you still need to pay for your aggregation port, transport, transit, support, etc. Oh, yeah, and they didn't pay for it, either. BTOP grant. - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com - Original Message - From: Dennis Burgess dmburg...@linktechs.net To: af@afmug.com Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2015 8:25:28 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Another stance could be to tell them that they have to open it up for other players to ride their fiber.. Think if you can come in and go, for xyz install, and you supply the bandwidth, you can charge what you want, and deliver xyz bandwidth. Now you are riding their fiber, and deliver to your customers, if you bulid it now, and convert them to fiber when it comes then you are good, they are bearing the cost of the fiber installation (the most expensive part) and you are just paying for transit.. If and when their business model goes kaput, you would be in a great position to buy it for pennies on the dollar as you already have a vested interest in it. Just another thought. Dennis Burgess, CTO, Link Technologies, Inc. den...@linktechs.net – 314-735-0270 – www.linktechs.net From: Af [ mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com ] On Behalf Of Ken Hohhof Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 8:00 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? The common assumption is that Internet prices are greatly inflated due to lack of competition, and if there were more competition, a price war would ensue and prices would drop dramatically. Not sure if this is true, but if so, the likely result would be covering just the operating costs, or even not that if other people’s money is being used to cover the losses. Eventually you end up with infrastructure that has not been properly maintained and upgraded, like has happened with the copper infrastructure. OK, fiber might need less maintenance and upgrades than copper, but I’m sure they would find a way to let it fall apart due to neglect. If nothing else, people seem to keep cutting fiber, accidentally or on purpose. I find it interesting that around us, we typically have 4-5 WISPs fighting over a sparsely populated rural area, not to mention satellite and mobile broadband plus DSL and cable in town. Yet I don’t see a race to the bottom on prices among the WISPs. And the ones that try to price a little lower tend to have oversubscription and reliability problems. I think there’s a realization that while you could compete primarily on price, you wouldn’t bring in enough revenue to build/maintain/upgrade a quality network
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
The Blagojevich theory of pricing. I’ve got this thing, and it’s f***ing golden, and I’m just not giving it up for f***ing nothing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wf9X6C0c-70 Actually I don’t think it matters what their price is, since it seems impossible to get hooked up to that network. Have you called Syndeo and tried to get a quote and an installation schedule? They seem happy with that network being just for the schools and libraries. I don’t think they want your business. I think the whole purpose was to get the BTOP money, the fiber network is just a relic of that. Geez, do we really have to sell service to people if they ask? That sounds hard. It was more fun getting paid prevailing wage to bury the fiber. From: Mike Hammett Sent: Saturday, July 11, 2015 5:09 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? I don't know what people are actually paying. No one that has their service (a few do) will tell me. Maybe they're all free to show people on it? *shrugs* - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com From: Dennis Burgess dmburg...@linktechs.net To: af@afmug.com Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 9:32:11 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Can’t you argue that is not a fair rate, take it to the FCC now ! IF they are charging 29.99 or 59.99 for residential and they want you to pay 90 bucks a month just to get the drop in?? Dennis Burgess, CTO, Link Technologies, Inc. den...@linktechs.net – 314-735-0270 – www.linktechs.net From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Mike Hammett Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 1:47 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Assuming they have reasonable rates. Our county is charging $90/month for residential drops (just the customer side of the drop, you still need to pay for your aggregation port, transport, transit, support, etc. Oh, yeah, and they didn't pay for it, either. BTOP grant. - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com From: Dennis Burgess dmburg...@linktechs.net To: af@afmug.com Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2015 8:25:28 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Another stance could be to tell them that they have to open it up for other players to ride their fiber.. Think if you can come in and go, for xyz install, and you supply the bandwidth, you can charge what you want, and deliver xyz bandwidth. Now you are riding their fiber, and deliver to your customers, if you bulid it now, and convert them to fiber when it comes then you are good, they are bearing the cost of the fiber installation (the most expensive part) and you are just paying for transit.. If and when their business model goes kaput, you would be in a great position to buy it for pennies on the dollar as you already have a vested interest in it.Just another thought. Dennis Burgess, CTO, Link Technologies, Inc. den...@linktechs.net – 314-735-0270 – www.linktechs.net From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Ken Hohhof Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 8:00 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? The common assumption is that Internet prices are greatly inflated due to lack of competition, and if there were more competition, a price war would ensue and prices would drop dramatically. Not sure if this is true, but if so, the likely result would be covering just the operating costs, or even not that if other people’s money is being used to cover the losses. Eventually you end up with infrastructure that has not been properly maintained and upgraded, like has happened with the copper infrastructure. OK, fiber might need less maintenance and upgrades than copper, but I’m sure they would find a way to let it fall apart due to neglect. If nothing else, people seem to keep cutting fiber, accidentally or on purpose. I find it interesting that around us, we typically have 4-5 WISPs fighting over a sparsely populated rural area, not to mention satellite and mobile broadband plus DSL and cable in town. Yet I don’t see a race to the bottom on prices among the WISPs. And the ones that try to price a little lower tend to have oversubscription and reliability problems. I think there’s a realization that while you could compete primarily on price, you wouldn’t bring in enough revenue to build/maintain/upgrade a quality network, and your service would suck. If not immediately, then over time. So the competition tends to be more on service and who has a tower with LOS to a particular customer. Other people’s money (federal, municipal, or outside investors) alter this thinking, but eventually you have to pay the piper
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
Second mover advantage really works out well with emerging technologies. From: Rory Conaway Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 12:04 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? I completely disagree with my esteemed colleague, Mr. Webster. Being second to the game is like trying to ask a girl to the prom who has already been asked. If you snooze, you lose. If you get the customers first, especially if you get 2 year contracts, they will have a lot harder time displacing you. You are in a better position if you already have customers and revenue in place when they fail. Rory From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of David Milholen Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2015 7:24 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? +1 they will try so hard just not to keep it going. Once they go over the tipping point of going out to peoples homes to hook up grandmas laptop or keep their ipad connected. On 7/7/2015 7:03 AM, Lewis Bergman wrote: 100% agree with Brian. This seems to be the path for about 99% of the Muni WISPS out there. Keep your eye on it, get to the know the staff. When the pain seems to get to much for them to bear offer to step in. The only thing you will have to deal with is the customers who think you should charge, or give for free, with the same structure a tax funded entity couldn't make work. That won't matter since those socialists can't understand logic there is no use explaining it to them. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 10:06 PM, Brian Webster i...@wirelessmapping.com wrote: My suggestion would be to just wait it out. Let them build it and lose money. Eventually they will realize that they have no idea how to be an ISP, the customers will not deal with slow government response times to complaints, and the government will hate dealing with title II issues and open internet regulations. They will throw their hands up and offer it via bid or something else to a private company to manage/own/run. You might be able to pick it up for far less than it would have cost you to build. I certainly would not try to overbuild them before they get going. The average consumer has already heard about their promised prices, you will be fighting that even though they have not even started building yet. Do a search for the UC2B project in Illinois, it was a municipal/university system built with stimulus funds. They did what they needed to meet grant obligations, then they all argued among the partners about who and how they would run things and failed at that. They finally let a private company take over and expand the system. Thank You, Brian Webster www.wirelessmapping.com www.Broadband-Mapping.com From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Carl Peterson Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 8:45 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Assuming you didn't have to recoup build costs, I don't see how it would be hard to run the network at $50 per sub. Bandwidth is dirt cheep at scale and there isn't much to go wrong with a fiber plant. On Jul 6, 2015, at 3:10 PM, Christopher Gray cg...@graytechsoftware.com wrote: About $40M is grant funding from the state for last mile services that is only available to municipalities. The balance of the funding is coming from town borrowing. My town will receive about $1.2M from the grant and will vote in September whether to authorize $2.3M of borrowing that would be paid with property tax. I'm 95% sure this will go through, and the network would be lit in about 3 years, but I can't get their numbers to work out. I cannot see how they can actually provide service and maintain their network and offer a base service of only $50 / month. If that jumps to $100, I could see remaining competitive, though. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Chuck McCown ch...@wbmfg.com wrote: Where is the funding coming from? I would not be comfortable building in an area where I am sure to get over built. From: Christopher Gray Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 11:56 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Several of the rural towns in my planned coverage area are looking into municipal fiber (average density about 10 premises per fiber mile, all above ground). They're claiming $50 for 25 Mbps service, $79 for 100 Mbps, and $109 for 1 Gbps. They already have funding authorized in about half of the towns they are targeting... but they'd be about 3 years from providing any service. Is it reasonable or possible to compete with such a thing? Should I ignore any area that plans to fund this, or might it be worth getting a foothold before their system is lit? Thanks - Chris -- Lewis Bergman 325-439-0533
