Heh. We were the first US city to do it (Chattanooga), and are the best. ;)
I led the team that worked on a bunch of software that supported the effort (behind the scenes and consumer-facing), and am glad to see other cities following—hopefully others will also copy EPB’s commitment to net neutrality and no caps. We’ve long had the same price (a couple bucks under $70) for the gig. Lowest offering here is symmetric 300meg currently. We even do 10gig to the home now.
Does this scale to other metro areas, if other initiatives could be funded and started? If so, why isn't it happening in those other metros? If not, what makes the Twin Cities special?
It went relatively slowly and started in sections of the city with the right customer demographics. The local government which is a big part of the equation seems to be generally a little more reasonable and less corrupt than is average.
I am speculating it is capital intensive and not enormously profitable, and it is slow.
> It went relatively slowly and started in sections of the city with the right customer demographics. The local government which is a big part of the equation seems to be generally a little more reasonable and less corrupt than is average.
That is also how Stockholm built out its fiber network. And, by the way, it is illegal in almost every city, because it would result in wealthier neighborhoods getting fiber first. That is the reason, for example, why Baltimore doesn’t have FiOS whole almost the whole rest of Maryland does.
> That is also how Stockholm built out its fiber network.
Stokab also had various mandates to connect or cooperate with schools, government, student housing, public(ly owned) housing and other entities. You would often get fiber in the equivalent "the projects" before someone in an affluent co-op. Without this I am not sure how well the approach would have worked.
Connecting a few government-owned buildings is a far cry from requirements in the US, where typically every area above a very low population threshold must be connected.
I wasn't a few government-owned building so much as 25% of the housing stock, around a hundred thousand apartments, which were actually owned by the city at the time. (And that is just the publicly owned housing). As far as I know it wasn't subsidized as such, but paid for by profit from rents and rent increases (these are essentially rent controlled apartments).
https://fiber.usinternet.com/
They lay their own fiber terminating at your home and have been steadily covering the metro area.