Live data from Hacker News

Utah Locals Are Getting Cheap 10 Gbps Fiber Thanks to Local Governments

techdirt.com

181–190 of 224 posts

Re: Utah Locals Are Getting Cheap 10 Gbps Fiber Thanks to Local Governments

#181
post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 2012 google paid like 12B for Moto, comcast had a market cap of like 80B

Google did a $70B stock buyback last year. Every year they are doing similar numbers for the last 5 years. In 2012 they had $50B cash on hand. Today despite the buybacks every year they still have $100-150Billion cash on hand, while Comcast is only worth $150 Billion. They could absolutely afford it now and most likely 10 years back as well without even considering financing the deal. --- Google is just very bad at a…

> Google is just very bad at acquisitions

Youtube, Android, Where2 (== Google Maps), Writeley (== Google Docs), reCAPTHA, Fitbit ?

Re: Utah Locals Are Getting Cheap 10 Gbps Fiber Thanks to Local Governments

#182

Lehi, UT opted to build their own infrastructure instead of using UTOPIA. Not sure if that was a good decision, but I'm not happy about the rates they're charging. I'd stay with Comcast if it wasn't a matter of principle.

Lehi offers 1Gbps fiber for $80/mo, which is about the same as Utopia. The pricing seems pretty good for dinner in Utah.

Re: Utah Locals Are Getting Cheap 10 Gbps Fiber Thanks to Local Governments

#183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Utopia provides an active ethernet connection to each subscriber with the specified bandwidth. This is superior to most fiber deployments, which are passive optical networks (GPON) where groups of 16-32 homes share a connection (usually 2.4 Gb down and 1.2 Gb up). I live in Utah and actively worked to get fiber in my small city. Utopia requires cities to guarantee a take rate (40% if I recall correctly) and taxpayers…

Verizon home, where available, isn't too bad... it's definitely a good backup connection for WFH scenarios.

T-mobile business has a backup plan for $30/mo ($15/mo on a promo a month ago) that can be used for up to 7 days of internet per month. I signed up for it so I will still have internet if my fiber goes out (my router will automatically switch over in an outage).

Re: Utah Locals Are Getting Cheap 10 Gbps Fiber Thanks to Local Governments

#184
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cox is more than that in Phoenix... I've got 2gb down (100mb up) currently. I do wish they didn't charge 2x or more to host a server at home though (business account).

> I do wish they didn't charge 2x or more to host a server at home though (business account). How is this enforced? Is it an IP address (instead of NAT) you're paying for?

The cable company blocks common inbound server ports for residential connections... I've considered just using DNS for letsencrypt and a non-standard port for http/https, but would rather not.

For less than the cost difference, I have a good sized VPS on OVH that I use.

Re: Utah Locals Are Getting Cheap 10 Gbps Fiber Thanks to Local Governments

#185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean a 1A violation like the government pressuring media companies to push their narratives? Because we have seen this year no one seems to care enough.

If you are unable to exercise your first amendment rights, you sue, and you win. This happens over and over again. Media companies push whatever narratives they want to.

Ok, who was sued over the twitter files?

Re: Utah Locals Are Getting Cheap 10 Gbps Fiber Thanks to Local Governments

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The regionalization of ISPs is entirely their own doing to avoid competition. And what mechanism did they use to do that?

Explicit contracts [1] and implicit collusion [2] [3]. There aren't that many large ISPs in the US. They know that if they compete they have to lower prices and if they don't compete they don't; so rather than compete and all of them accept lower prices (and worse margins) they don't. [1]: https://www.techdirt.com/2014/08/14/parallel-conduct-how-isp... [2]: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/09/comca…

Ok, so charters, regulation, bribery, local laws, and city policies…

None of that sounds like free market to me.

Re: Utah Locals Are Getting Cheap 10 Gbps Fiber Thanks to Local Governments

#187
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is probably not a terrible configuration for a lot of users. It is disappointing that the internet didn’t remain a network of mostly peers where everyone might host something. But, realistically, lots of people approximately just use their bandwidth to stream video, right?

Netflix themselves say that 15Mbps is enough for 4k. 1.2Gbps downstream is enough for >50 such 4k video streams without saturation -- something that will probably never happen in any household, even in Grandma's house on Christmas Eve with a bunch of grandkids around. Meanwhile, I've had single-player games of Factorio of medium complexity that would saturate 20Mbps upstream. Nobody needs a connection that is so heav…

> Netflix themselves say that 15Mbps is enough for 4k.

Aggressively compressed 4K, it's convenient for them to have convinced everyone that resolution is the one measure of video quality.

4K content on blu-ray UHD is H265 at 72, 92, 123, or 144 Mbps.

It would be a lot more data than Netflix will send you, but still doesn't saturate a fiber connection.

Re: Utah Locals Are Getting Cheap 10 Gbps Fiber Thanks to Local Governments

#188

Official release: https://www.utopiafiber.com/2024/05/08/utopia-fiber-adds-thr...

Utopia Fiber: 1Gbps for $45/mo 10Gbps for $150/mo AT&T Fiber: 1Gbps for $80/mo 5Gbps for $250/mo *** note: slower speed

I think there should be a $30/month charge for Utopia added to their service.

https://www.utopiafiber.com/residential-pricing/

So it's slightly cheaper than AT&T for 1Gbps and a more significant difference for their 10Gbps service which AT&T doesn't offer, as you point out.

Re: Utah Locals Are Getting Cheap 10 Gbps Fiber Thanks to Local Governments

#189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For however conservative Utah is, they are very community oriented so in practice, they seem to implement some fairly socialist policies. They were real early in housing first and they have a pretty nice built-out public transit system, a bunch of coops, 3x the average of credit union membership ... things like that.

There’s a communitarian-libertarian axis that’s distinct from the conservative-liberal axis. While libertarianism tends to dominate both the left and right in the U.S., I suspect most American conservatives outside the coasts are more communitarian, closer to Christian democrats: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_democracy . Conversely, while American liberals have putatively communal ambitions, they’re often t…

If you're referring to the political compass, that thing is just an astrological star chart for politics. It's just about as accurate.

Go to Wikipedia for that, about 70% of the word count is calling it nonsense https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Political_Compass

Those are the numbers you get with topics like homeopathy

Re: Utah Locals Are Getting Cheap 10 Gbps Fiber Thanks to Local Governments

#190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Utopia Fiber: 1Gbps for $45/mo 10Gbps for $150/mo AT&T Fiber: 1Gbps for $80/mo 5Gbps for $250/mo *** note: slower speed

I think there should be a $30/month charge for Utopia added to their service. https://www.utopiafiber.com/residential-pricing/ So it's slightly cheaper than AT&T for 1Gbps and a more significant difference for their 10Gbps service which AT&T doesn't offer, as you point out.

> So it's slightly cheaper than AT&T for 1Gbps

Utopia is:

  77% cheaper than AT&T (1 Gbps)
  66% cheaper than AT&T (5 Gbps) yet delivers 2x the speed than AT&T
That doesn't seem "slightly cheaper" to me.
Post reply on HN