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
Can’t you argue that is not a fair rate, take it to the FCC now ! IF they are charging 29.99 or 59.99 for residential and they want you to pay 90 bucks a month just to get the drop in?? Dennis Burgess, CTO, Link Technologies, Inc. den...@linktechs.netmailto:den...@linktechs.net – 314-735-0270 – www.linktechs.nethttp://www.linktechs.net From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Mike Hammett Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 1:47 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Assuming they have reasonable rates. Our county is charging $90/month for residential drops (just the customer side of the drop, you still need to pay for your aggregation port, transport, transit, support, etc. Oh, yeah, and they didn't pay for it, either. BTOP grant. - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com From: Dennis Burgess dmburg...@linktechs.netmailto:dmburg...@linktechs.net To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2015 8:25:28 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Another stance could be to tell them that they have to open it up for other players to ride their fiber.. Think if you can come in and go, for xyz install, and you supply the bandwidth, you can charge what you want, and deliver xyz bandwidth. Now you are riding their fiber, and deliver to your customers, if you bulid it now, and convert them to fiber when it comes then you are good, they are bearing the cost of the fiber installation (the most expensive part) and you are just paying for transit.. If and when their business model goes kaput, you would be in a great position to buy it for pennies on the dollar as you already have a vested interest in it.Just another thought. Dennis Burgess, CTO, Link Technologies, Inc. den...@linktechs.netmailto:den...@linktechs.net – 314-735-0270 – www.linktechs.nethttp://www.linktechs.net From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Ken Hohhof Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 8:00 AM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? The common assumption is that Internet prices are greatly inflated due to lack of competition, and if there were more competition, a price war would ensue and prices would drop dramatically. Not sure if this is true, but if so, the likely result would be covering just the operating costs, or even not that if other people’s money is being used to cover the losses. Eventually you end up with infrastructure that has not been properly maintained and upgraded, like has happened with the copper infrastructure. OK, fiber might need less maintenance and upgrades than copper, but I’m sure they would find a way to let it fall apart due to neglect. If nothing else, people seem to keep cutting fiber, accidentally or on purpose. I find it interesting that around us, we typically have 4-5 WISPs fighting over a sparsely populated rural area, not to mention satellite and mobile broadband plus DSL and cable in town. Yet I don’t see a race to the bottom on prices among the WISPs. And the ones that try to price a little lower tend to have oversubscription and reliability problems. I think there’s a realization that while you could compete primarily on price, you wouldn’t bring in enough revenue to build/maintain/upgrade a quality network, and your service would suck. If not immediately, then over time. So the competition tends to be more on service and who has a tower with LOS to a particular customer. Other people’s money (federal, municipal, or outside investors) alter this thinking, but eventually you have to pay the piper. From: Lewis Bergmanmailto:lewis.berg...@gmail.com Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 7:03 AM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? 100% agree with Brian. This seems to be the path for about 99% of the Muni WISPS out there. Keep your eye on it, get to the know the staff. When the pain seems to get to much for them to bear offer to step in. The only thing you will have to deal with is the customers who think you should charge, or give for free, with the same structure a tax funded entity couldn't make work. That won't matter since those socialists can't understand logic there is no use explaining it to them. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 10:06 PM, Brian Webster i...@wirelessmapping.commailto:i...@wirelessmapping.com wrote: My suggestion would be to just wait it out. Let them build it and lose money. Eventually they will realize that they have no idea how to be an ISP, the customers will not deal with slow government response times to complaints, and the government will hate dealing with title II issues and open internet regulations. They will throw their hands up and offer it via bid or something else to a private company to manage/own/run. You might be able to pick it up for far less than
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
I can agree here as well. Get the customers in via wireless, since they have a build out time, but like I said, I would either work on overbuilding it with your own fiber, or go ahead and see about transporting across there fiber, then when you know they overbuilt your wireless customers, you can simply go to the customer and say, for xyz we can deliver fiber now, maybe the same price faster speed etc, but its still your customer! Dennis Burgess, CTO, Link Technologies, Inc. den...@linktechs.netmailto:den...@linktechs.net – 314-735-0270 – www.linktechs.nethttp://www.linktechs.net From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Rory Conaway Sent: Wednesday, July 08, 2015 1:05 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? I completely disagree with my esteemed colleague, Mr. Webster. Being second to the game is like trying to ask a girl to the prom who has already been asked. If you snooze, you lose. If you get the customers first, especially if you get 2 year contracts, they will have a lot harder time displacing you. You are in a better position if you already have customers and revenue in place when they fail. Rory From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of David Milholen Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2015 7:24 PM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? +1 they will try so hard just not to keep it going. Once they go over the tipping point of going out to peoples homes to hook up grandmas laptop or keep their ipad connected. On 7/7/2015 7:03 AM, Lewis Bergman wrote: 100% agree with Brian. This seems to be the path for about 99% of the Muni WISPS out there. Keep your eye on it, get to the know the staff. When the pain seems to get to much for them to bear offer to step in. The only thing you will have to deal with is the customers who think you should charge, or give for free, with the same structure a tax funded entity couldn't make work. That won't matter since those socialists can't understand logic there is no use explaining it to them. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 10:06 PM, Brian Webster i...@wirelessmapping.commailto:i...@wirelessmapping.com wrote: My suggestion would be to just wait it out. Let them build it and lose money. Eventually they will realize that they have no idea how to be an ISP, the customers will not deal with slow government response times to complaints, and the government will hate dealing with title II issues and open internet regulations. They will throw their hands up and offer it via bid or something else to a private company to manage/own/run. You might be able to pick it up for far less than it would have cost you to build. I certainly would not try to overbuild them before they get going. The average consumer has already heard about their promised prices, you will be fighting that even though they have not even started building yet. Do a search for the UC2B project in Illinois, it was a municipal/university system built with stimulus funds. They did what they needed to meet grant obligations, then they all argued among the partners about who and how they would run things and failed at that. They finally let a private company take over and expand the system. Thank You, Brian Webster www.wirelessmapping.comhttp://www.wirelessmapping.com www.Broadband-Mapping.comhttp://www.Broadband-Mapping.com From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.commailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Carl Peterson Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 8:45 PM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Assuming you didn't have to recoup build costs, I don't see how it would be hard to run the network at $50 per sub. Bandwidth is dirt cheep at scale and there isn't much to go wrong with a fiber plant. On Jul 6, 2015, at 3:10 PM, Christopher Gray cg...@graytechsoftware.commailto:cg...@graytechsoftware.com wrote: About $40M is grant funding from the state for last mile services that is only available to municipalities. The balance of the funding is coming from town borrowing. My town will receive about $1.2M from the grant and will vote in September whether to authorize $2.3M of borrowing that would be paid with property tax. I'm 95% sure this will go through, and the network would be lit in about 3 years, but I can't get their numbers to work out. I cannot see how they can actually provide service and maintain their network and offer a base service of only $50 / month. If that jumps to $100, I could see remaining competitive, though. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Chuck McCown ch...@wbmfg.commailto:ch...@wbmfg.com wrote: Where is the funding coming from? I would not be comfortable building in an area where I am sure to get over built. From: Christopher Graymailto:cg...@graytechsoftware.com Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 11:56 AM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
