Steve Mensing, Editor
♦ The City of Salisbury had ample warnings about starting a high-speed municipal broadband utility, but they chose to ignore them. Just about everything that happened to other failed municipal broadbands, happened to Fibrant. Hiding the failure, depleting the water and sewer funds and gobbling from general fund, melting down city services (including our police force), blowing the original $33 million dollars in certificates of participation, hiding fibrant employees in other city departments (Magic Math), and so forth.
Today Salisbury is saddled with a monumental albatross eating Salisbury alive. The chickens indeed have come home to roost. AT&T U-Verse GigaPower and TWC Maxx are providing abundant super-highspeed internet at cheaper prices than Fibrant. Fibrant is a non-competitor. In the arena of TV, Fibrant can not compete with AT&T U-verse TV, TWC Cable TV, DirecTV (Now part of AT&T, and Dish. All of competitors offer TV at cheaper Prices and offer “TV everywhere” on internet enabled devices (Fibrant lacks this ingredient). And many savvy consumers are “cutting the cord” and enjoying a mix of antenna TV, IPTV (Roku 3 and 4) and KODI. Lest we forget Fibrant charges more for their TV.
Fibrant Cat 5 VOIP phone is blown away in price by other VOIP phones. Salisbury needs to find a way to let go of Fibrant. They can’t afford its “luxury”. Nobody will be coming to Salisbury to start a high-tech business when so many far more livable and safer places exist in North Carolina. Do high-tech people want to endanger themselves or have their buildings sacked by our city’s teaming army of break-in artists? Would they care to send their children to some of the worst performing public schools in the state? Many folks are looking to escape Shotzbury, not come here. It won’t be long before homes will bring 50 cents on the dollar of what their value was in 2008. A city can only have so many major problems before it bellies up.
Here is the original warning from the John Locke Society:
http://www.johnlocke.org/research/show/policy%20reports/198
Here are two outstanding studies that are must reads to understand why so many municipal broadbands never do the do:
