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Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

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Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#151

Post by wongarsu »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #146
xoa wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is the panacea we all hope for I have never seen "panacea" used by anyone except those opposed to any public infrastructure, and while you sound like you're speaking in all good faith and I appreciate that I still have trouble seeing this as something other then a strawman. Of course governments can have issues too. Public roads can have potholes. Bridges have not been kept up. Public parks aren't always maintained…

Is private sector waste a big thing? I wonder if there's something simple we're missing for a way to stop public spending that goes to corruption/waste.

>Is private sector waste a big thing?

sure, lots of big companies have problems with waste. Keeping things lean, focused and uncorrupted gets hard with size and higher hierarchies. But if the incentives are there it is somewhat easier for a private enterprise to avoid waste in all its forms.

>I wonder if there's something simple we're missing for a way to stop public spending that goes to corruption/waste.

Yes, accountability and informed voters. Why is a major who hired her cousin as city manager (even if it was at market rate) still in office?

Bringing reporting to the 21 century with easy to digest dashboards how various metrics of the city changed over the last 12 years or so would also help. The data is mostly there, it's just very time consuming to consume.

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#152

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

all2 wrote: post #119
roflchoppa wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should run for Mayor, I believe in you.

> bronco21016 for Mayor 2019 Can we do this? How could we put this together? More generally, is he qualified? How do we tell?

We need a dossier on the incumbent mayor. Bronco's qualifications won't matter.

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#153

Post by StreamBright »

rayiner wrote: post #12
StreamBright wrote: post #6

When the company offerings can be beaten with local government offerings you know something is bad. Wondering why US has such terrible internet options.

Akamai ranks the US in top 10 for actual speeds, ahead of every large EU country: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwiS... Nobody asks “why does Germany and France have such terrible internet options?”

The #1 economy on the planet ranks top 10 in internet speed, while most of its top companies are internet companies. Interesting. I never understood how California could get away with such a shitty internet when I lived there. Cable and M-lap ranks the US the top 20. Interesting #2.

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#154

Post by mrkstu »

pathseeker wrote: post #117
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

America's present ISP situation is worse than almost any alternative. Presently, the best-run municipalities are exploring municipal broadband. Their experiences will be positive. But not all municipalities are well-run. And today's well-run municipalities turn into tomorrow dumpster fires. Publicly-owned infrastructure rented to private provider-maintainers is a proven model. It isn't a fire-and-forget solution. But…

>America's present ISP situation is worse than almost any alternative. Blanket statements like this are pointless. I lived in Austin for a few years and had multiple fiber ISPs to choose from and was able to get 1 gbps for $70/mo.

Thats 100% because of Google Fiber- if you'd come in a couple years before that, the high speed choices were all expensive, bundled, and data capped.

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#155

Post by nonce413 »

rayiner wrote: post #68
cm2187 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing is the bulk of the cost is pulling wires. Fiber optic cables have an almost unlimited theoretical bandwidth. You just need to upgrade the hardware on both sides, which is getting cheaper by the minute.

A lot of the cost is pulling wires, but the equipment on both sides is also a major expense. FiOS scaled up from 75 mbps to 1 gbps over the same passive infrastructure, but the cost of upgrades was substantial. BPON line cards were upgraded to GPON linecards, and an upgrade to NGPON2 is in the works. As bandwidth went up, the number of customers per line card had to go down. 1G router ports had to be upgraded to 10G…

> I mean, just do a traceroute and see how many hops there are before you get to a peering node

Most carrier equipment operates below layer 3, and so is invisible to traceroute. But since you referenced it:

    traceroute to 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
     1  192.189.29.1 (192.189.29.1)  4.120 ms  4.267 ms  4.427 ms
     2  172.17.1.85 (172.17.1.85)  4.021 ms  4.077 ms  4.100 ms
     3  h252.63.131.40.static.ip.windstream.net (40.131.63.252)  10.661 ms  10.613 ms  10.600 ms

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#156

Post by michaelt »

wongarsu wrote: post #151
onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is private sector waste a big thing? I wonder if there's something simple we're missing for a way to stop public spending that goes to corruption/waste.

>Is private sector waste a big thing? sure, lots of big companies have problems with waste. Keeping things lean, focused and uncorrupted gets hard with size and higher hierarchies. But if the incentives are there it is somewhat easier for a private enterprise to avoid waste in all its forms. >I wonder if there's something simple we're missing for a way to stop public spending that goes to corruption/waste. Yes, accou…

  Why is a major who 
  hired her cousin as 
  city manager (...)
  still in office?
Decline in quality local newspapers with original reporting?

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#157

Post by all2 »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #152
all2 wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> bronco21016 for Mayor 2019 Can we do this? How could we put this together? More generally, is he qualified? How do we tell?

We need a dossier on the incumbent mayor. Bronco's qualifications won't matter.

incumbant.io is available. I sense a grass-roots campaign platform application. Probably SaaS. Maybe 'campaign as a service'?

Given recent events, this seems like it might actually be an appropriate idea to pursue.

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#158

Post by scarejunba »

rayiner wrote: post #16

I feel like people are being shortsighted about municipal fiber. It’s not a one time and you forget it thing. Verizon has upgraded the FiOS network several times since 2005. We have some towns on the eastern shore of MD that did municipal cable, back when that was the state of the art. Those systems are lagging far behind Comcast now because nobody wants to raise rates to generate cash for upgrades. Municipal fiber i…

Was it debt-financed? Interesting. I like the Stockholm model.

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#159

Post by orblivion »

bronco21016 wrote: post #86

I hate Comcast with a passion and have always fantasized about living in a progressive municipality that provides fiber to the home. However, a few years ago I bought a home and it’s only been over the last 6 months or so I’ve realized how horribly corrupt and mismanaged small city governments can be. We’re being sucked dry by our mayor who hired her cousin as city manager for an exorbitant compensation package. They…

You could start a cooperative within your town.

https://www.thelocal.de/20140601/german-villagers-build-own-...

Re: Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead

#160

Post by [deleted] »

bronco21016 wrote: post #86

I hate Comcast with a passion and have always fantasized about living in a progressive municipality that provides fiber to the home. However, a few years ago I bought a home and it’s only been over the last 6 months or so I’ve realized how horribly corrupt and mismanaged small city governments can be. We’re being sucked dry by our mayor who hired her cousin as city manager for an exorbitant compensation package. They…

[deleted]
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