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

Post by stusmall » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

Ididntdothis wrote: post #156

polpo wrote: post #124

Longmont, just south of Fort Collins, was the first city in Colorado to build out a municipal ISP, and it’s inspired surrounding cities to do the same. It’s where I live and it was a not-insignificant reason why I chose to move here. So far it has been a resounding success for the city. The buildout completed on time and adoption rates are higher than initially expected (the city planned for 37% but the last number I…

“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.

Post by bahmboo » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 6:15 PM UTC

aloknnikhil wrote: post #358

ehsankia wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But are there competing gigabit internet in Seattle? Obviously they will stay competitive, that's beside the point. It's like how Comcast happened to bring cheap gigabit internet to every city Google Fiber entered... The fact that it takes a local competitor to get these big companies to bring cheap gigabit is exactly the problem. Your anecdotal evidence about a city full of competition doesn't really prove anything.

There are far more options in Seattle than ever before (and possibly than any other city in the US). WaveG, CenturyLink, CascadeLink, WebPass (Google Fiber), Comcast

Post by reaperducer » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 6:24 PM UTC

nostromo wrote: post #323

linsomniac wrote: post #269

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...

Post by pkaye » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 6:26 PM UTC

virgilp wrote: post #216

voltagex_ wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the actual bandwidth like? Where's the closest big exchange?

I don't have the 1Gbps connection, I took the cheaper 400Mbps one. But they're fairly good at actually offering the promised bandwidth. Again, internet is one of the very few top-notch things here, better than most of the world.

Post by reaperducer » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 6:31 PM UTC

linsomniac wrote: post #332

cptskippy wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the late 90s fiber was widely deployed by Telcos in the US in anticipation of future demand growth that never occurred due to the ability to extract greater bandwidth out of single fibers. Bellsouth had fiber laid in much of suburban Georgia in the late 90s that remained dark. In the early 00s they were offering internet to some communities by running fiber to a box on the side of the house that converted it to 10…

The stories I heard about the expansion that was anticipating growth that never came was all about long-haul fiber: Fiber between cities and across the country. Some of that, one could speculate, was because these long haul fibers were being sold to businesses, who were paying ~$100/mbps, but the residential endpoints were still very slow (1.5Mbps DSL was blazing fast in 1998, if you could even get it), because the t…