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| Wolf in Sheeps Clothing Folks should really do some fact checking about this project before they extoll its virtues. It was the brain child of Tim Nulty from National Public Broadband. You may remember him as the head of the failed Burlington Telecom project in Vermont. Burlington remains in a huge financial mess as a result.
Lake County is home to about 11,000 people and has about 5,200 households. More than half of these households already can get broadband service from the local phone and cable company. Is it 100 Meg service, no, but it is not dial up either. Nulty and his team knew that Lake County did not qualify for stimulus funding on its own, so they lumped a bunch of St. Louis County homes into their application in order to quality.
The key here is that St. Louis County and its citizens don't have any responsibility when it comes to paying back the RUS loan.
So Lake County and its 11,000 citizens and 5,200 household are completely on the hook for $56.5 loan and another $3.5 million in general fund expenditures for this project. That is roughly $5,500 per person or $11,500 per household. They are spending way too much money on this project and setting the Lake County taxpayers up for financial disaster.
To put this in perspective, I believe the Burlington Telecom project was supposed to cost $34 million. They ended up spending an additional $17 million from the general fund to keep it going. Burlington has nearly 4 times as many people and more than 3 times as many households as Lake County. Burlington spends less money and has more people and it failed miserably. How do you think Lake County will end up? | |
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| said by Rolla:Folks should really do some fact checking about this project before they extoll its virtues. It was the brain child of Tim Nulty from National Public Broadband. You may remember him as the head of the failed Burlington Telecom project in Vermont. Burlington remains in a huge financial mess as a result.
Lake County is home to about 11,000 people and has about 5,200 households. More than half of these households already can get broadband service from the local phone and cable company. Is it 100 Meg service, no, but it is not dial up either. Nulty and his team knew that Lake County did not qualify for stimulus funding on its own, so they lumped a bunch of St. Louis County homes into their application in order to quality.
The key here is that St. Louis County and its citizens don't have any responsibility when it comes to paying back the RUS loan.
So Lake County and its 11,000 citizens and 5,200 household are completely on the hook for $56.5 loan and another $3.5 million in general fund expenditures for this project. That is roughly $5,500 per person or $11,500 per household. They are spending way too much money on this project and setting the Lake County taxpayers up for financial disaster.
To put this in perspective, I believe the Burlington Telecom project was supposed to cost $34 million. They ended up spending an additional $17 million from the general fund to keep it going. Burlington has nearly 4 times as many people and more than 3 times as many households as Lake County. Burlington spends less money and has more people and it failed miserably. How do you think Lake County will end up?
The burlington project failed because it got assaulted by lawyers to, and to keep it going, they(the city) had to dip into the general fund to pay lawyers to beat back the lawyers from the incumbent telecos. Also, what you can get in lake county is 1mbps down and 128k up most of the time, from frontier or centurylink, and you cant always get that. Both incumbents have forsaken the area, and are not spending on repairs or upgrades, thus, the community decided to wire itself. Hell, even local phone service is starting to fail because the incumbents refuse to replace copper wires that are too old and rotting, yet, the incumbents would spend millions on a law suit to stop this project from moving forward. If they spent even half of what they are paying the lawyers, there would be no problem in lake county.
If the telecos and incumbents arent doing it(upgrading and repairs), why do they fight so hard and waste money on lawyers to prevent the locals from doing it? They choose to spend on lawyers rather than increase speeds and services. Something is wrong when you see that happening. | |
 Rogue WolfReally Ties The Room Together
join:2003-08-12
Troy, NY | said by Chubbysumo:If the telecos and incumbents arent doing it(upgrading and repairs), why do they fight so hard and waste money on lawyers to prevent the locals from doing it? They choose to spend on lawyers rather than increase speeds and services. Something is wrong when you see that happening.
It's because the telcos and cablecos are terrified that successful muni projects will spread, and that cities that ARE profitable to them will realize that it's cheaper to "do it yourself" than to continue to pay the comfortable monopolies/duopolies that operate there.
Litigation is easier than innovation! 
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I may have been born yesterday, but I've spent all afternoon downtown. | |
| I don't think there has been any litigation related to the Lake County project. | |
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| oh really now? did you even read the article that this was about? it clearly states that Mediacom is suing Lake County for this or that, and then making (later proven false) claims just to bury the project in losses before it even gets off the ground. » m.startribune.com/business/?id=166061226» www.muninetworks.org/tags-281» minnesota.publicradio.org/collec···an.shtmltime and time again, over every little thing, Mediacom pays lawyers hundreds of thousands of dollars rather than invest it in the network that prompted the locals to build their own. Mediacom could have probably fixed all the problems with their Lake County network, and upgraded everyones service for the money they are dumping into litigation. | |
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