[HN Gopher] Comcast, CenturyLink fail to derail Utah community-o...
___________________________________________________________________
Comcast, CenturyLink fail to derail Utah community-owned gigabit
fiber network
Author : rntn
Score : 563 points
Date : 2023-08-04 15:29 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.techdirt.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.techdirt.com)
| natdempk wrote:
| Does anyone have a good playbook around getting fiber
| started/prioritized in your city? My city has done some brief
| exploration, but seemingly is dragging its feet on fiber in
| general and I'd love to see that change, especially if we could
| capitalize on a municipal offering that would benefit the city +
| residents.
| whompyjaw wrote:
| Commenting because I am also curious in this.
| NotACop182 wrote:
| Reach out to cities that have succeeded and contact them on the
| ins and outs.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Does 5G tech open up a possibility for a municipal network that
| isn't in need of burying fiber/cables? Or is there no spectrum
| to intercommunicate?
|
| https://go.siklu.com/blog/the-32-flavors-of-5g-and-how-smart...
|
| "Smart City" sounds like a corporate buzzword and tied to the
| moribund standards quagmire of IoT, but all we really need is
| connectivity. Is there a reserved spectrum for municipal 5G
| networks?
|
| I have a Starlink and while it is expensive, if you are rural,
| it is like having cable internet (as in, not-gigabit) anywhere
| you need it.
| oblib wrote:
| We had CenturyLink for over 20 years here. They recently sold us
| to Brightspeed who raised our monthly fee to $60 for what's
| really the very lowest end of "Highspeed" access (if that). The
| first thing Brighspeed did was throttle our bandwidth.
|
| Our local electric co-op (White River Valley Electric
| Cooperative) is currently laying fiber optic lines to all the
| homes and businesses they serve now and will be offering real
| high speed internet (gb both up/down) next year for $30 a month
| to all their customers first, and then those who are not that
| live in the area.
|
| When we moved here in the 90s and bought our home we really
| didn't think about who was providing our electricity, but we've
| learned since there is a huge difference.
|
| Just this week we had a vicious storm that blew power poles down
| and 1000s were without power. Our power was back on in around 36
| hours, others nearby were down for 3+ days.
|
| Those who live outside the co-op are paying more than twice as
| much for power depending on the time of day and load on the grid.
|
| We have a flat rate that's lower than their lowest rates.
|
| https://www.whiteriver.org/fiber/
| jedberg wrote:
| You don't even need a co-op for this. Local, municipal, _non-
| profit_ power companies are like this too. The city of Santa
| Clara, in the heart of Silicon Valley, has its own power
| company. Their rates are less than 1 /2 of PG&E (which they are
| surrounded by) and they were for example offering green energy
| back in 2005. And as you point out, were much better about
| maintenance.
|
| I really miss being served by SVP.
| labcomputer wrote:
| > Their rates are less than 1/2 of PG&E
|
| And their website is approximately 3141 times better than
| PG&E's. Electrical reliability and customer service are
| better, too.
|
| It's hard to overstate how much better municipal power
| companies are compared to for-profit ones (LADWP is better
| than SoCal Edison).
| eppp wrote:
| Munis will almost always beat any other electric provider
| including rural coops because their customer per mile is a
| multiple of a rural operator. It ends up making the coops
| look terrible because we have to cut an order of magnitude
| more vegetation for the same amount of customers.
| hedora wrote:
| With PG&E, all of that is rounding error. They've been
| hollowed out by decades of fraud and infrastructure
| neglect.
|
| In addition to dealing with inflated California
| construction costs, they also routinely block construction
| projects and urgent home repairs.
| labcomputer wrote:
| Add corruption to that. PG&E was insolvent (liabilities
| >> assets) and required a bailout from the state (because
| nobody would pay more than zero dollars for the company).
|
| That the state didn't simply take the assets and
| indemnify the previous owners for the liabilities (thus
| turning it into a giant "municipal" power company) speaks
| to corruption in CPUC and the state in general.
| bombcar wrote:
| Co-op utilities (and other forms of small local utilities) can
| have problems, but in general I prefer them. The bad isn't
| really that bad, and they can be very, very good.
| nine_k wrote:
| How expensive the laying operation is? Are they using some
| existing channels / piping / utility poles? The last mile is
| usually the biggest problem and expense.
| troyvit wrote:
| Yeah that was Longmont, CO's big expense. We had a fiber ring
| around town since '96 or something, used for traffic light
| management I guess? It took about three years to get the
| fiber to most peoples' doorsteps.[1]
|
| It's been great.
|
| [1] https://mynextlight.com/about/
| gtmitchell wrote:
| Good to hear, it seems UTOPIA has really turned a corner after a
| rough start. They expanded to my city recently and I have had no
| regrets about switching. No wonder Comcast / CenturyLink / etc
| are fighting so hard.
| theyeenzbeanz wrote:
| They formed a "concerned taxpayers" group in my area to gaslight
| and lobby against our towns own fiber proposal. It passed, but
| barely due to all the propaganda. So after spending 100k to go
| against it they're suddenly going to lay their own fiber since
| they've got proper competition now.
| manicennui wrote:
| Corporations should have no fucking say in things like this. The
| blatant corruption in the US is incredible.
| datadeft wrote:
| Just like making high fructose corn syrup legal in the EU?
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| This seems tangential, how is it related?
|
| I'm pretty sure HFCS is legal, and I've even eaten products
| containing it.
| larkost wrote:
| The argument is that it is U.S. companies that are insanely
| competitive at making high-fructose corn syrup, and that
| the EU has largely banned it as a shield to European
| companies making other sweeteners (e.g.: sugar).
|
| I would argue that the ban on genetically modified
| organisms (GMO) is a cleaner example of European
| protectionism (not that all other countries, the U.S.
| included, do not also practice protectionism).
|
| You can find lots of sources for the fact of this near-ban,
| but this one is nice and pointed: "Because of its low cost
| and long shelf-life, HFCS is used widely in manufacturing
| many food products, including candy, throughout the United
| States. However, due to strict EU regulations, HFCS is
| banned in much of Europe"
| https://www.sugarjoy.com/pages/hfcs-gmos-and-trans-fats
| Accujack wrote:
| >U.S. companies that are insanely competitive at making
| high-fructose corn syrup
|
| They're competitive because it's subsidized, which is
| what makes it cheaper than sugar in the US.
| babypuncher wrote:
| The whole reason soda tastes better outside the US is
| because bottlers in most other countries still use real
| sugar. HFCS is cheaper in the US because we heavily
| subsidize corn production for some reason.
|
| So it seems weird to me that people would complain that the
| EU made it harder for Coca-Cola to make their product taste
| shittier. There is a reason there is a huge market for
| "Mexican Coke" throughout the US.
| _joel wrote:
| Not just the US, this kind of lobbying and weaponisation of PR
| happens all over the world, unfortunately.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| Except when it happens in Bangladesh people have the guts to
| call it "corruption", unlike US where it's "lobbying and
| weaponisation of PR".
| larkost wrote:
| I think it is a little more nuanced. The case in this
| article is pretty bad, and I am certainly inclined to call
| it both a bad, and an inappropriate influence. But that is
| mostly because of how they are trying to disguise it as not
| being from the internet companies. But they are not handing
| money to a government official (personally) in order to get
| what they want, and I want to reserve the word "corruption"
| for things like that.
