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

arstechnica.com

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

#21

Post by 49531 »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15
epoch_100 wrote: post #2

Good! By allowing individual municipalities to manage their own Internet infrastructure, we can help keep the Internet from becoming effectively owned by the likes of Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon.

> By allowing individual municipalities to manage their own Internet infrastructure, we can help keep the Internet from becoming effectively owned by the likes of Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon I'm nervous about how thoughtlessly we're embracing public ISP ownership. Local governments are notoriously corrupt, in both politics and police. These referenda expand their power without rebalancing any checks or balances. We ju…

They're no more corrupt than large corporate players, but I can vote for my local government.

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

#22

Post by walrus01 »

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…

A properly designed dark architecture for fiber, with small neighborhood powered nodes, can have a 50+ year life... It's the electronics that are going to need replacing. Same whether you build for 1 strand active Ethernet to each CPE or a 1x16 split gpon.

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

#23

Post by jsjohnst »

nwellinghoff wrote: post #5
walrus01 wrote: post #4

1300 residents? How many individual premises? That is a rather small scan gpon project. Hope they hire someone with a clue and experience to build and run it, there is not a lot of Venn diagram overlap between municipal managers and network engineers. I do hope they realize that if they want to do everything themselves, they'll still need transport links to the nearest major IX point, and IP transit upstreams. I don'…

Sounds like they need to hire you. Your third option sounds pretty smart.

The second and third options are relatively common in the industry. Sibling comment gave an example, but happy to dig up more.

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

#24

Post by cm2187 »

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…

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.

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

#25

Post by jessaustin »

walrus01 wrote: post #4

1300 residents? How many individual premises? That is a rather small scan gpon project. Hope they hire someone with a clue and experience to build and run it, there is not a lot of Venn diagram overlap between municipal managers and network engineers. I do hope they realize that if they want to do everything themselves, they'll still need transport links to the nearest major IX point, and IP transit upstreams. I don'…

It's common to question why small villages like this even exist. "To enable reasonable internet connection" is one of the best reasons I've seen so far.

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

#26

Post by JumpCrisscross »

49531 wrote: post #21
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By allowing individual municipalities to manage their own Internet infrastructure, we can help keep the Internet from becoming effectively owned by the likes of Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon I'm nervous about how thoughtlessly we're embracing public ISP ownership. Local governments are notoriously corrupt, in both politics and police. These referenda expand their power without rebalancing any checks or balances. We ju…

They're no more corrupt than large corporate players, but I can vote for my local government.

> They're no more corrupt than large corporate players, but I can vote for my local government

My point is that's a terrible baseline to settle for. If our metric for "should we do it" is solely "is it better than Comcast," we've got a problem. My specific concern is around local police having expanded access to locals' internet activity.

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

#27

Post by Shivetya »

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.

why do people assume a local government will be the end all to services? they can be likely just as bad and when they decided your neighborhood isn't a priority you will have little to no recourse.

I do like the town's propose internet speeds and conditions compared to comcast but look at the extra money listed in the article. nearly a million had already been spend to map out the deployment and it will be another million and a half over twenty years to roll it out. throw in that any project past a few years will see the costs explode and this will mean that many will never see their new internet any time soon.

plus finally, it will be interesting what protections are built into the system that prevent the government from tracking the habits of the residents using the service.

so an entity with no financial obligation outside its jurisdiction with unlimited taxation powers and grants is able to out provide a private company, this is not news. when you have more money at your disposal you can make bigger promises the difference is they do not have to deliver as you have no legal recourse when they don't

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

#28

Post by Wohlf »

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?”

I was amazed how slow the internet was when I went to Germany last year, even in downtown Stuttgart.

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

#29

Post by frgtpsswrdlame »

seniorivn wrote: post #20
epoch_100 wrote: post #2

Good! By allowing individual municipalities to manage their own Internet infrastructure, we can help keep the Internet from becoming effectively owned by the likes of Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon.

how is it any better then current olygopolly? The solution should be raising competitiveness of the market. Like in countries with a lot better internet, especially per dollar.

>how is it any better than current oligopoly?

I mean I suppose you could ask the people that voted for it.

>The solution should be raising competitiveness of the market.

Networks like internet providership are notoriously hard to get competitive markets in. Even removing the regulatory barriers to entry there are still natural barriers to entry (high start up cost) and huge returns to scale. The natural state of this market is monopoly or oligopoly.

But even beyond this, this is raising the competitiveness of the market. Internet has become so integrated into the fabric of modern life that many feel compelled to purchase it from the one or maybe two providers in their area. That lowers competitiveness. Demonstrating that municipalities have ways of 'opting out' should force Comcast and other providers to compete with the hypothetical 'public ISP' that citizens can always vote in.

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

#30

Post by toomuchtodo »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #29
seniorivn wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

how is it any better then current olygopolly? The solution should be raising competitiveness of the market. Like in countries with a lot better internet, especially per dollar.

>how is it any better than current oligopoly? I mean I suppose you could ask the people that voted for it. >The solution should be raising competitiveness of the market. Networks like internet providership are notoriously hard to get competitive markets in. Even removing the regulatory barriers to entry there are still natural barriers to entry (high start up cost) and huge returns to scale. The natural state of this…

Your comment was dead, but I vouched for it because I believe your second paragraph has value. I'd ask you consider removing the first part, which is unnecessarily snarky and doesn't address the point (how is this better than an oligopoly).
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