I've seen a few instances of that over the years. I know and helped train a few that worked it out right and are happy with it.
Here is what I've seen go bad in the past with this model (just for fun because I like to rant about it): The reasoning is something like, "Hey, we are budgeting for fiber for utility monitoring and cameras or whatever, so let's be an ISP and make more money off the infrastructure investment!" And then the utility people create some math that doesn't work or bring in some "professional" to do the math and it still doesn't work. They bond everyone in the city to pay for it according to the false math and then a year or two later realize they could only afford to build out a portion of the city. And that the utility people have no clue how to build and/or run a MAN let alone a full-fledged customer facing ISP. Then citizens wake up and realize they aren't getting what they bonded for, get super angry and start firing people that don't deserve to get fired. The employees were just excited, sold a pile of lies and bad math, and not trained to handle their jobs that become three times more hours a week. One local case was Provo City electrical/utility division installed a lot of fiber within the city and then tried a hybrid model of having other companies do the front facing customer ISP. As we all know, that didn't work for them and was purchased by Google. Who then spent about 3-10x what most of us would spend to do the same plant work, lol! I sat in several meetings with employees at Provo City when it was in development and as an ISP partner in their initial stages. It was a three ring circus I tell you. I purchased the ISP for other reasons, but quickly divested myself of anything to do with Provo and their failing network at the time. Best thing I could have done it was a losing prospect. Now days things can be done much cheaper and smarter and tools and ONT/equipment are much better and easier to work with. But plant work is still expensive and hiring it out is still way expensive, so having realistic math and models is key and sort of hard to come by. -----Original Message----- From: AF <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Matt Hoppes Sent: Friday, March 1, 2019 9:53 AM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <[email protected]> Subject: [AFMUG] Fiber - Rural Electric Co-Ops Didn't someone here, a few days ago, mention that some Electric Co-Ops had previously built FTTH and then sold it off/shut it down because it ended up being more than they wanted to be involved in? Or something along those lines? -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list [email protected] http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
