Access to information is an essential building block of social development
Text transcript from the PDF text layer
Amsterdam, Netherlands, is building its own fiber network to provide very high-speed service to over 40,000 homes. The city government is not subsidizing this, but instead is simply acting as an investor. James Enck, over on EuroTelcoblog, has this to say regarding the message that Amsterdam’s effort is sending to other local service providers: Not to put words in anyone's mouth, but I think the message is something like: It may be "your network" and "your investment" you are trying to defend, but your customers are our taxpayers, our society, and we have a duty to look beyond the next quarter and where our share options are at present. Access to information is an essential building block of social development, like access to water and electricity. Highly-contended DSL products with bandwidth caps ain't gonna cut it.
Captured from http://www.librarycrunch.com/2005/11/your_customers_are_our_taxpaye.html via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. The screenshot and PDF preserve the captured visual layout; the transcript is provided for search and accessibility.