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The company in the article seems to poo-poo a local WISP, but Wireless ISPs will continue to be the chief deliverers of last-mile broadband to rural areas for a

The company in the article seems to poo-poo a local WISP, but Wireless ISPs will continue to be the chief deliverers of last-mile broadband to rural areas for a long time. Nobody is willing to foot the bill for a huge capital buildout. It just doesn't make financial sense to spend millions to deliver internet to a community with a 50 year ROI. Disclaimer: I currently work for a WISP and have been involved with microwave wireless internet for the better part of the last 20 years. No, it's not gigabit fiber, but in reality, every person in America doesn't need gigabit fiber right now. Many WISP reliability concerns have far less to do with the weather than they do the operators of the ISP. Many are inexperienced in reliable network design, or have budgets stretched so thin they cannot afford quality equipment. Most pay far more for the internet access they provide to customers than the big boys. I'm in a fairly rural county with a couple of mid-sized towns and cities (largest city has a population of about 100,000). Wired internet is available in most population centers, but dial-up and satellite is still all that is available for huge swaths of the county. I know of a particular neighborhood with new houses (Built during the boom around 2005) that the local cable company had hardline right out in front of the neighborhood. There were about 750 houses, most 2000+sq ft. For reasons unknown to me, the neighborhood had a high percentage of government-assisted families living in it. The cable company refused to run lines into the neighborhood for almost 10 years.

scoot 11y ago
> every person in America doesn't need gigabit fiber right now That's a pretty bold claim. Granted, Gb fiber to the home has limited uses outside of high bit-rate 4K / 8K TV; but to suggest that not a single individual out of 320M in the US (never min the rest of the world) needs Gb broadband? BS.
- jauer 11y ago
  I don't think he's saying no one needs gigabit fiber period, rather not everyone needs gig right now, which is demonstrably true. Even 4k is doable without gig using HEVC (50Mbps is typical ref: Wikipedia) and when uncompressed a gig isn't enough. Gig is cool and all but there are fairly large parts of the US where 10-30Mbps+ download with reasonable latency (not satellite) and no data caps (not cell) would be a gamechanger.
  - sathackr 11y ago
    Yes. Most HD(1080p) video is 8mb/s or lower. I feel like Santa Claus most of the time because people are so thankful to even get 10mb/s. It makes my line of work very rewarding. You would be amazed at how quickly a 10mb/s internet connection will make you everyone's best friend. I get fed nice home cooked dinners, showered with praise, invited over for game night. Some of these people will do almost anything just for fast, reliable internet. One company I worked for about 10 years ago went out of business, many of the customers had my personal cell phone number. I was bombarded with calls for the following 5 years with their old customers begging me to somehow get them internet. I tried my best where I could, but just didn't have the financial means to help them.
- phil21 11y ago
  You can't even say 1gbps is close to "enough" in the immediate foreseeable future (decade+). The sheer innovation we're leaving on the table is insane to me with this thinking. Can no one imagine any use for massive amounts of data moving around the world other than consuming media? Have you not seen what is possible between moving from 1ge to 40g in the datacenter between servers? It's not logical to extend this thinking to the client eventually? I really don't understand it. I remember being a 14 year old kid on a 9600 baud modem, upgrading to 28k and realizing what just became theoretically possible and then watching it happen before my eyes at a breathtaking pace. I doubt today's 14 year olds are any less imaginative. I guarantee if you had 10ge available to every home in the US for $50/mo you would see start to see some cool stuff no one immediately thinks of. The fact you can't get $100/mo gige in major dense metro areas (in the US - Think Chicago, NYC, etc.) by now boggles my mind. What a huge competitive lead we gave up for no reason. How have we bogged down in so much bureaucracy and overhead that we can't make this profitable?
  - sathackr 11y ago
    I agree. If you build it, they will come. And who knows what or who 'they' are. But while Google is spending millions putting fiber to every door in a few select cities, huge portions of the country still only have dial-up and satellite as options. That doesn't mean Google shouldn't be spending millions to do it. That would be the same argument as 'why are we spending billions to go to space when people are starving' -- I read an article once that I can't find now, it was titled something like 'why we should do awesome things'. Of course, we should feed the starving AND go to space AND do other awesome things. My main issue was, the article and company seemed to imply that the local WISP was impeding their ability to get funding to run fiber, when, for the last 10 years, that WISP was probably that community's only source of broadband. It did not say if they actively fought them, or it was simply their presence that was the issue.
    - jauer 11y ago
      A WISP (or any other provider) that provides 25Mbps download+some nominal upload to a area (and reports that on their bi-annual FCC form 477) would cause the area to be marked as "served" and thus ineligible for CAF funding. IIRC the USDA BTOP program which funded a lot of middle mile projects had similar restriction. From what I've seen this mostly spoils the traditional telcos (e.g. Centurylink & Frontier) because CAF (replacement for USF) won't pay for their upgrades (usually something like adding a VDSL2 DSLAM in a cabinet somewhere and running fiber back to their CO) when a high-performing WISP is in the area. Of course some little telcos that do FTTH are also affected.
- sathackr 11y ago
  I didn't say nobody needs gigabit fiber. I said everyone doesn't need gigabit fiber. Obviously at least someone needs gigabit fiber. And 10 gigabit fiber, and 100gigabit fiber. It's what runs the internet. I work in IT, have worked in IT my entire life, and rarely have a need for more than 20mb/s. The only exception being large downloads, which are few and far between.
  - scoot 11y ago
    > everyone doesn't need gigabit fiber. Maybe you meant "not everyone needs gigabit fiber? You said nobody needs it. "everyone doesn't" == "nobody does".
    - sathackr 11y ago
      From my unedited original post: > No, it's not gigabit fiber, but in reality, every person in America doesn't need gigabit fiber right now. You quoted it in your first reply as well. 'every person in America' is pretty close to 'everyone doesn't' Though I agree, 'not everyone needs gigabit fiber' would have provided more clarity to my intended meaning.
amazon_not 11y ago
> Nobody is willing to foot the bill for a huge capital buildout. False. It just so happens that it has been made illegal for those willing in some states. The people benefiting from the fiber network are often to pay for it. Fiber co-ops are an example of this.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

