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The internet should be a public utility

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Re: The internet should be a public utility

#241

Post by zbrozek »

hkmurakami wrote: post #217
zbrozek wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I went to their most-recent meeting. I have some hope for the project, but I don't think it's likely to make it my way before I'm part of the 20-mbps-is-ok elderly population. They've really got to figure out how to be a real ISP and use the preexisting utility easements rather than try to get new ones. As for the cost, they were talking about $1-3k/house depending on how many signed up in a "corridor". That's peanut…

So iirc LAH doesn't have (or has very few of?) conduits that the town itself owns. The part that'll likely happen first is a "dig once" installation of the Utility tunnels that are publicly owned. Gary Kremen (of match.com fame, who's on the water district as well) has been fighting hard for this, and I'd encourage you to reach out to him. There's an utility undergrounding effort over near the Foothill college fire s…

Thanks for the pointer! I sent a note on Nextdoor. I'm not opposed to spending money on infrastructure, but so far I haven't found a viable avenue for actually doing so.

I've also reached out to Common and Sail to see if they'd be willing to try to make something out of my commanding line-of-sight. Historically that has not been the case.

I think the nearest AT&T fiber node is a few minutes' walk away and I'd love to pay to cut a trench to it. But I haven't been able to find anyone there willing to entertain the idea.

I'm also trying to find a business within my line-of-sight that will let me pay them for roof and utility access so that I can beam something to myself.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#242

Post by derefr »

mulmen wrote: post #218
mr_toad wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Power lines are horrendously ugly. So is the 20 foot wide expanse of dirty tar next to the power lines. But people have lived with that all their lives, and barely notice it.

I’m not sure what you are suggesting here. Power lines can be buried but what’s the alternative to residential streets?

In Walt Disney's opinion, you could bury the streets, too. Utility corridors (or "utilidors" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_utilidor_system) are essentially the road equivalent to a subway systems' rails.

There are some existing pedestrian-only underground city corridor systems, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PATH_(Toronto); and there are many vehicle-only road tunnel networks underlaying modern "walkable" cities, mostly in Europe. There are even a few cities that already have both (e.g. Dubai), although they just have separate pedestrian and road-tunnel networks that don't connect.

Disney's vision was to marry the two—to treat them as an interconnected network, as we do today with the road network (which spans everything from walking trails in parks, to residential streets with bike lanes, to grade-separated freeways.)

We haven't done it yet, but there's not much stopping a city planner (especially of a new city, e.g. a charter city) from doing it. We really could have a "roadless" and even "streetless" surface, with only buildings and parks visible.

(IMHO, it'd be very good to try this first in an area that gets really hot, like Arizona, since you'd get the dual benefits of 1. keeping people cool on their way between air-conditioned buildings by relying on the natural thermal buffering of the earth; and 2. greatly decreasing surface albedo compared to cities that have tons of blacktop. Maybe make a city ordnance that all buildings—and especially rooves—have to be light colors, to boost that effect.)

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#243

Post by zbrozek »

tialaramex wrote: post #205
endgame wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You snark, but what happens when EV adoption picks up and suddenly those houses need to move a lot more electrons?

A large (probably over-size for most users) EV battery is 360MJ. It seems reasonable we should be able to fill the EV battery overnight, let's say 10 hours between we plug the EV in to charge (empty) and expect to find it full. So that 36000 seconds, and conveniently that gives us 10kW power input. Which sure enough is about 40A. So, not "a lot more" electrons. Transitioning other energy uses to electricity will incr…

I have a 200 amp panel. Today that's fine, but my home is heated by gas, my food is heated by gas, my pool is heated by gas, and my transportation is powered by gasoline.

Let's be naive and say that the panel was properly provisioned for the loads in the house when it was built in 1975. Now let's switch out gas heating for a heat pump, costing us 40 A. Induction cooktop? 50 A. Oven? 50 A. Two EVs? 100 A. Pool heater? 50 A.

Having a 400 amp panel quickly starts to sound pretty good. On the other hand, so does having a huge solar array and a bunch of batteries. But code and permitting and PG&E does not smile on such beefy residential installations.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#244

Post by AnthonyMouse »

est31 wrote: post #224
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Starlink does require towers because the data has to be beamed back to the ground. The more bandwidth you serve in an area, the more towers you need. That's a ground station, not towers. The "towers" are the satellites. And the number of grounds stations you need doesn't really have much to do with how much bandwidth you use, because they can use directional wireless or laser communications at higher power levels t…

> And the combination of that doesn't leave much left for cellular to do. you know how big the starlink antennas are? They don't fit in smartphones, not the directional ones.

Probably fit on your car though, which then gives you a hotspot for your phone wherever you are.

I suppose if you're out in the middle of nowhere away from both any building with fiber and any vehicle with Starlink then cellular might be useful, both those are also the kind of places without any cell reception.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#245

Post by zbrozek »

miguelmota wrote: post #155
zbrozek wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://muninetworks.org/content/owensboro-kentucky-headed-s... https://tech.co/news/chattanooga-fastest-internet-usa-2018-0... Those places are offering connections way better than I can get from AT&T.

Chattanooga’s municipally-owned telecoms provider (EPB) is charging $57.99 for 300mbs [0], while I get 500mbs for $39.99 in my area from a non-city owned company [1] [0] https://epb.com/home-store/internet [1] https://frontier.com/offer/experiencefios-c

You really can't compare across areas. I can get 20 mbps DSL for $50 here. At my old place, eight miles away, I could get 1000 mbps for $90. At my parents' lake cabin in Tennessee they can get 3 mbps for $50. And?

