[drfritznunkie]

If that were only the case... My parents live in one of these rural Western Massachusetts towns building their own fiber networks, Leverett, Ma. The town, is which directly north of Amherst and the Five College, had ZERO available landbased broadband options.

So no, they didn't spend huge amounts of money just to avoid the monopolist ISPs as there are none servicing the area. And this is pretty typical of the towns participating, it's not that they have crappy service, it's that they have NO service.

Also, having fiber has other ramifications. Try selling a house these days without available broadband and tell me how far you get or how much you have to drop the price. You'll get nowhere. My parents went through this several years ago when they were planning on moving, and quite literally had people simply turn around walk out when they found out that broadband was unavailable at the house.

Verizon is basically letting the copper in the area rot... it wasn't until 97? or 98? that my parents got touch tone dialing, and after every storm the line quality got worse and worse. At least now, for better or worse, the town and its residents are on the hook for the quality of service.

And I think everyone should have to dogfood their own products over a satellite connection. You'd be surprised how much everything sucks or breaks when you've got huge latency and basically modem++ speeds.

[ensignavenger]

Exactly- I am on satellite Internet, and it is amazing how many sites are difficult to use or break entirely (even Android apps that won't work at all) because of the latency. There was a study about a year ago that found that having Fiber would add 5-10k or more on to the value of a home.