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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

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Centurylink in Fort Collins offer 'up to 40 mbits' but it's rarely that fast and costs about $48 a month. Plus router rental. That's what we mean about them not upgrading infrastructure. They had their chance, and now the city will compete with them.

They used to quote their speeds in ATM frame rates, not in IP speed, and ATM has a lot of overhead. 15%? I wonder if their 40mbps is still quoting frame rates rather than actual IP throughput. Not sure, because 40mbps isn't enough for my home use, so I haven't even talked to them.

What is your home use scenario?

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

#342

Aside: I can't figure out what I'd even do with 10gig symmetric at home for $300/mo. I'd be tempted to run a distro mirror for the city, the last time I ran a mirror I had 30mbps I could give to it. I'd push for 10gig at the office when it comes, but we'd have to upgrade everything except a few dev servers...

How is running a distro mirror from home better than running it from a colo or cloud service?

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

#343

I don't understand why the upload speed is so slow for all the comcast packages. I reside in Portland, OR and Comcast seems to be the only descent option. However, the fastest upload speed I could get without springing for $300/month fiber was 35Mbs. I wound up paying $70/month for a package that provides 1000Mbs down and 35Mbs up despite only having modem that supports upto 283Mbs down just so I could get the faster…

We have fiber through Frontier in certain parts of the metro as well. A few years ago I lived in a place in Beaverton with a 30/30 fiber connection for $35/month. My parents have fiber as well. They were original Verizon FiOS customers before Frontier took over.

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

#344

CenturyLink, in particular, but also Comcast, has brought this upon themselves... They are doing everything they can to protect their existing infrastructure and do as little as possible to upgrade services. I'm thinking of back in '98 when QWest was rolling out DSL, the would only connect you to a central office. They refused to put DSLAMs in the pedestals, because if they did that they had to allow CLECs to do the…

This isn't true for Century Link. Lots of people in Seattle, and a growing number of other cities, have Century Link gigabit fiber to their residence. I pay less than $70 a month for this. Comcast is losing marketshare fast in Seattle because of this. https://www.centurylink.com/fiber/img/Gigabit-Launch-Map-res...

Yeah, well look just a couple of miles outside of the core city, and you'll find loads of people who still can't get anything faster than 1.5Mbps DSL. Hell, I live in the city, and CenturyLink only offers 12Mbps DSL to me. I know people who live in denser, core residential areas than me (Ballard, Queen Anne, etc) and can't even get over 25Mbps from CenturyLink.

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

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand, what are you referring to that isn't true?

I guess he's opposing the statement that they're doing as little as possible to upgrade their service.

When you've been beaten by a stick for years that first carrot can taste pretty good.

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

#346
post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”…

So we had this in the Florida Keys with AT&T who is the service provider of our area. I live 2 miles out on a peninsula of an island named Summerland, anyway I bought my house and AT&T assured me that I could get DSL but fiber would not be an option. I knew it was copper all the way to my home so I figured it would be the case. Anyways, I buy said house AT&T comes out and tried to get DSL working, and the lines have…

How is paying ATT 70k to string fiber different from your city paying 70k to string fiber? That the city can make people who don't live on your peninsula pay for the lines to your house?

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

#347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Comcast shut us off and informed us we were apparently spewing RF back out the line. They sent a tech to install an upstream noise filter. I believe it's a low-pass filter.

I unplugged everything except a short run to the cable modem and they retested our line and removed the filter. I didn't notice any drop in speeds while the filter was installed, but it was some years ago and my upload was only something like 1 or 2 Mbps anyway.

I must be lucky with Comcast - I've always gotten 50-100% over my advertised download rates. My total bill is $96/month and I'm getting 200Mbps down and 4-8 up. I'd have to go check what my advertised speeds even are at this point - it keeps creeping up, which is unsurprising since more and more neighborhoods have been getting fiber coverage over the same period.

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

#348

Aside: I can't figure out what I'd even do with 10gig symmetric at home for $300/mo. I'd be tempted to run a distro mirror for the city, the last time I ran a mirror I had 30mbps I could give to it. I'd push for 10gig at the office when it comes, but we'd have to upgrade everything except a few dev servers...

How is running a distro mirror from home better than running it from a colo or cloud service?

Well, is running a distro mirror from home better than running none at all? Because that's what it usually comes down too.

I'm already paying for the home connection and not fully utilizing it. I would have to pay more to run it from a colo or cloud.

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

#349

CenturyLink, in particular, but also Comcast, has brought this upon themselves... They are doing everything they can to protect their existing infrastructure and do as little as possible to upgrade services. I'm thinking of back in '98 when QWest was rolling out DSL, the would only connect you to a central office. They refused to put DSLAMs in the pedestals, because if they did that they had to allow CLECs to do the…

CenturyLink has been acting in what appears to be good faith within Denver city limits in the past few (~4) years or so. They've been offering gigabit fiber service in select parts of the city for around $60-70/month for at least that amount of time.

While I agree with the general sentiment about large providers needing to do more for less and faster, it seems that CL is being a good corporate citizen in Denver at least.

Personal Anecdote: I signed up for gigabit fiber at a previous residence and experienced consistent 850+ Mbps synchronously, often exceeding 900Mbps. Then upon purchasing a home in another part of the city I cancelled this newly-installed (Fast-forward to last week when I see CL contractors installing fiber in my alley. I'm now signed up for an install of this same gigabit fiber service for $70/month with no data caps, blocked ports, or other random charges (excluding tax) or restrictions. It's quite a good deal compared to other offerings here. A friend in another neighborhood is also set to receive his service soon, so it appears they're investing quite heavily in their fiber-to-the-home rollouts.

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