Can you be more specific? Right now you have 802.11ac with nothing coming behind it in the same price category. You have different flavors of 802.11ac technologies but the fundamentals are the same. I don’t believe being second to fiber is a good move. Rory From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of ch...@wbmfg.com Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 8:07 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Second mover advantage really works out well with emerging technologies. From: Rory Conawaymailto:r...@triadwireless.net Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 12:04 AM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? I completely disagree with my esteemed colleague, Mr. Webster. Being second to the game is like trying to ask a girl to the prom who has already been asked. If you snooze, you lose. If you get the customers first, especially if you get 2 year contracts, they will have a lot harder time displacing you. You are in a better position if you already have customers and revenue in place when they fail. Rory From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of David Milholen Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2015 7:24 PM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? +1 they will try so hard just not to keep it going. Once they go over the tipping point of going out to peoples homes to hook up grandmas laptop or keep their ipad connected. On 7/7/2015 7:03 AM, Lewis Bergman wrote: 100% agree with Brian. This seems to be the path for about 99% of the Muni WISPS out there. Keep your eye on it, get to the know the staff. When the pain seems to get to much for them to bear offer to step in. The only thing you will have to deal with is the customers who think you should charge, or give for free, with the same structure a tax funded entity couldn't make work. That won't matter since those socialists can't understand logic there is no use explaining it to them. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 10:06 PM, Brian Webster i...@wirelessmapping.commailto:i...@wirelessmapping.com wrote: My suggestion would be to just wait it out. Let them build it and lose money. Eventually they will realize that they have no idea how to be an ISP, the customers will not deal with slow government response times to complaints, and the government will hate dealing with title II issues and open internet regulations. They will throw their hands up and offer it via bid or something else to a private company to manage/own/run. You might be able to pick it up for far less than it would have cost you to build. I certainly would not try to overbuild them before they get going. The average consumer has already heard about their promised prices, you will be fighting that even though they have not even started building yet. Do a search for the UC2B project in Illinois, it was a municipal/university system built with stimulus funds. They did what they needed to meet grant obligations, then they all argued among the partners about who and how they would run things and failed at that. They finally let a private company take over and expand the system. Thank You, Brian Webster www.wirelessmapping.comhttp://www.wirelessmapping.com www.Broadband-Mapping.comhttp://www.Broadband-Mapping.com From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.commailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Carl Peterson Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 8:45 PM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Assuming you didn't have to recoup build costs, I don't see how it would be hard to run the network at $50 per sub. Bandwidth is dirt cheep at scale and there isn't much to go wrong with a fiber plant. On Jul 6, 2015, at 3:10 PM, Christopher Gray cg...@graytechsoftware.commailto:cg...@graytechsoftware.com wrote: About $40M is grant funding from the state for last mile services that is only available to municipalities. The balance of the funding is coming from town borrowing. My town will receive about $1.2M from the grant and will vote in September whether to authorize $2.3M of borrowing that would be paid with property tax. I'm 95% sure this will go through, and the network would be lit in about 3 years, but I can't get their numbers to work out. I cannot see how they can actually provide service and maintain their network and offer a base service of only $50 / month. If that jumps to $100, I could see remaining competitive, though. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Chuck McCown ch...@wbmfg.commailto:ch...@wbmfg.com wrote: Where is the funding coming from? I would not be comfortable building in an area where I am sure to get over built. From: Christopher Graymailto:cg...@graytechsoftware.com Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 11:56 AM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Several of the rural towns in my planned coverage area are looking
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
Did I misunderstand the goal? Was the question to put fiber in first or put in wireless first? Rory From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of ch...@wbmfg.com Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 9:28 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Second mover advantage with fiber, not RF. Let the muni experiment falter then come in and mop up. From: Rory Conawaymailto:r...@triadwireless.net Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 10:12 AM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Can you be more specific? Right now you have 802.11ac with nothing coming behind it in the same price category. You have different flavors of 802.11ac technologies but the fundamentals are the same. I don’t believe being second to fiber is a good move. Rory From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of ch...@wbmfg.commailto:ch...@wbmfg.com Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 8:07 AM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Second mover advantage really works out well with emerging technologies. From: Rory Conawaymailto:r...@triadwireless.net Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 12:04 AM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? I completely disagree with my esteemed colleague, Mr. Webster. Being second to the game is like trying to ask a girl to the prom who has already been asked. If you snooze, you lose. If you get the customers first, especially if you get 2 year contracts, they will have a lot harder time displacing you. You are in a better position if you already have customers and revenue in place when they fail. Rory From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of David Milholen Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2015 7:24 PM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? +1 they will try so hard just not to keep it going. Once they go over the tipping point of going out to peoples homes to hook up grandmas laptop or keep their ipad connected. On 7/7/2015 7:03 AM, Lewis Bergman wrote: 100% agree with Brian. This seems to be the path for about 99% of the Muni WISPS out there. Keep your eye on it, get to the know the staff. When the pain seems to get to much for them to bear offer to step in. The only thing you will have to deal with is the customers who think you should charge, or give for free, with the same structure a tax funded entity couldn't make work. That won't matter since those socialists can't understand logic there is no use explaining it to them. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 10:06 PM, Brian Webster i...@wirelessmapping.commailto:i...@wirelessmapping.com wrote: My suggestion would be to just wait it out. Let them build it and lose money. Eventually they will realize that they have no idea how to be an ISP, the customers will not deal with slow government response times to complaints, and the government will hate dealing with title II issues and open internet regulations. They will throw their hands up and offer it via bid or something else to a private company to manage/own/run. You might be able to pick it up for far less than it would have cost you to build. I certainly would not try to overbuild them before they get going. The average consumer has already heard about their promised prices, you will be fighting that even though they have not even started building yet. Do a search for the UC2B project in Illinois, it was a municipal/university system built with stimulus funds. They did what they needed to meet grant obligations, then they all argued among the partners about who and how they would run things and failed at that. They finally let a private company take over and expand the system. Thank You, Brian Webster www.wirelessmapping.comhttp://www.wirelessmapping.com www.Broadband-Mapping.comhttp://www.Broadband-Mapping.com From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.commailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Carl Peterson Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 8:45 PM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Assuming you didn't have to recoup build costs, I don't see how it would be hard to run the network at $50 per sub. Bandwidth is dirt cheep at scale and there isn't much to go wrong with a fiber plant. On Jul 6, 2015, at 3:10 PM, Christopher Gray cg...@graytechsoftware.commailto:cg...@graytechsoftware.com wrote: About $40M is grant funding from the state for last mile services that is only available to municipalities. The balance of the funding is coming from town borrowing. My town will receive about $1.2M from the grant and will vote in September whether to authorize $2.3M of borrowing that would be paid with property tax. I'm 95% sure this will go through, and the network would be lit in about 3 years, but I can't get their numbers to work out. I cannot see how they can actually
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
Right now, I'm not installing any of my own fiber. All new expansion is wireless. They do not plan on allowing anyone other than the owner to use the network. I'm pushing for other options, but it seems unlikely they will open it. Once they are closer to lighting their service, I plan to make at least one offering that matches theirs for speed and price. It sounds like it will be possible to retain customers, but not to expect many. I do need some of the sites to expand into areas that will not be getting fiber, so I might as well cover some new customers along the way. -Chris On Wed, Jul 8, 2015 at 1:43 PM, Rory Conaway r...@triadwireless.net wrote: Ahh, I was thinking deploy wireless first before the fiber. I could care less if they brought the fiber in later. Rory *From:* Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] *On Behalf Of *ch...@wbmfg.com *Sent:* Wednesday, July 8, 2015 9:54 AM *To:* af@afmug.com *Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Let someone else do the fiber. First. *From:* Rory Conaway r...@triadwireless.net *Sent:* Wednesday, July 8, 2015 10:34 AM *To:* af@afmug.com *Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Did I misunderstand the goal? Was the question to put fiber in first or put in wireless first? Rory *From:* Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com af-boun...@afmug.com] *On Behalf Of *ch...@wbmfg.com *Sent:* Wednesday, July 8, 2015 9:28 AM *To:* af@afmug.com *Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Second mover advantage with fiber, not RF. Let the muni experiment falter then come in and mop up. *From:* Rory Conaway r...@triadwireless.net *Sent:* Wednesday, July 8, 2015 10:12 AM *To:* af@afmug.com *Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Can you be more specific? Right now you have 802.11ac with nothing coming behind it in the same price category. You have different flavors of 802.11ac technologies but the fundamentals are the same. I don’t believe being second to fiber is a good move. Rory *From:* Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com af-boun...@afmug.com] *On Behalf Of *ch...@wbmfg.com *Sent:* Wednesday, July 8, 2015 8:07 AM *To:* af@afmug.com *Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Second mover advantage really works out well with emerging technologies. *From:* Rory Conaway r...@triadwireless.net *Sent:* Wednesday, July 8, 2015 12:04 AM *To:* af@afmug.com *Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? I completely disagree with my esteemed colleague, Mr. Webster. Being second to the game is like trying to ask a girl to the prom who has already been asked. If you snooze, you lose. If you get the customers first, especially if you get 2 year contracts, they will have a lot harder time displacing you. You are in a better position if you already have customers and revenue in place when they fail. Rory *From:* Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com af-boun...@afmug.com] *On Behalf Of *David Milholen *Sent:* Tuesday, July 7, 2015 7:24 PM *To:* af@afmug.com *Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? +1 they will try so hard just not to keep it going. Once they go over the tipping point of going out to peoples homes to hook up grandmas laptop or keep their ipad connected. On 7/7/2015 7:03 AM, Lewis Bergman wrote: 100% agree with Brian. This seems to be the path for about 99% of the Muni WISPS out there. Keep your eye on it, get to the know the staff. When the pain seems to get to much for them to bear offer to step in. The only thing you will have to deal with is the customers who think you should charge, or give for free, with the same structure a tax funded entity couldn't make work. That won't matter since those socialists can't understand logic there is no use explaining it to them. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 10:06 PM, Brian Webster i...@wirelessmapping.com wrote: My suggestion would be to just wait it out. Let them build it and lose money. Eventually they will realize that they have no idea how to be an ISP, the customers will not deal with slow government response times to complaints, and the government will hate dealing with title II issues and open internet regulations. They will throw their hands up and offer it via bid or something else to a private company to manage/own/run. You might be able to pick it up for far less than it would have cost you to build. I certainly would not try to overbuild them before they get going. The average consumer has already heard about their promised prices, you will be fighting that even though they have not even started building yet. Do a search for the UC2B project in Illinois, it was a municipal/university system built with stimulus funds. They did what they needed to meet grant obligations, then they all argued among the partners about who and how they would run things
