I wonder when this is coming to san francisco.
Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast
461–470 of 519 posts
Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast
#462Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
Virginia has pre-emption of pretty much all matters of law. Cities and counties can only pass zoning ordinances.
For example, it's not possible for a VA city or county to make something a crime, unless there's a specific law on the state level allowing them to.
Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast
#463I'm taking this thread as an opportunity to pay Comcast a review I owe them as I recently became a first time customer with them:
Comcast may have the best deal in most areas by virtue of monopoly, but I can guarantee you that the average customer ends up paying more. I agreed with a rep on $60 per month for just internet, nothing else. The bill comes and it's $83 with basic TV and a service charge. How they did this was they sent me a text message with a link to an agreement and asked if "everything looks right". Being on my cell phone and on my lunch break I just wanted to get it over with and said yeah.
They also assume you want somebody to come over and plug in your modem and rent you a router. I explicitly said no to this, but they signed me up for installation anyway.
I'm convinced Comcast institutionally trains reps to steer sign ups in this way.
I was refunded eventually, but it still cost me time to dispute billing.
Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast
#464I find it so hard to grapple that much of SF / Silicon Valley (supposedly the "innovation hub of the world") is subject to near-monopoly by Comcast. AT&T's offerings are 40mbps/5mbps in 2019. So that's obviously not an option. Even Comcast only has 250mb/10mb. In _silicon valley_. In 2019. I had WebPass in one building I was in in 2014, and had symmetric gigabit for $40/mo. Nothing like that has existed in any of the…
This is because the tech workers who primarily fill those buildings tend to lack political awareness and hence the wishes of the people get stepped all over by entrenched powers.
Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast
#465Earlier quoted context omitted.
Democracy, if you don't like it vote for people against it and if it wins still that's the breaks sometimes. Some things work better with collective action than private enterprise especially things that require large build outs of infrastructure that you don't want duplicated: eg roads, you're paying to maintain a lot of roads you never drive on because their existence benefits everyone.
In that sense, I would not be against a municipal government installing a system of conduits and/or dark fiber, and charging ISPs and other fiber users for it (provided they had some reasonable obligations to conduct the whole business transparently). I think conduits and dark fiber are both more similar to roads (and utility poles and the structural cables between them) than actual internet service; and the nice thi…
The big question in the municipality as network layer only is how do companies actually compete?
They could offer certain services I guess like IPTV but then why are they an ISP/Cable service provider instead of just a streaming platform separate from being an ISP.
Could they do any better on speed by getting better interconnects to the wider internet or is that also part of the community infrastructure?
The options for differentiation seem rather slim so I'm wondering how much actual competition there would be in this model.
Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast
#466Earlier quoted context omitted.
Seems that most cable providers do this when an incumbent moves into town. It’s happened to me in two separate metro areas and just happened to my buddy in Phoenix.
Sorry to nitpick but incumbent should be used the other way round. Namely Comcast is the incumbent (currently “holding office”) and the new town ISP is the new comer
Thanks for the thoughtful correction. I won’t make that mistake twice!
Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast
#467Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sko Buffs! But also Fort Collins has a lot of beer production, so they are ok in my book. It’s still not Boulder though...
Careful not to spill your quinoa smoothie on your bespoke Macbook when you type your comments.
You're gonna make fun of people for being healthy and rich? I think you just self-owned.
Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast
#468Earlier quoted context omitted.
In that sense, I would not be against a municipal government installing a system of conduits and/or dark fiber, and charging ISPs and other fiber users for it (provided they had some reasonable obligations to conduct the whole business transparently). I think conduits and dark fiber are both more similar to roads (and utility poles and the structural cables between them) than actual internet service; and the nice thi…
The big question in the municipality as network layer only is how do companies actually compete? They could offer certain services I guess like IPTV but then why are they an ISP/Cable service provider instead of just a streaming platform separate from being an ISP. Could they do any better on speed by getting better interconnects to the wider internet or is that also part of the community infrastructure? The options…
> The big question in the municipality as network layer only is how do companies actually compete?
This is why I am more interested in the dark fiber or conduit services. The major technical risk of municipal networks is that they will not keep up with new backhaul equipment innovations. Australia maintains a national "broadband" service which is haunted by stagnation, and while it is easy for people to say they simply didn't try hard enough, I think it's more likely that this risk is endemic to government-operated telecommunications infrastructure.
I would set the system up so that vendors can compete by installing better or more interesting routing infrastructure in the dark fiber network, or on their own fiber in rented conduit space. Possibly they could also offer edge computing, peering at substations, wireless services, private networks, and probably all sorts of things you or I have not thought of yet.
> Could they do any better on speed by getting better interconnects to the wider internet or is that also part of the community infrastructure?
They are empowered to do whatever makes sense, they could even do hard private networks if they wanted.
Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast
#469CenturyLink, 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'm in a combo CenturyLink / Comcast market, and it's AMAZING what competition between even just those two firms does to my offerings. Switched from Comcast's $90/mo gigabit with a 1 TB data cap and only 90 Mb/s upload to CenturyLink's $60/mo symmetric gigabit with no data cap. I have a contract-less "lifetime price guarantee", they did free install (which included running a fiber line from the pole to my house with…
> gigabit with a 1 TB data cap and only 90 Mb/s upload
Do you actually get that throughput or is it bullshit and you get 1/50 that rate? Post some real stats based on your own personal benchmarking which we can verify. Thanks.
Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast
#470Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm in a combo CenturyLink / Comcast market, and it's AMAZING what competition between even just those two firms does to my offerings. Switched from Comcast's $90/mo gigabit with a 1 TB data cap and only 90 Mb/s upload to CenturyLink's $60/mo symmetric gigabit with no data cap. I have a contract-less "lifetime price guarantee", they did free install (which included running a fiber line from the pole to my house with…
> gigabit with a 1 TB data cap and only 90 Mb/s upload Do you actually get that throughput or is it bullshit and you get 1/50 that rate? Post some real stats based on your own personal benchmarking which we can verify. Thanks.
This is aggressive and unnecessary language.