I have a difficult time believing that Ting will decide to come here. Some of the reasons:
The pricing is very interesting. Right now I pay about $60/month for 80 mbps downloads and 5-6 mbps uploads. The service has been very reliable. So it sounds good to have the possibility of getting gigabit speeds for only another $30/month. The other side of this is that the $60/month is about twice what I would pay for the speed I get elsewhere so it’s not clear that the biggest contribution Ting might make is to lower the monopolistic rates Comcast and Qwest get away with. More important is that I question how many households in Santa Fe really need gigabit speeds. FRIAMers are not representative of the SF population and even among us, how many of us need that speed.. The second issue is where the service would be available. At their range of costs per drop, they would be restricted to a small radius in the center of the city. I live a couple of miles up Hyde Park Road near the Santa Fe Institute. We have all underground utilities so I can’t see any way Ting will ever get up here. The $9 vote even if all 100 or so of my neighbors did it seems totally irrelevant. But my largest problem by far is issue of cherry picking and providing service in only select areas which for residential customers means where the rich people live. That leaves out most of the residents who are poor and live on the south side of the city. As I understand it, Ting would not be required to provide service to the schools, most of which are on the south side. I suppose one could take the position that as a private company Ting should be able to decide who it wants to attract as customers. On the other hands, then what is a “public” utility? This was a major issue when I was involved with the city trying to stop and then fix their 2010 telcom franchise ordinance. One interesting side note to that sad effort is that Qwest tried to block the franchise ordinance which would have allowed cherry picking arguing that they (Qwest) had to provide service for everyone and it would be unfair competition to allow other telcoms to pick their customers. This issue was part of the reasons Qwest sued the city over the ordinance. Santa Fe has an over 20 year history of making disastrous decisions on telcom that prevented putting in the infrastructure that would have created an environment where companies like Ting could come here and provide premium service while all residents would be guaranteed a decent affordable level of service. At this point I tend to agree with what I see as Sean’s view that progress will be incremental. Sad situation for most of the residents of Santa Fe, especially the school kids. I encourage any of you that are interested in this issue to get on the 1st mile list serve (http://www.1st-mile.org/ <http://www.1st-mile.org/>). There’s lots of information there about what is going on here and in other communities by people who have many years of experience working on these issues. Ed _______________________ Ed Angel Founding Director, Art, Research, Technology and Science Laboratory (ARTS Lab) Professor Emeritus of Computer Science, University of New Mexico 1017 Sierra Pinon Santa Fe, NM 87501 505-984-0136 (home) an...@cs.unm.edu <mailto:an...@cs.unm.edu> 505-453-4944 (cell) http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel <http://www.cs.unm.edu/~angel> > On Mar 5, 2016, at 11:26 AM, Nick Thompson <nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote: > > Dear Friammers, particularly those in Santa Fe, > > I have been rummaging around on the Ting Website trying to figure out how > this thing could possibly work. Fibre? Really? > > https://ting.com/blog/internet/charlottesville/ > <https://ting.com/blog/internet/charlottesville/> > > Look at the second item in the blog. Apparently they have an interesting > “foot-in-the-door” strategy, which they are using in Charlottesvill, VA. > They ask you to kick in $9 dollars to “vote” for your neighborhood. > > Also, at the city level, one can express interest. See > https://ting.com/internet/townvote <https://ting.com/internet/townvote> > > Nick > > > > > ============================================================ > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College > to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > <http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com>
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