16 ms·

That sucks for citizens of the US. I think the Swedish (Nordic?) model for bringing internet connectivity to it's citizens is superior. The municipalities own

That sucks for citizens of the US. I think the Swedish (Nordic?) model for bringing internet connectivity to it's citizens is superior. The municipalities own (most of) the networks and all the fiber cables, letting companies use them for a small(ish) fee. These companies later sell it to customers. This help people to get the best deals and ensure that the networks are continually upgraded. For example, I have 250/100 mbit/s for free. My rent pays for this. But I could if I wanted to easily upgrade to 1gbit/s up and down. I can change ISP (even if that wouldn't be paid for by my rent) and I would know that I always could get the same internet-connectivity speeds. Although, while this is true for many parts of Sweden, it's not available for everyone. Some places still have networks owned by one company without any access to the city network.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
gregmac 10y ago
> The municipalities own (most of) the networks and all the fiber cables, letting companies use them for a small(ish) fee. These companies later sell it to customers. This is the model that should be used everywhere, if we were to actually consider it a utility. By default it does nothing, but if you pay some company to terminate it to the internet then you get internet, using whatever speed they can provide. Let the ISPs compete based on the service they provide: internet speed, reliability, support, and other add-ons like (e-mail or malware filters or the best wifi-router-modem included) or even the lack of any add-ons. Even if this isn't a "municipal service" strictly speaking, if contracted out to a telco of sorts, it should be done the same way, and we should not allow the same company that provides the physical lines to provide the actual service, since it's anti-competitive.
Brakenshire 10y ago
> The municipalities own (most of) the networks and all the fiber cables, letting companies use them for a small(ish) fee. These companies later sell it to customers. This help people to get the best deals and ensure that the networks are continually upgraded. The UK version is that the cables are owned by one highly regulated company (BT OpenReach) which then has to sell on to retail ISP's at a set rate. Fibre To The Cabinet (that is, using copper for the last few hundred metres), was rolled out to probably 70% of households without subsidy, and from then on it has required government funding for rural or otherwise difficult areas. The speed is nowhere near what you're listing, though. It's something like 10-50 Mb/sec.
- js2 10y ago
  In the US, we have CLECs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_local_exchange_carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_local_exchange_car...
iuhgdwij 10y ago
s/payed/paid Lätt att stava knasigt :-)
- staticelf 10y ago
  Så går det när man skriver för fort! Rättade det och ett fel till! Tackar.
gthtjtkt 10y ago
All hope is not lost (yet): > Craig Barratt, chief executive of Access, the Alphabet division containing Google Fiber, also said he planned to step down because the company was shifting to new technologies and methods of deploying high-speed internet. Fiber is expensive in every way (labor, regulatory hurdles, resistance from existing broadband companies, etc.). If they've found a viable alternative, it could mean they'll be able to accelerate their broadband rollout. I'm not saying we should assume that's already the case, but we also shouldn't assume this means they're giving up.
- melling 10y ago
  First invent better robots that can do the job, or similar tasks. Next sell the technology to refine it to further fund R&D. Finally, purse other ventures that used to have expensive labor costs. They could do Google Fiber today if they could sell it for more. The only other realistic plan is to reduce to cost of the project.
drzaiusapelord 10y ago
>That sucks for citizens of the US. This seems a little hyperbolic. Where I live I can get gigabit either via Comcast or AT&T here in Chicago. The rollout to gigabit is slow, but its coming. Sweden has 9.5m people. We have 320m and a huge landmass. Infrastructure upgrades simply take longer considering our size and population and a variety of other issues. Its not exactly Google or bust. Its clear Google doesn't have the chops to enter more markets. Its assumed they were never serious about being competitive and wanted to jump-start gigabit for the home. Whether or not they accomplished that is unknown as both AT&T and Comcast had gigabit plans before Google rolled out its own product. I'm sure it helped push things forward a bit. Lastly, Google is looking towards a WISP-model for its services. The fiber runs are too encumbered with right-of-way and crony monopolistic practices. Even then Google is taking a loss with its service according to some analysts. With the proper wireless bandwidth and licensed frequencies, you can deliver internet services without a fiber run to the home. Google is also a mobile company much more than an ISP. It makes no sense to have this artificial division between home and mobile internet. With voip over lte it makes no sense to even have things like gsm or cdma anymore or have your phone number 'owned' by some mobile carrier. It seems google is retooling for a more beefy project fi or something similar that will bridge the gap between home and mobile internet. I imagine, in the future, the idea of having a home internet and a separate mobile internet is going to go away. edit: -3 score? Please reply instead of drive-by hating.
