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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

#231

Post by anovikov »

jeremyjh wrote: post #208
DrJaws wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Spain, I'm paying 25€ for 600/600, unlimited calls, a mobile phone line with 3gb of data and 10 hours of calls. $50 for just 1gbps, seems like they can even make profit from that.

How much of your taxes is being used to subsidize that rate?

In Russia, 1gbps may be from $3 to $10 per month depending on the place, and it works as such at least throughout Russia maybe falling to 200-300mbps to far off places like the U.S.

In Lithuania, i paid 15 EUR a month for 500/500 and it worked perfectly too.

U.S. prices are super high - mostly a consequence of most people living in detached houses - long distances and high complexity of wiring. In Russia and Lithuania, most live in Soviet-style apartment blocks - high user density.

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

#232

Post by Bedon292 »

nnq wrote: post #221
DrJaws wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Spain, I'm paying 25€ for 600/600, unlimited calls, a mobile phone line with 3gb of data and 10 hours of calls. $50 for just 1gbps, seems like they can even make profit from that.

with 3gb of data - maybe I'm a weird consumer, but I don't get it what's with this insanely low data caps... while in France I had a 100gb / month 4G data plan for ~20EUR, and couple times I even exceeded those 100 gb! how/what are most people using internet for that they tolerate such small caps?!

My phone is always on WiFi unless I am in my car driving from place to place. I use under 2GB a month, closer to 1GB most months. I can't even comprehend how you would use 100GB of data on a mobile device in a month. My primary internet consumption is sitting at a computer all day long, or a laptop on the couch. The mobile data is just for traffic, slack, email, and news. All my podcasts are downloaded on WiFi, all my music is as well. There is just no reason for me to use any real amount of data while not on WiFi.

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

#233

Post by ineedasername »

virgilp wrote: post #184
Ididntdothis wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

“And I know my $50/mo rate will never rise.” Let’s hope they tie it to inflation or similar. Otherwise the system will die slowly due to underfunding.

Well, Romania is known for cheap internet prices, but for reference, here the largest _private_ operator is offering 1Gbps for $9.33/mo, taxes included (19% VAT). I kinda' doubt that $50/mo is really unsustainable, especially once the infrastructure is already built.

You can't really compare sticker prices here. US percapita GDP is about 6 times higher. The average salary is about 8 times higher. So as a proportion of those things, cost is fairly similar.

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

#234

Post by ip26 »

nnq wrote: post #221
DrJaws wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On Spain, I'm paying 25€ for 600/600, unlimited calls, a mobile phone line with 3gb of data and 10 hours of calls. $50 for just 1gbps, seems like they can even make profit from that.

with 3gb of data - maybe I'm a weird consumer, but I don't get it what's with this insanely low data caps... while in France I had a 100gb / month 4G data plan for ~20EUR, and couple times I even exceeded those 100 gb! how/what are most people using internet for that they tolerate such small caps?!

Unless you're consuming a lot of media, multiple GB is a lot. I have a super cheap plan with 500MB/month. It might sound impossible, but really all I have to do is turn off background mobile data for most apps, which had no business constantly sucking bytes anyway. Bonus, now my battery life is better.

If you have no WiFi access it's a somewhat different story, but WiFi is ubiquitous.

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

#235

Post by jmspring »

The small town where I live in North Eastern California gets it's internet from a local co-op that provides both electrical and internet services to the local community. Part of where I chose to purchase when I moved up here was based on getting fiber. It's been rock solid, but it's about $110/mo for (recently updated) 100/20 fiber. Previously, people were stuck with line of site wifi (can be problematic with a lot of trees) or satellite.

Their roll out has been interesting. In some areas, they have taken advantage of legacy cable feeds (cable companies pulled out awhile ago). Sometimes they were successful, some needed repair, and some just flat out didn't work.

The service got kick started with grants for rural internet service.

