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Cleveland launches plan to provide cheap broadband

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Re: Cleveland launches plan to provide cheap broadband

#41

Post by 1-more »

sxg wrote: post #33

I just moved back to Cleveland, and I signed up for Cleveland Broadband (clevelandbroadband.com), which is incredible! I pay $50/mo for 1 Gb/s download and upload speeds with no contract or temporary introductory pricing. The best part is the customer service, which I've only had to use twice while initially setting it up, but it's a direct line to a person who physically came to my place within an hour and was super…

I had municipal broadband in a town I lived in and it was the same experience: you get the feeling that everyone involved really cared about it because it's our town, not just an account number somewhere.

Re: Cleveland launches plan to provide cheap broadband

#42

Post by qup »

rtkwe wrote: post #30
qup wrote: post #4

"Cheap" to be determined

It's been much cheaper than the local mono/duopoly providers in all the other cities it's been done in so far your skepticism is unearned.

I'm not skeptical. I should have said "How cheap*..."

Given that it's the whole goal of the project, you'd think they might have come up with a number.

Re: Cleveland launches plan to provide cheap broadband

#43

Post by qup »

gs17 wrote: post #29
qup wrote: post #4

"Cheap" to be determined

It's very likely to be cheaper and better than Comcast at least.

If they're not aiming to clear that bar, I think we should bin it.

I was actually really interested to hear what kinds of numbers they can pull off. I hate Comcast, and I hate my local provider even worse.

Re: Cleveland launches plan to provide cheap broadband

#44

Post by xenospn »

jpk wrote: post #38
llsf wrote: post #25

Would it make sense for the municipality to own the pipes that run in the city ? Like some cities own the sewer pipes. Could it be an infrastructure that the city builds, owns, maintains and rents to ISP ? The city would have a full control on how many houses are connected. That is the type of investments that a city is suited for (i.e. large upfront cost financed by bonds). AT&T, Charter, Comcast, they have no incen…

Part of me likes this approach, but another part of me is hesitant putting the local government in control of all of the network infrastructure. It could conceivably allow local officials to turn it all off during a protest or something; similar to what we saw during the Arab Spring events.

They can already do that with ease by instructing the companies that own it to shut it down. I’d argue that having local officials in charge offers more transparency than a nameless corporation.

Re: Cleveland launches plan to provide cheap broadband

#45

Post by oooyay »

llsf wrote: post #25

Would it make sense for the municipality to own the pipes that run in the city ? Like some cities own the sewer pipes. Could it be an infrastructure that the city builds, owns, maintains and rents to ISP ? The city would have a full control on how many houses are connected. That is the type of investments that a city is suited for (i.e. large upfront cost financed by bonds). AT&T, Charter, Comcast, they have no incen…

Being NAASCO certified and having seen a lot of sewer pipe that's owned by a city, that's probably a terrible idea. Cities are also partially responsible for the bribing scheme required to open a Telco in a town.

There are already backbone providers, having communities band together as last mile providers would likely be far more optimal. It may seem like a minor distinction, but to me theres a big gap between "co-op" and "city owned".

Re: Cleveland launches plan to provide cheap broadband

#46

Post by bigstrat2003 »

parineum wrote: post #22
nerdponx wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine that: company gets free money from the government to do such-and-such thing but isn't strictly required to do it, then they take the free money and don't do the thing. It's almost like corporations are self-interested and un-altruistic.

I don't know why you'd be railing against the company here for acting in it's best interest (exactly as you'd expect) rather than the state for giving away money with no strings attached. A private business sure as hell wouldn't be so foolish as to sign such a contract.

One can blame both parties. It was foolish (or corrupt, take your pick I guess) for the government to give out money without formal strings attached. It is unethical for the companies to take that money knowing it's intended for $thing, without ever intending to do $thing. Neither is good.

Re: Cleveland launches plan to provide cheap broadband

#47

Post by CSMastermind »

jrgifford wrote: post #16

It'll be interesting to see if they can do this better than previous attempts. I remember in 2009 when OneCommunity tried[1], 2014 when OneCommunity launched everstream, their for-profit arm (and didn't change much)[2], or the 2018 Old Brooklyn/Ward 13 project[3]. Somewhere in there, there was an initiative (probably 2009 or so?) that included public wifi in Cleveland Heights along much of Cedar Road, where One Commu…

My buddy was at Case Western back in 2007/8ish and worked on that One Community project. He called it 'porn for the poor'.

There were all these utopian ideas getting floated about how revolutionary the idea was and that basically lack of high speed internet access was the only thing keeping all these people in poverty.

If we just gave the poor fast internet access as a public service then they would all learn to code, get remote jobs, and raise themselves out of poverty.

Months into the experiment they discovered that no one used the free job training features that came with the internet access and instead they were just using it for porn and piracy.

Re: Cleveland launches plan to provide cheap broadband

#48

Post by tshaddox »

sxg wrote: post #33

I just moved back to Cleveland, and I signed up for Cleveland Broadband (clevelandbroadband.com), which is incredible! I pay $50/mo for 1 Gb/s download and upload speeds with no contract or temporary introductory pricing. The best part is the customer service, which I've only had to use twice while initially setting it up, but it's a direct line to a person who physically came to my place within an hour and was super…

For what it's worth, I have Frontier in Los Angeles County and I have the same positive experience, other than that my gigabit connection is $70/month (it's possible that's reasonable given overall cost of living differences).

Re: Cleveland launches plan to provide cheap broadband

#50

Post by [deleted] »

BreadPants wrote: post #21
jrgifford wrote: post #16

It'll be interesting to see if they can do this better than previous attempts. I remember in 2009 when OneCommunity tried[1], 2014 when OneCommunity launched everstream, their for-profit arm (and didn't change much)[2], or the 2018 Old Brooklyn/Ward 13 project[3]. Somewhere in there, there was an initiative (probably 2009 or so?) that included public wifi in Cleveland Heights along much of Cedar Road, where One Commu…

I remember that and did contact Everstream for internet service. It was 1000/1000, but they wanted $500 for running the lines from across the street and then $500 per month after that. Insane.

[deleted]
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