Palo Alto FTTH Initiative Stalls
Tech-friendly Palo Alto, Calif.’s initiative to provide broadband service over a city-owned fiber network appears to be losing momentum, raising doubts about the workability of the concept in other cities

The city council voted 5-1 Monday night to end a trial providing fiber infrastructure and broadband to 70 homes in one neighborhood in Palo Alto. The participants reportedly received 100-Mbit/s data service for $85 a month.

“It would have cost $40 million to roll the service out to the rest of the city, so we would have had to go to the general fund, and the constituents would not have supported that,” Kishimoto says.

Palo Alto, with its mix of community activism, social liberalism, and tech savvy, seems like the perfect place for municipal broadband to find grassroots support. That the idea is losing ground may be a bad sign for other cities now considering similarly ambitious plans.