|
| However, I do think that companies should have a voice in
| how they are regulated. Not control by any means, but a
| voice. This voice needs to be out in the open (so no
| backroom deals), and clearly labeled what it is. And
| regulating this sort of thing is really difficult to get
| right (in part because of legislators self-interest in
| these things).
|
| Part of the problem here is that money, and the advertising
| it buys, has become so necessary in our politics. So if
| money is necessary for people to be able to hear "free
| speech", how can you prevent or limit people from spending
| that money? And if the only way candidates can get their
| message heard is to spend a lot of money, of course they
| are going to listen to those people and corporations who
| can provide that money (directly or indirectly). And if
| that is the way they are going to be listened to, then of
| course rich people and corporations are going to spend the
| money. It is a nasty cycle.
|
| More generally, the vast majority of the opinions people
| hear (through advertising and also on various media) are
| presented in forums where only one side is speaking. To
| take the case of (Former) President Trump's indictments,
| his supporters are simply not hearing any voices talking
| about the merits of the cases. They are only hearing people
| talk about the potential politicization. Yes, there are
| lots of places where the merits are being debated, but most
| people have no interest in broadening their horizons. And
| the gatekeepers on the political Right have found it is
| easier to capture attention through rage, and being fair or
| balanced does not engender the rage they are selling.
| tremon wrote:
| _they are not handing money to a government official
| (personally) in order to get what they want, and I want
| to reserve the word "corruption" for things like that._
|
| Can we call it institutionalized corruption then, when
| the handing of money to policitians is made legal through
| PACs?
| specialist wrote:
| Lobbying (petitioning one's government) is fine. Bribery
| and corruption are not.
|
| When spending cash money to garner influence is
| considered Freedom Speeches(tm), something is very, very
| broken.
|
| Further, great wealth inequity and democracy are
| incompatible. Sure, there's a balance to be worked out.
| All reasonable observers will agree our current setup is
| way out of balance.
| rzazueta wrote:
| "Lobbying and weaponisation of PR" is just artisinal,
| organic, farm-to-table corruption.
| polygamous_bat wrote:
| IMO it's the opposite, like everything else we have
| optimized corruption, packaged it in a shiny package, and
| convinced the populace we either can't live without it or
| there's no way around it.
| geodel wrote:
| Right. I am seeing tons of people who want to speak truth
| to power are moving to Bangladesh from US
| dang wrote:
| Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to
| Hacker News.
| imglorp wrote:
| > after decades of predatory behavior, slow speeds, and high
| prices by regional telecom monopolies.
|
| Plus some serious fraud as well: cable customers and taxpayers
| paid into various universal service funds for decades without
| actually providing the rural access we all paid for repeatedly.
| The FCC of course is being very gentle [1], not wanting to hurt
| any corporate feelings, and we shell out more billions to help
| them out [2] in case they didn't steal enough the first few
| decades.
|
| So this is just infuriating when communities want to provide
| their own broadband -- because cable will not ever -- and the
| same fraudsters jump in their way.
|
| 1. https://www.fcc.gov/rbap
|
| 2. https://www.cnet.com/news/politics/fcc-
| approves-20-4m-rural-...
| rconti wrote:
| I'm so angry that Comcast is getting away with advertising their
| 200Mbps service as "10G". I have seen repeated confusion from
| folks online who think it means 10Gbps. I sent a complaint to the
| FCC, FTC, and the CA AG, but doubt anything will happen. The
| funny thing was, in their rebuttal to the FCC, Comcast even calls
| their rebuttals "talking points". I thought "talking points" was
| well known as a slightly derogatory term, where it's just crap
| you parrot because it sounds good.
| nickstinemates wrote:
| I recently upgraded to their 2.5Gb service and it's pretty fast
| (I had a sustained 110MB/s download over 150GB yesterday,) and
| generally get 50Mbps upload. It's unfortunately a bit
| unreliable.
|
| Some days I have 4-5 router resets / blips in connectivity and
| then can go weeks without it. Two or three times I have been
| severely throttled by something for an hour or two. This
| happens at specific times of day - i.e, around 2pm.
|
| When previously on their more basic plan I never had any of
| these issues.
|
| All of that said, while I have personally not had any issues
| with Comcast, I'd switch to a local ISP like sonic.net in a
| heartbeat if it was available in my area.
| sharts wrote:
| Same. It's too bad sonic expansion can't happen faster. Wish
| they had detailed maps of which neighborhoods have it
| already.
| [deleted]
| LegitShady wrote:
| Talking points aren't themselves a derogatory idea. You can
| have good talking points for defensible ideas, and in fact in
| public communication planning these is critical. It's only
| derogatory when you use talking points to try to slip something
| unethical or corrupt through by obfuscating.
| sschueller wrote:
| Things like this really piss me off because it "poisons the
| pool". The "regular" person doesn't know the difference and I
| don't expect them too but they do remember such things and in
| the future it leads to issues.
| greggyb wrote:
| I have had great experiences with home internet from the likes of
| Comcast and Verizon for a decade now. What became true a decade
| ago? I moved to a city where there were two viable broadband
| providers (Comcast + municipal fiber, then Comcast + Verizon in
| two different locations). My conclusion: it doesn't matter who is
| offering the service, it matters that there is more than one
| viable option.
|
| Municipal fiber is not special due to the ISP being municipal
| government. It is special because it is a path for a community to
| force a second option into existence.
|
| Lest anyone misunderstand this post: this is an observation in
| wholehearted support of the linked article. It is wonderful that
| a community is able to move forward with getting better internet
| service.
|
| Additionally, I am not trying to brag. I am very lucky to have
| been able to relocate as I have, and that my locations have had
| multiple viable options. I recognize that most of the US does not
| have this flexibility. Again, I offer these observations as full
| throated support for communities pursuing municipal fiber.
|
| Edit, summarizing: Competition works. In my experience, the
| dominant factor determining ISP quality is the presence of
| another ISP with a substitutable offering.
| loufe wrote:
| I understand your point, and to that effect I'd opt for a
| duopoly over a monopoly ten times out of ten. That said, even
| duopoly for internet options sucks. Here in Canada your choice
| between Bell/Rogers, or Bell/Videotron, or Bell/Shaw, etc.
| makes almost no difference vs the choice between a single one
| of them. They just bought out almost all independant providers
| in the country (we're all enjoying huge discounts right now
| that are obviously temporary, and were used as a tool to
| undercut them to make the purchases pass more easily).
|
| I would argue it's more important to have more than one option,
| but it still DOES matter who those options are.
| glitcher wrote:
| My experience has been similar. After many years of only having
| one viable choice of ISP, once another upgraded their lines and
| could compete suddenly things changed very quickly.
|
| I recall a tragically comic phone call to cancel service with
| Cox (of course you were _required_ to do all cancellations over
| the phone). I told them the speed and price I was getting from
| their competitor, which was already installed and confirmed,
| and they tried to convince me those numbers were not possible!
| Hahahaha! Bonus, the new provider 's downtime also proved to be
| far less over the next few years.
| Accujack wrote:
| >Competition works. In my experience, the dominant factor
| determining ISP quality is the presence of another ISP with a
| substitutable offering.
|
| Yes. This is the root of the problem with Internet access in
| the US. The post-Reagan relaxation of antitrust enforcement has
| allowed many monopolies to grow, and combined with lobbying at
| all levels of government has created the stagnant environment
| we have now for Internet and wireless services.
