Kansas City, Missouri Based Datashack gets into Gigabit Municipal ISP Business with FREE Services

[drmike]

Datashack, a company best known for cheap colocation and cheap dedicated server rentals is diversifying.

North Kansas City leaders inked a 10-year deal with Datashack to operate the municipal owned fiber network liNKCity.

For a one time fee of $100 for 100Mbit or $300 for 1Gbit customers get connected by Datashack to liNKCity. After paying the one-time fee, their internet services will remain FREE for the duration of the 10 year period.

Edit:

Simple math: $300 / 10 years = $30 a year / 12 = $2.50 a month.

Datashack is providing free connectivity to government, churches and schools.

Their goal and income is selling internet access to businesses in North Kansas City and leveraging the liNKCity fiber for their other ventures in the hosting (namely transit to major regional POPs).

Links:  http://www.nkc.org/newsView.aspx?nid=8341

           http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/article2144253.html

           http://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/news/2014/09/03/north-kansas-city-free-gigabit-internet-service.html

 

[zzrok]

Simple math: $300 / 10 years = $3 a year / 12 = 25 cents a month or less than 1 cent per day.

$300 / 10 = $30 / 12 = $2.5

Still crazy cheap.  Do you have links to sources?

 

[D. Strout]

I wonder why they decided to compete with Google Fiber? Kansas City was GF's first location, and now there's another gigabit game in town? Cheaper, that's for sure. Wonder if Google will "adjust" their prices with this?

 

[drmike]

Well it appears North Kansas City is it's own municipality and Google wasn't going there. 

 

[D. Strout]

Ahh, makes sense. North Kansas City was jealous, so it came up with a plan to make the rest of the Kansas City gonna be jealous. Google's Fiber's "free" level of service is a one-time $300 fee like this setup, but you get slower speeds. Now, for that same $300, you get the gigabit in NKC. Interesting.

 

[Dylan]

Ahh, makes sense. North Kansas City was jealous, so it came up with a plan to make the rest of the Kansas City gonna be jealous.

LiNKCity predates Google Fiber by about six years, but it's been a financial disaster for the city since it started. Last year Google agreed to pay to use North Kansas City's fiber as a pass-through to other areas, and that was supposed to be a financial turning point, but apparently even that wasn't enough to get the system out of its deficit.

http://www.pitch.com/kansascity/linkcity-google-fiber-dark-fiber/Content?oid=3220559

 

[drmike]

LiNKCity predates Google Fiber by about six years, but it's been a financial disaster for the city since it started. Last year Google agreed to pay to use North Kansas City's fiber as a pass-through to other areas, and that was supposed to be a financial turning point, but apparently even that wasn't enough to get the system out of its deficit.

http://www.pitch.com/kansascity/linkcity-google-fiber-dark-fiber/Content?oid=3220559

Although the fiber - most of it dark [unlit and unused] hasn't panned it for lINKCity, the city appears to continue to finance deficits from a gambling funded stash. 

Inevitably, the fiber will see a ROI / local utility justification or it will be liquidated and that money likely thrown into a general slush fund.   I hope they stick to owning the fiber and benefitting the citizens there.

We need more local fiber projects like this in the States.

 

[iann_lfcvps]

This is great news in my opinion. Another gigabit player enters the market on the cheap and hopefully it continues to show the rest of the states that these types of projects are possible and viable.

 

[DomainBop]

This is great news in my opinion. Another gigabit player enters the market on the cheap and hopefully it continues to show the rest of the states that these types of projects are possible and viable.

These types of projects are possible to start but until someone turns a profit nobody is going to be convinced they have a viable business model and are sustainable, or stated another way...it was possible for WebVan to start their little grocery delivery project and it was possible for them to raise $375 million in their IPO but the party ended for their unsustainable business model when they burned through their cash...

Question: will this fiber network be connected to the outside world via DataShack's lovely network mix of GogentHE?

 

[Munzy]

These types of projects are possible to start but until someone turns a profit nobody is going to be convinced they have a viable business model and are sustainable, or stated another way...it was possible for WebVan to start their little grocery delivery project and it was possible for them to raise $375 million in their IPO but the party ended for their unsustainable business model when they burned through their cash...

Question: will this fiber network be connected to the outside world via DataShack's lovely network mix of GogentHE?

Or for that matter, will it be connected to anything. I have a server at datashack and I might hook it up to it, just not sure yet.

 

[drmike]

These types of projects are possible to start but until someone turns a profit nobody is going to be convinced they have a viable business model and are sustainable, or stated another way...it was possible for WebVan to start their little grocery delivery project and it was possible for them to raise $375 million in their IPO but the party ended for their unsustainable business model when they burned through their cash...

Question: will this fiber network be connected to the outside world via DataShack's lovely network mix of GogentHE?

Well, this porkject was government payoff reshuffling.   It was a tax on the gambling industry that bankrolled the metro fiber.  Unsure if there has been ANY real local chip in.  Ideally someone else can reference that info to confirm either way.