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
Ahh, I was thinking deploy wireless first before the fiber. I could care less if they brought the fiber in later. Rory From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of ch...@wbmfg.com Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 9:54 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Let someone else do the fiber. First. From: Rory Conawaymailto:r...@triadwireless.net Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 10:34 AM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Did I misunderstand the goal? Was the question to put fiber in first or put in wireless first? Rory From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of ch...@wbmfg.commailto:ch...@wbmfg.com Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 9:28 AM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Second mover advantage with fiber, not RF. Let the muni experiment falter then come in and mop up. From: Rory Conawaymailto:r...@triadwireless.net Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 10:12 AM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Can you be more specific? Right now you have 802.11ac with nothing coming behind it in the same price category. You have different flavors of 802.11ac technologies but the fundamentals are the same. I don’t believe being second to fiber is a good move. Rory From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of ch...@wbmfg.commailto:ch...@wbmfg.com Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 8:07 AM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Second mover advantage really works out well with emerging technologies. From: Rory Conawaymailto:r...@triadwireless.net Sent: Wednesday, July 8, 2015 12:04 AM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? I completely disagree with my esteemed colleague, Mr. Webster. Being second to the game is like trying to ask a girl to the prom who has already been asked. If you snooze, you lose. If you get the customers first, especially if you get 2 year contracts, they will have a lot harder time displacing you. You are in a better position if you already have customers and revenue in place when they fail. Rory From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of David Milholen Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2015 7:24 PM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? +1 they will try so hard just not to keep it going. Once they go over the tipping point of going out to peoples homes to hook up grandmas laptop or keep their ipad connected. On 7/7/2015 7:03 AM, Lewis Bergman wrote: 100% agree with Brian. This seems to be the path for about 99% of the Muni WISPS out there. Keep your eye on it, get to the know the staff. When the pain seems to get to much for them to bear offer to step in. The only thing you will have to deal with is the customers who think you should charge, or give for free, with the same structure a tax funded entity couldn't make work. That won't matter since those socialists can't understand logic there is no use explaining it to them. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 10:06 PM, Brian Webster i...@wirelessmapping.commailto:i...@wirelessmapping.com wrote: My suggestion would be to just wait it out. Let them build it and lose money. Eventually they will realize that they have no idea how to be an ISP, the customers will not deal with slow government response times to complaints, and the government will hate dealing with title II issues and open internet regulations. They will throw their hands up and offer it via bid or something else to a private company to manage/own/run. You might be able to pick it up for far less than it would have cost you to build. I certainly would not try to overbuild them before they get going. The average consumer has already heard about their promised prices, you will be fighting that even though they have not even started building yet. Do a search for the UC2B project in Illinois, it was a municipal/university system built with stimulus funds. They did what they needed to meet grant obligations, then they all argued among the partners about who and how they would run things and failed at that. They finally let a private company take over and expand the system. Thank You, Brian Webster www.wirelessmapping.comhttp://www.wirelessmapping.com www.Broadband-Mapping.comhttp://www.Broadband-Mapping.com From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.commailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Carl Peterson Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 8:45 PM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Assuming you didn't have to recoup build costs, I don't see how it would be hard to run the network at $50 per sub. Bandwidth is dirt cheep at scale and there isn't much to go wrong with a fiber plant. On Jul 6, 2015, at 3:10 PM
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
I completely disagree with my esteemed colleague, Mr. Webster. Being second to the game is like trying to ask a girl to the prom who has already been asked. If you snooze, you lose. If you get the customers first, especially if you get 2 year contracts, they will have a lot harder time displacing you. You are in a better position if you already have customers and revenue in place when they fail. Rory From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of David Milholen Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2015 7:24 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? +1 they will try so hard just not to keep it going. Once they go over the tipping point of going out to peoples homes to hook up grandmas laptop or keep their ipad connected. On 7/7/2015 7:03 AM, Lewis Bergman wrote: 100% agree with Brian. This seems to be the path for about 99% of the Muni WISPS out there. Keep your eye on it, get to the know the staff. When the pain seems to get to much for them to bear offer to step in. The only thing you will have to deal with is the customers who think you should charge, or give for free, with the same structure a tax funded entity couldn't make work. That won't matter since those socialists can't understand logic there is no use explaining it to them. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 10:06 PM, Brian Webster i...@wirelessmapping.commailto:i...@wirelessmapping.com wrote: My suggestion would be to just wait it out. Let them build it and lose money. Eventually they will realize that they have no idea how to be an ISP, the customers will not deal with slow government response times to complaints, and the government will hate dealing with title II issues and open internet regulations. They will throw their hands up and offer it via bid or something else to a private company to manage/own/run. You might be able to pick it up for far less than it would have cost you to build. I certainly would not try to overbuild them before they get going. The average consumer has already heard about their promised prices, you will be fighting that even though they have not even started building yet. Do a search for the UC2B project in Illinois, it was a municipal/university system built with stimulus funds. They did what they needed to meet grant obligations, then they all argued among the partners about who and how they would run things and failed at that. They finally let a private company take over and expand the system. Thank You, Brian Webster www.wirelessmapping.comhttp://www.wirelessmapping.com www.Broadband-Mapping.comhttp://www.Broadband-Mapping.com From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.commailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Carl Peterson Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 8:45 PM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Assuming you didn't have to recoup build costs, I don't see how it would be hard to run the network at $50 per sub. Bandwidth is dirt cheep at scale and there isn't much to go wrong with a fiber plant. On Jul 6, 2015, at 3:10 PM, Christopher Gray cg...@graytechsoftware.commailto:cg...@graytechsoftware.com wrote: About $40M is grant funding from the state for last mile services that is only available to municipalities. The balance of the funding is coming from town borrowing. My town will receive about $1.2M from the grant and will vote in September whether to authorize $2.3M of borrowing that would be paid with property tax. I'm 95% sure this will go through, and the network would be lit in about 3 years, but I can't get their numbers to work out. I cannot see how they can actually provide service and maintain their network and offer a base service of only $50 / month. If that jumps to $100, I could see remaining competitive, though. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Chuck McCown ch...@wbmfg.commailto:ch...@wbmfg.com wrote: Where is the funding coming from? I would not be comfortable building in an area where I am sure to get over built. From: Christopher Graymailto:cg...@graytechsoftware.com Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 11:56 AM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Several of the rural towns in my planned coverage area are looking into municipal fiber (average density about 10 premises per fiber mile, all above ground). They're claiming $50 for 25 Mbps service, $79 for 100 Mbps, and $109 for 1 Gbps. They already have funding authorized in about half of the towns they are targeting... but they'd be about 3 years from providing any service. Is it reasonable or possible to compete with such a thing? Should I ignore any area that plans to fund this, or might it be worth getting a foothold before their system is lit? Thanks - Chris -- Lewis Bergman 325-439-0533 Cell -- [cid:image001.jpg@01D0B909.4950CA20]
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
