When I saw this headline, my first thought was "Boy was this the wrong day to run this story." Then I read it, and I saw a possible future. Key quotes:
Since the spring, families in the Wellington neighborhood [in Manassas, VA, a DC suburb) and an Old Town business have served as test subjects for the new program. Allen Todd, the director of the city's publicly owned utility [emphasis added], said the program has been successful enough that the service is ready to be offered to all homes and businesses that use city power.
"It's really amazing and it's fast," Todd said. "Anywhere you have an electric outlet you have the Internet. You can take your computer to your neighbor's house, down the streets or across town."
Users would plug their computers into a converter box the size of two cigarette packs and then plug the converter into any electric outlet in Manassas. That connects users to the city's fiber optic network and then the Internet,Todd said.The system would require adding equipment to all of the city's 2,000 transformers, but Todd said he hopes to get a company that, in exchange for access to the city's grid, would provide the new equipment, Internet access and billing services.
The city also hopes to get a sizable cut of the connection fees that customers would pay, which Todd estimated at $20 to $30 a month for unlimited access.
For an Old Town architecture firm, the service has worked like a charm.
"It's real fast compared to what I have at home, DSL, and it's noticeably quicker," said Sean Porter, an architect with Robert B. Loveless, AIA, Architects, on Main Street. "I mean it's not super quick, but we've never really had a problem. We have it networked with seven computers on it, and it doesn't slow it down."
So let's review: a ubiquitous Internet connection faster than DSL for $20-30 a month. Easily pays for itself, and may even ease the tax burden. Next step: buy a half-ton of cheap Lindows/Xandros/Lycoris boxes and pass them out with the converters to everyone getting food stamps (or kids getting free lunch at school).
Use the next batch of money to make sure your power infrastructure is secure and won't get hit in a cascading overload.
When you don't have to make sure your profits are higher this quarter than last, you can get these kinds of economies, and still do the right thing.