| troyvit wrote:
| I agree with you to a point, but man there are ways that
| Comcast and Verizon just can't compete with Municipal. If I
| want to upgrade a modem I can read some reviews of the best
| Wifi6 routers or whatnot, or I can ping the guy I know who
| works for my provider (who also basically introduced me to my
| partner of 8 years) and get his take on it. The closest thing
| I've gotten to that with a Comcast person was shooting the
| breeze about easement rights for his van and how that neighbor
| calling the cops on him is going to be disappointed.
|
| When I call for support it's some lady a mile away who answers
| on the third ring, and if I break my modem she apologetically
| asks if it's OK if somebody's there in an hour to fix it for me
| for $35.
|
| It's like buying local vegetables except its internet and
| cheaper. You can't beat it.
| greggyb wrote:
| You make some good points. I was very focused on
| speed/price/quality of network service in my post.
|
| This also reflects my own biases and preferences. All I want
| from an ISP is a reliable uplink at a decent price. The last
| piece of equipment that is the ISP's is the ONT. I built my
| own router. I used to have my own DOCSIS modem, but I gave
| that to a family member a while ago and have had fiber since.
|
| Ideally, I never talk to someone from my ISP. I have had Fios
| since 2017, and I have only had to talk to them once, to
| cancel service when I moved. So, as long as I have had
| Verizon (importantly, in homes that were already wired for
| Verizon _and_ a competitor), they have been an ideal ISP.
|
| I recognize that my preferences are far from universal, but
| my original post did not reflect that.
| specialist wrote:
| Are these ISPs using our money to lobby against their customers?
|
| It just now occurred to me broadband advocates might be able to
| copy the renewable energy advocates. Like passing laws to prevent
| energy companies from lobbying against their own rate payers.
|
| Cable companies are regulated too, right?
| Astronaut3315 wrote:
| This is great to hear. We have CenturyLink fiber installed to our
| home but we don't use it. They're a truly incompetent company and
| I hope they get bought out by someone that can actually run an
| ISP. Community ownership would be even better.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| One of my criteria for a 'forever home' is that the community
| must have municipal internet.
|
| My, and my family's experience with private internet companies
| has been horrendous, for years. My parent's only internet option,
| up until a few weeks ago, was $65 6mbit dsl. They are maybe half
| a mile from a fiber connection serving the local school, but they
| refuse to expand it. ATT did not want their business. When they
| complained about the poor quality of the internet, they were told
| repeatedly that the only reason their street had any service what
| so ever was that they were 'grandfathered' from the days of dail
| up.
|
| As for me. I live in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the
| south east. I have heavy rail passenger transport to the city
| center not even a mile from my house, yet comcast is really the
| only option I have for internet. They know I don't have options,
| and their prices, offerings, and customer service reflect this.
|
| TLDR: I'll basically be using this map to determine where I move
| next https://communitynets.org/content/community-network-map
| jp191919 wrote:
| Municipal ISP in my city (Tacoma,WA) failed miserably and was
| sold to a private company. I assume the city mismanaged it.
|
| Still shows on that map but doesn't exist anymore.
| MostlyStable wrote:
| Just FYI but my small town municipal fiber co-op isn't on that
| map, so it probably shouldn't be viewed as authoritative.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| Why don't you contact them to let them know?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Romania was an unregulated market for the first years after
| broadband became available, as a result there was immense
| competition for customers leading to rock bottom prices for huge
| amounts of bandwidth, while in the rest of Europe the local
| telcos were up to their old games.
|
| In Canada the situation was so bad you simply had zero choice as
| to which provider you would get, it was whoever supplied your
| cable connection, unless you wanted dial up.
|
| Unbelievable that even today these companies are trying to gauge
| their customers and would deny them options to do this
| themselves. It's the bloody internet, not something they had a
| hand in creating.
| e40 wrote:
| I had a call with a Comcast sales/tech dude just yesterday. I
| really ripped into them. We pay $225/mo for coax 200/20 right
| now. They wanted more than $600/mo for fiber, didn't even say the
| speed, but I assume it was 1Gbps up/down. I have 10Gbps Sonic.net
| for $50/mo at home.
|
| Mostly what I spent time ripping on him for was not being able to
| disable SecurityEdge (DNS hijacking) and outages (~7 multi-hour
| ones this year). His only answer was "if you want an SLA you need
| to get fiber" which is 100% BS.
|
| The second there is an alternate (other than AT&T) I will jump to
| them. Too bad Sonic doesn't have fiber in my office area, but I
| hope they will at some point.
|
| Comcast is my 2nd most hated company. First is AT&T.
| tenebrisalietum wrote:
| > We pay $225/mo for coax 200/20 right now.
|
| Do you also subscribe to cable TV?
|
| My cable bill was about the same until I ditched the TV portion
| and went with Internet only. Now under $100 a month for a
| similar speed.
| linsomniac wrote:
| This is almost certainly their business service, not
| residential. Our office has a similar level of service via
| Comcast Business, for basically the same price.
| e40 wrote:
| No, this is Business Internet. No way to get Residential at a
| business address.
| rconti wrote:
| With comcast, it was cheaper to have internet+tv than just
| internet. The scam is that it's only cheaper for the first
| year, so you have to keep threatening to cancel.
|
| The internet-only plans had no specials, so WYSIWYG but it
| looks expensive in year 1.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I subscribe to a combo TV/Internet plan because it costs less
| in absolute terms than an internet-only plan. I returned the
| set-top box to avoid the rental fee, and don't hook the cable
| TV up to anything.
| jp191919 wrote:
| $600/mo?!? Dam, I was paying $65/mo for 960/960. Centurylink
| just raised the price to $75 last month.
| dr_orpheus wrote:
| Then sounds like you live in a place where the competition is
| driving down the prices. Where I lived before Comcast wanted
| ~$250/mo for something like 600/200. Now after I've moved
| (only like 20 miles) I live in a place where we have a
| municipal fiber network. So now last time I checked Comcast
| is offering gig speeds for $70/mo
| Unbeliever69 wrote:
| I'm paying $72 for Google Fiber in Taylorsville if that is an
| option for you. Best Internet I've ever had. Blazing fast.
| Practically 0 down time. Haven't had to reboot my router
| ever. Great equipment with no dead spots in my house. 0
| complaints.
| dghughes wrote:
| I'm paying about $425 CAD for TV/Internet ($225) 350/10Mbps,
| two cell phones w/20GB data ($100), and a land line ($80)
| plus 15% tax.
|
| My ISP won't bundle them since TV/Internet, landline,
| cellphone are all different lines of business. They are one
| of the cheapest ISPs though. Bell Canada is aggressive
| (continual salesman visits to my door) and has poor service,
| with Rogers the same. There are resellers of my ISPs service
| but they are very small and support is limited.
|
| The land line and TV and one phone is for my elderly mother.
| She doesn't even watch a lot of TV but the land line in her
| mind is essential. The cellphone is like the modern version
| of Medical Alert she has it in case of an emergency. If she
| remembers. Yet last year during a hurricane we lost all comms
| landline and cell for nearly a week.
|
| Even more fun so many people moved here it's overloading all
| the cell towers.
| philjohn wrote:
| From the context later in the post, this is for "business
| broadband".
| lesquivemeau wrote:
| I'm always flabbergasted by the price of fiber plans in NA. The
| max you could pay for a household in France is less than 50EUR
| for 8Gbps (and i assume prices are similar or lower in other EU
| countries), even accounting for wage gap it's quite a
| difference.