Assuming they have reasonable rates. Our county is charging $90/month for residential drops (just the customer side of the drop, you still need to pay for your aggregation port, transport, transit, support, etc. Oh, yeah, and they didn't pay for it, either. BTOP grant. - Mike Hammett Intelligent Computing Solutions http://www.ics-il.com - Original Message - From: Dennis Burgess dmburg...@linktechs.net To: af@afmug.com Sent: Tuesday, July 7, 2015 8:25:28 AM Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Another stance could be to tell them that they have to open it up for other players to ride their fiber.. Think if you can come in and go, for xyz install, and you supply the bandwidth, you can charge what you want, and deliver xyz bandwidth. Now you are riding their fiber, and deliver to your customers, if you bulid it now, and convert them to fiber when it comes then you are good, they are bearing the cost of the fiber installation (the most expensive part) and you are just paying for transit.. If and when their business model goes kaput, you would be in a great position to buy it for pennies on the dollar as you already have a vested interest in it. Just another thought. Dennis Burgess, CTO, Link Technologies, Inc. den...@linktechs.net – 314-735-0270 – www.linktechs.net From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Ken Hohhof Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 8:00 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? The common assumption is that Internet prices are greatly inflated due to lack of competition, and if there were more competition, a price war would ensue and prices would drop dramatically. Not sure if this is true, but if so, the likely result would be covering just the operating costs, or even not that if other people’s money is being used to cover the losses. Eventually you end up with infrastructure that has not been properly maintained and upgraded, like has happened with the copper infrastructure. OK, fiber might need less maintenance and upgrades than copper, but I’m sure they would find a way to let it fall apart due to neglect. If nothing else, people seem to keep cutting fiber, accidentally or on purpose. I find it interesting that around us, we typically have 4-5 WISPs fighting over a sparsely populated rural area, not to mention satellite and mobile broadband plus DSL and cable in town. Yet I don’t see a race to the bottom on prices among the WISPs. And the ones that try to price a little lower tend to have oversubscription and reliability problems. I think there’s a realization that while you could compete primarily on price, you wouldn’t bring in enough revenue to build/maintain/upgrade a quality network, and your service would suck. If not immediately, then over time. So the competition tends to be more on service and who has a tower with LOS to a particular customer. Other people’s money (federal, municipal, or outside investors) alter this thinking, but eventually you have to pay the piper. From: Lewis Bergman Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 7:03 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? 100% agree with Brian. This seems to be the path for about 99% of the Muni WISPS out there. Keep your eye on it, get to the know the staff. When the pain seems to get to much for them to bear offer to step in. The only thing you will have to deal with is the customers who think you should charge, or give for free, with the same structure a tax funded entity couldn't make work. That won't matter since those socialists can't understand logic there is no use explaining it to them. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 10:06 PM, Brian Webster i...@wirelessmapping.com wrote: My suggestion would be to just wait it out. Let them build it and lose money. Eventually they will realize that they have no idea how to be an ISP, the customers will not deal with slow government response times to complaints, and the government will hate dealing with title II issues and open internet regulations. They will throw their hands up and offer it via bid or something else to a private company to manage/own/run. You might be able to pick it up for far less than it would have cost you to build. I certainly would not try to overbuild them before they get going. The average consumer has already heard about their promised prices, you will be fighting that even though they have not even started building yet. Do a search for the UC2B project in Illinois, it was a municipal/university system built with stimulus funds. They did what they needed to meet grant obligations, then they all argued among the partners about who and how they would run things and failed at that. They finally let a private company take over and expand the system. Thank You, Brian Webster www.wirelessmapping.com www.Broadband-Mapping.com From: Af
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
On the topic of pricing, if anyone wants a good read about market prices/packages you can check out these two pricing studies I published while working on the Illinois Broadband Mapping project. The study did not go in to which technologies or which carriers had lowest prices but rather it shows which speed tiers are at which prices and the number of competitors. The appendix pages show the maps that correspond to the data tables in the main reports. The second report was conducted a year after the first so we also gave a change over time review. Illinois is a good state to look at for this information because there are a lot of WISPs in operation both rural and metro. Short summary: Speed tier offerings got faster. Prices stayed the same or slightly dropped. The idea that lack of competition keeps prices higher is proven false. The wireline carriers DID NOT target more affluent neighborhoods with better broadband packages. The more rural areas had prices higher than the metro markets. 2013 report is here http://www.broadbandillinois.org/Research/Internal-Research/Pricing-Report.html 2014 report at this link http://www.broadbandillinois.org/Research/Internal-Research/2015-Pricing-Report.html Thank You, Brian Webster www.wirelessmapping.com www.Broadband-Mapping.com From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Ken Hohhof Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 9:00 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? The common assumption is that Internet prices are greatly inflated due to lack of competition, and if there were more competition, a price war would ensue and prices would drop dramatically. Not sure if this is true, but if so, the likely result would be covering just the operating costs, or even not that if other people’s money is being used to cover the losses. Eventually you end up with infrastructure that has not been properly maintained and upgraded, like has happened with the copper infrastructure. OK, fiber might need less maintenance and upgrades than copper, but I’m sure they would find a way to let it fall apart due to neglect. If nothing else, people seem to keep cutting fiber, accidentally or on purpose. I find it interesting that around us, we typically have 4-5 WISPs fighting over a sparsely populated rural area, not to mention satellite and mobile broadband plus DSL and cable in town. Yet I don’t see a race to the bottom on prices among the WISPs. And the ones that try to price a little lower tend to have oversubscription and reliability problems. I think there’s a realization that while you could compete primarily on price, you wouldn’t bring in enough revenue to build/maintain/upgrade a quality network, and your service would suck. If not immediately, then over time. So the competition tends to be more on service and who has a tower with LOS to a particular customer. Other people’s money (federal, municipal, or outside investors) alter this thinking, but eventually you have to pay the piper. From: Lewis Bergman mailto:lewis.berg...@gmail.com Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 7:03 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? 100% agree with Brian. This seems to be the path for about 99% of the Muni WISPS out there. Keep your eye on it, get to the know the staff. When the pain seems to get to much for them to bear offer to step in. The only thing you will have to deal with is the customers who think you should charge, or give for free, with the same structure a tax funded entity couldn't make work. That won't matter since those socialists can't understand logic there is no use explaining it to them. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 10:06 PM, Brian Webster i...@wirelessmapping.com wrote: My suggestion would be to just wait it out. Let them build it and lose money. Eventually they will realize that they have no idea how to be an ISP, the customers will not deal with slow government response times to complaints, and the government will hate dealing with title II issues and open internet regulations. They will throw their hands up and offer it via bid or something else to a private company to manage/own/run. You might be able to pick it up for far less than it would have cost you to build. I certainly would not try to overbuild them before they get going. The average consumer has already heard about their promised prices, you will be fighting that even though they have not even started building yet. Do a search for the UC2B project in Illinois, it was a municipal/university system built with stimulus funds. They did what they needed to meet grant obligations, then they all argued among the partners about who and how they would run things and failed at that. They finally let a private company take over and expand the system. Thank You, Brian Webster www.wirelessmapping.com www.Broadband-Mapping.com From: Af
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
100% agree with Brian. This seems to be the path for about 99% of the Muni WISPS out there. Keep your eye on it, get to the know the staff. When the pain seems to get to much for them to bear offer to step in. The only thing you will have to deal with is the customers who think you should charge, or give for free, with the same structure a tax funded entity couldn't make work. That won't matter since those socialists can't understand logic there is no use explaining it to them. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 10:06 PM, Brian Webster i...@wirelessmapping.com wrote: My suggestion would be to just wait it out. Let them build it and lose money. Eventually they will realize that they have no idea how to be an ISP, the customers will not deal with slow government response times to complaints, and the government will hate dealing with title II issues and open internet regulations. They will throw their hands up and offer it via bid or something else to a private company to manage/own/run. You might be able to pick it up for far less than it would have cost you to build. I certainly would not try to overbuild them before they get going. The average consumer has already heard about their promised prices, you will be fighting that even though they have not even started building yet. Do a search for the UC2B project in Illinois, it was a municipal/university system built with stimulus funds. They did what they needed to meet grant obligations, then they all argued among the partners about who and how they would run things and failed at that. They finally let a private company take over and expand the system. Thank You, Brian Webster www.wirelessmapping.com www.Broadband-Mapping.com *From:* Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] *On Behalf Of *Carl Peterson *Sent:* Monday, July 06, 2015 8:45 PM *To:* af@afmug.com *Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Assuming you didn't have to recoup build costs, I don't see how it would be hard to run the network at $50 per sub. Bandwidth is dirt cheep at scale and there isn't much to go wrong with a fiber plant. On Jul 6, 2015, at 3:10 PM, Christopher Gray cg...@graytechsoftware.com wrote: About $40M is grant funding from the state for last mile services that is only available to municipalities. The balance of the funding is coming from town borrowing. My town will receive about $1.2M from the grant and will vote in September whether to authorize $2.3M of borrowing that would be paid with property tax. I'm 95% sure this will go through, and the network would be lit in about 3 years, but I can't get their numbers to work out. I cannot see how they can actually provide service and maintain their network and offer a base service of only $50 / month. If that jumps to $100, I could see remaining competitive, though. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Chuck McCown ch...@wbmfg.com wrote: Where is the funding coming from? I would not be comfortable building in an area where I am sure to get over built. *From:* Christopher Gray cg...@graytechsoftware.com *Sent:* Monday, July 06, 2015 11:56 AM *To:* af@afmug.com *Subject:* [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Several of the rural towns in my planned coverage area are looking into municipal fiber (average density about 10 premises per fiber mile, all above ground). They're claiming $50 for 25 Mbps service, $79 for 100 Mbps, and $109 for 1 Gbps. They already have funding authorized in about half of the towns they are targeting... but they'd be about 3 years from providing any service. Is it reasonable or possible to compete with such a thing? Should I ignore any area that plans to fund this, or might it be worth getting a foothold before their system is lit? Thanks - Chris -- Lewis Bergman 325-439-0533 Cell
