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Because city governments are really great at investing appropriately in infrastructure! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis https://en.wikipedia.o

by harryh 10y ago

Because city governments are really great at investing appropriately in infrastructure! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis

dublinben 10y ago
Where municipal fiber is available, it is better than the commercial alternatives.
- sgt101 10y ago
  It is for now; come back in 10 years and lets see. Keeping fibre in the ground working in the face of storms, other people digging it up and tech churn (ok, what is after 10Gbe ? How are you going to run that round the mainstreet?) isn't rocket science, but it is a technical maintenance task and new build infrastructures have a great upfront advantage. For a while.
  - amazon_not 10y ago
    Buried fiber works just fine regardless of storms. Aerial fiber is a different matter. Patching up fiber cables after a cut is no big deal. Tech churn, i.e. what active equipment to use, is just run of the mill stuff. You can upgrade the optics to 100G if you need it, but if you don't nobody is forcing you to move past 10G. I've built and ran fiber networks for over 10 years and operations and maintenance is no big issue.
    - sgt101 10y ago
      Super interesting: what fault rate (per 1000 per week) do you see and what kind of geography are you in (urban?) On the past 10Gbe point : contention is the killer, there is a rise of "super users" for example video editors shipping to and from the cloud, which drives the need for > backhaul - are you not seeing that? Also on the bigger points; small providers have to peer, like everyone, but do they get good deals? How about prices on kit? Strategic deals with Huweii / Cisco are hard enough for tier one, do you not think that you'll get squeezed ?
      - amazon_not 10y ago
        Buried fiber doesn't really develop faults once it's put in the ground and doesn't really require any maintenance either. The deeper you put it the safer it is and when we put in fiber we put it in deep. The rate faults that occur are fiber cuts and these fiber cuts are usually the result of some contractor not using call before you dig or being sloppy about it. Bandwidth usage is always growing, but then again the cost of IP transit is constantly going down too. Heavy users aren't really an issue and end user 10G connections are rather rare. Those that really need dedicated 10G connections buy leased lines or wavelengths and pay accordingly. More bandwidth usage isn't a problem, it's a good thing that drives more business. Peering is easy and cheap to small and large providers alike. Transit is also so cheap that it often is cheaper to buy more IP transit than to build out more peering capacity. Access to networking hardware is not a problem and there are products for every need and price point. The largest issues are access to capital, barriers to entry and competition.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
theothermkn 10y ago
> Because city governments are really great at investing appropriately in infrastructure! > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis This sketch of a sketch of an argument that you have laid out it a total non sequitur. It seems to me that you're pointing to the Flint water crisis as proof either that all municipal infrastructure efforts are disastrous, or that enough of them are that the public utility alternative is essentially dead. If that is the "argument," then the easiest way to defeat this is just to say, "Flint was news because it represented a rare and egregious failure." That's it. That's all we need to say to rebut that in its entirety. If we stop there, however, we miss the opportunity to point out the converse: It's not news when customers get gouged for sub-par service, because corrupt and monopolistic practices are rampant within capitalist institutions, especially around lock-in. Cable companies. Phone companies. Privatized utilities. Airlines after deregulation. Military suppliers. It's just not news. We'd also miss the opportunity to point out that the tactic of pointing to one criminal failure of a civic organization as proof positive that private industry is universally better is a favorite tactic of a certain obnoxious kind of 20-something free-market fanboy set. HN is better off when that set either stays home or ups its game.
- harryh 10y ago
  Flint is an extreme example, but underinvestment in infrastructure is not rare. It's endemic. Governments across the country are underinvesting in infrastructure at all levels. It's not just me who's saying this. It's been a major talking point of the democratic party for years. And that's for infrastructure like roads and water delivery where technology is largely static. The problem would likely only be worse for more dynamic infrastructure like broadband.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    In large part because the wealthy, and corporations, have entirely shirked their taxpaying obligations. That is: paying for the services which enabled them to become wealthy in the first place.
- rayiner 10y ago
c0nducktr 10y ago
If city governments are so incompetent, why are ISPs lobbying to prevent municipal networks?
- yompers888 10y ago
  Because the incompetence of municipal governments (in most of the US) is in overbuilding infrastructure to serve unproductive areas so that maintenance obligations come to consume ever larger portions of the budget unless they can achieve the Ponzi scheme of paying for it with the taxes from new growth. That would be terrifying to compete with.