- bbctol 10y ago
  Where I live I can get Comcast. Slow Comcast. At the price they set. I pay for TV channels and don't own a TV. I asked if I could stop paying for parts of the service I cannot use, and they told me "No." As they are the only ISP in my area, I'd really, really like public involvement in Internet infrastructure, even if just to provide a single competitor. Seeing as I live a few blocks from Tim Berners-Lee's office, it's a little ridiculous that I can only access the web through an abusive monopoly.
  - JoeAltmaier 10y ago
    "Abusive Monopoly" is the definition of most cable providers. Its a long sad history of civic corruption and greed. The actual cable should be turned into a utility, and the content competed for channel by channel, service by service, in an open market.
c0nducktr 10y ago
Why not skip the middle step and just have the municipalities provide it to the customers directly?
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  > Why not skip the middle step and just have the municipalities provide it to the customers directly? Because monopolies are wasteful and horrible at things like customer service. The fiber in the ground is a natural monopoly. Connecting that fiber to the rest of the world isn't. You don't want the monopoly to extend one inch more than it has to, regardless of whether the natural monopoly is municipal or Comcast.
  - jonathankoren 10y ago
    And if municipal ISPs weren't more efficient than the corporate conglomerates you'd have a point, but the fact is that municipal ISPs have been found to provide cheaper and higher quality service than than the corporate ISPs, quite simply because there isn't a profit motive beyond breaking even. This is why Comcast, Time-Warner and the rest are pressuring state legislatures to ban municipal ISPs.[0] [0] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/09/muni-isp-forced-to-shut-off-fiber-to-the-home-internet-after-court-ruling/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/09/muni-i...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - toomuchtodo 10y ago
    Do you have any proof Comcast being the monopoly is "better" than your municipality (who doesn't have to show a profit)? Or is this just how you feel?
    - kodablah 10y ago
      GP said "regardless of whether the natural monopoly is municipal or Comcast", i.e. both are bad options. Not sure why you are asking the GP to defend a claim that wasn't made.
walshemj 10y ago
Where does the capital come from to do this and how do you serve remote areas outside of towns.
- crivabene 10y ago
  You normally have government funds that are allocated to reduce the "digital divide" (deploying high speed broadband to places where it does not make any sense to do it financially). Works well especially when the company receiving such funds is only focusing on building the infrastructure to then rent it back to the ISPs that will leverage it to provide services to the customers... A similar model is also used here in Italy to provide mobile network coverage in certain areas: the mobile operators "teamed up" and deployed "shared" infrastructure instead of having to deploy and mantain each one its own. This is the way in which they cover remote (less profitable) areas or special areas like the entire subway lines.
  - walshemj 10y ago
    and where does that government fund come from providing BB (not mobile) to all of those remote places in Norway and Sweden is not going to be cheap.
    - crivabene 10y ago
      From taxes, or EU subsidies (which are still taxes). But it's the same concept as building roads or other basic infrastructure. As a government, you invest in creating infrastructure in your country even if in purely commercial terms is less profitable. You reduce the digital divide, you lay out infrastructure for future growth, you create jobs, and so on. Different models, pros and cons for each one.
- nickpsecurity 10y ago
  You do it like this: https://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-rural-community-is-building-its-own-gigabit-fibre-network https://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-rural-community-is-bu... ;)
crivabene 10y ago
As mentioned in the other discussion, I totally agree this kind of model seems to work better. As an example, here in Italy we have a separate company ran by a utility provider (which is used to handle infrastructure at a scale and can leverage existing assets) taking care of deploying fiber in the cities and then they make it available to multiple ISPs (bitstream). In this way you have an entity who is solely focused on building and managing the infrastructure, which is able to make investments that single ISPs would not be able to do (while trying to still be profitable). The end result for the consumers is that here in Milan, as an example, multiple operators started offering 1 Gb/s FTTH connections for around 30 EUR/month. Such fees are only possible if you do not have to try to be profitable while having to absorb the hit from deploying your own infrastructure.
rayiner 10y ago
The question is whether the Nordic model is scalable. Here is the OECD data on broadband deployment: http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/1.2-OECD-WiredWirelessBB-2015-12.xls http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/1.2-OECD-WiredWirelessBB-2.... It breaks down DLS, cable, and fiber subscribers per 100 residents. Sweden: 11.4 DSL, 6.6 cable, 17.5 fiber. U.S. 8.2 DSL, 18.5 cable, 3.4 fiber. U.K. 30.6 DSL, 7.2 cable, 0.0 fiber. Germany: 28.9 DSL, 8.1 cable, 0.6 fiber. France: 33.3 DSL, 4.5 cable, 2.1 fiber. Spain: 16.5 DSL, 5.5 cable, 6.8 fiber. Italy: 21.1 DSL, 0.0 cable, 0.6 fiber. The U.S. does better than every big European country, whose residents are by and large stuck on DSL.
