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Harvard Study Shows Why Big Telecom Is Terrified of Community-Run Broadband

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Re: Harvard Study Shows Why Big Telecom Is Terrified of Community-Run Broadband

#31
We can easily be running our own internet. I recenlty discovered CJDNS[1] (protocol for encrypted p2p address allocation and routing for mesh networks, so essentially OSI layer 3) and project Hyperboria[2] (a community of local WiFi initiatives) while exploring scuttlebutt[3]. Confirmed my suspicions that we could probably be getting waaay better internet connectivity at way lower prices.

Decentralized tech is going to be the future. Now if we can only figure out how to not get squashed down by the powers that be.

[1] https://github.com/cjdelisle/cjdns

[2] https://hyperboria.net/

[3] p2p social network https://scuttlebutt.nz

Re: Harvard Study Shows Why Big Telecom Is Terrified of Community-Run Broadband

#32
The prequalification walls stuff is bullshit and should be illegal. Twice now I've moved to a recently constructed place where it was impossible to get any information on offerings or prices before completion - and putting in neighbor's addresses is an infuriating process of trying to find one who has ISP A instead of B repeatedly until I don't get a "this address already has service please login" message.

So help me God I will get involved in local government if for no other reason that to advocate for municipal broadband and requiring fiber be laid for all new construction.

Re: Harvard Study Shows Why Big Telecom Is Terrified of Community-Run Broadband

#33
post #10

Most broadband providers work with overbooking / contention ratios, so if you sell 100/100mbit you buy 20:1 to 50:1 less from the upstream provider. Overbooking ratios for consumer internet can be between for example 20:1 to 50:1. That means for 20mbit of bandwith to consumers you buy 1 mbit of bandwidth from a upstream provider. Buying one megabit of uplink at current market rate is typically less than a dollar from…

I think you’re mis-interpreting the overbooking ratios. My understanding is that a 20:1 ratio means that for 1 mbit you can serve 20 customers 1 mbit. Your point still stands though. That means if 1 mbit cost $1 then it costs $0.04/customer. The real cost is in deploying the wires and countless studies have shown the ROI on that, especially given the exorbitant rates, is typically 5 years or less per hookup. Can you…

Right, 20:1 ratio means for 20mbit of bandwith to consumers you buy 1 mbit of bandwidth from a upstream provider. I don't think you're disagreeing.

Re: Harvard Study Shows Why Big Telecom Is Terrified of Community-Run Broadband

#34
post #2

Living in Oakland I wish I could replace my slow, expensive and high-latency Comcast broadband connection with Fiber. It is crazy that we in silicon valley practically have no competition.

When I was in Oakland I was able to get Webpass with my building. $500/yr and 200mbit, though in practice it was actually higher. Never had a problem real with them, and their service was great.

Per latency, my ping when playing games was sub 20 (but to be fair the servers were in California).

Re: Harvard Study Shows Why Big Telecom Is Terrified of Community-Run Broadband

#35
post #2

Living in Oakland I wish I could replace my slow, expensive and high-latency Comcast broadband connection with Fiber. It is crazy that we in silicon valley practically have no competition.

Not that I am a big fan of AT&T, but they have started offering fiber gigabit in Oakland over the past year. I switched from Comcast in December. Wish Sonic or Monkeybrains would become available here.

What did you switch to?

Re: Harvard Study Shows Why Big Telecom Is Terrified of Community-Run Broadband

#36
post #10

Most broadband providers work with overbooking / contention ratios, so if you sell 100/100mbit you buy 20:1 to 50:1 less from the upstream provider. Overbooking ratios for consumer internet can be between for example 20:1 to 50:1. That means for 20mbit of bandwith to consumers you buy 1 mbit of bandwidth from a upstream provider. Buying one megabit of uplink at current market rate is typically less than a dollar from…

Your UK bb reference is from 2007; it's an interesting historical read, although I can't find the information about contention ratio easily. Could you give the page number please? I think that modern use cases require very much more significant bandwidth, and sustaining sufficient bandwidth with QoS for 2018 use cases (and think 2025 for the purposes of sane investment) is quite beyond wifi mesh. 5G will potentially meet these cases outside and with a dense fibre backhaul, internally I think we're talking plasticised fibre.

Re: Harvard Study Shows Why Big Telecom Is Terrified of Community-Run Broadband

#37
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or just unbundle the local loop as we do in the UK

yes although can be harder to retrofit, e.g. i don't believe many of the US fiber architectures were built to be multi-tenant with (n) service providers behind 1 operator. especially because the duopoly's control most of them. enter the muni-fiber and similar projects...but built to a different commercial model...

Well tough luck mate (you want to play in the big boys game ante up sub) Any how you can use ADSL variants or upgrade to FTC and use VDSL for the last drop.

Re: Harvard Study Shows Why Big Telecom Is Terrified of Community-Run Broadband

#38
post #10

Most broadband providers work with overbooking / contention ratios, so if you sell 100/100mbit you buy 20:1 to 50:1 less from the upstream provider. Overbooking ratios for consumer internet can be between for example 20:1 to 50:1. That means for 20mbit of bandwith to consumers you buy 1 mbit of bandwidth from a upstream provider. Buying one megabit of uplink at current market rate is typically less than a dollar from…

I think you’re mis-interpreting the overbooking ratios. My understanding is that a 20:1 ratio means that for 1 mbit you can serve 20 customers 1 mbit. Your point still stands though. That means if 1 mbit cost $1 then it costs $0.04/customer. The real cost is in deploying the wires and countless studies have shown the ROI on that, especially given the exorbitant rates, is typically 5 years or less per hookup. Can you…

The marginal cost of a new 20Mbit customer when you have 500+ customers is 1 Mbit upstream bandwidth. However, you can't really get just 1 Mbit at those scales so it's closer to 100 extra customers cost 100Mbit.

Re: Harvard Study Shows Why Big Telecom Is Terrified of Community-Run Broadband

#39
post #10

Most broadband providers work with overbooking / contention ratios, so if you sell 100/100mbit you buy 20:1 to 50:1 less from the upstream provider. Overbooking ratios for consumer internet can be between for example 20:1 to 50:1. That means for 20mbit of bandwith to consumers you buy 1 mbit of bandwidth from a upstream provider. Buying one megabit of uplink at current market rate is typically less than a dollar from…

> You can buy commercial Internet uplink and link up your neighbours...

Thanks for this. I've been wondering about this for the last few years now. Guess the idea isn't completely nuts and will have to research further.

Re: Harvard Study Shows Why Big Telecom Is Terrified of Community-Run Broadband

#40
post #16

The only way to get the last mile competition we need in the US, and make net neutrality irrelevant, is for org-run fiber builds in which the org doesn't offer services. The org operates a multi-tenant fiber infrastructure in which you and I can pick (n) "service providers"...part of what I am hoping is a 2018 full of decentralization and distribution: https://goo.gl/DkpmU5

Another pie-in-the-sky option: pick a UHF television channel and de-license that portion of the spectrum. The IEEE would develop a standard (like what was done for Wi-Fi) that lets anyone be a local broadcaster or service provider
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