Alec Saunders SquawkBox

I don’t ordinarily make a practice of commenting on what’s going on at the FCC.  American politicians don’t pay much attention to commentary from foreigners.  However, if you are a US based VoIP provider, then you need to pay attention to what happened last week at the FCC.  The impact is huge, as VoIP providers are not only treated as telecom providers, but are also required to pay into the USF at the highest rate. 

Pulver writes about it here and here. He’s trying to mount an appeal.  Join him.

Cringely has written a fantastic piece on treating the last mile as cooperatively owned infrastructure.  Based on conversations he has had with my friend Bob Frankston, it’s a seemingly radical view of what might happen if the users of the network owned the access piece.  On IP Democracy, Mitch Shapiro has published an additional lengthy commentary. 

Radical?  Actually, not really.  Developers of planned communities have been doing this for years.  In 1999 I had the opportunity to tour a development outside Indianapolis doing exactly what Cringely and Frankston suggest.  Each home was provisioned with fibre at the curb, converging on a NOC at the center of the community.  The community owned and managed all the utilities provided to home owners, and took bids from service providers for the raw services.  Telephony, television, internet and so on were provided to home owners at an attractive bundled rate, returning a small profit to the developer / manager of the NOC.

It’s a great idea.