Metauser

Net Neutrality and the Last Mile

July 3, 2006 Posted by mitch | internet, technology, thoughts | 0 Comments

For those that don't know, the "Last Mile" refers to the connection from the end user(consumer's residence) to their ISP's backbone. This is also the portion that the Net Neutrality debate is talking about. There was recently an article in the column I, Cringely on pbs.org, talking about a "solution" to this whole debate. A thought I believe I've mentioned previously on one of my rants. Essentually the article is calling for a community owned Fiber To The Home (FTTH) network, paid for by the home owners in the community. While I personally agree with this, this also would be impracticle in more urban areas, where better wireless access would be much easier and cheaper. As I've said before I would love to have UTOPIA in my house. It simply is a FTTH infastructure built and backed by the City. Its operated by a non-profit organization, and they allow anyone to provide services over it. However, since the city I bought my house in, did not support UTOPIA when they were looking for cities sign up. I'm not sure when the next time will be that they can join, and if its a long way away, I'm going to look at what it would take to just get the community I live in to join up with UTOPIA, since I never thought that just a community could before. Which also reminds me... I need to look up the transcripts from any and all meetings the city counsil had with regard to UTOPIA.. So I know who not to vote for come elections.

I support UTOPIA just as I support the city maintaining city roads. The city controlling the fiber infastructure is the best solution because that puts the city council immediately in control of the "last mile" of their infastructure, and could allow the citizens to vote to keep it current and working. Also allowing as many providers as they feel they need to keep up competition. This situation also provides exactly what the anti-net neutrality people want to do, let the market figure it out itself without legislation. However, this still doesn't account for the credits and such that the Telco's were given to "upgrade" the nations infastructure. And maybe we should make them help pay the cities to pay for this community owned FTTH.