Here’s an idea.
Part of the purpose of municipal networks is to aggregate demand and overcome a co-ordination problem. Since most communications are local, and to have value a network needs to connect you to someone, the natural unit of purchase would seem to be a “neighbourhood”. This could be anything from 100 to 100,000 people, I guess.
However, the big ‘ol telco methodology is to dole out small bits of connectivity to top-payers one-by-one with massive marketing effort, and slowly drop the price to gather up a mass market. Yes, you want to convert a large proportion of the homes you pass into subscribers. But that doesn’t mean you want to pass a large proportion of homes. Furthermore, those homes you do pass may want to communicate with people who aren’t in the affluent areas. Why get a videophone if your student kids live in a cheap part of town?
I firmly believe that the route to future success in telecom is via innovate financing and ownership models. So here’s one.
You may have heard of PledgeBank. It allows people to co-ordinate on a promise where you’re only willing to proceed if enough other people agree not to free-ride. This is being used, for example, to co-ordinate refusal to acquire ID cards in the UK. (Hmmm - how long until the site is closed down for supporting incitement to break the law…)
You can pass all the anti-municipal broadband bills you like, but there’s nothing stopping a private entity like iTown Communications coming along and conducting a PledgeBank-like exercise. They can even “red line”, and get people in poorer areas to pledge lower amounts than in affluent ones.
There are issues, of course. You need to make these pledges binding. It may be hard to collect on those who default on their pledge. Perhaps you need to get people to put some money where their mouth is up front, into an escrow account.
But ultimately, it can be done.
PS For non-British readers, the title refers to this hollow pledge.
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