Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast • Hacker News Board

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#301

Post by crumpets » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 4:35 PM UTC

smt88 wrote: post #74

dfsegoat wrote: post #54

Nitpicking title: 'Town' vs. 'City', bugs me as a former CO resident. Ft. Collins is huge (~170k people compared to most CO towns which are 400-10k ppl). The title sort of leads you to believe it was a folksy, rural community effort. In reality Intel, AMD, Broadcom and a major State University are located there and that probably helped the effort substantially. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Collins,_Colorado#Maj…

I looked into this, and Ft. Collins is a "Home Rule Municipality" under state law, meaning it can name itself either a town or city. It seems to have chosen to be a city, so you're right. Around the world, it seems that there's one consistent criterion for something being a city: it must have self-rule and a certain amount of government structure. Some places (notably not the US) have population requirements, but tho…

>I personally appreciate the headline saying "town" in a colloquial sense

But that's the problem. It's not a "town" in a colloquial sense for anyone who grew up outside of major metro areas. If 170k is not enough, then there are no cities in Wyoming, Montana, North Dakota, nor South Dakota.

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#302

Post by barkerja » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

dfsegoat wrote: post #54

Nitpicking title: 'Town' vs. 'City', bugs me as a former CO resident. Ft. Collins is huge (~170k people compared to most CO towns which are 400-10k ppl). The title sort of leads you to believe it was a folksy, rural community effort. In reality Intel, AMD, Broadcom and a major State University are located there and that probably helped the effort substantially. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Collins,_Colorado#Maj…

My little village (around ~1200 people I believe) in Central New York is currently exploring its own municipality owned internet. They sent out surveys to all the residents a few months back to see if there's a large enough interest.

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#303

Post by ineedasername » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

virgilp wrote: post #255

ineedasername wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't really compare sticker prices here. US percapita GDP is about 6 times higher. The average salary is about 8 times higher. So as a proportion of those things, cost is fairly similar.

GDP doesn't matter here. Average salary might... presuming employees that maintain the system are paid average salary, AND the cost is overwhelmingly in the "salaries" category - which I sorta' doubt.

You don't have to take my word for it. There's recently been a push for expansion of Romania's broadband network to more rural areas. At an investment of about $110 million US, it will reach an expected 150,000 additional households, for a cost around $730 per household. Compare that to the US, where the estimate is closer to $3000 and as high as $8000 per household, a 7 to 11 fold increase over Romania. [0]

Nearly all aspects of infrastructure build out are heavily weighted towards labor costs. A 2009 rule in the US required large projects use union labor, and just that marginal increase in labor costs increased infrastructure costs by around 15%. Anecdotally, I had a home addition some years back. Materials costs about 20%, labor about 80%.

Also once built, the capital expenditures for something like broadband drop to negligible rates while the labor cost of maintenance & administration just keeps on going, maybe not as high as the initial build but you need new & different workers too-- sales reps, account managers, etc. Given that prices tend towards the marginal cost of production over time, in this case being mostly labor, it makes perfect sense that a country with 1/8 the labor costs could offer a service at 1/5 the cost in the US, the difference in those proportions accounting for the marginal capital costs of maintenance.

[0] https://www.telegeography.com/products/commsupdate/articles/...

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#304

Post by chimi » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 4:42 PM UTC

crumpets wrote: post #285

gamegoblin wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In general I agree, but in practice certain nominal prices can be monotonically decreasing due to improved technology lowering prices faster than inflation raises them. For instance, in terms of $/GB, data storage costs have been strictly decreasing in nominal terms even with the existence of inflation. That said, I am not sure how much innovation is going into the costs of maintaining a fiber network, so it’s possib…

Two things: - data costs for bandwidth costs hasn't gone down at the same rate - A big chunk of an ISP is labor costs, which do not go down over time

Isn't this article and the discussion precisely about the reason why costs for bandwidth haven't gone down? That is, the infrastructure providers are keeping the costs high because they can.

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#305

Post by jancsika » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 4:46 PM UTC

josh2600 wrote: post #44

jkilpatr wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "upgrading our network" They actually where not doing this before because it's probably a bad idea. Modern cable networks look like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_fiber-coaxial#/media/Fi... Fiber goes to copper which then splits out to a large number of homes. The copper line near your home can do multiple gigabit but that needs to be shared with everyone else on the tree. So selling higher speeds is ea…

Basically every telecom network is built as fiber to the node not fiber to the premises. The nasty truth of all communication and transportation systems is that arteries are cheap and capillaries are expensive. If I am building roads, it is WAY cheaper to just build highways than it is to build the small roads to everyone’s homes. When doing construction for telecom, the payback calculations are based upon “passings”…

> Basically every telecom network is built as fiber to the node not fiber to the premises.

My town is quite literally stringing up fiber (and laying it in some cases) throughout the town limits over the next 90 days.

So unless you mean that most residents/businesses won't technically have a physical fiber-optic type cable dangling inside their abode, I don't understand what you're talking about.

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#306

Post by gwright » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 4:50 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #289

wlesieutre wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason for getting a faster link is that most broadband connections in the US are not symmetric. Comcast in my area doesn't even make claims of upload speed anymore, but my recollection of when they used to is that it was about 10% of the download speed. If you want more than 2 Mbps upload, that 20 Mbps plan wouldn't cut it.