- TorKlingberg 10y ago
  Zero fiber in the UK? That looks wrong. Although, a lot of "fiber" sold in the UK is not actually fiber all the way to the home.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - Ambroos 10y ago
    Only FTTH (fiber-to-the-home) should count as fiber. In Belgium one of the larger cable providers used to advertise their plans as 'FiberNet' while it was only FTTN (fiber-to-the-neighbourhood) and the last step was cable (with significantly lower uplink speeds than what would be attainable with fiber).
    - njs12345 10y ago
      We have a lot of fibre-to-the-cabinet in the UK, which means you may only have copper for a few hundred metres. It's obviously nowhere near as good as fibre to the home, but I think lumping it in with plain old DSL is a bit unfair - a lot of people get 60+mbps down and 18+mbps up which isn't too shabby internationally.
      - Xixi 10y ago
mikeash 10y ago
The trouble is that in the US, this sort of thing is seen as government unfairly competing with private industry. Of course, we just get private industry setting up monopolies or duopolies instead, often with the help of local laws prohibiting competition. This is worse, but somehow more acceptable to the American electorate.
- E6300 10y ago
  I didn't know that! What a stupid position to have. Do they also think that the abundance of air competes unfairly with air salesmen?
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Not quite, but many people's views on pollution regulations come surprisingly close.
  - dredmorbius 10y ago
    See coal vs. solar in TX, FL, AZ, NV.
  - a_thro_away 10y ago
    Anything that is done at cost by the government is viewed by many as a lost potential profitable and taxable business; one that would drive up the GDP (Gross Domestic Product), a well used measure of an economy. Problem with using GDP, in my limited understanding, is that taxing things, even your breathing air, increases the GDP - I'd rather it not.
    - chimeracoder 10y ago
      > Anything that is done at cost by the government is viewed by many as a lost potential profitable and taxable business; one that would drive up the GDP (Gross Domestic Product), a well used measure of an economy. No, that's not how GDP works. The GDP measurement is independent of whether the action is performed by the private or public sector. > Problem with using GDP, in my limited understanding, is that taxing things, even your breathing air, increases the GDP No, that's not how GDP works either.
markbnj 10y ago
When you say "citizens of the US" you're talking about a continent that would take roughly five days to cross at highway speed, driving ten hours a day. You may as well say "citizens of Europe." If you haven't done that drive, by the way, you should. It will add some perspective to these comparisons. A more reasonable comparison would be between Sweden (population 9.5m) and the state I live in, New Jersey (population 8.9m), which is one of the geographically smaller states in the U.S. We've enjoyed wide access to high speed broadband here for fifteen years or so now. I currently have clean 120 mbps service that is operated at utility levels of reliability. I have no complaints.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  Good for you. You probably had a bunch of former AT&T employees on the local board negotiating with cable company twenty years ago. Unfortunately, you're the exception because cable companies are able to exploit gaps in the regulatory framework. The scaling up of a system to the national level isn't the challenge -- it's the need to scale down to the municipal level that creates the monopoly problems. The POTS network was regulated by FCC and State utility commissions, and were run very well. Cable is government by franchise agreements at the local level, which results in poor governance because local governments aren't equipped to negotiate these types of contracts.
- micahbright 10y ago
  Sometimes people struggle to find something good to say about Sweden, the rape capital of the world. Glad we can find a good comparison - New Jersey...less rape...more, faster internet
  - weatherlight 10y ago
    Totally inappropriate!
  - sctb 10y ago
    The issue of the unfairness of this comment towards an entire country aside: > Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
prplhaz4 10y ago
If my internet connection was maintained in a similar manner to the street I live on, I would be switching to satellite. The US has a severe problem with its ability to maintain infrastructure - which I think is closely related to the ability to scale mentioned in another comment. For reference, Sweden is around the same size as California, with 1/4th the population.
- jonathankoren 10y ago
  Do you have the same problem with your water and sewer? The problem with infrastructure in the US is simply one of money. We don't want to pay for nice things. It's the 50 year old self-fulfilling prophesy of cut budgets, then complain that nothing is maintained and so the budget needs to be cut more because clearly it must have been wasted. Repeat ad nauseum. (This of phenomenon also plays out on the micro scale when people claim poor people are poor because they bought a stick of gum, instead of I guess investing 22 cents in an index fund or something.)
  - refurb 10y ago