by harryh 10y ago

Because city governments are really great at investing appropriately in infrastructure! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis

dublinben 10y ago

Where municipal fiber is available, it is better than the commercial alternatives.

sgt101 10y ago
It is for now; come back in 10 years and lets see. Keeping fibre in the ground working in the face of storms, other people digging it up and tech churn (ok, what is after 10Gbe ? How are you going to run that round the mainstreet?) isn't rocket science, but it is a technical maintenance task and new build infrastructures have a great upfront advantage. For a while.
- amazon_not 10y ago
  Buried fiber works just fine regardless of storms. Aerial fiber is a different matter. Patching up fiber cables after a cut is no big deal. Tech churn, i.e. what active equipment to use, is just run of the mill stuff. You can upgrade the optics to 100G if you need it, but if you don't nobody is forcing you to move past 10G. I've built and ran fiber networks for over 10 years and operations and maintenance is no big issue.
  - sgt101 10y ago
    Super interesting: what fault rate (per 1000 per week) do you see and what kind of geography are you in (urban?) On the past 10Gbe point : contention is the killer, there is a rise of "super users" for example video editors shipping to and from the cloud, which drives the need for > backhaul - are you not seeing that? Also on the bigger points; small providers have to peer, like everyone, but do they get good deals? How about prices on kit? Strategic deals with Huweii / Cisco are hard enough for tier one, do you not think that you'll get squeezed ?
    - amazon_not 10y ago
      Buried fiber doesn't really develop faults once it's put in the ground and doesn't really require any maintenance either. The deeper you put it the safer it is and when we put in fiber we put it in deep. The rate faults that occur are fiber cuts and these fiber cuts are usually the result of some contractor not using call before you dig or being sloppy about it. Bandwidth usage is always growing, but then again the cost of IP transit is constantly going down too. Heavy users aren't really an issue and end user 10G connections are rather rare. Those that really need dedicated 10G connections buy leased lines or wavelengths and pay accordingly. More bandwidth usage isn't a problem, it's a good thing that drives more business. Peering is easy and cheap to small and large providers alike. Transit is also so cheap that it often is cheaper to buy more IP transit than to build out more peering capacity. Access to networking hardware is not a problem and there are products for every need and price point. The largest issues are access to capital, barriers to entry and competition.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

theothermkn 10y ago

> Because city governments are really great at investing appropriately in infrastructure! > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis This sketch of a sketch of an argument that you have laid out it a total non sequitur. It seems to me that you're pointing to the Flint water crisis as proof either that all municipal infrastructure efforts are disastrous, or that enough of them are that the public utility alternative is essentially dead. If that is the "argument," then the easiest way to defeat this is just to say, "Flint was news because it represented a rare and egregious failure." That's it. That's all we need to say to rebut that in its entirety. If we stop there, however, we miss the opportunity to point out the converse: It's not news when customers get gouged for sub-par service, because corrupt and monopolistic practices are rampant within capitalist institutions, especially around lock-in. Cable companies. Phone companies. Privatized utilities. Airlines after deregulation. Military suppliers. It's just not news. We'd also miss the opportunity to point out that the tactic of pointing to one criminal failure of a civic organization as proof positive that private industry is universally better is a favorite tactic of a certain obnoxious kind of 20-something free-market fanboy set. HN is better off when that set either stays home or ups its game.

harryh 10y ago
Flint is an extreme example, but underinvestment in infrastructure is not rare. It's endemic. Governments across the country are underinvesting in infrastructure at all levels. It's not just me who's saying this. It's been a major talking point of the democratic party for years. And that's for infrastructure like roads and water delivery where technology is largely static. The problem would likely only be worse for more dynamic infrastructure like broadband.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  In large part because the wealthy, and corporations, have entirely shirked their taxpaying obligations. That is: paying for the services which enabled them to become wealthy in the first place.
rayiner 10y ago

c0nducktr 10y ago

If city governments are so incompetent, why are ISPs lobbying to prevent municipal networks?

yompers888 10y ago
Because the incompetence of municipal governments (in most of the US) is in overbuilding infrastructure to serve unproductive areas so that maintenance obligations come to consume ever larger portions of the budget unless they can achieve the Ponzi scheme of paying for it with the taxes from new growth. That would be terrifying to compete with.