| sergiotapia wrote:
| I pay $90 for 1gigabit fiber AT&T in Miami. It's one of the
| main reasons I bought my house since it was a new development
| one of the first with fiber in the area.
| applied_heat wrote:
| I am a recent star link convert. It might work for you?
| nickstinemates wrote:
| Why is it so expensive? I pay less than $100/mo for their
| 2.5Gb/50 service. Is it business vs. residential pricing?
|
| I'd _love_ to have sonic.net.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| Currently suffering my third multi-hour Comcast/Xfinity outage
| in as many months. When I called the support line to try to get
| a support tech to escalate an inquiry into why I've had so many
| outages, the robot _literally_ said, "An agent cannot help
| you. Goodbye." No, I'm not paraphrasing.
| wooshboats wrote:
| When I worked for Xerox doing outsourced Verizon phone
| support, the fastest way to get someone on the phone who
| actually worked for Verizon, was paid twice as much, had 100x
| the credit limit etc, was too tell the IVR "Disconnect
| service". I use this every time I have to call anything and
| usually get half decent service.
| ericbarrett wrote:
| I wasn't even offered the phone tree to try that! It looked
| up my account from my phone number, told me there was an
| outage, said what I wrote above, and hung up.
| leesalminen wrote:
| At least they're honest about it :). Normally they'd let you
| badger an agent to escalate the issue to nowhere.
| [deleted]
| lesona wrote:
| Trying to get to an agent is practically impossible. I
| called recently to make an account change, but after I went
| through the automated system I got an "I'm sorry, we see
| there is an outage in your area. Please wait for the outage
| to be resolved and then call back."
|
| Insane.
| nomat wrote:
| I mean, what are you gonna do about it? Companies have so
| many customers and so much capital these days that they
| don't have to pretend anymore.
| TheRealDunkirk wrote:
| I'm the "tech guy" at my church. I've had no less than SEVEN
| Comcast sales people hassle me over the past couple of years
| about "upgrading" to fiber. They even had our pastor talked
| into to it for a second. "It's the same price!" "Yeah, for a
| TENTH of the speed as coax." Luckily, he finally saw through
| this. I keep asking them to leave me alone, but the sales staff
| turns over every 3 or 4 months, and then someone new goes
| through the customer list all over again. I kind of get it. A
| new company is laying fiber all over the city, and pre-selling
| the service at MUCH lower pricing, so Comcast sees another
| market about to slip through their fingers.
| kbenson wrote:
| > Too bad Sonic doesn't have fiber in my office area, but I
| hope they will at some point.
|
| Aerial (telephone pole) deployment is vastly cheaper than
| trenching (and many business parks and newer neighborhoods were
| built with conduit buried with AT&T/Comcast already in them),
| so Sonic's deployment generally has followed where there are
| aerial options to utilize. That said, I think (micro)trenching
| is becoming more viable, so I believe plans to start delivering
| to some areas through that are moving ahead.
| dylan604 wrote:
| This aerial deployment maybe cheaper, but there is on going
| rent for having your line on someone else's poles. I have no
| knowledge of those rental agreements other than they exist. I
| wonder if the trenching style deployment also has some sort
| of agreement with the city?? Whenever I do see the trenching
| teams installing fiber lines, I'm always curious why such a
| small amount is being installed. I know there are many many
| fiber strands in the "cable" they are burying, but why just
| the one. Every connection needs a pair, so how ever many
| strands are in that "cable", there's half that number of
| connections.
| kbenson wrote:
| > This aerial deployment maybe cheaper, but there is on
| going rent for having your line on someone else's poles.
|
| I don't think it's much, if anything, depending on the
| location. My understanding is it's governed by public use
| policies, since it's public infrastructure. I do know it
| requires some work for those putting more infrastructure on
| there to figure out the new load and stress and submit
| plans for required work, and sometimes poles are identified
| that are degraded to the point that it requires replacement
| or retrofitting, but I can't recall whether that's a burden
| taken by the public utility, the company looking to utilize
| the space, it's shared, or it's situational and depends.
|
| > I wonder if the trenching style deployment also has some
| sort of agreement with the city?? Whenever I do see the
| trenching teams installing fiber lines, I'm always curious
| why such a small amount is being installed.
|
| You do need to get permits in both cases. I think
| microtrenching is easier to get permitted because it causes
| less issues with the road. You're cutting a line an inch or
| so wide, so there's less worry about car tires compacting
| the filling material and making the road bumpy. Since it's
| deep but not wide, it could also be they're stacking
| multiple runs one on top of each other, which at any one
| point in time may look like a very small amount being
| inserted (I don't know, not my department).
|
| > Every connection needs a pair, so how ever many strands
| are in that "cable", there's half that number of
| connections.
|
| Depending on what you mean by "connection", they don't.
| Fiber strands are split out with optical splitters, one or
| more times, so a single strand back to the CO can handle
| multiple actual installation locations (but not too many).
| Planning out how many you allow generally and how much
| you'll allow max is a balancing act. Sometimes you deliver
| to a building with multiple units and you don't want to
| drop a line to every unit but you don't want to serve
| twenty units off a single strand that might be split once
| upstream already).
| eek2121 wrote:
| Yet AT&T Fiber is an awesome product.
| e40 wrote:
| That may be, but it's expensive in my area and their support
| is legendarily terrible. I had ADSL for 6+ years and it was
| an absolute shitshow. Near the end, they told me I needed to
| switch providers because they couldn't fix the problem, which
| was in the drop cable from the pole to house. I had one tech
| tell me to have a "tree trimming accident" and just cut the
| line, as they wouldn't replace it otherwise.
|
| Also, I remember a year or two ago a discussion on reddit and
| possibly here about customers with HTTPS certificate errors
| and it was ultimately traced after months to a bad router
| that was mangling packets. MONTHS.
|
| Most people at AT&T are incompetent and the ones that aren't
| are hobbled by the ones that are. Just my experience. YMMV.
| gottorf wrote:
| > I had one tech tell me to have a "tree trimming accident"
| and just cut the line, as they wouldn't replace it
| otherwise
|
| Just mind-boggling! Maybe you should have had that
| accident, after all.
| e40 wrote:
| Yeah, I seriously considered it. I was worried they'd try
| to bill me for it and I wasn't up for the fight. I knew I
| was moving to Comcast, at that point. The move from AT&T
| to Comcast to Sonic, each time, has felt like a 10x
| improvement.
| selectodude wrote:
| Except the hot garbage they use as FTTH modulators.
| sschueller wrote:
| Corruption and attempts to control markets are everywhere and if
| you don't fight them they will win.
|
| In Switzerland fiber needs to be accessible to all providers
| which results in many places having fiber run by the local power
| providers and the large state owned telephone company. This is
| what allows providers to offer 25gbit synchronous for under 70
| USD per month.
|
| However this did not stop the large state owned communication
| provider to attempt to kill competition by no longer running p2p
| (1 or 4 fibers directly from a home to the local exchange
| bulding) fibers but p2mp (1 fiber to a splitter in the street
| with a backbone to the exchange) which requires active splitters
| (the environmental impact of this was completely ignored). This
| automatically limits any other provider from offering a faster
| service than the phone company.
|
| Even after a court case and then an injunction they spent
| millions to expand this network thinking they can somehow
| perswaid the courts and use people complaining that they can't
| have fiber because of an injunction (they told customers on the
| phone that fiber is available but can't be connected due to a
| court case). In the end they however back peddled and it appears
| they will loose the case now.