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
+1 they will try so hard just not to keep it going. Once they go over the tipping point of going out to peoples homes to hook up grandmas laptop or keep their ipad connected. On 7/7/2015 7:03 AM, Lewis Bergman wrote: 100% agree with Brian. This seems to be the path for about 99% of the Muni WISPS out there. Keep your eye on it, get to the know the staff. When the pain seems to get to much for them to bear offer to step in. The only thing you will have to deal with is the customers who think you should charge, or give for free, with the same structure a tax funded entity couldn't make work. That won't matter since those socialists can't understand logic there is no use explaining it to them. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 10:06 PM, Brian Webster i...@wirelessmapping.com mailto:i...@wirelessmapping.com wrote: My suggestion would be to just wait it out. Let them build it and lose money. Eventually they will realize that they have no idea how to be an ISP, the customers will not deal with slow government response times to complaints, and the government will hate dealing with title II issues and open internet regulations. They will throw their hands up and offer it via bid or something else to a private company to manage/own/run. You might be able to pick it up for far less than it would have cost you to build. I certainly would not try to overbuild them before they get going. The average consumer has already heard about their promised prices, you will be fighting that even though they have not even started building yet. Do a search for the UC2B project in Illinois, it was a municipal/university system built with stimulus funds. They did what they needed to meet grant obligations, then they all argued among the partners about who and how they would run things and failed at that. They finally let a private company take over and expand the system. Thank You, Brian Webster www.wirelessmapping.com http://www.wirelessmapping.com www.Broadband-Mapping.com http://www.Broadband-Mapping.com *From:*Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] *On Behalf Of *Carl Peterson *Sent:* Monday, July 06, 2015 8:45 PM *To:* af@afmug.com mailto:af@afmug.com *Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Assuming you didn't have to recoup build costs, I don't see how it would be hard to run the network at $50 per sub. Bandwidth is dirt cheep at scale and there isn't much to go wrong with a fiber plant. On Jul 6, 2015, at 3:10 PM, Christopher Gray cg...@graytechsoftware.com mailto:cg...@graytechsoftware.com wrote: About $40M is grant funding from the state for last mile services that is only available to municipalities. The balance of the funding is coming from town borrowing. My town will receive about $1.2M from the grant and will vote in September whether to authorize $2.3M of borrowing that would be paid with property tax. I'm 95% sure this will go through, and the network would be lit in about 3 years, but I can't get their numbers to work out. I cannot see how they can actually provide service and maintain their network and offer a base service of only $50 / month. If that jumps to $100, I could see remaining competitive, though. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Chuck McCown ch...@wbmfg.com mailto:ch...@wbmfg.com wrote: Where is the funding coming from? I would not be comfortable building in an area where I am sure to get over built. *From:*Christopher Gray mailto:cg...@graytechsoftware.com *Sent:*Monday, July 06, 2015 11:56 AM *To:*af@afmug.com mailto:af@afmug.com *Subject:*[AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Several of the rural towns in my planned coverage area are looking into municipal fiber (average density about 10 premises per fiber mile, all above ground). They're claiming $50 for 25 Mbps service, $79 for 100 Mbps, and $109 for 1 Gbps. They already have funding authorized in about half of the towns they are targeting... but they'd be about 3 years from providing any service. Is it reasonable or possible to compete with such a thing? Should I ignore any area that plans to fund this, or might it be worth getting a foothold before their system is lit? Thanks - Chris -- Lewis Bergman 325-439-0533 Cell --
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
Another stance could be to tell them that they have to open it up for other players to ride their fiber.. Think if you can come in and go, for xyz install, and you supply the bandwidth, you can charge what you want, and deliver xyz bandwidth. Now you are riding their fiber, and deliver to your customers, if you bulid it now, and convert them to fiber when it comes then you are good, they are bearing the cost of the fiber installation (the most expensive part) and you are just paying for transit.. If and when their business model goes kaput, you would be in a great position to buy it for pennies on the dollar as you already have a vested interest in it.Just another thought. Dennis Burgess, CTO, Link Technologies, Inc. den...@linktechs.netmailto:den...@linktechs.net – 314-735-0270 – www.linktechs.nethttp://www.linktechs.net From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Ken Hohhof Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 8:00 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? The common assumption is that Internet prices are greatly inflated due to lack of competition, and if there were more competition, a price war would ensue and prices would drop dramatically. Not sure if this is true, but if so, the likely result would be covering just the operating costs, or even not that if other people’s money is being used to cover the losses. Eventually you end up with infrastructure that has not been properly maintained and upgraded, like has happened with the copper infrastructure. OK, fiber might need less maintenance and upgrades than copper, but I’m sure they would find a way to let it fall apart due to neglect. If nothing else, people seem to keep cutting fiber, accidentally or on purpose. I find it interesting that around us, we typically have 4-5 WISPs fighting over a sparsely populated rural area, not to mention satellite and mobile broadband plus DSL and cable in town. Yet I don’t see a race to the bottom on prices among the WISPs. And the ones that try to price a little lower tend to have oversubscription and reliability problems. I think there’s a realization that while you could compete primarily on price, you wouldn’t bring in enough revenue to build/maintain/upgrade a quality network, and your service would suck. If not immediately, then over time. So the competition tends to be more on service and who has a tower with LOS to a particular customer. Other people’s money (federal, municipal, or outside investors) alter this thinking, but eventually you have to pay the piper. From: Lewis Bergmanmailto:lewis.berg...@gmail.com Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 7:03 AM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? 100% agree with Brian. This seems to be the path for about 99% of the Muni WISPS out there. Keep your eye on it, get to the know the staff. When the pain seems to get to much for them to bear offer to step in. The only thing you will have to deal with is the customers who think you should charge, or give for free, with the same structure a tax funded entity couldn't make work. That won't matter since those socialists can't understand logic there is no use explaining it to them. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 10:06 PM, Brian Webster i...@wirelessmapping.commailto:i...@wirelessmapping.com wrote: My suggestion would be to just wait it out. Let them build it and lose money. Eventually they will realize that they have no idea how to be an ISP, the customers will not deal with slow government response times to complaints, and the government will hate dealing with title II issues and open internet regulations. They will throw their hands up and offer it via bid or something else to a private company to manage/own/run. You might be able to pick it up for far less than it would have cost you to build. I certainly would not try to overbuild them before they get going. The average consumer has already heard about their promised prices, you will be fighting that even though they have not even started building yet. Do a search for the UC2B project in Illinois, it was a municipal/university system built with stimulus funds. They did what they needed to meet grant obligations, then they all argued among the partners about who and how they would run things and failed at that. They finally let a private company take over and expand the system. Thank You, Brian Webster www.wirelessmapping.comhttp://www.wirelessmapping.com www.Broadband-Mapping.comhttp://www.Broadband-Mapping.com From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.commailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Carl Peterson Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 8:45 PM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Assuming you didn't have to recoup build costs, I don't see how it would be hard to run the network at $50 per sub. Bandwidth is dirt cheep at scale and there isn't much to go wrong
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
