Comcast rejected by small town, residents vote for municipal fiber instead • Hacker News Board

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

#41

Post by ghaff » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 3:30 PM UTC

jessaustin wrote: post #25

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.

I assure you that small rural towns can be pretty hard to get broadband in from anyone, Comcast included. These towns exist for the most part because people want space and relative quiet.

I'd also note that about 10% of the people in the town participated in the vote and the final vote was fairly close. Hopefully it works out because options aren't great if you can't get Verizon or Comcast in much of the Northeast. (My dad in Maine has about a 0.5Mbit/sec connection.)

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

#42

Post by nicoburns » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 3:30 PM UTC

ams6110 wrote: post #32

walrus01 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And who in the government of a small town is competent to design such an architecture? Who is competent to hire a competent company to design such an architecture? In the case of my town the answer is nobody. Our municipal internet project has been a boondoggle of incompetence, false starts, and mismanagement. Going on a decade. Meanwhile the people using Comcast or AT&T generally have usable service. I'm not a fan o…

The obvious solution seems to be a public entity at federal level. They would be big enough to have the relevant expertise without the misaligned incentives of the big corporate companies.

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

#43

Post by takeda » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 3:33 PM UTC

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #3

Good for them. I hope this trend continues because ISPs need a good solid kick in the teeth.

All ISPs need is to separate the last mile (the fiber between your house and nearest POP) from their service. Once that would be available, we would have a real compression in that market.

In all countries which are known for having best internet experience the ISP don't own the last mile.

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

#44

Post by dudul » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 3:33 PM UTC

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?”

1) Norway and Sweden are as large as France size wise.

2) Now, for fun, let's integrate the price dimension to this report. Yes I have better (maybe 1.5 to 2 times as fast) Internet than my parents who are in Europe, but I also pay 3 times what they pay for it.

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

#45

Post by JumpCrisscross » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 3:34 PM UTC

Angostura wrote: post #36

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

OK, do you're rejecting both the idea of the local municipality and corporates. What's your preferred solution?

> you're rejecting both the idea of the local municipality and corporates. What's your preferred solution?

Municipality builds and owns the infrastructure; competitively leases it to private operators for fixed periods of time.

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

#46

Post by amelius » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 3:36 PM UTC

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.

You can vote with your wallet, too.

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

#47

Post by ngngngng » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 3:38 PM UTC

cm2187 wrote: post #24

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.

Exactly. We're getting municipal 10 gigabit in my town currently. I can't see myself being unsatisfied with 10 gigabit fiber for a long long time.

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

#48

Post by toomuchtodo » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 3:38 PM UTC

ryandrake wrote: post #38

toomuchtodo wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not nervous at all (disclaimer: I support public ownership of infrastructure over private/commercial ownership, stakeholders > shareholders). Local governments are governed by local citizens . I have no impact on Comcast or Time Warner's governance, as either a shareholder or customer. If I don't hold my local government accountable, that's my fault . My local community owning my roads, sidewalks, water, sewer (s…

I think OP’s fear is that the quality of local governments varies enormously. Your local government might be awesome. If so, congratulations! Not everyone lives in places with great oversight or has access to the legal means to keep their local government in check. A local government one state over might decide to ban search terms about contraceptives or keep a list of customers visiting LGBT sites for various persec…

While I can appreciate your concerns over data firewalls as it relates to local government (privacy advocate, annual EFF donation, yada yada), I would like to see a real world example of it occurring in the US before I'd consider changing my stance on locally owned internet infra vs Comcast, Time Warner, et el (I will even put my money where my mouth is, and come after such a municipality personally with an attorney, that's the sort of thing I find fun).

If Billy Bob the municipal broadband administrator is “sharing his list of fags” with his hillbilly friends, you can FOIA logs, emails, records, and come after the city for their transgression. You can vote local government representatives out of office. If Comcast does this, you have no recourse (and they would even be within their right to sell this data to the highest bidder).

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

#49

Post by lolc » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 3:40 PM UTC

Shivetya wrote: post #27

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 mi…

You realize the people who will be taxed over this agreed to it?

> 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.

Speculation.

> 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.

The same protections you'd get from any other provider.

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

#50

Post by lightbyte » Wed, Dec 12, 2018, 3:41 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #46

49531 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You can vote with your wallet, too.

Many people can't with regards to ISPs. I only have one provider that goes to my address.