|
| Thanks to the small provider that took this to the courts (init7)
| it appears we will keep a network open for competition and future
| proof.
|
| There are fines pending but those are a 2 edges sword. The tax
| payer effectively pays it since the majority stake belongs to the
| tax payer. So a large fine is bad and a small fine is bad because
| it's not a deterrent. The executives that caused the mess's are
| already mostly gone (hence the back peddling) but the correct
| action would be to claw back their pay and bonus or something
| like that so the next "hot shots" don't try such shit again.
| tw04 wrote:
| >The tax payer effectively pays it since the majority stake
| belongs to the tax payer. So a large fine is bad and a small
| fine is bad because it's not a deterrent. The executives that
| caused the mess's are already mostly gone (hence the back
| peddling) but the correct action would be to claw back their
| pay and bonus or something like that so the next "hot shots"
| don't try such shit again.
|
| If it's state owned, they should be allowed to determine how
| the penalty is levied. Make the fine directly payable by the
| executives in charge, it'll stop immediately.
|
| Also not to nitpick as I'm guessing English is a second
| language and it's quite excellent -
|
| *persuade the courts
| Etheryte wrote:
| I think this is the best kind of typo. The spelling given by
| the original comment pronounces the same way as the correct
| spelling, we've just all memorized that one of them is the
| correct way to go from verbal to written.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| I have never wanted to move to Switzerland more
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| Why do people want the extra bandwidth? Isn't latency in
| distant end server response times generally much slower than
| speeds, unless the concern is bandwidth for streaming?
| sharts wrote:
| Probably the same reason people want extra free speech?
|
| If available and technically feasible, then why not ensure
| it as much as possible.
| tw04 wrote:
| Latency drives throughput for a single session - but most
| people that want that kind of bandwidth don't care about a
| single stream going at the full 25Gbit. Things like
| torrents or lftp will allow you to create multiple data
| streams for a single file if you need higher throughput
| than you can get through a single session.
|
| If you're self-hosting something like a web server, no one
| user is ever going to hit you with 25Gbit of requests,
| it'll be coming from multiple sources.
| RajT88 wrote:
| High latency is not the same thing as low throughput.
|
| It is wild how many people do not understand this.
|
| Latency can inform throughput if your windows do not scale.
| But the whole reason we have window scaling schemes is to
| optimize throughput in the face of latency.
|
| With regards to remote server performance - yeah - CDN's
| exist for this reason. I may not saturate my gigabit
| connection while downloading game patches, but I get close
| enough. I have also had the experience on a different ISP
| of having spent more time downloading and installing
| updates than I ever did playing my PlayStation.
| nickstinemates wrote:
| Peaks. If you have a home with 5 people in it - watching 4k
| content, downloading games, etc. There can be contention
| and performance gets degraded. This is a case where size of
| pipe matters more than latency.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| To make a future where people do not have to depend on
| Youtube and the like?
| jedberg wrote:
| > Why do people want the extra bandwidth?
|
| This reminds me of "640K ought to be enough for anybody".
|
| Right now I have 1gpbs up and down at home. That was an
| upgrade I did from 50 down about five years ago. The reason
| we upgraded was because at night when everyone was
| streaming things would slow down and we'd be fighting with
| each other. The 1g stopped that issue.
|
| Right now the 1g is more than enough. But I'm sure there
| will come a time when it won't be. Maybe we'll have 8k
| streaming from AR headsets that require one stream for each
| eye. Or who knows what else.
|
| I'd rather get ahead of it.
|
| And right now it still takes a few minutes to download a
| movie at full quality. I have to say that when we went from
| 50m to 1g it was nice to be able to download TV shows in
| seconds.
| entropicdrifter wrote:
| I pay $90 a month for 1Gbps up/down fiber to the home. To
| pay $70 a month for 25x that speed is ludicrous. I imagine
| I could pay half of what I do or less to get the same
| speeds.
| pnw wrote:
| IMHO many of these US and EU comparisons don't pan out due to
| scale.
|
| Switzerland is a small, wealthy and densely populated country
| compared to the US.
|
| Utah alone is five times the size of Switzerland. Swiss GDP per
| capita is ~20% higher and most importantly, the population
| density of Switzerland is 213 people per sq km versus 34 in the
| US (and undoubtedly that number is even lower in Utah which has
| one of the lowest population densities in the US).
| sschueller wrote:
| You could make the same statement when it was time to wire
| the US for power or telephone lines. Yet a large chunk of the
| US has power and telephone.
| b59831 wrote:
| [dead]
| monocasa wrote:
| That doesn't explain why dense, high GDP parts of the US
| don't have Switzerland's speeds.
| babypuncher wrote:
| This still reads like a success story of municipal networks to
| me. It is much easier to hold public institutions like this
| accountable than private regional monopolies. A private company
| is not subject to the whims of the Democratic process, and
| regional monopolies ensure that free market forces have a much
| harder time cultivating competition or disruption. The fact
| that your courts were able to put an end to these practices and
| the executives responsible are gone while Comcast continues to
| operate unchecked throughout large swaths of the US really
| demonstrates this.
|
| In Utah, we've been fighting the corruption and anti-
| competitive practices of Comcast and CenturyLink for over two
| decades. And despite many small victories like the recent one
| in Bountiful, many residents are still getting screwed over
| with no viable recourse. The city my parents live in fell for
| Comcast's intense lobbying a few years ago and now they have no
| real path towards getting a meaningful alternative.
| trogdor wrote:
| > 25gbit synchronous for under 70 USD per month
|
| Wow. And I thought my 10GbE home network was fast...
|
| TIL there are 25GbE Thunderbolt 3 adapters.
| HeckFeck wrote:
| You could say: bandwidth that burninates.
| sschueller wrote:
| You need some hw to take advantage of it but it's not too
| bad. https://sschueller.github.io/posts/wiring-a-home-with-
| fiber/
| philjohn wrote:
| Why use active splitters when it's much cheaper to install
| passive ones?
| sschueller wrote:
| It was calculated to save about 50 USD per connection (p2p vs
| p2mp). Why active I don't know, they may not all be. There
| were probably also other interests which I would love to know
| about but I wasn't a fly on the wall when those decisions
| were made.
|
| The sheer amount of money spent to expand the network after
| the court injunction forbid connecting those seems sus to me.
| It will take many years and many more millions to undo.
|
| I should also point out that a lot of this money to expand
| the fiber network comes from government grants.
| throw0101b wrote:
| If you're talking about 25 Gb/s specifically, standards
| didn't exist until relatively recently (e.g., IEEE Std
| 802.3ca-2020, 25GS-PON/G.9804), so if you want to handle
| those speeds you had to go active.
|
| If you were building out in later 2022 or 2023, you have have
| (more) 25Gb PON parts available. Pre-2021 your options may
| have been more limited.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > providers to offer 25gbit synchronous
|
| What use cases are there for residential (or even most
| business) connection to be 25Gb/s (or even >10 Gb/s)? Are there
| 'practical' application for homes or offices to have this much?
|
| At $WORK we have both 10 Gbps to both our office and our DC,
| and we don't come close to saturating that.
|
| There's really only so many Linux ISOs that you can download at
| home.
|
| (I'm not "against" having it, just curious on possible uses.)
| Gelob wrote:
| How about streaming actual 4k content at not a terrible
| bitrate
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| Youtube 4k is 25mbps and I don't think anyone's 4k is over
| 100mpbs.
| throw0101b wrote:
| Blu-ray 4K content is an absolute maximum of ~150Mbps, but
| can be below 100Mbps. So with a 1G/1000M connection you can
| stream have 7-10 streams of 4K Bluray quality video
| simultaneously.
