A San Diego start up company has announced plans to sell broadband delivered by gas pipelines. The problem with these schemes to put broadband in {insert your favorite utility here: gas pipes, electric cable, sewer lines} is that you can end up spending a significant portion of what it would take to build out a complete, communitywide fiber system, but in most cases, you will have a second class broadband system that could put your community permanently behind communities that do invest in fiber--and from an economic development perspective, the result could be difficult to overcome.
These are typically vendor driven solutions, not community needs based solutions. These systems may well have a niche role to play in the market place, but the future is fiber--no other delivery system has the same ability to increase in capacity over time. I want to make sure communities invest in systems that are going to last for decades, and fiber, when you look at the total life cycle costs, is much cheaper than any radio-based solution, which includes over the air wireless, BPL (Broadband Over Power Lines), and the gas pipe system.
Vendors tend to want to push a single system, but it does not have to an either/or choice (either fiber or wireless). It is better to design an integrated system from the ground up with fiber throughout your service area and a wireless overlay so that our mobile devices (phones, PDAs, etc.) work anywhere.