The common assumption is that Internet prices are greatly inflated due to lack of competition, and if there were more competition, a price war would ensue and prices would drop dramatically. Not sure if this is true, but if so, the likely result would be covering just the operating costs, or even not that if other people’s money is being used to cover the losses. Eventually you end up with infrastructure that has not been properly maintained and upgraded, like has happened with the copper infrastructure. OK, fiber might need less maintenance and upgrades than copper, but I’m sure they would find a way to let it fall apart due to neglect. If nothing else, people seem to keep cutting fiber, accidentally or on purpose. I find it interesting that around us, we typically have 4-5 WISPs fighting over a sparsely populated rural area, not to mention satellite and mobile broadband plus DSL and cable in town. Yet I don’t see a race to the bottom on prices among the WISPs. And the ones that try to price a little lower tend to have oversubscription and reliability problems. I think there’s a realization that while you could compete primarily on price, you wouldn’t bring in enough revenue to build/maintain/upgrade a quality network, and your service would suck. If not immediately, then over time. So the competition tends to be more on service and who has a tower with LOS to a particular customer. Other people’s money (federal, municipal, or outside investors) alter this thinking, but eventually you have to pay the piper. From: Lewis Bergman Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 7:03 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? 100% agree with Brian. This seems to be the path for about 99% of the Muni WISPS out there. Keep your eye on it, get to the know the staff. When the pain seems to get to much for them to bear offer to step in. The only thing you will have to deal with is the customers who think you should charge, or give for free, with the same structure a tax funded entity couldn't make work. That won't matter since those socialists can't understand logic there is no use explaining it to them. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 10:06 PM, Brian Webster i...@wirelessmapping.com wrote: My suggestion would be to just wait it out. Let them build it and lose money. Eventually they will realize that they have no idea how to be an ISP, the customers will not deal with slow government response times to complaints, and the government will hate dealing with title II issues and open internet regulations. They will throw their hands up and offer it via bid or something else to a private company to manage/own/run. You might be able to pick it up for far less than it would have cost you to build. I certainly would not try to overbuild them before they get going. The average consumer has already heard about their promised prices, you will be fighting that even though they have not even started building yet. Do a search for the UC2B project in Illinois, it was a municipal/university system built with stimulus funds. They did what they needed to meet grant obligations, then they all argued among the partners about who and how they would run things and failed at that. They finally let a private company take over and expand the system. Thank You, Brian Webster www.wirelessmapping.com www.Broadband-Mapping.com From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Carl Peterson Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 8:45 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Assuming you didn't have to recoup build costs, I don't see how it would be hard to run the network at $50 per sub. Bandwidth is dirt cheep at scale and there isn't much to go wrong with a fiber plant. On Jul 6, 2015, at 3:10 PM, Christopher Gray cg...@graytechsoftware.com wrote: About $40M is grant funding from the state for last mile services that is only available to municipalities. The balance of the funding is coming from town borrowing. My town will receive about $1.2M from the grant and will vote in September whether to authorize $2.3M of borrowing that would be paid with property tax. I'm 95% sure this will go through, and the network would be lit in about 3 years, but I can't get their numbers to work out. I cannot see how they can actually provide service and maintain their network and offer a base service of only $50 / month. If that jumps to $100, I could see remaining competitive, though. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Chuck McCown ch...@wbmfg.com wrote: Where is the funding coming from? I would not be comfortable building in an area where I am sure to get over built. From: Christopher Gray Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 11:56 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Several of the rural towns in my planned coverage area
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
Check out UTOPIA for a good case study. There are plenty more too. From: Lewis Bergman Sent: Tuesday, July 07, 2015 6:03 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? 100% agree with Brian. This seems to be the path for about 99% of the Muni WISPS out there. Keep your eye on it, get to the know the staff. When the pain seems to get to much for them to bear offer to step in. The only thing you will have to deal with is the customers who think you should charge, or give for free, with the same structure a tax funded entity couldn't make work. That won't matter since those socialists can't understand logic there is no use explaining it to them. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 10:06 PM, Brian Webster i...@wirelessmapping.com wrote: My suggestion would be to just wait it out. Let them build it and lose money. Eventually they will realize that they have no idea how to be an ISP, the customers will not deal with slow government response times to complaints, and the government will hate dealing with title II issues and open internet regulations. They will throw their hands up and offer it via bid or something else to a private company to manage/own/run. You might be able to pick it up for far less than it would have cost you to build. I certainly would not try to overbuild them before they get going. The average consumer has already heard about their promised prices, you will be fighting that even though they have not even started building yet. Do a search for the UC2B project in Illinois, it was a municipal/university system built with stimulus funds. They did what they needed to meet grant obligations, then they all argued among the partners about who and how they would run things and failed at that. They finally let a private company take over and expand the system. Thank You, Brian Webster www.wirelessmapping.com www.Broadband-Mapping.com From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Carl Peterson Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 8:45 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Assuming you didn't have to recoup build costs, I don't see how it would be hard to run the network at $50 per sub. Bandwidth is dirt cheep at scale and there isn't much to go wrong with a fiber plant. On Jul 6, 2015, at 3:10 PM, Christopher Gray cg...@graytechsoftware.com wrote: About $40M is grant funding from the state for last mile services that is only available to municipalities. The balance of the funding is coming from town borrowing. My town will receive about $1.2M from the grant and will vote in September whether to authorize $2.3M of borrowing that would be paid with property tax. I'm 95% sure this will go through, and the network would be lit in about 3 years, but I can't get their numbers to work out. I cannot see how they can actually provide service and maintain their network and offer a base service of only $50 / month. If that jumps to $100, I could see remaining competitive, though. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Chuck McCown ch...@wbmfg.com wrote: Where is the funding coming from? I would not be comfortable building in an area where I am sure to get over built. From: Christopher Gray Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 11:56 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Several of the rural towns in my planned coverage area are looking into municipal fiber (average density about 10 premises per fiber mile, all above ground). They're claiming $50 for 25 Mbps service, $79 for 100 Mbps, and $109 for 1 Gbps. They already have funding authorized in about half of the towns they are targeting... but they'd be about 3 years from providing any service. Is it reasonable or possible to compete with such a thing? Should I ignore any area that plans to fund this, or might it be worth getting a foothold before their system is lit? Thanks - Chris -- Lewis Bergman 325-439-0533 Cell
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
Where is the funding coming from? I would not be comfortable building in an area where I am sure to get over built. From: Christopher Gray Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 11:56 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Several of the rural towns in my planned coverage area are looking into municipal fiber (average density about 10 premises per fiber mile, all above ground). They're claiming $50 for 25 Mbps service, $79 for 100 Mbps, and $109 for 1 Gbps. They already have funding authorized in about half of the towns they are targeting... but they'd be about 3 years from providing any service. Is it reasonable or possible to compete with such a thing? Should I ignore any area that plans to fund this, or might it be worth getting a foothold before their system is lit? Thanks - Chris
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
About $40M is grant funding from the state for last mile services that is only available to municipalities. The balance of the funding is coming from town borrowing. My town will receive about $1.2M from the grant and will vote in September whether to authorize $2.3M of borrowing that would be paid with property tax. I'm 95% sure this will go through, and the network would be lit in about 3 years, but I can't get their numbers to work out. I cannot see how they can actually provide service and maintain their network and offer a base service of only $50 / month. If that jumps to $100, I could see remaining competitive, though. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Chuck McCown ch...@wbmfg.com wrote: Where is the funding coming from? I would not be comfortable building in an area where I am sure to get over built. *From:* Christopher Gray cg...@graytechsoftware.com *Sent:* Monday, July 06, 2015 11:56 AM *To:* af@afmug.com *Subject:* [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Several of the rural towns in my planned coverage area are looking into municipal fiber (average density about 10 premises per fiber mile, all above ground). They're claiming $50 for 25 Mbps service, $79 for 100 Mbps, and $109 for 1 Gbps. They already have funding authorized in about half of the towns they are targeting... but they'd be about 3 years from providing any service. Is it reasonable or possible to compete with such a thing? Should I ignore any area that plans to fund this, or might it be worth getting a foothold before their system is lit? Thanks - Chris
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
I wouldn't go into that area unless you can deploy so that you will not be completely dependent on the locations served by the fiber network (i.e. be able to serve rural areas as well). As Rory stated, the planned network is likely not sustainable - but it could put a strain on your customer count for a while. -Jason On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 2:10 PM, Christopher Gray cg...@graytechsoftware.com wrote: About $40M is grant funding from the state for last mile services that is only available to municipalities. The balance of the funding is coming from town borrowing. My town will receive about $1.2M from the grant and will vote in September whether to authorize $2.3M of borrowing that would be paid with property tax. I'm 95% sure this will go through, and the network would be lit in about 3 years, but I can't get their numbers to work out. I cannot see how they can actually provide service and maintain their network and offer a base service of only $50 / month. If that jumps to $100, I could see remaining competitive, though. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Chuck McCown ch...@wbmfg.com wrote: Where is the funding coming from? I would not be comfortable building in an area where I am sure to get over built. *From:* Christopher Gray cg...@graytechsoftware.com *Sent:* Monday, July 06, 2015 11:56 AM *To:* af@afmug.com *Subject:* [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Several of the rural towns in my planned coverage area are looking into municipal fiber (average density about 10 premises per fiber mile, all above ground). They're claiming $50 for 25 Mbps service, $79 for 100 Mbps, and $109 for 1 Gbps. They already have funding authorized in about half of the towns they are targeting... but they'd be about 3 years from providing any service. Is it reasonable or possible to compete with such a thing? Should I ignore any area that plans to fund this, or might it be worth getting a foothold before their system is lit? Thanks - Chris