    No, it's things like what happened with the Big Dig in Boston... "However, the project was completed only in December 2007 (instead of 1998), at a cost of over $14.6 billion ($8.08 billion in 1982 dollars, meaning a cost overrun of about 190%)[6] as of 2006"
    - jonathankoren 10y ago
      Lets be honest here. What would you do when you've dug a hole in the middle of Boston and disrupted traffic and every other piece of infrastructure in that part of city after you run out of budget? Walk away and leaving a gaping pit? Spend more money and fill the pit in, and then be left with your original problem, that's now probably even worse than when you started? Fill in the hole, and then dig a new hole? Or do you effectively throw good money after bad and finish the job? Comparing a government transportation project to anything in the private sector is a canard. There's literally nothing comparable. That isn't the say that government contracting policies and processes are perfect and not abused. They clearly aren't perfect, and they clearly are abused. See the F-35, and well, pretty much every military purchase since the Cold War. See the vast majority of government infrastructure projects. Most importantly, these cost overruns aren't something that's fundamental about private-vs-public, but rather something about how American governments function.[0] Unfortunately, there's no single smoking gun, and instead everyone falls back to their favorite boogeymen. (My favorites are multiple environmental impact studies, public comment periods, fraud, and of course willful incompetence (i.e. "I don't believe the government should do this, so I"m going to do a really shitty job, and then use my poor performance as evidence that the government is intrinsically incompetent.")) [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/why-u-s-infrastructure-costs-so-much https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/why-u-s-i...
novaleaf 10y ago
keep in mind the subtext beneath the announcement: they are shifting to other technologies that require less physical infrastructure investment (wireless?)
zzzeek 10y ago
> The municipalities own (most of) the networks and all the fiber cables, letting companies use them for a small(ish) fee. These companies later sell it to customers. This help people to get the best deals and ensure that the networks are continually upgraded. well that would be socialism. Sorry comrade, here in the US we have this thing called FREEDOM. It Trumps your smart/efficient/reasonable solutions any day.
- DasIch 10y ago
  I do wonder what would happen, if networks for water, waste, electricity or even streets would have to be build on a large scale in the political climate of the US today.
  - cgvgffyv 10y ago
    Implying the political climate has ever been any different. Something something past, rose-tinted glasses. Political climate is a function of the people in charge. People in charge, due the nature of power and its effects, are always the same. Therefore the political climate is always the same. You're just inadvertently filtering out.
    - refurb 10y ago
      This is actually quite true. Read about the 1964 Presidential election and you'll see not much has changed.
  - maxerickson 10y ago
    It depends on what you mean by large scale, but there is nothing unusual about a development with hundreds of new homes, with complete utilities (maybe even a small wastewater treatment system for the development).
- fib739mnsi 10y ago
  Uhh, you do realize the areas most receptive to fiber have been conservative red states and cities, correct? https://fiber.google.com/about/ https://fiber.google.com/about/ By contrast, California municipalities have made building fiber difficult[1]. [1] http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/blog/morning-roundup/2013/05/why-google-fiber-isnt-in-california-yet.html http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/blog/morning-roundup/2...
digi_owl 10y ago
Norway is a mix of things. In more urban areas, its the cable TV provider that rules (often a subsidiary of the former government telecom monopoly). And out in rural areas it has been mostly DSL. But recently local power companies have started deploying fiber, many of them partnering with a single company for the ISP side of things.
technofiend 10y ago
We've tried, man. Billions of dollars were given to Verizon, AT & T, etc to build out infrastructure. They took the money and did little or nothing. We have "regulatory capture" which is where an incumbent lobbies and gets state or federal regulations that blocks competition. A widely cited figure states that the average broadband customer costs Comcast less than $2/month for broadband internet. Yet they charge more than $50/mo to supply it and recently rolled out data transfer caps. Without any real competition Comcast, et. al. can do what they like. Google's switching to wireless is in part an acknowledgment that competing in the wired space is costly and fraught with hurdles including lawsuits from incumbents. Could we wire the nation tomorrow with gigabit everywhere? Well not literally, but if there was a "moonshot" program that captured the public's imagination yeah I'd imagine we could get it done in a few years. We've done it before when we really wanted to - the Rural Electrification and Highway programs are two examples from the last century. But it would represent an incredible change from how business is done today and the resulting lawsuits would drag on for decades after the work was done.
- botexpert 10y ago
  Still, fast wireless depends a lot on fiber. I think it's practically impossible to have a good wireless internet network without cables.