scoot 11y ago

> every person in America doesn't need gigabit fiber right now That's a pretty bold claim. Granted, Gb fiber to the home has limited uses outside of high bit-rate 4K / 8K TV; but to suggest that not a single individual out of 320M in the US (never min the rest of the world) needs Gb broadband? BS.

jauer 11y ago
I don't think he's saying no one needs gigabit fiber period, rather not everyone needs gig right now, which is demonstrably true. Even 4k is doable without gig using HEVC (50Mbps is typical ref: Wikipedia) and when uncompressed a gig isn't enough. Gig is cool and all but there are fairly large parts of the US where 10-30Mbps+ download with reasonable latency (not satellite) and no data caps (not cell) would be a gamechanger.
- sathackr 11y ago
  Yes. Most HD(1080p) video is 8mb/s or lower. I feel like Santa Claus most of the time because people are so thankful to even get 10mb/s. It makes my line of work very rewarding. You would be amazed at how quickly a 10mb/s internet connection will make you everyone's best friend. I get fed nice home cooked dinners, showered with praise, invited over for game night. Some of these people will do almost anything just for fast, reliable internet. One company I worked for about 10 years ago went out of business, many of the customers had my personal cell phone number. I was bombarded with calls for the following 5 years with their old customers begging me to somehow get them internet. I tried my best where I could, but just didn't have the financial means to help them.
phil21 11y ago
You can't even say 1gbps is close to "enough" in the immediate foreseeable future (decade+). The sheer innovation we're leaving on the table is insane to me with this thinking. Can no one imagine any use for massive amounts of data moving around the world other than consuming media? Have you not seen what is possible between moving from 1ge to 40g in the datacenter between servers? It's not logical to extend this thinking to the client eventually? I really don't understand it. I remember being a 14 year old kid on a 9600 baud modem, upgrading to 28k and realizing what just became theoretically possible and then watching it happen before my eyes at a breathtaking pace. I doubt today's 14 year olds are any less imaginative. I guarantee if you had 10ge available to every home in the US for $50/mo you would see start to see some cool stuff no one immediately thinks of. The fact you can't get $100/mo gige in major dense metro areas (in the US - Think Chicago, NYC, etc.) by now boggles my mind. What a huge competitive lead we gave up for no reason. How have we bogged down in so much bureaucracy and overhead that we can't make this profitable?
- sathackr 11y ago
  I agree. If you build it, they will come. And who knows what or who 'they' are. But while Google is spending millions putting fiber to every door in a few select cities, huge portions of the country still only have dial-up and satellite as options. That doesn't mean Google shouldn't be spending millions to do it. That would be the same argument as 'why are we spending billions to go to space when people are starving' -- I read an article once that I can't find now, it was titled something like 'why we should do awesome things'. Of course, we should feed the starving AND go to space AND do other awesome things. My main issue was, the article and company seemed to imply that the local WISP was impeding their ability to get funding to run fiber, when, for the last 10 years, that WISP was probably that community's only source of broadband. It did not say if they actively fought them, or it was simply their presence that was the issue.
  - jauer 11y ago
    A WISP (or any other provider) that provides 25Mbps download+some nominal upload to a area (and reports that on their bi-annual FCC form 477) would cause the area to be marked as "served" and thus ineligible for CAF funding. IIRC the USDA BTOP program which funded a lot of middle mile projects had similar restriction. From what I've seen this mostly spoils the traditional telcos (e.g. Centurylink & Frontier) because CAF (replacement for USF) won't pay for their upgrades (usually something like adding a VDSL2 DSLAM in a cabinet somewhere and running fiber back to their CO) when a high-performing WISP is in the area. Of course some little telcos that do FTTH are also affected.
sathackr 11y ago
I didn't say nobody needs gigabit fiber. I said everyone doesn't need gigabit fiber. Obviously at least someone needs gigabit fiber. And 10 gigabit fiber, and 100gigabit fiber. It's what runs the internet. I work in IT, have worked in IT my entire life, and rarely have a need for more than 20mb/s. The only exception being large downloads, which are few and far between.
- scoot 11y ago
  > everyone doesn't need gigabit fiber. Maybe you meant "not everyone needs gigabit fiber? You said nobody needs it. "everyone doesn't" == "nobody does".
  - sathackr 11y ago
    From my unedited original post: > No, it's not gigabit fiber, but in reality, every person in America doesn't need gigabit fiber right now. You quoted it in your first reply as well. 'every person in America' is pretty close to 'everyone doesn't' Though I agree, 'not everyone needs gigabit fiber' would have provided more clarity to my intended meaning.

amazon_not 11y ago

> Nobody is willing to foot the bill for a huge capital buildout. False. It just so happens that it has been made illegal for those willing in some states. The people benefiting from the fiber network are often to pay for it. Fiber co-ops are an example of this.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]