Live data from Hacker News

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

techdirt.com

211–220 of 224 posts

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

#211
post #134

> Two decades later and the coalition just announced that 18 different ISPs now compete for Utah resident attention over a network that now covers 21 different Utah cities. In many instances, ISPs on the network are offering symmetrical (uncapped) gigabit fiber for as little as $45 a month (plus $30 network connection fee, so $75). Some ISPs are even offering symmetrical 10 Gbps fiber for around $150 a month: Congrat…

> Congratulations, you've invented European style internet access with prices that almost match, super proud of you Utah. Isn’t Utah like 3M in an area the size of Western Europe? It is an accomplishment considering

No, Utah is less than half the size of Spain or France. That's vastly less than the size of Western Europe.

So, while it's an impressive accomplishment, it's not "size of Western Europe" impressive.

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

#212
The Utopia rollout has been so poorly done. Where I live, the entire area was supposed to get it and they missed houses here and there. Ours is one of them.

Gladly forking out $$$ to Comcast for their coax gigabit until the city gets it right.

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

#213
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That new national network ("the NBN") is so hit-or-miss that it's not funny. My current connection in Brisbane is 1GbE download (incredibly fast for Australia), but only 50mbps upload. That 50mbps upload is the fastest commonly available speed in the whole country. Most ISP's don't offer anything faster than 20mbps. :( Reliability isn't great either. Had an 8 hour (!) outage overnight about a month ago, then a ~2 hou…

My favorite part of NBN was always data caps. Data caps on internal traffic thru fiberoptic backbone!

Do data caps still exist with the NBN in recent years?

I somewhat remember them from years ago, before I moved overseas for a while.

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

#214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the plan until AT&T pulled the rug out from the resellers, so it's not an option anymore, as much as we'd like to. That said, I believe we are in San Jose, just mostly for aerial (telephone pole) locations. Below ground infra is much more expensive to serve, and historically we've focused on aerial for that reason, but I believe plans are moving forward to fill in the gaps in the areas where we already provi…

I think our fiber comes from telephone poles. Would you be able to run another line on those?

Not an individual line, but if the poles aren't full then theoretically we could serve the area. Until the poles are full its free to use with an accepted usage plan and engineering plans to show pole stress and load/tension, but each tenant has a section with a buffer between them and there's only so much room.

If you want to contact me through my email in my profile) and are willing to accept that my crazy personal inbox situation might mean I easily miss it), I'm willing to do some closer looking with your actual info.

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

#215

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

How have you calculated that price for 1Gbps? I'm looking at the numbers and it seems like the cheapest 1 Gpbs connection would be $70/mo?

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

#216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're using the wrong pricing. AT&T has one price. Utopia has 2 components, the ISP and Utopia itself, making up the total price. If you go to the website link I posted, it's not $45, it's $45 to the ISP and $30 to Utopia. That makes $75, which is slightly cheaper than $80.

"Service from UTOPIA Fiber is billed in . One part is for services provided by the Internet Service Provider (ISP) you select, and the other is for the physical network connection provided by UTOPIA Fiber. Check out our price list to help you compare service options from our various ISPs. "

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

Emphasis mine. The cheapest service available from Utopia is $30 to them + $35 for 250Mbps service, totaling $65/month. There is no $45/month service.

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

#217

Comcast lobbied so hard to get our local mileage for fiber expansion voted down. When it passed, they suddenly decided they’re going to spend 6 figures worth of money to expand their own fiber backdown (they’re not even to the house). Its amazing when corporations will spend more money fighting something than actually implementing said thing.

Corporate ISPs take the same approach to community ISPs as they do to unions. Any hint of their existence must be crushed immediately and forcefully regardless of cost. If community ISPs (or unions) succeed, it shows what is possible.

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

#218
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What networking gear do you use inside your home? What router? Do they terminate an actual fiber connection (SFP+) to your home or you get 10GB Ethernet?

I’m not the op, but I can recommend the Unifi link aggregation switch and cheap Mellanox connectX3 cards. They are about $20 and are amazing. Fibre runs aren’t expensive but the transceivers are so copper DAC is good for short runs (as the connectors are built in). Thunderbolt sfp adaptors also work.

Fibre transceivers are not expensive. You can get 2km 1310nm single mode 10G SFP+ modules for US$15 here: https://www.fibermall.com/sale-420055-sfp-10g-ir-1310nm-2km....

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

#219
post #85

As someone who has 1/1000th of that bandwidth to the Internet, and yet still only saturates that connection when transferring from some nearby sites, I'm curious how useful having a 10Gbps local connection will actually turn out to be in practice. Being able to download Linux ISOs faster is the prominent use case that comes to mind.

{ Multiple people in household each having multi-party high resolution video calls | band practice | data manipulation collaborations | 4K TV on demand } can suck up the bandwidth when the priority is smooth real-time with low interactive latency. It's not always going to be peak demand, but it'll be noticable when everybody piles on at particular times of day. TBH I have relatively low bandwidth most of the time and…

Band practice?

Edit to clarify: I cannot fathom live collaboration over the internet when even 15 ms lag is annoyingly noticeable (10 ms latency with a midi keyboard seems like the cutoff for me personally at least).

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

#220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Reforms to the Pole Attachment Act have made this shit is easy now. Easy, but not cheap. AFAICT, the pole attachment regulation changes only happened in mid-January 2024. They're probably good changes, but 1) They happened just yesterday, speaking in "policy time". 2) If you don't think an absolute assload of time and money can be wasted with doomed-to-fail appeals and spurious orders for documentation and impact a…

>You'd expect a big city with a high density of customers would get lit up before a fairly small, sparse town if it was just a cost/benefit analysis doing the location selection. The costs are so high that a reasonable person would never expect that, not without government subsidies. Like what's happening in the small towns. Nothing is stopping you from starting an ISP-- except the fact that you'll go broke because m…

> That's why Google Fiber ... turned on the electrified subsidy extraction machine to "high" before making a deployment decision.

If by "subsidy extraction" you mean "Required that the only objection incumbents could make to GF's pole attachments were objections rooted in real safety issues, that all objections must be resolved rapidly, and that incumbents could not charge GF outsized pole attachment fees (IIRC, often defined as 'not more than the incumbent had been historically charging themselves').", then, yeah, I agree they did demand a level playing field free from unreasonable interference from incumbent operators.

> That's why Google Fiber pitted cities against each other ... to see who could get the most people to [promise] to subscribe...

Yeah, that's part of any big, expensive rollout. You don't do it unless you have enough people who commit to use the service for a period of time to make it worth doing the rollout.

> ...most people are happy with Comcast.

The difference between the rates and restrictions imposed by the incumbent ISPs in areas where there is healthy ISP competition and areas where there is not suggest otherwise. Even credible rumors that an independent ISP might serve a significant portion of an area with a mon- or duopoly cause the incumbents to scramble to offer freebies, rate reductions, and gratis data transfer cap and speed increases.

Given the all of the previous, and that the FCC continues to update their pole attachment regs to add more avenues for appeal and impose more and more "playing field leveling" rules, I suspect you know less about this topic that you claim to.

Post reply on HN