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I am a volunteer, officer and board member in a local non-profit in Portland specializing in broadband issues and activities, and I can tell you that many parts of Portland are underserved.  One of our member-volunteers moved a few miles (to the heart of NE Portland) and found that he could not get DSL service.

Last-mile service, no matter where you are, urban or rural, Oregon or another state, is not working to the benefit of the users. Regulation isn't working. Control of the last mile should be in some kind of public ownership, like our streets, water and sewer services are.  You don't have Walmart or Chrysler owning the streets, controlling where you can shop.  Why should a private for-profit company own your communications?

The technology is here now (it is called Fiber Optics), it has massive capacity compared to what is currently deployed.  If people cooperate, it is not that expensive to install. And if we can avoid the rent-seeking behavior of a private company, it can serve the interests of all the citizens.

I am in favor of users building, operating and paying for their own networks, for their own benefit, in common to the degree necessary.  If grants or loans can get those efforts off the ground, I'm in favor of those as well.

Ask for it by name: Publicly-Owned Fiber-to-the-Premises network.

I would welcome the chance to work on rural networks.  Please contact us at the Personal Telco Project and maybe we can help:  info@personaltelco.net

posted 4 years, 2 months ago
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rj_oregon writes: [quote][i]Could a few years of technology development bring WiMax up to compete with Fiber?[/i][/quote] WiMax on a large scale has not to my knowledge been demonstrated yet. Any wireless technology has scaling problems, as more and more people try to use the same medium. Having spent the last several years working with wifi technology, I can say that wireless teaches you a new appreciation for wires (or fiber). Wireless communications have their place, primarily in providing mobility, but for capacity I don't think you are going to beat fiber for the foreseeable future (where "foreseeable" in this case is a long, long time).

-- Russell Senior, Secretary, Personal Telco Project, a 501(c)(3) non-profit

posted 5 years, 1 month ago
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tpohara writes: [quote][i]I understand your points. What I would submit is that if all the public owns is the "last mile", then you are increasing the likelihood of poor service from the pipe owner, not improving it.[/i][/quote]
Can you imagine poorer service than you get from Comcast and Qwest? Honestly?
[quote][i]But lets examine the roads analogy anyway, because there is still a good counterpoint that I feel you might have missed: their condition. How are the roads in Portland?[/i][/quote]

My experience with streets in Portland is quite positive. I drive all over and have excellent luck going to/from anywhere I want to go.
[quote][i]Now I'm sure that Portland's Information Technology department would welcome the chance to hire enough people to support your citizens when there are problems, but can you honestly tell me that you trust the local government to not be at least as bad about addressing problems?[/i][/quote]
"Your citizens?" Omg, you are criticizing Portland and you don't even live here? Short answer is, yes, I trust them more than I trust Comcast and Qwest, for the reasons I described. A slightly longer answer is that no one has suggested that the City itself would necessarily operate the network, though that is possible.

I recently had an experience with the water bureau that was replacing (scheduled maintenance, not due to failure) a water line on my street. The crew demonstrated outstanding competence. They did a beautiful job and used components that should last a hundred years, and left behind a tidy pavement repair. If that is any indication of how public employees would operate a fiber network then absolutely, I would want them doing it.

-- Russell Senior, Secretary, Personal Telco Project, a 501(c)(3) non-profit

posted 5 years, 1 month ago
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There is public ownership of roads. There is public ownership of electrical transmission lines. There is public ownership of air and water transport medium (river channels and air routes). What the publically-owned FTTP project proposes is public ownership of the so-called "last-mile" medium. You'd still buy Internet bandwidth from a private provider, but you'd have a 100Mbit or faster connection to *them* and you can pick who you use.

You are right that it would be a large capital investment, but ultimately *someone* is going to make that investment. When they do, they will control the terms of service on that medium. The only real way to guarantee that the end users will have a choice of who they use on that network is to have that medium owned publically.

Another issue is that the current private network providers have a conflict of interest regarding high speed bandwidth. Private network providers hurt their own interests by allowing people to get communications services (like video or telephone services) from competitors. For example Comcast has an interest in people paying them $100/month for cable service. People might want to download specific programs from someone else and *not* buy television service from Comcast. Very high-speed Internet connections compete with them. The same thing applies to telephone companies like Qwest and voice telephone service. As long as this conflict exists, the incumbent carriers will be dragging their feet rolling out faster service.

-- Russell Senior, Secretary, Personal Telco Project, a 501(c)(3) non-profit

posted 5 years, 1 month ago
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I am an officer and volunteer with the local educational non-profit, the Personal Telco Project. We have been active in the Portland area helping people share their internet connections using wifi technology since 2000.

I have long advocated public ownership of communications infrastructure, and personally very much support the idea of a publically-owned fiber-to-the-premises (FTTP) network. I like the idea of having the freedom to purchase private services (i.e. upstream bandwidth to the Internet) over a public network, much like we all use public streets to go to private stores. Verizon has been surrounding Portland with a private fiber-to-the-home network, but with that kind of network Verizon owns the customer. You are not free to purchase network services of your own choice over their infrastructure, but only those they choose for you. If you want internet service, you get it from them on their terms. No shopping around is allowed. That is the wrong model. The same model applies to Comcast, and as a consequence, Personal Telco nodes can't use Comcast residential service. The Personal Telco Project would be impossible if those rules applied to DSL.

Numerous countries (notably South Korea, Japan and elsewhere) provide much higher speeds for substantially less money than Americans are paying for bandwidth now. We shouldn't allow private providers to limit us in this way.

The $500 million tossed around sounds like a lot of money, and it is, but barring some disaster it would ultimately all be paid by rate payers, subscribers to the network, not by taxpayers. Likely, some portion of that amount would have to be guaranteed by the taxpayer to reduce risk for bond purchasers, so it ought not be taken lightly. Still, the idea is an excellent one and we should be working hard to figure out a way to make it work.

We all accept that owning our own home is more economical than perpetual rent payments. The same logic applies to a durable FTTP network.

-- Russell Senior, Secretary, Personal Telco Project, a 501(c)(3) non-profit

posted 5 years, 1 month ago
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