Section 4 of 4
Three towns that stopped waiting
Where the commercial case never arrived, some communities built the network themselves. The documented cases are useful in both directions — what it costs, what it takes, and how the arithmetic changes when a utility already owns the poles.
- Three towns that stopped waitingMunicipal networks exist where a community concluded no commercial operator was coming, and the documented cases are instructive either way.
- What a build actually costs, per passingCost per home passed is the number every municipal case turns on, and it varies by an order of magnitude with density and terrain.
- The co-op modelRural electric cooperatives already own poles and rights of way, which changes the arithmetic completely.
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