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
They can’t. That’s the problem. After it becomes a budget drain for a while, it either gets sold, shut down, or the price goes up which costs more customers. Then there is the assumption they can actually build it out for the price they claim. Most of those projects have financial issues with contractors and don’t meet the numbers which delay them further. Go after them. Rory From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Christopher Gray Sent: Monday, July 6, 2015 12:10 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? About $40M is grant funding from the state for last mile services that is only available to municipalities. The balance of the funding is coming from town borrowing. My town will receive about $1.2M from the grant and will vote in September whether to authorize $2.3M of borrowing that would be paid with property tax. I'm 95% sure this will go through, and the network would be lit in about 3 years, but I can't get their numbers to work out. I cannot see how they can actually provide service and maintain their network and offer a base service of only $50 / month. If that jumps to $100, I could see remaining competitive, though. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Chuck McCown ch...@wbmfg.commailto:ch...@wbmfg.com wrote: Where is the funding coming from? I would not be comfortable building in an area where I am sure to get over built. From: Christopher Graymailto:cg...@graytechsoftware.com Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 11:56 AM To: af@afmug.commailto:af@afmug.com Subject: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Several of the rural towns in my planned coverage area are looking into municipal fiber (average density about 10 premises per fiber mile, all above ground). They're claiming $50 for 25 Mbps service, $79 for 100 Mbps, and $109 for 1 Gbps. They already have funding authorized in about half of the towns they are targeting... but they'd be about 3 years from providing any service. Is it reasonable or possible to compete with such a thing? Should I ignore any area that plans to fund this, or might it be worth getting a foothold before their system is lit? Thanks - Chris
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
It may not be the best area to go into... but it is the area I'm already in. I'm really debating about whether to do further expansion. I suppose I can just be conservative and only expand where I can get sufficient return in the 3 year window. Does anyone have any examples of successful low-cost rural fiber deployments? On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 5:58 PM, Wireless Admin wirel...@htn.net wrote: Remember, this is government. Government is the only thing that can fail miserably and still exist. For them payday still happens on Friday even after such a failure. Retirement with a pension is a given…… Steve B. -- *From:* Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] *On Behalf Of *Christopher Gray *Sent:* Monday, July 06, 2015 3:10 PM *To:* af@afmug.com *Subject:* Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? About $40M is grant funding from the state for last mile services that is only available to municipalities. The balance of the funding is coming from town borrowing. My town will receive about $1.2M from the grant and will vote in September whether to authorize $2.3M of borrowing that would be paid with property tax. I'm 95% sure this will go through, and the network would be lit in about 3 years, but I can't get their numbers to work out. I cannot see how they can actually provide service and maintain their network and offer a base service of only $50 / month. If that jumps to $100, I could see remaining competitive, though. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Chuck McCown ch...@wbmfg.com wrote: Where is the funding coming from? I would not be comfortable building in an area where I am sure to get over built. *From:* Christopher Gray cg...@graytechsoftware.com *Sent:* Monday, July 06, 2015 11:56 AM *To:* af@afmug.com *Subject:* [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Several of the rural towns in my planned coverage area are looking into municipal fiber (average density about 10 premises per fiber mile, all above ground). They're claiming $50 for 25 Mbps service, $79 for 100 Mbps, and $109 for 1 Gbps. They already have funding authorized in about half of the towns they are targeting... but they'd be about 3 years from providing any service. Is it reasonable or possible to compete with such a thing? Should I ignore any area that plans to fund this, or might it be worth getting a foothold before their system is lit? Thanks - Chris
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
Remember, this is government. Government is the only thing that can fail miserably and still exist. For them payday still happens on Friday even after such a failure. Retirement with a pension is a given.. Steve B. _ From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Christopher Gray Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 3:10 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? About $40M is grant funding from the state for last mile services that is only available to municipalities. The balance of the funding is coming from town borrowing. My town will receive about $1.2M from the grant and will vote in September whether to authorize $2.3M of borrowing that would be paid with property tax. I'm 95% sure this will go through, and the network would be lit in about 3 years, but I can't get their numbers to work out. I cannot see how they can actually provide service and maintain their network and offer a base service of only $50 / month. If that jumps to $100, I could see remaining competitive, though. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Chuck McCown ch...@wbmfg.com wrote: Where is the funding coming from? I would not be comfortable building in an area where I am sure to get over built. From: Christopher Gray mailto:cg...@graytechsoftware.com Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 11:56 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Several of the rural towns in my planned coverage area are looking into municipal fiber (average density about 10 premises per fiber mile, all above ground). They're claiming $50 for 25 Mbps service, $79 for 100 Mbps, and $109 for 1 Gbps. They already have funding authorized in about half of the towns they are targeting... but they'd be about 3 years from providing any service. Is it reasonable or possible to compete with such a thing? Should I ignore any area that plans to fund this, or might it be worth getting a foothold before their system is lit? Thanks - Chris
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
Assuming you didn't have to recoup build costs, I don't see how it would be hard to run the network at $50 per sub. Bandwidth is dirt cheep at scale and there isn't much to go wrong with a fiber plant. On Jul 6, 2015, at 3:10 PM, Christopher Gray cg...@graytechsoftware.com wrote: About $40M is grant funding from the state for last mile services that is only available to municipalities. The balance of the funding is coming from town borrowing. My town will receive about $1.2M from the grant and will vote in September whether to authorize $2.3M of borrowing that would be paid with property tax. I'm 95% sure this will go through, and the network would be lit in about 3 years, but I can't get their numbers to work out. I cannot see how they can actually provide service and maintain their network and offer a base service of only $50 / month. If that jumps to $100, I could see remaining competitive, though. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Chuck McCown ch...@wbmfg.com wrote: Where is the funding coming from? I would not be comfortable building in an area where I am sure to get over built. From: Christopher Gray Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 11:56 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Several of the rural towns in my planned coverage area are looking into municipal fiber (average density about 10 premises per fiber mile, all above ground). They're claiming $50 for 25 Mbps service, $79 for 100 Mbps, and $109 for 1 Gbps. They already have funding authorized in about half of the towns they are targeting... but they'd be about 3 years from providing any service. Is it reasonable or possible to compete with such a thing? Should I ignore any area that plans to fund this, or might it be worth getting a foothold before their system is lit? Thanks - Chris
Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber?
My suggestion would be to just wait it out. Let them build it and lose money. Eventually they will realize that they have no idea how to be an ISP, the customers will not deal with slow government response times to complaints, and the government will hate dealing with title II issues and open internet regulations. They will throw their hands up and offer it via bid or something else to a private company to manage/own/run. You might be able to pick it up for far less than it would have cost you to build. I certainly would not try to overbuild them before they get going. The average consumer has already heard about their promised prices, you will be fighting that even though they have not even started building yet. Do a search for the UC2B project in Illinois, it was a municipal/university system built with stimulus funds. They did what they needed to meet grant obligations, then they all argued among the partners about who and how they would run things and failed at that. They finally let a private company take over and expand the system. Thank You, Brian Webster www.wirelessmapping.com www.Broadband-Mapping.com From: Af [mailto:af-boun...@afmug.com] On Behalf Of Carl Peterson Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 8:45 PM To: af@afmug.com Subject: Re: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Assuming you didn't have to recoup build costs, I don't see how it would be hard to run the network at $50 per sub. Bandwidth is dirt cheep at scale and there isn't much to go wrong with a fiber plant. On Jul 6, 2015, at 3:10 PM, Christopher Gray cg...@graytechsoftware.com wrote: About $40M is grant funding from the state for last mile services that is only available to municipalities. The balance of the funding is coming from town borrowing. My town will receive about $1.2M from the grant and will vote in September whether to authorize $2.3M of borrowing that would be paid with property tax. I'm 95% sure this will go through, and the network would be lit in about 3 years, but I can't get their numbers to work out. I cannot see how they can actually provide service and maintain their network and offer a base service of only $50 / month. If that jumps to $100, I could see remaining competitive, though. On Mon, Jul 6, 2015 at 1:58 PM, Chuck McCown ch...@wbmfg.com wrote: Where is the funding coming from? I would not be comfortable building in an area where I am sure to get over built. From: Christopher Gray mailto:cg...@graytechsoftware.com Sent: Monday, July 06, 2015 11:56 AM To: af@afmug.com Subject: [AFMUG] Plan to Compete with Municipal Fiber? Several of the rural towns in my planned coverage area are looking into municipal fiber (average density about 10 premises per fiber mile, all above ground). They're claiming $50 for 25 Mbps service, $79 for 100 Mbps, and $109 for 1 Gbps. They already have funding authorized in about half of the towns they are targeting... but they'd be about 3 years from providing any service. Is it reasonable or possible to compete with such a thing? Should I ignore any area that plans to fund this, or might it be worth getting a foothold before their system is lit? Thanks - Chris