- godzillabrennus 10y ago
  Guess this means we should see Google at http://www.wispa.org/ http://www.wispa.org/ next year :-)
- hash-set 10y ago
  We have worse than that now--we have an FBI and DOJ that have become political enforcement only.
- greedo 10y ago
  Imagine if in 2009, instead of ephemeral "shovel ready" projects, we invested in building fiber to every home.
  - 10y ago
prostoalex 10y ago
That model is useful for environments with high population density living with relatively compact terrestrial coverage. The costs will vary wildly when you apply this model to wire up Arizona, Nebraska, or even greater Los Angeles area.
- greedo 10y ago
  Allo is bringing fiber to a lot of communities in Nebraska, and the dominant ISPs are freaking out. Six of the seven served locations aren't large towns by any measure. https://www.allocommunications.com/ https://www.allocommunications.com/
sii 10y ago
While this is true to a certain extent I wouldn't go as far as calling this the Swedish model. There are plenty of companies that own and are continually rolling out new fiber in Sweden, especially when you start looking outside the large cities. I would guess that IP-Only (Bynet) and Telia alone are currently putting more fiber in the ground than the state run networks combined. For rural areas a lot (most?) of the new fiber is built by local organisations and payed for by the members, EU-subsidies and partnerships with companies that take over the operations of the networks once they have been built. That said, both IP-Only and Telias fiber networks are Open networks that allow the customers to choose from a number of different ISP for their internet connectivity.
slightlycuban 10y ago
We're trying. Our not-too-far-off alternative is to require whoever owns the physical cable within the city to sell services to other providers (usually for a regulated fee). Basically what we did for long-distance phone service. The recent FCC ruling stopped short of doing just that, but it isn't a stretch of the imagination for the FCC to apply full teleco rules to cable providers in the US. Of course, every ISP is going to lobby extremely hard against that. But one can only hope...
ryen 10y ago
>ensure that the networks are continually upgraded. How is that ensured? At least in the US, munis and federal govt are notoriously slow on upgrading tech. Often requiring legislative (slow) approval and tax increases to get it done.
- henrikschroder 10y ago
  The Stockholm municipal fiber company is wholly owned by the city, makes a profit, and reinvests every single krona into upgrades and expansion. It took 20 years or so, but they started with the most lucrative routes in the inner city, serving companies and universities, and then slowly expanded their network over the years until they're now at a point where I think they've covered almost every home in the city. No tax money used beyond the initial funding, since it's a profitable company, and no legislation required, since it's just a company. And the competition can't whine either, because this company isn't doing anything they couldn't do.
johndevor 10y ago
> For example, I have 250/100 mbit/s for free. This isn't "free" - your taxes pay for it.
- Symbiote 10y ago
  No, his pays for it with his rent, the same way my rent includes heating. The owner of the building has probably signed a deal to get a good rate for everyone. Fine if you like it, but a waste of money if you'd prefer a different provider.
  - johndevor 10y ago
    Nope. > The municipalities own (most of) the networks The municipalities use his tax money.
    - Symbiote 10y ago
      You appear to have an agenda here. Please read the original comment in its entirety, beyond the first half of the two sentences you misleadingly quote. > municipalities own (most of) the networks and all the fiber cables, letting companies use them for a small(ish) fee. > For example, I have 250/100 mbit/s for free. My rent pays for this. He pays rent to the landlord, the landlord pays the broadband company for service to all the apartments, the broadband company pays the municipality to use the fibre network. The fibre network might have used tax money initially, or it might have been laid with income from usage fees from other areas. There's no ongoing use of tax money for the network.
nodesocket 10y ago
Fact check.... I spent nearly a month in Stockholm in July. Stayed with friends and none of them got close to 1Gbps. In-fact speeds were similar to mine here in San Francisco (50 - 100Mbps).
zamalek 10y ago
The model in South Africa is extremely similar: single country-wide governmental telco/last mile (Telkom) and competing private ISPs. It doesn't work at all. My 10Mb ADSL is currently sitting at 6Mb because of "line optimization." Resolving the last issue on my line took 8 months. I pay €65 for this because there is no other choice. We have a moniker for this pit of incompetence: "Hellkom." As we speak, private ISPs are rolling out their own fibre-to-the-home in order to break loose of Hellkom. Hellkom is responding by launching their own FTTH packages that are 3x the cost and have caps that can be depleted in a day. What works for the Swedish will not work for everyone.
awqrre 10y ago
it's good for privacy, maybe
Grishnakh 10y ago
>I think the Swedish (Nordic?) model for bringing internet connectivity to it's citizens is superior. That's no surprise. The Scandinavian countries are superior nations to every other country on Earth, except maybe Switzerland. Every quality-of-life study ranks them at the very top.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

