However, smaller cities are another story.
“I think towns are putting out RFPs faster than the industry can respond.
“There are several thousand cities pursuing this; there are only so many vendors pursuing smaller cities.”
But you drop to tier 2 and there is only resellers.
“We should be looking at cities with densities of about 2,500 people per square mile.
As tech costs drop, we’ll be able to bring that number down,” he said.
“I never say no to any deal, because I always believe there’s a deal.
Vos maintains a blog on the status of public broadband projects around the world.
“I see it(public broadband) as a utilitylike water or electricity.
I see it as the thing that carries a lot of other things.
From there, the signal is dropped down to users via Wi-Fi.
Using a public broadband infrastructure as a platform for city services is a way to save money.
That is the case with a large insurance company in a small Wisconsin town.
Rhodes didn’t identify either the company or the town.
We go through qualification steps.
We don’t like to say no out of the gate either,” Rhodes said.
Can small towns make money from their broadband investment?
This could work either through taxes applied to VoIP services or through lease agreements for the infrastructure with providers.
