Failed Ottawa fibre-to-the-home plan gaining interest from around the world

An Ottawa entrepreneur who was unsuccessful in his attempts to bring fibre-to-the-home to the city has been inundated with interest from others who may want to implement his business plan in other regions of the world. Peter Hoddinott is the president and currently sole employee of Streetlight, a company that wanted to offer fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) in neighbourhoods throughout Ottawa. But it ran into a classic Catch-22. Investors would not pony up the money until they knew service providers were on board; service providers needed to know who their potential customers would be. But having those names meant the service providers could bypass Streetlight and make the connections themselves. Hoddinott found he and his colleagues did not have the skill sets required to do proper canvassing of residents to find out what they were interested in paying for. Streetlight’s business plan was built around subscriber ownership of an equal access network. The model was to run glass lines from utility poles to the homes and small businesses. But Hoddinott discovered technology is not a selling point for most consumers. "You really need to talk services," he tells Network Letter. "In fact, they don’t like the idea of the technology. What they want to know is ‘what will it do for me? Will it decrease my telephone bill? Will it mean that I end up watching more TV? What happens if you give me lousy service and I’m not interested? How much of an investment am I going to be out?’" Hoddinott notes that most homeowners already have telephony, cable or satellite TV, and Internet connectivity (through DSL, cable modem or dial-up). Streetlight had hoped to provide some sort of link between community residents and service providers. The company had no desire to be anything more than the pipe that connected the two. "Because at the end of the day what we were trying to do was try to create equal access. We didn’t want to be a Rogers and we didn’t want to be a Sympatico," Hoddinott adds. "We said, ‘Look, you are residents in your little neighbourhood and you’ll get yourself a big fat conduit and it’s yours and you kind of go out to content providers and choose your content.’" Worldwide interestEven though Streetlight’s attempts came to naught, Hoddinott believes in the premise. He told Bill St-Arnaud, senior director of advanced networks at CANARIE Inc., about the business model and Streetlight’s willingness to spread the word. St-Arnaud sent a message out to his voluminous email list. He provided Hoddinott’s email address and told people Streetlight was making the business plan available. The reaction was immediate."There’s emails coming in from all over the world," Hoddinott marvels. " got tentacles everywhere." One enthusiastic correspondent is a Mexican entrepreneur. He hopes to become an alternative carrier in his district, overbuilding on the same poles that utilities and cablecos already have in place. The expectation is that eventually the glass conduit would be able to deliver services that the older companies’ technologies cannot.Hoddinott finds the interest pleasantly surprising. The final choice, he stresses, is up to consumers. "I was surprised just how many grassroots efforts there are doing things like this. There’s a bunch going on in and around Ontario and Canada generally. There’s a pile going on in other countries," he reports. "I guess if anything what I’ve convinced myself of is there’s no technical problems that will prevent this. It’s desirability of users to do something like this." Hoddinott is in the process of winding down the operations of Streetlight. He will then devote his attentions to other pursuits.

Failed Ottawa fibre-to-the-home plan gaining interest from around the world

News | 09/23/2002 4:00 am EDT

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