gregmac 10y ago

> The municipalities own (most of) the networks and all the fiber cables, letting companies use them for a small(ish) fee. These companies later sell it to customers. This is the model that should be used everywhere, if we were to actually consider it a utility. By default it does nothing, but if you pay some company to terminate it to the internet then you get internet, using whatever speed they can provide. Let the ISPs compete based on the service they provide: internet speed, reliability, support, and other add-ons like (e-mail or malware filters or the best wifi-router-modem included) or even the lack of any add-ons. Even if this isn't a "municipal service" strictly speaking, if contracted out to a telco of sorts, it should be done the same way, and we should not allow the same company that provides the physical lines to provide the actual service, since it's anti-competitive.

Brakenshire 10y ago

> The municipalities own (most of) the networks and all the fiber cables, letting companies use them for a small(ish) fee. These companies later sell it to customers. This help people to get the best deals and ensure that the networks are continually upgraded. The UK version is that the cables are owned by one highly regulated company (BT OpenReach) which then has to sell on to retail ISP's at a set rate. Fibre To The Cabinet (that is, using copper for the last few hundred metres), was rolled out to probably 70% of households without subsidy, and from then on it has required government funding for rural or otherwise difficult areas. The speed is nowhere near what you're listing, though. It's something like 10-50 Mb/sec.

js2 10y ago
In the US, we have CLECs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_local_exchange_carrier https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Competitive_local_exchange_car...

iuhgdwij 10y ago

s/payed/paid Lätt att stava knasigt :-)

staticelf 10y ago
Så går det när man skriver för fort! Rättade det och ett fel till! Tackar.

gthtjtkt 10y ago

All hope is not lost (yet): > Craig Barratt, chief executive of Access, the Alphabet division containing Google Fiber, also said he planned to step down because the company was shifting to new technologies and methods of deploying high-speed internet. Fiber is expensive in every way (labor, regulatory hurdles, resistance from existing broadband companies, etc.). If they've found a viable alternative, it could mean they'll be able to accelerate their broadband rollout. I'm not saying we should assume that's already the case, but we also shouldn't assume this means they're giving up.

melling 10y ago
First invent better robots that can do the job, or similar tasks. Next sell the technology to refine it to further fund R&D. Finally, purse other ventures that used to have expensive labor costs. They could do Google Fiber today if they could sell it for more. The only other realistic plan is to reduce to cost of the project.

drzaiusapelord 10y ago

>That sucks for citizens of the US. This seems a little hyperbolic. Where I live I can get gigabit either via Comcast or AT&T here in Chicago. The rollout to gigabit is slow, but its coming. Sweden has 9.5m people. We have 320m and a huge landmass. Infrastructure upgrades simply take longer considering our size and population and a variety of other issues. Its not exactly Google or bust. Its clear Google doesn't have the chops to enter more markets. Its assumed they were never serious about being competitive and wanted to jump-start gigabit for the home. Whether or not they accomplished that is unknown as both AT&T and Comcast had gigabit plans before Google rolled out its own product. I'm sure it helped push things forward a bit. Lastly, Google is looking towards a WISP-model for its services. The fiber runs are too encumbered with right-of-way and crony monopolistic practices. Even then Google is taking a loss with its service according to some analysts. With the proper wireless bandwidth and licensed frequencies, you can deliver internet services without a fiber run to the home. Google is also a mobile company much more than an ISP. It makes no sense to have this artificial division between home and mobile internet. With voip over lte it makes no sense to even have things like gsm or cdma anymore or have your phone number 'owned' by some mobile carrier. It seems google is retooling for a more beefy project fi or something similar that will bridge the gap between home and mobile internet. I imagine, in the future, the idea of having a home internet and a separate mobile internet is going to go away. edit: -3 score? Please reply instead of drive-by hating.

bbctol 10y ago
Where I live I can get Comcast. Slow Comcast. At the price they set. I pay for TV channels and don't own a TV. I asked if I could stop paying for parts of the service I cannot use, and they told me "No." As they are the only ISP in my area, I'd really, really like public involvement in Internet infrastructure, even if just to provide a single competitor. Seeing as I live a few blocks from Tim Berners-Lee's office, it's a little ridiculous that I can only access the web through an abusive monopoly.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  "Abusive Monopoly" is the definition of most cable providers. Its a long sad history of civic corruption and greed. The actual cable should be turned into a utility, and the content competed for channel by channel, service by service, in an open market.

c0nducktr 10y ago

Why not skip the middle step and just have the municipalities provide it to the customers directly?

AnthonyMouse 10y ago
> Why not skip the middle step and just have the municipalities provide it to the customers directly? Because monopolies are wasteful and horrible at things like customer service. The fiber in the ground is a natural monopoly. Connecting that fiber to the rest of the world isn't. You don't want the monopoly to extend one inch more than it has to, regardless of whether the natural monopoly is municipal or Comcast.
- jonathankoren 10y ago
  And if municipal ISPs weren't more efficient than the corporate conglomerates you'd have a point, but the fact is that municipal ISPs have been found to provide cheaper and higher quality service than than the corporate ISPs, quite simply because there isn't a profit motive beyond breaking even. This is why Comcast, Time-Warner and the rest are pressuring state legislatures to ban municipal ISPs.[0] [0] http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/09/muni-isp-forced-to-shut-off-fiber-to-the-home-internet-after-court-ruling/ http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/09/muni-i...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- toomuchtodo 10y ago
  Do you have any proof Comcast being the monopoly is "better" than your municipality (who doesn't have to show a profit)? Or is this just how you feel?
  - kodablah 10y ago
    GP said "regardless of whether the natural monopoly is municipal or Comcast", i.e. both are bad options. Not sure why you are asking the GP to defend a claim that wasn't made.

walshemj 10y ago

Where does the capital come from to do this and how do you serve remote areas outside of towns.

