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Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

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Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#131
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't 5G solve that problem? Lay fiber to a bunch of 5G nodes and then you can service hundreds of customers who only need to install a wireless modem to get fiber speeds and latency.

5G (at least the high speed kind) has really really bad penetration, T-mobiles 1.9Ghz has trouble working indoors 5G's 30, 40, and 70Ghz frequencies are much worse. You will need direct line of sight to a tower optimistically a mile away. Otherwise you'll fall back to '5G' on traditional 4G spectrum and you won't get any faster speeds.

So put the base node somewhere high like a water tower, hill, or really tall pole and then put your home modem on the telephone pole or your chimney to establish line of site. They can even use beam forming to bounce their signals against other objects to get to their destination. Homes and base stations don't move so they actually seem like a good use case for 5g over phones which are consistently inside and moving which breaks the line of site.

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#132
post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two hundred and thirty dollars? Per month? Bloody hell. I'm on the highest consumer rate that BT offers and that costs £45/mo.

Does BT include a huge TV package with set top boxes (fees), premium movie channels (HBO etc.), a modem\router (fee), internet, voip, and likely a handset fee? That’s the only way it would get to $230. I’ve paid between $70-$115 for symmetrical gigabit and that’s the most expensive you can buy. A £45 plan might be 100mpbs down and maybe 10 up. From BT’s website: >ULTRAFAST FIBRE PLUS £54.99 Average speed 145Mb Speed…

> Does BT include a huge TV package with set top boxes (fees), premium movie channels (HBO etc.), a modem\router (fee), internet, voip, and likely a handset fee?

Yes, no, yes, yes, not sure, yes.

And I agree that the speeds are quite sad. It's entirely unclear to me why they feel incapable of offering higher speeds, other than they can upcharge businesses for the privelege. It's consistent across providers though, which makes me think there must be a technological hindrance somewhere along the line.

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#133
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One more data point. Vilnius, Lithuania 1GBs for 19.90€ (22.00$) /month https://www.telia.lt/privatiems/kur-veikia-internetas-ir-tv/...

For what its worth, average salary in Lithuania is around 10,000 euros per year.

And it's also little over the size of West Virginia.

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Faliciously Purporting that Federal Regulatory Agencies are intended to be something because that's how they currently function doesn't lend you any credibility. Instead it makes untrustworthy and manipulative. It's completely possible to corrupt an agency and for the FCC to behave the way you described through political interference but that is not their intended purpose.

You should read the Kingsbury Accord and the history of the FCC. The origin of the FCC is fascinating.

I assume you're referring to the Kingsbury Commitment? I'm familiar with it and the creation of the FCC a decade or so later to take over responsibilities of the FRC and ICC but I've not read anything that delves into the politics surrounding it all or how closely they're related.

Do you have any recommendations?

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#135
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't 5G solve that problem? Lay fiber to a bunch of 5G nodes and then you can service hundreds of customers who only need to install a wireless modem to get fiber speeds and latency.

5G (at least the high speed kind) has really really bad penetration, T-mobiles 1.9Ghz has trouble working indoors 5G's 30, 40, and 70Ghz frequencies are much worse. You will need direct line of sight to a tower optimistically a mile away. Otherwise you'll fall back to '5G' on traditional 4G spectrum and you won't get any faster speeds.

> 5G (at least the high speed kind) has really really bad penetration,

To be fair, both Fiber and Coax have far worse "penetration"; Changing the definition of a 5g fiber connector from "wireless to devices inside of a home" to "a small antenna you put on the outside of the house or by the window and a wifi router inside" drastically changes the definition, keeps infrastructure cheap, and the cost at the home is still significantly less.

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#137
It is incredible how similar electricity utility and internet utility delivery is happening. For first 30-40 years, governments and private enterprises were competing quite a bit over who can have the monopoly in providing electricity. I recently read a book which deals with impact of electricity from social, political, industrial perspective. https://www.amazon.com/Age-Edison-Electric-Invention-America...

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "upgrading our network" They actually where not doing this before because it's probably a bad idea. Modern cable networks look like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_fiber-coaxial#/media/Fi... Fiber goes to copper which then splits out to a large number of homes. The copper line near your home can do multiple gigabit but that needs to be shared with everyone else on the tree. So selling higher speeds is ea…

Basically every telecom network is built as fiber to the node not fiber to the premises. The nasty truth of all communication and transportation systems is that arteries are cheap and capillaries are expensive. If I am building roads, it is WAY cheaper to just build highways than it is to build the small roads to everyone’s homes. When doing construction for telecom, the payback calculations are based upon “passings”…

I have fiber directly to my house here in the Philippines. It's pretty much becoming the standard offering here now, with mobile data as the low-entry-cost alternative. Lack of pre-existing infrastructure has some interesting side effects.

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really like how it is done in Sweden where the city provides the fibre but doesn’t run any service over it. We can choose from 5-10 ISPs. Much like the road.

If all the ISPs are using the same infrastructure how do they compete on internet speed?

The same way trucking companies compete on speed.
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