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“The users, not the tax payers, are paying for this. Had the other providers upped their speeds this would not have been necessary.”

You 100% sure of this? Really?

Because this is the 2nd time I’ve seen it posted I’m throwing the BS card. Wherever this is starting it’s hogwash.

I work for a large networking company, that being said I know very well what it costs to run networks. And I can tell you all right now, that the equipment required to drop Fiber into a home plus running the Fiber (Installation, labor, and terminations) is not cheap. Depending on whether it’s aerial or underground ranges from $20,000 per installed mile to as high as $500,000 mile if in a major metro area because of permits right of way management etc.
But Gosh... guess what it’s government and they don’t have to worry about right of way... seems fair already!
Add to this the cost of gateway devices to be attached to each home, the switch/router to be installed, plus the termination point this will be going to and we are easily in the range of between 2.5-3k per port/drop. What is very nice about this from a vendor perspective is I know I’ll be selling more gear every 5-7 years as it gets End-of-support so now we have a churn of equipment.

Now we get a “Public” company who is issuing bonds (What are bonds? and how are they paid back to investors?) to build a project. This project will hopefully cover 47,000 people... of course the take rate so far has been around 15% oh and it looks as if they are providing 24/7 manning of a NOC, so that pretty much means what minimum of 10 full time bodies for a 3 shift service? Add to this that not everyone uses the internet, I know shocking but very true. It’s not a trivial amount of people either, and Granny sitting at home knitting just doesn’t care. This can be between 30-40% of the population. And now evaluate what has been said...

“Will my taxes go up because this project is so expensive?

No. The funds for constructing the fiber network come from bonds issued by the City of Wilson. Tax revenues are not being used to fund this project in any way.”

How do they compute that it will generate enough income to payback the bonds hmm?? I’d love to see the business plan. Because I know another municipality who tried this same crap. (Zipp Fiber optic) and they are so far in the Red it’s spilling over everywhere, and why? Because they magically planned on a 100% take rate for service!
Gosh, I bet Time Warner would love that type of take rate!

Even if you take the equipment that will be necessary to build the NOC, provide for minimum of 10 full-time Customer Service people, and not to mention the other government goons who will be apart of this and what to you think the annual cost of labor will be? I’m going to throw a dart... Government workers I’m thinking around $18.00 - $26.00/hour. I think it’s pretty safe to say around $50k, maybe not quite but it will be more because it’s a government job. So benefits will be swell, and maybe even a nice city pension! So 10 bodies * 50k, plus a manager, plus a coordinator, plus a supervisor + + +... Easily Easily $1,000,000/year. That’s just to start with the support and management. Then you have a team to INSTALL the gear...

It’s all fraud. The government doing a project like this is simply wrong. If the business case was there don’t you think a competitor would have come in? I mean think about it. It’s because the government can lie about the business case and no one will hold them accountable because they’ll have moved on by the time the rooster comes home to crow. Then it becomes all of the constituents problem.

Sorry, I’m off the soapbox now, I’m a firm believer of “Government stay the hell out of my way” so know where I am coming from.

The government doing a project like this is simply wrong.

Well put.

I helped put such a scam to a quick death in my small town about 5 years ago.

Firm principles are very important things. And it's an important principle that government should NOT compete with private business. If it does, a fundamentally unfair and unbalanced playing field results. Everyone loses.

There are other high-speed Internet options available in the private sector, so there is ZERO justification for any government involvement here.

"But other countries have faster Internet service!"

SO WHAT!!??

I'll pay for my 8 Mbps cable and be quite happy with a smaller government, thank you.