Residents "own" last-mile in Canadian broadband trial

Canadians generated one of the most innovative ideas ever for last-mile connectivity. In an experiment led by Bill St.Arnaud, researcher at Canarie, a Canadian government-funded institution, 400 houses are being wired with optical fiber -- for which the homeowners will pay an estimated $2,700. The fiber connects up to the nearest network access point, and homeowners own it outright -- meaning they can resell it with their homes, or lease out capacity to their neighbors. Here's why this is a great idea. First, as I've mentioned more than once -- carriers don't actually make a profit on the last mile, which is why investment in last-mile infrastructure lags behind demand. That leaves precious few choices for building out the last mile, all of them (until now) bad ones. Asking homeowners to foot the bill directly ensures that bandwidth is paid for by the folks who truly value it -- the ones who plan on using it. Yet another advantage: It makes the "net neutrality" issue moot. Since the fiber is owned by the homeowner, there's no risk of censorship at the last mile. And since the connection is broadband, quality of service becomes less of an issue. Finally, this approach neatly segments Internet infrastructure and services. Users purchase a pipe into the cloud -- not a connection into any particular backbone network or set of services. Therefore, content providers can continue to innovate without fear that users and customers will be unable to access their content.