crivabene 10y ago
You normally have government funds that are allocated to reduce the "digital divide" (deploying high speed broadband to places where it does not make any sense to do it financially). Works well especially when the company receiving such funds is only focusing on building the infrastructure to then rent it back to the ISPs that will leverage it to provide services to the customers... A similar model is also used here in Italy to provide mobile network coverage in certain areas: the mobile operators "teamed up" and deployed "shared" infrastructure instead of having to deploy and mantain each one its own. This is the way in which they cover remote (less profitable) areas or special areas like the entire subway lines.
- walshemj 10y ago
  and where does that government fund come from providing BB (not mobile) to all of those remote places in Norway and Sweden is not going to be cheap.
  - crivabene 10y ago
    From taxes, or EU subsidies (which are still taxes). But it's the same concept as building roads or other basic infrastructure. As a government, you invest in creating infrastructure in your country even if in purely commercial terms is less profitable. You reduce the digital divide, you lay out infrastructure for future growth, you create jobs, and so on. Different models, pros and cons for each one.
nickpsecurity 10y ago
You do it like this: https://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-rural-community-is-building-its-own-gigabit-fibre-network https://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-rural-community-is-bu... ;)

crivabene 10y ago

As mentioned in the other discussion, I totally agree this kind of model seems to work better. As an example, here in Italy we have a separate company ran by a utility provider (which is used to handle infrastructure at a scale and can leverage existing assets) taking care of deploying fiber in the cities and then they make it available to multiple ISPs (bitstream). In this way you have an entity who is solely focused on building and managing the infrastructure, which is able to make investments that single ISPs would not be able to do (while trying to still be profitable). The end result for the consumers is that here in Milan, as an example, multiple operators started offering 1 Gb/s FTTH connections for around 30 EUR/month. Such fees are only possible if you do not have to try to be profitable while having to absorb the hit from deploying your own infrastructure.

rayiner 10y ago

The question is whether the Nordic model is scalable. Here is the OECD data on broadband deployment: http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/1.2-OECD-WiredWirelessBB-2015-12.xls http://www.oecd.org/sti/broadband/1.2-OECD-WiredWirelessBB-2.... It breaks down DLS, cable, and fiber subscribers per 100 residents. Sweden: 11.4 DSL, 6.6 cable, 17.5 fiber. U.S. 8.2 DSL, 18.5 cable, 3.4 fiber. U.K. 30.6 DSL, 7.2 cable, 0.0 fiber. Germany: 28.9 DSL, 8.1 cable, 0.6 fiber. France: 33.3 DSL, 4.5 cable, 2.1 fiber. Spain: 16.5 DSL, 5.5 cable, 6.8 fiber. Italy: 21.1 DSL, 0.0 cable, 0.6 fiber. The U.S. does better than every big European country, whose residents are by and large stuck on DSL.

TorKlingberg 10y ago
Zero fiber in the UK? That looks wrong. Although, a lot of "fiber" sold in the UK is not actually fiber all the way to the home.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- Ambroos 10y ago
  Only FTTH (fiber-to-the-home) should count as fiber. In Belgium one of the larger cable providers used to advertise their plans as 'FiberNet' while it was only FTTN (fiber-to-the-neighbourhood) and the last step was cable (with significantly lower uplink speeds than what would be attainable with fiber).
  - njs12345 10y ago
    We have a lot of fibre-to-the-cabinet in the UK, which means you may only have copper for a few hundred metres. It's obviously nowhere near as good as fibre to the home, but I think lumping it in with plain old DSL is a bit unfair - a lot of people get 60+mbps down and 18+mbps up which isn't too shabby internationally.
    - Xixi 10y ago

mikeash 10y ago

The trouble is that in the US, this sort of thing is seen as government unfairly competing with private industry. Of course, we just get private industry setting up monopolies or duopolies instead, often with the help of local laws prohibiting competition. This is worse, but somehow more acceptable to the American electorate.

E6300 10y ago
I didn't know that! What a stupid position to have. Do they also think that the abundance of air competes unfairly with air salesmen?
- mikeash 10y ago
  Not quite, but many people's views on pollution regulations come surprisingly close.
- dredmorbius 10y ago
  See coal vs. solar in TX, FL, AZ, NV.
- a_thro_away 10y ago
  Anything that is done at cost by the government is viewed by many as a lost potential profitable and taxable business; one that would drive up the GDP (Gross Domestic Product), a well used measure of an economy. Problem with using GDP, in my limited understanding, is that taxing things, even your breathing air, increases the GDP - I'd rather it not.
  - chimeracoder 10y ago
    > Anything that is done at cost by the government is viewed by many as a lost potential profitable and taxable business; one that would drive up the GDP (Gross Domestic Product), a well used measure of an economy. No, that's not how GDP works. The GDP measurement is independent of whether the action is performed by the private or public sector. > Problem with using GDP, in my limited understanding, is that taxing things, even your breathing air, increases the GDP No, that's not how GDP works either.

markbnj 10y ago

When you say "citizens of the US" you're talking about a continent that would take roughly five days to cross at highway speed, driving ten hours a day. You may as well say "citizens of Europe." If you haven't done that drive, by the way, you should. It will add some perspective to these comparisons. A more reasonable comparison would be between Sweden (population 9.5m) and the state I live in, New Jersey (population 8.9m), which is one of the geographically smaller states in the U.S. We've enjoyed wide access to high speed broadband here for fifteen years or so now. I currently have clean 120 mbps service that is operated at utility levels of reliability. I have no complaints.

