True, but that still does not mean you can attribute 100% of the federal smart meter grant to the fiber buildout. Even if you chose to ignore all the other investments made into the smart metering infrastructure, fiber routes built to service the electric grid (such as routes to substations) cannot be used for providing Internet service. As such it is not reasonable to attribute 100% of the $111.5M grant to EPB fiber's network.
> Sure, with the newer 83,000 subscribers figue, it's more like $4,000 rather than $5,000.
This again assumes 100% of the federal grant being used to subsidize EPB fiber. I don't think that argument has any merit, as both the Feds and the incumbents would have words if that were the case.
> The FiOS uptake rate is under 40% (and during the first decade was under 1/3).
Yes, but we aren't talking about Verizon here. EPB's take rate is somewhere between 50% and 66% (83k subs out of 120k households, but part of those 83k are businesses), so my point still stands that costs are equivalent, given the actual take rate.
> It says that's the "Average cost of hooking up new fiber optic customer for EPB." I don't take that to be the cost including construction of the network in the first place.
No, but it includes the new construction needed to hook up customers in new developments.
> Is that for debt service? That could be for shared O&M too.
"$10 million: Fiber optic system access fees and rents paid to electric system in 2014"
> Television packages are also a major revenue source. In computing the operating margin, if you exclude TV from costs you also need to exclude TV from revenues.
Yes, but TV services are usually a loss leader and a break even proposition at best. Margins would probably improve by dropping TV.