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Walmart strategy
So far in the telco deployment war, we've seen several companies come in and try to 'cherry pick' the big customers in big cities with lower priced bandwidth than the major telcomms. A few opened their own 'central officies' in major cities and tried to pump T1s and above to business consumers (i.e. people who pay too much for what they buy). They ripped up the roads (and X $100 per foot) and wired through pre-built offices (at $X per foot of cable) and generally, haven't really taken over from the major players. But wouldn't it be neater to have the revolution in bandwidth start at the grassroots level? To start at the almost 'village' level and then work its way up. For example, I live in a small town of about 6,000 people. A big fat pipe hooked up to a mesh network or something could easily cover the needs of this town for broadband access. It could be high speed up and down, and would require a more limited investment to install (in an area where you can rent an office for about $400 a month no matter what the size). It would be everywhere--wifi mesh everywhere. The price could be almost cooperative in nature, say a few bucks a month ($9 maybe) and it could be run in an almost non-profit way to pay for expenses and then move to other things like hosting and email etc. I call this the WalMart strategy. Walmarts moved into small towns and became the dominant player in large part because of a) pricing and b) offerings better than the competition. In a small town like mine, where the phone company or cable company is an 'all or nothing' type arrangement, a better way, a cheaper way could come to dominate the tiny market and prosper. And then do it again, and again, and again. Wash, rinse, repeat, all over the country. This would be kind of fun.... There are responses to this message:
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