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Comment by crusso | Hacker News Reader

They even mention that the vendor would pay for all expediting of permitting and such. Wtf is the city actually doing?

How is this even remotely something that a vendor would want to pursue?

It's a turnkey monopoly for only 3-5 billion dollars, the upfront costs are fairly trivial when you account for the fact that this could be a business that will operate into the next century.

Also, they're free to sell telephone and cable television service on top of internet. I think a few companies have been able to grind out a profit on cable TV.

There's another part of the article where this vendor is required to open their network to competitors.

They are required to sell wholesale to companies provided end user products. It seems the intent is to set the wholesale price for profitability.

Gouging end users by controlling their air supply is one business model. The city is preferring a model where the wholesaler makes a profit at the transport layer and competes in a market at the retail layer. Sounds good for the citizens to me and profitable for company.

I find it helps to take the unfamiliarly large numbers and convert them back to a human scale.

3.5 million housing units in LA. If you can average $12/month/household you can service your 10% loan on $5B.

Seems doable to me.

If it's doable then why hasn't any ISP done it already? It sounds like the RFP adds costs (open access) but no benefits to the existing situation in LA.

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