71–80 of 121 posts
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Another one: Mountain View's Google Public WiFi was never usable by anyone for anything.
In their defense, I don’t actually know of any municipal-scale outdoor wifi project that was a success, though I’d love to hear about it.
https://www.deseret.com/2014/5/20/20541836/wi-fi-available-a...
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If anything there needs to be more regulation in the UK, I don't understand why every year I have to go through the song and dance of calling up my ISP at the time, saying "it's too expensive I'm going to leave", and getting them to put the price down. It seems like a lot of these companies' revenue relies on people being too lazy or ill-informed to do this so you end up paying way more than you need to be. It litera…
This is probably a function of the marketplace. Honestly, it is difficult to differentiate yourself as a modern ISP, except price. Most normies are using Gmail or the equivalent instead of POP3/IMAP from their ISP. As a result, ISP has cut-throat pricing that is probably heavily loss-leading. Then they jack up prices and how people are sticky -- don't leave. This outcome still seems better than shitty combined telco.
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It fails basic civil engineering on so many levels. Imagine doing that in a city with an active frost line well below 2". How many pothole-related outages would you expect to obviously experience if you were to try such an experiment? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frost_line
Is cold weather bad for fiber? I'm confused by this post. It fails basic civil engineering on so many levels. This is classic HN armchair engineering. I'm sure Google didn't put any thought into their physical rollout.
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The U.S. sorta did this in the copper days: the local/incumbent phone company owned the copper from the home to the CO (central office) and then phone service could be handled by either the ILEC or CLEC. And you could dial-in to whatever ISP you wanted. This was intended to provide some amount of competition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_local_exchange_car... https://www.bandwidth.com/glossary/competitiv…
We sort of do this in the UK. British Telecom own Open Reach who provide infrastructure for the country. There is cable, for a second option in cities, and there are some regional fibre networks that provide a second infrastructure option, but for the most part Open Reach is the only option. I had massive issues with my line, I had engineers come out and we were able to test the cables and show that there was a fault…
It doesn't matter at all if you get fibre as that only goes wrong due to physical breaks (I know this is only 99% true but it's basically true), but both Sky and BT invested a lot of money in being able to resolve copper faults so have a good capability to both identify what's needed and get appropriate action from Openreach, I don't think anyone else does.
Anyway - the Openreach infrastructure really is separately managed. BT Consumer is just another ISP now.
Summary: Google tried to "nano"-trench Louisville, KY using 2" deep trenches (by comparison micro-trenching is typically 6" deep) then use epoxy to cover the trench. The epoxy didn't stand up to tires. Google tried to replace the epoxy with asphalt but that damaged the fiber. Google determined at that point that nano-trenching wouldn't work and didn't want to spend additional money to remedy the situation, so they ab…
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I’m also in Raleigh. I remember Aug 2015: Free T-shirt May 2017: ATT dug up my yard (Everyone was hopping it was google) Nov 2017: ATT fiber Installed (At least it’s not spectrum cable anymore) Dec 2021: Google Fiber dug up my yard. May 2022: Google Fiber installed. It’s a shame they re-trenched everything 4 years after ATT did.
Dug up your yard??? I am getting fiber in 2 months and they are going under my garden by injecting it with high pressure so that it "lands" in my service hatch under my house. Appointment after that someone will enter my house and connect it...
Summary: Google tried to "nano"-trench Louisville, KY using 2" deep trenches (by comparison micro-trenching is typically 6" deep) then use epoxy to cover the trench. The epoxy didn't stand up to tires. Google tried to replace the epoxy with asphalt but that damaged the fiber. Google determined at that point that nano-trenching wouldn't work and didn't want to spend additional money to remedy the situation, so they ab…
I'm not in the US, but in my country the fibre-provider and the ISP are unrelated companies. There are multiple fibre companies (typically an area is served by one or another of them although my area has two) and of course a couple dozen ISPs that do the ISP part. This model works -really- well. ISPs compete on price, and service. Fibre folks do the physical stuff. Fibre companies are incentivised to get rolled out i…
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the state of Tennessee effectively has banned [still cat-and-mouse] other cities from implementing Chattanooga's beloved solution It's bleakly hilarious that politicians of a certain stripe fall over themselves to pass laws against policies that deliver value to the public.
Free market proponents don’t want the government competing with industry. It’s not that surprising