Fiberopoly

This article was authored by James Henry, Senior Managing Director of Bank Street Group.

In recognition of April Fool’s Day, I thought the readers at Telecom Ramblings might enjoy this Monopoly-inspired Fiberopoly board game:

Object of Fiberopoly:

By selling, buying, renting, negotiating, and with a little luck from the dice, your goal is to amass the most fiber assets and become the wealthiest player on the board.

Contents of Fiberopoly:

Your Fiberopoly board game should consist of the board, 5 Character Tokens, 2 Dice, 32 Office Buildings, 12 Data Centers, both Chance and Community Chest cards, property or deed cards, Fiberopoly play money, and the Fiberopoly rules and instruction booklet.  The five Character Tokens are Bank Street, Level 3, Lightower, Zayo and Mr. Moneybags representing Private Equity.

Game Preparation:

A banker needs to be chosen (Bank Street, of course) and will hand out the following denominations of money: five $500 bills, five $100 bills, four $50 bills, ten $20 bills, nine $10 bills, twenty $5 bills and ten $1 bills. This should be a total of $3,600 per player given. All players will select a Character Token and be placed on GO to start the game. Chance and Community Chest Cards are to be placed face down in their allotted locations on the board. The banker will make all financial and strategic transactions throughout the game.

Game Play:

The official Fiberopoly board game rules state that starting with the banker, each player takes turns tossing the dice. The highest rolling player begins and game play continues to his left. Rolling doubles results in another turn. Three doubles in a row will take you immediately to Jail. Each time a player passes GO they receive $200 from the banker.

The rules of buying a property are that if you land on an un-owned property, the player may buy it at the shown price.  If you do not want to buy the property, the banker holds an auction and the highest bidder wins.  Properties without a set price ($$$) go immediately to auction.  The property deed is then given to its owner.

Rent is charged and collected by the owner to anyone who lands on that property as listed per deed. If all deeds of the same color are owned, double is charged.  On-Net buildings can be purchased if the same colored properties are all owned by the same player. Office Buildings must be built evenly on all 3 or 2 deeds and Data Centers can be bought after four Office Buildings have been connected. One Data Center takes the place of 4 Office Buildings.  Deeds give instructions on Office Building and Data Center costs.

Properties with may be leveraged at any time to the bank. Paying mortgaged property back results in a 10% added interest on mortgage price.

When a player lands on a Chance or Community Chest space, the top card is taken, obeyed, and placed at the bottom of the pile. Get out of Jail cards can be kept or sold until used.

Landing on Stimulus Grant results in a $500 award from the $7.2 billion fund set up by the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) and the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications Information Administration (NTIA) courtesy of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act.

Jail rules are such that one must be sent there by a card, rolling 3 doubles or by landing on the Go to Jail space. Player cannot collect $200 and their turn ends. The player has 2 options, roll dice to get out of jail with doubles or pay $50. If three turns go by and player is still in jail, he/she must pay $50 and is released playing the number rolled on the dice.

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Categories: Fun · Guest Posts