The city's slowly built fiber network has a 30-percent uptake rate for those it passes: The triple-play network (voice, data, and TV) will provide large profits to the city when it's debt is paid down in 15 years, InformationWeek reports. The network was built along the "built the barn you can afford" model, which avoided massive expenses in an all-at-once network deployment, and had an outside investor which provided low-cost financing due to what was seen as a sound business model. Revenue flow goes positive in 2009.
Two thousand of Burlington's 39,000 citizens are signed up at rates that start at $45 per month with a triple play. Now given that the uptake rate is reported at 30 percent, and households are typically comprise three to four people, perhaps 7,000 people of 25,000 are connected; those numbers were omitted from the story.
Their wireless plan is underway, but they're considering all the technologies that are available to them. Licenses are often more obtainable in smaller towns for wireless spectrum that the big boys own in big markets. Either a provider can be encouraged to build a network, or a license owner will sublet their option.