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_HD_Blu-ray
|
| What does going to 10G, let alone 25G, get you? Are you
| really planning on 70-100 4K simultaneous movie streams on
| 10G, or 160-250 simultaneous streams on 25?
| Trixter wrote:
| That's missing some of the bigger picture. One of the
| reasons streaming 4k content is at a lower bitrate is
| because it has to deal with network hiccups _and_ fit
| inside the buffer of most playback devices. A computer or
| phone has plenty of room, but streaming 4K content to a
| TV or chromecast /roku/firestick/etc. does not. Faster
| bandwidth means keeping the bucket full more reliably.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| Are we sure that is true? Why would Netflix or similar
| pay out to give a better picture? Outside of a few AV
| aficionados, I doubt the average consumer would know or
| care.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > What use cases are there for residential (or even most
| business) connection to be 25Gb/s (or even >10 Gb/s)?
|
| Using a mapped remote drives for actual work, especially with
| multiple remote workers. (WFH kind of blurs
| residential/business use case distinctions.)
| afavour wrote:
| "Futureproofing" feels like a lame answer but when you're
| talking about laying cables in the ground it's a good one.
| Just imagine a future where we're streaming 4K 360 degree
| video for VR headsets or something.
|
| I'm sure all the folks that have had to tear up 100Mbps LAN
| cables wished there was 1000Mbps cable in there instead.
| throw0101b wrote:
| The laying of cables is the same: it's single-mode fibre
| with a PON architecture. Once you have that possible future
| speeds are 'infinite' with end-point upgrades.
|
| I'm asking: why _even get_ the 25Gig service over the
| 10Gig? What are _you doing_ with a 25G down /uplink that
| you cannot accomplish with 10G?
| bauruine wrote:
| It's not PON thats why they are able to provide 25
| Gbit/s. And they choose 25 Gbit/s because the switches
| for it where only slightly more expensive than the 10
| Gbit/s version would have been. They did a talk about it
| some time ago.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXmJCzMeIBo
| throw0101b wrote:
| 25 Gb/s is available with PON now (>2021). See IEEE Std
| 802.3ca-2020, 25GS-PON/G.9804.
| bauruine wrote:
| True but the "state owned ISP" in Switzerland only has
| XGS-PON hardware. So Init7 could only provide 25Gbit/s in
| the parts of the network thats not PON.
| antonjs wrote:
| If the price is under $70 for 25G, I'd imagine most
| people pay half that for less bandwidth, but the 25G
| works for a number of people who need or want it, plus is
| great marketing. Also selling 25G that's underutilized is
| probably substantially cheaper.
| sschueller wrote:
| Init7 charges the same for 10gibt or 25gbit[1]. Just
| setup costs and HW are more.
|
| The 1gibt service they have now is cheaper and intended
| for "regular users". It's now CGNAT and comes with a per-
| configured router. [2]
|
| [1] https://www.init7.net/en/internet/fiber7/
|
| [2] https://www.init7.net/en/internet/easy7/
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _but the 25G works for a number of people who need or
| want it_
|
| Yes. But I'm asking: what is the _need_ for it?
|
| If you want and are willing to spend the money go ahead.
| But I'm asking for the use-case.
| tw04 wrote:
| Honestly when it comes to bandwidth: if you build it, they
| will come? It's a chicken and egg problem most of the time.
| People aren't going to invent a new widget if there's no
| infrastructure and no sign of there ever being infrastructure
| to support it.
|
| For instance: who in their right mind would have built
| Netflix in 1992?
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| We were experimenting with IGMP on the Mbone back then, in
| terms of teleconference and webinar capabilities. We sort
| of envisioned that large groups of people would tune in
| simultaneously to live events, but Netflix's VOD and
| YouTube made for a markedly different architecture.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| I think that the GP meant "symmetric" rather than
| "synchronous". 25 symmetric means "$up == $down".
|
| I believe that a synchronous clock is a given for broadband.
| doublerabbit wrote:
| I'd buy an old shed and turn it in to a make-shift data
| centre; plug an ethernet cable in to a mushroom.
|
| MTP, like TCP but more squishy.
|
| The book entangled-life was also a great read [1]
|
| [0] https://www.newswise.com/articles/mushrooms-communicate-
| with...
|
| [1] https://www.merlinsheldrake.com/entangled-life
| sschueller wrote:
| I was thinking of setting up some website and try to get
| hugged to death by HN but I think my server will crap out
| before the 25gbit connection.
| throw0101b wrote:
| > _I 'd buy an old shed and turn it in to a make-shift data
| centre, plug an ethernet cable in to a mushroom._
|
| My various jobs in recent years is to run HPC data centres:
| a little while ago one with 12PB of total storage (along
| with lots of Ceph storage for ~300 on-prem, private cloud
| OpenStack instances), a more recent one had about a
| thousand GPUs (our power usage was high-five digit kWh each
| month).
|
| Whenever I looked at our routers/firewalls, we never came
| close to saturating 10Gb/s even with all data sets we dealt
| with.
| allset_ wrote:
| That sounds like a limitation on the remote end that
| doesn't support high bandwidth. If you have 10Gbps
| connections on both ends, your link should be saturated
| (minus some overhead).
| oceanplexian wrote:
| Games. These days the average new AAA games approach 100GB.
| the biggest ones like Ark Survival are 400GB.
|
| A 5 minute download vs a 50 minute download is a totally
| meaningful difference in quality of life. It might sound
| crazy but a top end gaming rig can definitely take advantage
| of that 10G connection.
| sharts wrote:
| Why does there have to be a practical application?
|
| Bandwidth is like speech. Once you've provided the basic
| framework you should have the right to as much or as little
| as wanted.
|
| We don't limit speech of some people that don't talk as much
| and expand it only for those that talk a lot. That would be
| crazy.
| manquer wrote:
| Cost ? Anything over 1 gbs let alone 10gbs requires special
| /extra hardware which is on the expensive side .
|
| If there is no real use , why spend for that kind of gear ?
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| I get 250mbs down, and outside of a massive Steam game, I
| am not sure what I would do with more.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| As far as I'm concerned a town government that does not own its
| own fiber network is like a town government that does not own its
| own roads.
| [deleted]
| cornstalks wrote:
| It's so great seeing my hometown make progress here. Internet
| options have always been an absolute joke here.
|
| I think a lot of people are going to be surprised in the near
| future (once the network rolls out to residents) just how cheap
| fast internet can be. And many people don't realize just how
| _awful_ Comcast 's uplink speeds are (1 Gb down won't save your
| Zoom calls if you only have <=20 Mbps up). Bountiful is in for a
| big quality-of-life improvement for internet users (which is
| basically everyone).