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#246

Post by robocat »

kekeblom wrote: post #64
zbrozek wrote: post #4

I talked with the mayor of Los Altos Hills, CA yesterday where I advocated for a municipal fiber ISP. It seems crazy to me that in Silicon Valley, and specifically in one of its richest towns, that broadband is not available to every residence. She makes a good point: the residents don't care. Her argument is that ~20 mbps DSL is good enough for the elderly population. And further - that for those who find that inade…

The city of Zurich has what to my understanding is public fiber which is available to most buildings. (I assume there are some exceptions). It is managed by the electricity company run by the city. https://zuerinet.ch Setting up routers, billing etc. has been delegated to any third party ISP willing to do the job. I think they can charge what they want, as there are some very small differences in price. I pay ~44CHF/…

This is the model that NZ (similar size/population as Oregon) followed. We have the network provider, which can be regional. ISPs compete for pricing model and peering etc, and the ISP manages the home installation, but all ISPs use the same network.

It is a country wide rollout, subsidised by the government (maybe loan, but govt takes risk?). They haven’t solved rural access.

Everything in my city is underground - mostly trenchless on the street using underground thrusting. Tech used varies by region and network operator.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#247

Post by tarde »

tzs wrote: post #175
tarde wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

on his first year he passed the "internet fast lane" regulation, against net neutrality, and made lots of profits for his cable and wireless business. only to four months later start a huge campaign with obama pro net neutrality for the classification of ISPs as utilities under Title II of the Communications Act of 1934 (with profitable exceptions). Opening the floodgates on direct white house influence on the FCC an…

> on his first year he passed the "internet fast lane" regulation, against net neutrality, and made lots of profits for his cable and wireless business No, he proposed a net neutrality regulation that would allow fast lanes, and said he was open to a stronger rule if it had enough support. The comments on the first proposal overwhelmingly favored a stronger approach, and so the final rule that he actually passed was…

ok, you think the fast lane is not part of net neutrality to begin with. I'm on the side where words have meaning.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#248

Post by zbrozek »

dylz wrote: post #182
zbrozek wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm currently using a Netgear LB1121 with external antennas connected to AT&T's 4G network. It's maybe a smidge better than DSL, but not definitively so. Both throughput and latency are all over the map (2-sigma 1 to 70 mbps, 30-60 ms). I don't get a publicly-routable IP. So instead I have to buy another service and expend a bunch of IT-administration mental energy to use a VPS just so I can SSH home. The basic rules…

I'm curious, do you get non-screwed-with service? Try curling any IP on port 80; they seem to proxy everything, from web to TLS handshakes.

It lives behind NAT, so I can't host anything. But it seemed to be unmolested. That said, I couldn't handle the NAT and decided to bounce all of my traffic off of a Vultr VPS. That comes with its own problems, like lots of websites (e.g. Vimeo) thinking I'm a bot and blocking me.

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#249

Post by mulmen »

derefr wrote: post #242
mulmen wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not sure what you are suggesting here. Power lines can be buried but what’s the alternative to residential streets?

In Walt Disney's opinion, you could bury the streets, too. Utility corridors (or "utilidors" — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_utilidor_system ) are essentially the road equivalent to a subway systems' rails. There are some existing pedestrian-only underground city corridor systems, such as https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PATH_(Toronto) ; and there are many vehicle-only road tunnel networks underlaying modern "wal…

It's definitely an interesting thought exercise.

Do those tunnels actually go to individual homes? I can understand subterranean arterials but would each house actually have direct access to a tunnel? How does that work? Is my garage underground? Does everyone have a basement with an "outside" door?

How does a fire truck or ambulance get to my house? Do deliveries get dropped off underground?

Re: The internet should be a public utility

#250

Post by joveian »

marcusverus wrote: post #197
joveian wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had that and a major issue is that the $10/month covers both phone and internet, not just internet. The combined plan I had was supposed to include 500MB per month internet but I'm fairly sure hot-spot was not enabled and direct tethering was certainly not enabled. Also the phones are extremely locked down and don't even allow USB audio devices. The $10/month can be used towards a more expensive plan which is wh…

Lifeline currently pays separate subsidies for voice and data, see the link from my first post. The quality of device has nothing to do with lifeline, which is device agnostic. The author's stated solution is also device agnostic. As for concerns about bandwidth, they're kind of bunk, IMO. The argument by the author is that basic internet access is necessary to function in today's world, and Lifeline already exists f…

I do agree with your main point that the author should have discussed Lifeline.

The specific Lifeline mobile plans that are $10/month require use of the provided device (or in some cases a very limited number of specific alternative devices sold by the plan provider). It is true that you can apply the credit toward other phone or internet service but then it will cost you something in addition to the lifeline credit (I don't remember if the low speed DSL option required using the provided device, possibly not, and landline phone wouldn't require a particular device, but I don't think any mobile phone plan for $10/month is device agnostic).

Read the first paragraph of your link again under "how it works". It is a single $10/month subsidy that can go to voice, data, or a combination plan. I did see after posting that the current version of the plan I was on offers 3Gb data per month so that would be quite useful (hopefully tethering works now).

However, one reason I call it corruption is that plan changes do not apply to anyone who already has the service, so people who have been using it for a while need to pay for what others get as part of the plan. Unless you switch providers, which is what the limitation on switching data plans prevents. I would understand a limitation on how frequently you can change providers since devices are provided, however the restriction applies after service ends.

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