Ting, the mobile service provider owned by Tucows, now has made its second investment in an Internet Service Provider business. In an earlier move, Tucows had invested in a small Charlottesville, Va. ISP, with new plans to provide gigabit access.
In the latest move, Ting will be the retail operator of a fiber to home network owned by the municipality in Westminster, Md. It isn’t yet clear what bandwidths will be offered.
Tucows, an Internet domain name registrar, in 2012 launched Ting, a mobile virtual network operator.
It doesn’t take much insight to note that lots of smaller towns and smaller ISPs might find the prospect of building or operating gigabit access networks a reasonable business proposition.
Decades ago, we used to call this sort of thing "overbuilding." That was a scenario where a third provider built a network and competed directly with a local cable TV operator and telco for video and other services. It always was a tough business, and few ever occurred.
These days, the focus is high speed Internet access, with or without video entertainment. That's the Google Fiber model. What Ting is trying is based strictly on a pure-play ISP business model.
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