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

#236

Post by Bartweiss »

robohoe wrote: post #130
hanklazard wrote: post #83

After many years of using Comcast because it was my only option, I recently had my breakup call with them. We have Verizon Fios as an option and at their lowest tier speeds, we get 100 mbps symmetric (and every time I've checked the speed over the past week, it has been as advertised). Our overpriced Comcast plan was giving us "up to 60 mbps" but we were getting, wait for it, 1 mbps in the last few weeks of our plan.…

Speaking of poor cable speeds, were your downstream/upstream signals poor? Did you have an upstream filter installed on your line by any chance? I too had a similar issue but a tech visit to disconnect a noise filter fixed it.

> Did you have an upstream filter installed on your line by any chance? I too had a similar issue but a tech visit to disconnect a noise filter fixed it.

Could you explain more about this?

I've never heard of a noise filter on a cable line, and I can't really imagine why you'd have one - unless it's something ISPs do to cripple upload speeds on otherwise symmetric connections?

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

#237

Post by lolwhatitis »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #171
smt88 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked into this, and Ft. Collins is a "Home Rule Municipality" under state law, meaning it can name itself either a town or city. It seems to have chosen to be a city, so you're right. Around the world, it seems that there's one consistent criterion for something being a city: it must have self-rule and a certain amount of government structure. Some places (notably not the US) have population requirements, but tho…

> it seems that there's one consistent criterion for something being a city: it must have self-rule and a certain amount of government structure. What do you mean by self-rule? Singapore is autonomous, but that's definitely not the norm for cities. Almost all of them belong to larger states. No US city has self-rule even at the level below the federal government. Washington, DC comes closest, but it is technically ru…

Well, the concept of an independent city - that is, one that isn't contained within any county - does exist in the U.S.:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_city_(United_State...

Of course, Washington DC could be considered one example, although the above Wikipedia link begs to differ because DC isn't a state. However, there are a few dozen more, most of which are in Virginia.

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

#238

Post by toast0 »

post_break wrote: post #87

ATT brought 1gig fiber to my neighborhood (probably because I'm in NASA's backyard). I have gig symmetrical unlimited for $70 a month. Comcast of course tries to offer the same but with cable and you and I both know it wont be symmetrical, or anywhere close to the speed you pay for. It's funny how quickly Comcast will bend when there is a competitor in the area. Just down the street where there is no fiber they will…

Where you in Google's abandoned list of chosen city/metro areas? About 6 months after that list came out, AT&Ts fiber list came out and there was a lot of overlap, and then Google was like hmm, maybe wireless?

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

#239

Post by rb808 »

ilikehurdles wrote: post #176
rb808 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I brought up the 5G as an example of something that could change in the future. The problem is no one knows what is going to happen in 10-20 years. Its easy to spend public resources and have a great cheap service, maintaining this for decades is a different problem and it'll be interesting to see how it pans out.

How is that different from the infrastructure the private industry (allegedly) maintains?

The difference if the network loses money, or few people use the network in 10 years time it wont leave the residents with big bills.

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

#240

Post by bri3d »

chooseaname wrote: post #214
brennanpeterson wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up there, and just moved back. Is much nicer than 30 years ago, and legitimately nicer than boulder. Fiber is great, and people forget how much of US infrastructure was communal in early electric buildouts as well. Some of the objections seems to be reflexive anti-government sentiment. I haven't seen corporate services do well enough to convince me of the realistic improvements. And with most services negotiat…

OT: Outside of Boulder, what's the tech job scene like out there?

The Denver tech job scene is pretty strong. A lot of startups and a growing corporate outpost presence, as well as all of the "old tech" around the Tech Center.

Northern Colorado (Longmont, Ft. Collins) has traditionally been a center for hardware design and test equipment, but unfortunately most of these companies have shrunk overall and have reduced their Colorado presence.

I would say that in recent years the epicenter of startup software jobs in Colorado has shifted back from the brief Boulder startup run and moved into downtown Denver, while Boulder has become a center for corporate outposts (Google, Twitter, Amazon, Microsoft, Workday, NetApp, Splunk).

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