Their main website fails to address any of the gorey details:

http://uniteprivatenetworks.com]

Unite runs a network mix of Level3, Telia and Qwest.

Hopefully, with this deal some of these other upstreams start getting mixed into the Datashack mix.

PS: Appears United Private Networks is going a good bit of hiring, for anyone in the Kansas City area:

http://uniteprivatenetworks.com/careers/

Current Position Openings:
Customer Operations Team

Senior Project Coordinator – Fiber to Tower Initiative – Kansas City Metro

Project Coordinator – Fiber to Tower Initiative – Kansas City Metro

Project Coordinator – Kansas City Metro

Property Administrator – Kansas City Metro

Outside Plant Team

Construction Supervisor - Omaha, NE or Lincoln, NE (must be willing to travel between cities frequently)

Strategic Projects Engineer  - Open Location

Administrative Assistant of Construction - Des Moines, IA

Sales Team

Business Development Manager, Emerging Markets  - Kansas City Metro

Business Development Team

Carrier Relations Specialist  - Kansas City Metro

Legal Team

Corporate Counsel  - Kansas City Metro

 

[eva2000]

woah that's cheap.. beats me paying AUD$123/month for cable with Telstra Australia !

 

[drmike]

woah that's cheap.. beats me paying AUD$123/month for cable with Telstra Australia !

Beat the pants out of the cable / telco lack of throughput duopoly I call home and pay 2x+ for ahhh... I won't even say how pitiful my upstreams are.   I probably move packets faster and with less errors with a urine stream.

 

[MCH-Phil]

And now I wish I never moved!  Damn stuck with this crap wireless that's 5/5 on a good day.    Miles ahead on upload than a lot of the US.

 

[drmike]

5 on the upload side?  Yeah the local telcos don't offer such speeds, nor do the cable companies most of us suffer under.  Exceptions are their newest McRipoff plans and fiber. 

Don't go trying to get Static IPs or business access from the incumbents either.  Unless you like being robbed.

 

[MCH-Phil]

I have TW Telecom, some legacy crap they don't really advertise any longer.  Sort of a PTP wireless.  It feeds back to an Intel facility close by that we piggyback off of.  This is what we are provided.  I may move to cable shortly, as ADSL in my area is a ripoff (7/1 for ~$50).  Cable will be also though with CableOne (50/unknown for ~50), I know that CO is oversubscribed here like nothing else though.  Thus I stick with this PTP wifi lol.

Centurylink is able to offer decent upload here.  I have a few DSL links that are closer to 10Mb up.  Comcast as well, as we know by looking at their site also does.  I have a few 5Mb up links with them also.  These are all business accounts.  Alas nothing like 1Gb.

 

[drmike]

TW Telecom and a 5Mbps upside?  Is this business class?     TW Telecom = biz unit spun off from Time Warner Cable years back and recently sold to someone...

I use to have a PTP wireless link 10 years ago.  I loved it.   3 hops and 20+ miles in all weather with mere milliseconds end to end.  Quite sick on 5.8Ghz band I do believe it was.   Best bandwidth one can have unless you get fiber directly to your place.

 

[MCH-Phil]

It is provided via an affiliation with Intel, this is business class.

 

[BrianHarrison]

How is the fiber run in North Kansas City? Telephone poles? Underground? I would think it'd cost a lot more than $300 to bring connectivity into a house...

 

[drmike]

How is the fiber run in North Kansas City? Telephone poles? Underground? I would think it'd cost a lot more than $300 to bring connectivity into a house...

Kansas City is an old city.   Can't see them running most of it any other way than telephone poles as right of ways would be littered and non existent in most places.

I know Google was being blah about pole fees with KC proper and some early special treatment / franchise whining from others.   I expect the same there in N KC.

Fiber typically is already there in such a project.   If they intend on towing it down every street in town, well that gets pricey.  

Looking at maps, the town appears to be a rather simple grid.  The streets to the South start at 10th and go up to 32nd.  East to west looking at maximum of about 20 blocks... so something like 20 x 32.

Total area in their borders: Land area: 4.36 square miles.  Bunch of that is industrial, traintracks, water related stuff, etc.

Rolling a truck for this, yeah it's pricey.   If it is pole/line to home, still adds up, but doable.   I know from FIOS rollout what a fiasco rolling trucks was, high gear costs and installs that often take many hours.  Think Verizon put per customer FIOS start costs up north of $700 per and that was where fiber already was on that street running by the structure.

Should note there appears to be a casino in the N KC city limits.

Very very strange town though.  Never saw anything like this.

The town appears to own and bankroll the local hospital to the tune of:

1610 full time employees @ $7,360,536 per month spent

and

1,029 part time employees @ $2,324,381 per month spent.....

Hospitals: $285,000,000 ($66480.06 per citizen)

Their police department totals 43 employees. Or 7.48 per 1k citizens.  Compare that to Missouri per 1k citizens rate of 2.42.

Quite a bit of handouts seemingly going into NKC.... can't see the local tax coffers @ 4287 residents total financing all this largess.