On Thursday 27 September 2007, Kyle Waters wrote: > I think he was just comparing it to UTOPIA. Spanish Fork was being used > as an example(by senator stephenson) of why the state should ban all > cities from bonding for telecommunications infrastructure. I need > counter arguments :).
Counter arguments? When I lived there it was fantastic. Everyone I know who lives there still think it's very good. Perhaps he should talk to the guy in SF that's in charge of the project. When I spoke with him years ago, he explained that the entire project stayed in the black throughout the entire deployment process--which only took a few years to cover the entire city. Talk about well managed financially and technically. Compared to commercial offerings (qwest DSL or Comcast/AT&T) they were better all around: - Qwest couldn't even do DSL to my home because their field office was already multiplexing. - They provide a better infrastructure than Comcast--much lower number of amplifiers per node (I think it was six-fold--a max of one amplifier per node as opposed to Comcast's six) - They provided (when I was there) higher speeds (3Mbit as opposed to 1.5, and since then if I am not mistaken they have doubled it, at no extra charge) - They provided excellent customer service--try getting any decent customer service from Comcast. Examples: Me: "Can I get a static IP" SF: "How many do you want?" Me: "I'm having connection troubles" SF: "We'll be there in 15-30 minutes." Later that day, SF: "we had a port go flaky, it'll be fixed by morning." Compare to Comcast (when I was in California, so maybe it's not fair): Me: "I'm having connection troubles" Comcast, after waiting on hold for 30 minutes: "reboot your modem, sir" Comcast, after reboot does nothing: "I'm sorry sir, I can't help you. Let me schedule for a tech to come out sometime this week..." Maybe it's not for every city government, but IMO Spanish Fork really got it right on this one. Nick /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
