Traverse City, MI braves the wrath of telcoms lobbyists, pushes ahead with municipal fiber network

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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/06/17/charter-sucks-mittens.html

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I’m very glad to hear this, and hope my city will be next in creating a municipal fiber network. Please, please, please scrape off the lousy service we all have to suffer under!

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Also keep in mind that Traverse City is a tourist town, this municipal network idea could spread across the state. Wouldn’t that be wonderful!

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They don’t seem so worried about the city being on the hook for insufficient subscribers to water and power. Maybe that is because we should be treating internet like a public utility. Private industry has failed sufficiently fill the need so it is time for municipal governments to step in.

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Hasan Minhaj’s Netflix show, “Patriot Act” did a great episode on this, yesterday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xw87-zP2VNA

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$3.5 million divided by 2200 is $1591. Amortized over 5 years with 5% interest that’s $27/month.

Yeah, they’re going to have a hard time selling that.

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Good for the Cherryland. Hopefully they can get some kind of connectivity in the nearby rural areas that don’t have to rely on a wireless mesh or the awful satellite service.

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It’s not that I’m for municipal fiber, it’s that the commercial offerings are terrible.

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Especially encouraging because MI is one of the states that has erected barriers to municipal broadband (without outright prohibiting it).

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Keep in mind that is just CapEx. Also your calculation assumes a 100% take rate, which wont happen. OpEx (monthly cost for their broadband, maintenance, etc) is on top of the loan payment. Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) is probably going to be under $75 given there is probably some competition.

Given they are a municipality they can probably get a longer loan duration and lower interest rate though. Honestly you’d need it to make this work.

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My point was that the capital amortization is not going to price them out of the market so I deliberately highballed the rate and lowballed the time frame.

No question but that 2200 customers is too low to be a good scale, but the quoted step up to the whole town is a lot lower than the initial $/household.

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