Comment by JunkDNA | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JunkDNA | Hacker News Reader

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I wonder if there is a way to adopt something analogous to a franchise model here. It strikes me that only the communities that are really, really engaged are going to be able to pull this off (which is true of most public works projects). That being said, it would be great to not have every small town and borough have to figure everything out for themselves. A franchise operator for a fast food restaurant doesn't have to worry about where to buy burgers, the brand of deep fryers, or even the optimal amount of time to fry the tater tots. If there was a full on recipe for doing this that is proven to work, a small number of citizens might be able to make it happen even in places where the local government is ambivalent. A proper setup would include some national branding to help with PR (I.e. Every article in every newspaper about community broadband would use the same name for it). It would include marketing materials for the public as well as briefing packs for local officials, legal briefs for attorneys, etc... On the technical side it would recommend specific hardware, suppliers, and designs.

The advantage to such an approach would be to harness economy of scale at a national level, but allow local communities to drive the process and own the network.

I'm not sure how you would structure it to avoid creating another monopoly in the parent company of the franchises. But perhaps a nonprofit or a corporation 100% owned by the community franchisees would work.

I am involved in a local community fiber project- DadeCountyFiber.org and I have been thinking along similar lines. I think an association or coop model may work best. I am actually considering a proposal to organize a Fraternal Society that would operate with local chapters controlling the local networks, and leveraging the resources of each other. The Fraternal Society would provide education and social activities to members, and encourage the open development and collaboration of the network.

Any thoughts or ideas are always welcome!

The main need for community fiber is because we've proven that private companies cannot be trusted with a broadband monopoly/duopoly and yet to allow more companies to run lines would create chaos. For that reason, the community needs to control the last mile. But the community doesn't need to be the ISP. Without the barrier to entry that is running lines to residential customers, many smaller ISPs will be able to compete with each other and you'll see the market actually work the way that it's supposed to.

So run the fiber to people's houses and charge ISPs a fixed fee per customer that covers the cost to maintain the network and, potentially, recovers a bit of the initial expense of the network. But then let customers choose their ISP based on speed and features. The worst thing you can do is replace the crap fully-private system we have now with a slightly-less crappy government monopoly.

I tend to like the open access model you are proposing. I am very inclined to operate the network on an open access model. However, depending on our funding sources, we may be forced to be an ISP and phone company to get the funding. Right now we are exploring the FCC's Rural Broadband Experiments. In theory, we could have a partner service provider handle the phone service requirement, but it may not be as easy to do in practice. Thanks for commenting. Even if we do operate our own ISP/Phone Company, it is strongly likely the network will be open access.

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