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Strategic IT for Government
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Monday, December 15, 2003 |
Top 10 IT stories of 2003. After a three-year roller-coaster ride, the IT industry settled down a bit in 2003. The year seemed to provide a respite from megamergers, monopoly-busting, history-making corporate scandals, and the exhilarating but scary boom-and-bust cycle. Not that anyone was operating on cruise control. IT managers faced continual assault from a variety of nasty worms, handled user demands for wireless access and figured out how to work 64-bit computing technology into their systems. IT issues spilled into the public domain as politicians around the world grappled with spam and the challenges created by offshore outsourcing. Home users saw an increasing number of consumer electronics products aimed at them from vendors who had once focused solely on the computer market. [InfoWorld: Top News]
10:36:31 PM 
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Source: Community Fiber:
http://communityfiber.blogspot.com/2003_12_14_communityfiber_archive.html#107150330161262213
Monday, December 15, 2003
Utah: "Cities dream of high-speed digital link called Utopia" The Salt Lake Tribune is carrying another article on the proposed 18-city UTOPIA FTTH (fiber to the home) project.
The article quotes a University of Denver academic, Ron Rizutto, who criticizes such systems on several grounds. The article, however, does not note his employment as senior fellow with the cable television industry's Cable Center.
One Rizutto criticism is that municipal systems duplicate existing private investments. This is not exactly true -- usually substantially exceed existing private investments. That's because they usually only get built in areas where the existing cable TV and telecommunication providers have done a poor job serving local customers and failed to invest in the plant upgrades necessary to offer affordable broadband.
A second criticism is that these systems "are not making money in the conventional sense" and just breaking even -- but isn't that the point of municipal ownership?
Rizutto also notes that some municipal systems are losing money but the article does not go into details. All broadband systems -- public or private -- lose money intitially as they are being built. From my own experience, I would expect that most municipal systems in the U.S. are breaking even after the first three or four years.
posted by Al Bonnyman 12/15/2003 07:22:47 AM #
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8:49:26 PM
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© 2004 Ted Ritzer
Last Update: 1/6/2004; 8:44:47 AM
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