Our (Australia's) former monopoly telephone provider, Telstra, is building a new monopoly. Smart Communities is Telstra getting involved with property developers to provide the phone, TV (free and pay) and broadband via optical fibre to the residence. My favourite forum for broadband, Whirlpool, has a bunch of discussions about the good and bad of this situation.
So a family member is building a home in one of these communities. Given there is a lack of choice in phone / broadband suppliers now it is dealing with practicalities of dealing with a fibre to the home.
There is another option, 3G wireless connectivity, but Telstra provide an incentive to owners to sign up with them that can not be ignored.
Telstra provide the electronics so there is a box in the garage with phone, data and TV ports. Now it is planning the house cabling. And even more interesting is dealing with blackouts. To have a phone service during blackout requires a battery backup or UPS for the fibre connection. So if a UPS is needed for phone during blackouts, then one may as well find a UPS that will power the switches and modem for the network and a laptop for net access will allow for both phone and net access during a blackout.
So I got from monopoly to uninterrupted power supplies... funny how the brain works some days.
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