Comments on: Future Fibre: wireless.farm

By: J Robinson

J Robinson — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 02:45:59 +0000

With respect to this posting, Guelph-Eramosa is not the first community in Canada to give up waiting for government and incumbent operator resources to build out reliable Internet networks in their areas. The first in Canada was Blackfalds, Alberta. While it is considered a small bedroom community to Red Deer, the community wanted to attract more business. By building out their own fiber network, they did just that. Not only have new businesses setup up shop, the overall population has increased partly because of new business employees that moved into the area and partly because those in central Alberta wanting reliable high speed Internet chose to move there to get it. Another community that has built out a co-op ISP is Winkler, MB. They are located in the far south of the province and were also being left out of the real Internet world. They now have one of the fastest and cost-effective local networks outside of the most prestige communities inside of large Canadian metropolitan zones. Residents of Winkler have access to 1Mb/s speeds in addition to VOIP telephone and IPTV (Internet television). An acqaintence of mine lives there and told me he pays less than $100 for all of this including 1Mb/s Internet. More communities across Canada are seeing the writing on the wall that the large companies are taking money from the Canadian taxpayer for rural Internet access but not directing much of it to these rural build outs. I give credit to the residents of Eramosa that they are tired of waiting and broken promises and are going at it on their own. The results as I predicted years ago: Much lower build out costs and much faster deployment. If anyone wants cost effective and fast Internet, the future is in residing in small rural communities that own their own systems.

By: J Robinson

J Robinson — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 02:34:30 +0000

In reply to Russ Nelson. Although I have not read the piece on turnpikes and tollroads, I do know that few people understand the real motivation for this infrastructure being built in America. It was not to support commerce. After WW2, and heading into the Cold War, the US Government realized they had no effective means of deploying large numbers of troops and equipment across the country to protect the larger urban areas. As such, billions of dollars were invested to create the hundreds of turnpikes for military purposes. If you study maps carefully you will see that there is a series of turnpikes that run north-south and another that run east-west. This was designed with purpose to maximize troop movements to critical areas of the country. If war were to break out again and American urban zones were at high risk, the turnpikes would be closed to the public and be used exclusively by military and government vehicles.

By: Stu

Stu — Wed, 08 Jan 2020 01:01:08 +0000

In reply to Russ Nelson. Great idea. I wonder what Phillip thinks?

By: Russ Nelson

Russ Nelson — Mon, 23 Dec 2019 13:26:50 +0000

http://eh.net/encyclopedia/turnpikes-and-toll-roads-in-nineteenth-century-america/

“The turnpike experience of nineteenth-century America suggests that the stock/dividend company can also be a fruitful, efficient, and socially beneficial way to make losses and go on making losses. The success of turnpikes suggests that our modern sensibility of dividing enterprises between profit and non-profit – a distinction embedded in modern tax laws and regulations – unnecessarily impoverishes the imagination of economists and other policy makers. Without such strict legal and institutional bifurcation, our own modern society might better recognize the esteem in trade and the trade in esteem.”

What if you built out fiber to a community who purchased shares in an LLC, with the understanding that 1) if they didn’t get enough subscriptions, you wouldn’t build, and 2) that you would pay dividends if there were corresponding profits above all costs as a result? The idea being that the community members who REALLY needed fiber would be the ones to bear the brunt of the cost, and that wireless.farm would basically be an operating company for this LLC. If the company didn’t make money and pay dividends, oh well, people had their fiber.

Of course, the government is probably the water in the oil and the sand in the gears for this plan.