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Comcast's upload is so bad that they don't even bother
| advertising a minimum upload bandwidth. Zero mention of upload
| capacity anywhere.
|
| It could be 5Mb/s split over 200 households for all you know.
| fotta wrote:
| They do publish numbers in a very hidden page:
| https://www.xfinity.com/networkmanagement
| dheera wrote:
| Meanwhile I live 2km from Google's headquarters and I can't get
| more than 20mbps up.
|
| Part of the reason is I can't afford to own here (nobody can)
| and property owners don't want to upgrade either. Same with EV
| charging.
|
| Places like this should require property owners who rent out
| their properties to get with the beat or leave. Property
| managers who don't install gigabit fiber, EV charging, and
| induction stoves aren't welcome in this community. This is
| Silicon Valley, not Utah, yet the Utahans have us one-upped
| already.
| rconti wrote:
| I jumped from comcast (whatever, 200 up/20 down or similiar) to
| 1Gbps symmetrical 4 years ago and now 10Gbps symmetrical. For
| less than half of what Comcast charges, with a local ISP
| (Sonic). It just makes you realize how much money is being
| funneled directly into shareholder pockets (and to lobbyists
| and congresscritters and local regulators). And then they brag
| about throwing $100k at some local schools or something.
| docmars wrote:
| Gotta make sure those g'ddamned pirates don't have enough
| bandwidth to seed their beloved cable-network-owned TV shows
| and movies, at the expense of everyone else who could benefit
| from faster uplink speeds. ;)
| bdavbdav wrote:
| You sure on that? We have 1000/100. Both WFH using zoom etc, 4
| nest cams etc recording. We very rarely break 10-15mbps up.
| JohnFen wrote:
| It gives me some hope that perhaps my city could do something
| similar.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| Don't be too hopeful. You might live in a state that passed
| law banning municipal internet.
|
| https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-
| roadbloc...
| [deleted]
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://www.google.com/search?q=how+to+advocate+for+communit.
| ..
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| Who needs 20Mbit/s for Zoom? Are they sending 4K UHD from a pro
| DSLR?
|
| My ISP (cable modem) was around 25Mbit/s down, 5Mbit/s up in
| the before times, and they've rapidly upgraded speeds a few
| times since the lockdowns, but mine's been max 20Mbit upstream,
| and no complaints. I've used every app there is for realtime
| meetings.
|
| https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/201362023-Zoom-sys...
|
| Zoom recommended 3.8Mbit/sec. Most third parties recommend 5.
| 20 is ridiculous, and will allow for 3 of your kids playing
| Fortnite and Netflix all day while Dad's in meetings.
| Etheryte wrote:
| "640K [of memory] ought to be enough for anyone."
| crest wrote:
| If you want to send a copy of your camera stream to everyone
| on the call from your device directly for lower latency...
| ckdarby wrote:
| That is not how Zoom works today...
| casey2 wrote:
| You aren't just at the mercy of your housemates, at peak
| times 20Mb can drop to 1Mb easily. Advertised speeds are a
| theoretical maximum.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| I suppose that my ISP has some really great backbone
| service in my area, then, because dropouts and "peak hours"
| mean nothing to me.
| klabb3 wrote:
| Remember that Zoom became popular during Covid. Another less
| recent but massively popular thing is TV streaming.
|
| The point is: it's a thought error to look at what is
| mainstream today to determine the potential of tomorrow. It's
| akin to dismissing cheap electricity based on that we already
| have enough light bulbs.
|
| Fast reliable internet is infrastructure, which is not
| exciting on its own. However, if widely available, new
| downstream opportunities open up that otherwise nobody would
| be foolish enough to invest in.
|
| But most importantly, it's not expensive for being
| infrastructure. Americans in particular are already
| overpaying insanely for internet.
| simlevesque wrote:
| This assumes this is the only traffic on your network.
| Nowadays it's never true.
|
| Also I'd guess most people's network has mote than one user
| at a time.
| cornstalks wrote:
| 4+ kids in a family is pretty common in Bountiful. Some I
| know have more than twice that (my own is >4). During COVID
| everyone would be in calls at the same time (school for kids,
| work for parent(s)). People are back in person now but we
| still have snow days occasionally.
|
| So yeah, 20 Mbps up can really suck, especially when you
| realize the advertised speeds are only "up to."
| TheKarateKid wrote:
| You can never apply the "____ is more than enough" theory to
| technology. Remember when DSL felt as fast as driving a
| Ferrari?
| Aurornis wrote:
| > (1 Gb down won't save your Zoom calls if you only have <=20
| Mbps up)
|
| 1080p Zoom HD only calls for 3.8Mbps. A 20Mbps up connection
| should be just fine if it's truly 20Mbps up.
|
| I have a couple coworkers on StarLink who can only get 20Mbps
| up on a good day. Zoom is still fine.
| linsomniac wrote:
| Can't say specifically for Zoom, but I do know that during
| the pandemic lockdowns, with me on Google Meet or BlueJeans,
| and my two kids on Teams for their school, our Xfinity
| 500Mbps service really struggled, and going to their Gigabit
| service was needed. ISTR that 500Mbps had 20Mbps up and
| gigabit had 30Mbps, but I might be off there.
|
| Switched to city fiber as soon as it was available and that's
| been a blessing.
| Peanuts99 wrote:
| Sounds like your local exchange couldn't cope with the
| additional traffic rather than your line.
| mox1 wrote:
| Yea that upgrade caused something else to happen, because
| like OP said 20mbps of actual bandwidth will support 3-4
| people on Zoom,Netflix(non 4k!),gaming just fine.
|
| You probably got a different modem, with more channels,
| that opened up more actual bandwidth for you.
| linsomniac wrote:
| That's true, I did upgrade from a 3-4 year old DOCSIS 3.0
| Surfboard to a 3.1 Surfboard at the same time. I didn't
| run any metrics to see what actual bandwidth usage was, I
| was just waiting for symmetric gig fiber at the time.
| cornstalks wrote:
| > _if it 's truly 20Mbps up._
|
| I agree, though "if" is kinda key. And the number of
| concurrent users in your household. It can be easy to
| accidentally saturate your uplink if you have multiple users
| in your family and you aren't coordinating. Or at least
| that's been my experience.
| gibspaulding wrote:
| I was thinking the same. I've been working from home on a
| rural DSL connection for the past 6 months. 10mbps down and
| 2mbps up. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, but Teams calls
| do seem to handle it surprisingly well.
| blooalien wrote:
| > "Internet options have always been an absolute joke here."
|
| Yep. You can totally thank the totally corrupt and pretty much
| borderline criminal Comcast and Centurylink (and their bribe-
| hungry pet politicians) for that.
| sharts wrote:
| Why would capitalist enterprises want to derail others? It is
| unfathomable
| a2tech wrote:
| These entrenched groups can only win by stopping the municipal
| options from starting. Once they've started using it they'll
| never go back (willingly) to these big corporate messes.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I am on a big corporate mess, but its a decent one (AT&T
| fiber).
|
| After being on this connection for ~2 years, I cannot imagine
| going back to Comcast. I've actually been looking at moving,
| and my #1 filter is fiber network availability. I will
| literally skip an otherwise perfect property if it doesn't have
| access, or the ability to add access for <6 figures.
| irrational wrote:
| Same. I our old house we were on Verizon (which became
| Frontier which became zipplyfiber) fiber optic network for 17
| years. It was relatively cheap, reliable, and fast. When we
| moved a few years ago, I refused to consider any house that
| wasn't on ZipplyFiber.
| nostromo wrote:
| Meh... that's not really true.
|
| I used to support municipal fiber in my home town (Seattle) --
| but after many years of dollars spent and zero progress, the
| city finally mothballed the effort.
|
| And now I have fiber to the home (Centurylink) at a price so
| low I don't even think about it.
|
| I think the key is competition. If your city doesn't have
| competition, it absolutely makes sense to create competition
| from the municipality.
| JohnFen wrote:
| You're happy with CenturyLink? The people I know who have it
| absolutely hate that company, just as much as Comcast
| customers tend to hate Comcast.
