Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

techdirt.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 519 posts

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

#371

Post by reaperducer »

thedaemon wrote: post #291
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…

I have CenturyLink 1Gbps in Colorado Springs. Not sure what you mean about not upgrading their infrastructure. The price is $75 fixed forever as long as I always pay my bill on time.

I have CenturyLink 1Gbps in Colorado Springs. Not sure what you mean about not upgrading their infrastructure.

Not everyone lives on your block in your town in your state.

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

#372

Post by gwright »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #316
gwright wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is asymmetric speeds a problem? I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with having multiple types of service for different use cases. That is true with other utilities (electric, water, gas) and is part of general infrastructure planning in those areas. Of course the actual pricing, availability, etc are also important but I don't think there needs to be a one-size-fits-all model for Internet bandwidth.

Constrains end user capabilities. Harder to live stream or heavily use something like Dropbox with under 5Mbps up.

I get that. I'm not saying that there aren't different use cases, I'm saying that it is reasonable that there should be different price points for the different use cases.

Even if the physical plant supported symmetric bandwidth, I would expect different pricing plans for different utilization patterns.

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

#373

Post by munk-a »

malnourish wrote: post #368
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.

That's fine though, as long as they're not actively campaigning and lobbying to keep entities from entering the field in the first place.

No it isn't fine - the fact that the monopoly is developed enough to suppress competition is already a bad thing - these guys need to be broken up hard.

When they additionally lobby to stop locals from fixing the problem - that's them rubbing salt in the wounds and I'm glad they're doing it, it's getting less technical folk to wake up to the BS.

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

#374

Post by polpo »

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.

The $50/mo rate is for charter members who signed up within the first 3 months of it being available. New customers have to pay $70/mo, which drops to $60/mo after the first year. So not everyone is paying the $50/mo rate.

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

#375

Post by malnourish »

munk-a wrote: post #373
malnourish wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's fine though, as long as they're not actively campaigning and lobbying to keep entities from entering the field in the first place.

No it isn't fine - the fact that the monopoly is developed enough to suppress competition is already a bad thing - these guys need to be broken up hard. When they additionally lobby to stop locals from fixing the problem - that's them rubbing salt in the wounds and I'm glad they're doing it, it's getting less technical folk to wake up to the BS.

I think I did a poor job communicating what I meant.

I agree with you, the current status quo is abhorrent.

Were there to be competition, some providers offering poor deals is fine. That isn't the case though. Thank you for articulating.

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

#376

Post by munk-a »

dfsegoat wrote: post #54

Nitpicking title: 'Town' vs. 'City', bugs me as a former CO resident. Ft. Collins is huge (~170k people compared to most CO towns which are 400-10k ppl). The title sort of leads you to believe it was a folksy, rural community effort. In reality Intel, AMD, Broadcom and a major State University are located there and that probably helped the effort substantially. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Collins,_Colorado#Maj…

Honestly I'm glad they didn't go with "Colorado City", since Colorado City is a town... in Arizona.

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

#377

Post by xur17 »

samstave wrote: post #185
dantillberg wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't get municipal fiber where you live in Longmont (I'm a resident; hi!), you should most likely be complaining to your landlord, not the city. If you're not sure, call up Longmont Power & Communications and ask them what's up. There are a few apartment complexes around Longmont that have resisted integration with the city's fiber network. My understanding is that the city has negotiated with each of them ov…

Get a neighbor and a few dollars and broadcast that connection as a wisp via ubnt equipment.

I have a friend that did this between 3 houses. The Ubiquiti equipment to make it happen is fairly affordable, and works pretty well.

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

#378

Post by [deleted] »

thekyle wrote: post #113
bjelkeman-again wrote: post #88

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?

[deleted]

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

#379

Post by nosequel »

nicholasjarnold wrote: post #349
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…

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 le…

In Fort Collins, CenturyLink only offers 80 MB down. Fiber from CL in Northern Colorado isn't even on the table.

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

#380

Post by vvpan »

This is terrible, but let's not forget that this is actionable. Last presidential election Lawrence Lessig got onto Democratic ballot only to bring up the issue of influence of big money on the democratic process. Which is at the root of the Comcast issue. The Democrats barred him from participating in debates. The issue is not debated even by Democrats and I'm not even talking about Republicans! Support the candidate who will bring up limiting campaign spending, campaign contributions and lobbying - only then things will change. Again, no party so far has done much meaningful on the issue.
Post reply on HN