I don't disagree that asymmetric speeds are a problem, but I think there's this bubble where tech professionals think that once everyone has gigabit up and down, your average Joe is going to be demanding 10 gigabit and up, and the data isn't proving that out. People are happy to stream a couple of views of Netflix at once and that's it (even if you're thinking everyone is going to do live syncing of block volumes to…

Why is asymmetric speeds a problem? I don't think there is anything inherently wrong with having multiple types of service for different use cases. That is true with other utilities (electric, water, gas) and is part of general infrastructure planning in those areas.

Of course the actual pricing, availability, etc are also important but I don't think there needs to be a one-size-fits-all model for Internet bandwidth.

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#307

Post by how2cflags » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 4:51 PM UTC

sbarre wrote: post #97

microcolonel wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because of Beanfield. Outside of the core of Toronto that is not the case. If you go all the way to Burlington, it starts costing about $300/mo, if they are even willing to install it. I'm hoping Beanfield continues to expand their area of competition.

It's more than just Beanfield. I live in a condo building and Beanfield wasn't even an option here. If that was the case, I'd never have been able to get this plan, right? I agree that it's certainly due to competition, but it's not as reductive as that. Also, I have a co-worker who lives in Milton and he has the same service as me for basically the same price (he's in a bundle though).

Ah, I have a friend in a downtown condo who uses their 1Gbps service and he hasn't had any issues with them. Sadly I'm in an older town house so my options are Bell or Rogers, neither of which can offer symmetric fiber as the cost to deploy wouldn't be worthwhile their time.(Oddly Bell installed fiber in the older building across the street from me into all the units.) Either way, I ended up going with Teksavvy. No marketing nonsense or calls to up sell anything and I get 300/20 for 62 a month without a contract.

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#308

Post by chimi » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 4:52 PM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #248

lolwhatitis wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, the concept of an independent city - that is, one that isn't contained within any county - does exist in the U.S.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_city_(United_State... Of course, Washington DC could be considered one example, although the above Wikipedia link begs to differ because DC isn't a state. However, there are a few dozen more, most of which are in Virginia.

Such a city is still under two higher levels of government; it's hard to call that "self-rule". Also, this kind of administrative definition of "city" causes weird conflicts. It's easy for a city, such as Los Angeles, to be much larger than the county it's nominally located in, such as Los Angeles county. Conceptually, it's also easy for a city to be its own county, which is a different status than "not contained in…

In the context of a city, self-rule means the place has a mayor and a city council. It can pass local ordinances, have a local sales tax, and provide services to the constituents.

Not all places start out with those things. The rules differ by state, but generally, you need a certain population, a percentage of whom must petition the higher authorities (which you mention), and then vote as a community to create the create the infrastructure and take care of themselves.

At that point, they lose a lot of the benefits provided by those higher levels, like the county and state service providers of fire, police, and garbage disposal for example.

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#309

Post by calvinmorrison » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 4:53 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #289

wlesieutre wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason for getting a faster link is that most broadband connections in the US are not symmetric. Comcast in my area doesn't even make claims of upload speed anymore, but my recollection of when they used to is that it was about 10% of the download speed. If you want more than 2 Mbps upload, that 20 Mbps plan wouldn't cut it.

I don't disagree that asymmetric speeds are a problem, but I think there's this bubble where tech professionals think that once everyone has gigabit up and down, your average Joe is going to be demanding 10 gigabit and up, and the data isn't proving that out. People are happy to stream a couple of views of Netflix at once and that's it (even if you're thinking everyone is going to do live syncing of block volumes to…

Well, for one 4k streaming will probably significantly increase desired download speeds.

Re: Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast

#310

Post by wlesieutre » Wed, Sep 18, 2019, 4:54 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #289

wlesieutre wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One reason for getting a faster link is that most broadband connections in the US are not symmetric. Comcast in my area doesn't even make claims of upload speed anymore, but my recollection of when they used to is that it was about 10% of the download speed. If you want more than 2 Mbps upload, that 20 Mbps plan wouldn't cut it.

I don't disagree that asymmetric speeds are a problem, but I think there's this bubble where tech professionals think that once everyone has gigabit up and down, your average Joe is going to be demanding 10 gigabit and up, and the data isn't proving that out. People are happy to stream a couple of views of Netflix at once and that's it (even if you're thinking everyone is going to do live syncing of block volumes to…

Agreed with that, my connection is plenty fast. It would be nice to have a faster one, but not enough that I'm going to pay more for it.

I think I'm around 50 Mbps and it could be used much more heavily, but it doesn't make any sense on YouTube's end to send me a 50 megabit video stream. It's a the storage and upload costs on the provider side limiting that.

Even if you pay extra for Netflix's 4K support, that only needs 25 megabits. It's compressed to hell compared to a 4K bluray, but if we all had faster internet I don't know if that would change. It's lot harder to market the actual visual quality of a video compared to talking about how many pixels it has.

Maybe we'll see whole new services that need the bandwidth, but most stuff that sends a lot of data could be downloaded in advance if you don't mind waiting 5 minutes instead of having it instantly accessible. How many billion dollars are we willing to spend to build out faster networks to avoid that? What's the selling point for very fast streams, we go back to cloud mainframes and all of our devices are dumb terminals that stream our games and the whole OS from an AWS datacenter?