How to: find high speed data access, non-retail.

[jkinz-+hffLmS/kj4 at public.gmane.org]

Hi,

We have a local study group looking into building a pilot project as
a prototype of a municipally owned, commercially operated (possibly),
broadband service.

I am trying to find out what hi-speed data connections exist
either in our town or near enough to it, that they might be used as the
internet access for the pilot. This is in Hudson, MA  

Does anyone have any ideas about what telecomm services may already have 
fiber (or anything else ) installed in Hudson, or nearby?  Or suggestions 
about how I can look for such companies? 



If you care: (meaning - why read this unless you have to? .. )

background info on the project but -not- requirements for the 
pilot::

So far the group has determined that Fiber is the desired media. The
choice of: to the curb or to the home hasn't been determined yet, but
it seems clear that time will ultimately settle on "to the home" so we
will be planing on installing with "to the home", or making sure that
upgrading to it will be directly built-into the implementation.

Also the group has determined that it should provide a semi-dark fiber
installation and open the cable plant to any vendor who wishes to sell
services directly to end users. Hopefully a group of aggressively
competitive vendors will produce lower prices for services.  The study
group has been much influenced by the story of Burlington telecomm.

http://www.burlingtontelecom.com/residential_services/bundles.htm

In this case Broadband means using either wired and wireless
capabilities as needed and directed by the local geography - as in
obstructions to installing fiber and obstructions to using Wi-Fi.

The service is intended to be used for any "legal application(s)".  
So any multi-media networked gaming, telephone, movies, music, etc...
and yes, plain old internet. whatever that means these days. 



--- even deeper Background info ----

As a result of my unstinting and boundlessly energetic efforts to persuade 
certain locally connected and politically influential neighbors, 

[read: "my never ending whine-ing and complaining at them"] 

I'm now part of a feasibility study group charged with generating a report 
and a set of recommendations on whether or not our village should run its
own communications network for connecting to the internet. 

The report has to describe what the reasonable paths to follow in building 
a local telecomm capability are, how the paths can be financed, what the 
potential liabilities are, legality of such a service and how it should be
staged: how many discrete, progressive chunks) it should be split up into.

The Town has a very high financial rating and the town leaders are very
determined to keep it that way. This reduces the potential number of 
financing solutions but it is a core characteristic of the local political
and governmental culture. 

Since there are an overwhelming number of combinations to study the 
possibilities of the study group cut off the study effort by issuing a 
preliminary report that outlined what others have already done and
made an initial recommendation of designing a pilot project as the next step.

The reasoning is that the effort of designing a pilot project will generate
some actual cost data and hard information about what facilities exist in
our region for building these services.  The discussion above is the result
of the effort now planning that pilot project.



-- 
Jeff Kinz                                            Emergent Design,