Jim Henry wrote: > Just curious, does anyone know if in these countries where > broadband is cheaper and more prevalent than the U.S., is it > really cheaper or is it subsidized by the government? I honestly > don't know the answer. I would like it to be cheaper here also > and more widespread, but not at the expense of free enterprise. > If it takes socialism to accomplish this, I don't want it.
I heard that socialism has gone away now that "cialis" is caught in the spam filters. Seriously, though, I have yet to see street lights operated on a pay-per-view commercial basis. Somebody paid once-and-for-all to pave and light the streets, and it could be tax money. Does that make it socialism? In Sweden I pay 320 SEK/mo ($40) for 10 Mbit/s. This is possible because I live in a coop apartment building, where every apartment is wired by an ISP, and the in-house switched LAN is connected to a municipal fiber in the basement. This ISP (www.bredband.com) was founded with venture capital during the dotcom boom and got a contract with the largest national association of apartment coops (www.hsb.se). Through this contract, apartment coops that are members have a very streamlined procedure for signing up to get their apartment buildings wired. This spring, the ISP is introducing a reduced price 2 Mbit/s offering (still over CAT-5 twisted pair ethernet, so I guess it is really 10 Mbit/s but bandwidth limited) and at the same time my line is upgraded to 100 Mbit/s at unchanged price. As far as I know, there is no direct government subsidy, but a lot of factors work together: * Compared to the U.S., more people here live in apartments. People living in private homes cannot get broadband as cheap, simply because wiring a dozen apartments in one building is a lot cheaper than wiring a dozen private homes. * Coops is a very common form of apartment ownership in Sweden since the 1930s, and the national associations work pretty well. The nationwide template contract made it easier for a lot of small coops to sign up, who don't have the technical insights to do their own negotiations. * The dotcom boom provided the venture capital for this broadband-only ISP. You could call this "subsidized by stupid investors". I guess the stock price has fallen, but at least this company is still around. * The old national telco is not involved at all in this solution. * The ISP rents dark fiber from the municipal utility between my building and the ISP's facility in this town. The municipal water, sewer, electricity, and heating utility is operated as a whole-owned corporation (www.tekniskaverken.se) and I don't know exactly how they have financed the build-out of the municipal fiber network. I guess most of these conditions could also apply to New York City, more than to rural or suburban America. -- Lars Aronsson ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Aronsson Datateknik - http://aronsson.se -- NYCwireless - http://www.nycwireless.net/ Un/Subscribe: http://lists.nycwireless.net/mailman/listinfo/nycwireless/ Archives: http://lists.nycwireless.net/pipermail/nycwireless/