| bob1029 wrote:
| I don't think its the company as much as the nature of the
| product.
|
| Fiber is simply in a completely different universe of
| quality compared to DOCSIS & DSL.
|
| AT&T is literally the worst thing on earth... unless you
| have access to their fiber offerings. Then it might be
| among the best. I can get 5gbps in my area now but I don't
| bother. Internet is solved for me as far as I am concerned
| now.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I don't know. I know that I despise Comcast, although my
| problem with them isn't the actual service itself. That's
| been great. My problem is dealing with them as a company.
|
| If I had any other option, even one with worse service,
| I'd switch away in a heartbeat if the new company were
| easier to deal with.
| selectodude wrote:
| I'm trying to get 5Gbit just as a way to upgrade the
| homelab. 5gbit firewall and routing requires a lot of new
| toys :)
| nostromo wrote:
| Yes, I'm happy with their gigabit fiber product
| specifically. I can't comment on other products.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I have CenturyLink 940Mbps up and down fiber, and have not
| had a single issue in 5+ years. Never talked to them
| outside of the installation.
|
| But the satisfaction is because it's symmetric fiber. I'm
| sure CenturyLink DSL is garbage, just like Comcast coaxial.
| jacob171714 wrote:
| I mean if you never actually switched to a municipal service
| than it doesn't really count as a refutation. I thought
| seattle had issues doing this sort of stuff in general.
| jp191919 wrote:
| I have centurylink fiber in Tacoma, and I've been very happy
| with it.
|
| Our municipal ISP failed and was sold to a private company.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| Indeed, each win against Corporate Last Mile persists. High
| value effort in inhibiting the success of their lobbying
| efforts. Get the fiber on the poles or in the ground and drive
| them out of town.
|
| https://ilsr.org/broadband-2/
|
| https://communitynets.org/content/community-network-map
| treis wrote:
| That's not true. Provo, as an example, spent 50 millions on
| their fiber before selling it to Google for $1.
| TootsMagoon wrote:
| I pay $70mo in Portland for 1gbit
| jeron wrote:
| Surprised Utah of all states supporting a community owned
| enterprise
| BryanLegend wrote:
| We have a decently well run state government here.
| macintosh-hd wrote:
| Municipal ISPs are banned in cities with populations over 50k
| by the state of Utah so it's not that great.
| barbazoo wrote:
| Is there an actual practical reason for this that would
| explain it or is it just lobbying?
| yamazakiwi wrote:
| Most places in the valley already have Google Fiber and
| it's still expanding, if that's valuable information to
| you.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Not me. Because of Mormonism, I'd bet Utah simply has _more
| community_ than most other places.
| tbyehl wrote:
| Don't write off the Utah incumbents yet, they convinced the
| politicians to sabotage iProvo and take a massive loss.
| lolinder wrote:
| It looks like iProvo was started nearly two decades ago [0]. A
| lot has changed since then. Especially after the pandemic
| lockdowns, public awareness of the importance of home internet
| and the stranglehold of the monopolies has gone up
| dramatically. I would not expect to see a repeat of iProvo in
| 2023.
|
| [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IProvo
| tbyehl wrote:
| Yeah. Another thing that changed during that period where
| Utah was deliberately sabotaging iProvo was a bunch of states
| made it illegal for a municipality to use debt financing for
| buildouts.
|
| In another instance of politicians intentionally harming
| rural broadband, over in Tennessee, EPB was extending their
| fiber network to neighboring communities outside their
| electrical footprint that wanted it, and they made that
| illegal, too.
| nologic01 wrote:
| There is this famous physics quote that _nature abhors a vacuum_
| (and will instantly fill it with air) but this effect is far more
| appropriate for human affairs. If people let their guard down, do
| not get informed, are not civic-minded, organized, active, hence
| create a vacuum in oversight and governance, _somebody_ will take
| advantage of it and will fill the vacuum.
|
| The details vary over time and space but the essence is always
| the same. Somebody will influence the decision making bodies to
| make decisions that are suboptimal for the many and advantageous
| for a few. It may blatant corruption or more involved and nuanced
| "capture". There is no real difference for the societal calculus.
|
| A well functioning society is not an utopic place where nobody
| tries to take advantage of the commons. It is rather an immune
| system where signals, feedback loops and deterrent mechanisms
| instantly neutralize any parasitic attempt.
|
| Ironically, a well connected digital society is technically fully
| equipped to create such immune systems. All it takes the right
| frame of mind.
| blitz_skull wrote:
| I think I'd consider sending my data packets via smoke signal
| before ever handing comcast another dime. I have actually planned
| my geographical location (i.e. buying a house) around whether or
| not I had alternatives to Comcast.
|
| Seriously, fuck that company.
| jmyeet wrote:
| I used to think that almost nobody who opposed socialism actually
| knew what socialism is. That's true but what I've realized more
| recently is that almost nobody who defends capitalism actually
| knows what capitalism is. It's just a kneejerk reaction without
| thought.
|
| The fight by large telcos against municipal broadband is the
| perfect representation of capitalism vs socialism.
|
| Municipal broadband is a fundamentally socialist idea. The people
| of a town, city, county or whatever essentially own the means of
| production, being the Internet connectivity in this case.
|
| Comcat, AT&T, Spectrum, etc perfectly exemplify capitalism: these
| companies exist solely to extract as much value from the end-
| consumers as possible while doing the least possible, all for
| higher profits for shareholders. it is pure rent-seeking and
| using the political process and the courts to create and maintain
| monopolies to keep those profits as high as possible.
|
| All of this is entirely obvious within the context of the labor
| theory of value [1] and dialectical materialism [2].
|
| The last mile should be muncipally owned, operated and maintained
| and Internet access should be a basic utility like water and
| electricity.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism
| MetaWhirledPeas wrote:
| (This is great news.)
|
| Isn't it funny though, that when we're against something we call
| it "government", but when we're in favor of something we call it
| "community" :)
| axewwwxxx wrote:
| [flagged]
| linsomniac wrote:
| Very amusing that CenturyLink is complaining about FTTH. Back in
| the '90s (when they were USWest) they pocketed billions of
| dollars in increased tariffs with the express purpose of them
| delivering FTTH. Short of a few trial locations, they didn't seem
| to do anything but pocket the money.
|
| They could have been out in front with FTTH, but instead decided
| to just sit on their existing copper infrastructure. Which, at
| least in my town, seems to just be rotting away; seems like
| everywhere I go I see one of their boxes that's broken open with
| the innards spilling out and exposed directly to the weather.
|
| This is the same company that refused to deploy DSLAMs anywhere
| but in the CO, because if they put them in neighborhoods it would
| allow CLECs to also deploy them around towns, and USWest didn't
| want to deploy full coverage, so they worried about CLECs
| deploying to neighborhoods that USWest didn't. So if you weren't
| within 18K feet of a CO, you were screwed for DSL service.
| codelord wrote:
| As a Comcast customer who's paying 5x what I was paying in Europe
| for half the bandwidth I want this to succeed. However let's not
| celebrate a win before actually delivering the service to the
| customers. There's more to building a business than seed funding
| it. The pessimistic in me would say if there was a viable path to
| providing high-speed internet with low cost in the US surely
| companies with a lot on the line like Netflix, Google, Amazon,
| etc. would make that happen. If you think it's all Comcast profit
| margins you can always go and buy Comcast stocks to get your
| share of that profit. They are doing well but not spectacularly
| well.
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