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September 06, 2007

Fiber To The Home Roundup

First off, read Danna's excellent comment (thanks Danna!). Onwards:

There was an excellent public forum held today by the EPB with regards to their new Fiber to the Home product and the upcoming vote by the Chattanooga City Council on whether or not to grant approval to move forward with their plan.

Praise for the program was near-universal: Marti Rutherford phoned in her support from her "residence"; Ward Crutchfield said he'd give it the thumbs up for $20, a six-pack of malt liquor, and the "Collected Filmography of Missy O'Shea" on DVD; and Robert T. Nash was particularly excited about his porn collection becoming like "an Adult Library of Congress".

All joking aside: I think the plan is fantastic. Broadband internet access will inevitably become a utility, and I think the strategic economic advantage that fiber-to-every-doorstep provides makes it a worthwhile investment, and I'm glad that the EPB is on top of this. It takes vision, and the EPB should be commended.

A few "curmudgeon-y" concerns (and I was told by the EPB spokesperson that "none of these are a problem as far as I know at this time"):

1. Privacy. The EPB has done a great job of drawing clear legal distinctions between The City of Chattanooga and the EPB. This absolutely needs to be there with broadband internet access, and the City should be given no access to any customer data without a warrant.

2. Arbitrary and/or non-public limits on the amount of transfer (the amount of data in total you're allowed to send/receive in a given time period). Comcast is notorious for their private transfer caps for which they'll simply cancel your account for exceeding. With fiber especially, the EPB should have clearly stated transfer limits (if they have them).

3. Data-type-specific bandwidth throttling. Again, Comcast is notorious for doing this. If the EPB is going to limit certain types of traffic, it needs to state this clearly and it needs to provide options to not have that traffic limited.

4. Net Neutrality. If I start having to pay extra for people to access my blog in a timely fashion and for broadband access to my site at home, I'm going to be very upset. This amounts to a double-tax imo, and the EPB should avoid doing this.

I hope the EPB will take the time to address these issues, even if they're a bit on the technical side of things. I trust they will, as they've done a ridiculously fantastic job of communicating with the public thus far.