Spooky23 10y ago
Good for you. You probably had a bunch of former AT&T employees on the local board negotiating with cable company twenty years ago. Unfortunately, you're the exception because cable companies are able to exploit gaps in the regulatory framework. The scaling up of a system to the national level isn't the challenge -- it's the need to scale down to the municipal level that creates the monopoly problems. The POTS network was regulated by FCC and State utility commissions, and were run very well. Cable is government by franchise agreements at the local level, which results in poor governance because local governments aren't equipped to negotiate these types of contracts.
micahbright 10y ago
Sometimes people struggle to find something good to say about Sweden, the rape capital of the world. Glad we can find a good comparison - New Jersey...less rape...more, faster internet
- weatherlight 10y ago
  Totally inappropriate!
- sctb 10y ago
  The issue of the unfairness of this comment towards an entire country aside: > Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

prplhaz4 10y ago

If my internet connection was maintained in a similar manner to the street I live on, I would be switching to satellite. The US has a severe problem with its ability to maintain infrastructure - which I think is closely related to the ability to scale mentioned in another comment. For reference, Sweden is around the same size as California, with 1/4th the population.

jonathankoren 10y ago
Do you have the same problem with your water and sewer? The problem with infrastructure in the US is simply one of money. We don't want to pay for nice things. It's the 50 year old self-fulfilling prophesy of cut budgets, then complain that nothing is maintained and so the budget needs to be cut more because clearly it must have been wasted. Repeat ad nauseum. (This of phenomenon also plays out on the micro scale when people claim poor people are poor because they bought a stick of gum, instead of I guess investing 22 cents in an index fund or something.)
- refurb 10y ago
  No, it's things like what happened with the Big Dig in Boston... "However, the project was completed only in December 2007 (instead of 1998), at a cost of over $14.6 billion ($8.08 billion in 1982 dollars, meaning a cost overrun of about 190%)[6] as of 2006"
  - jonathankoren 10y ago
    Lets be honest here. What would you do when you've dug a hole in the middle of Boston and disrupted traffic and every other piece of infrastructure in that part of city after you run out of budget? Walk away and leaving a gaping pit? Spend more money and fill the pit in, and then be left with your original problem, that's now probably even worse than when you started? Fill in the hole, and then dig a new hole? Or do you effectively throw good money after bad and finish the job? Comparing a government transportation project to anything in the private sector is a canard. There's literally nothing comparable. That isn't the say that government contracting policies and processes are perfect and not abused. They clearly aren't perfect, and they clearly are abused. See the F-35, and well, pretty much every military purchase since the Cold War. See the vast majority of government infrastructure projects. Most importantly, these cost overruns aren't something that's fundamental about private-vs-public, but rather something about how American governments function.[0] Unfortunately, there's no single smoking gun, and instead everyone falls back to their favorite boogeymen. (My favorites are multiple environmental impact studies, public comment periods, fraud, and of course willful incompetence (i.e. "I don't believe the government should do this, so I"m going to do a really shitty job, and then use my poor performance as evidence that the government is intrinsically incompetent.")) [0] https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/why-u-s-infrastructure-costs-so-much https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-04-08/why-u-s-i...

novaleaf 10y ago

keep in mind the subtext beneath the announcement: they are shifting to other technologies that require less physical infrastructure investment (wireless?)

zzzeek 10y ago

> The municipalities own (most of) the networks and all the fiber cables, letting companies use them for a small(ish) fee. These companies later sell it to customers. This help people to get the best deals and ensure that the networks are continually upgraded. well that would be socialism. Sorry comrade, here in the US we have this thing called FREEDOM. It Trumps your smart/efficient/reasonable solutions any day.

DasIch 10y ago
I do wonder what would happen, if networks for water, waste, electricity or even streets would have to be build on a large scale in the political climate of the US today.
- cgvgffyv 10y ago
  Implying the political climate has ever been any different. Something something past, rose-tinted glasses. Political climate is a function of the people in charge. People in charge, due the nature of power and its effects, are always the same. Therefore the political climate is always the same. You're just inadvertently filtering out.
  - refurb 10y ago
    This is actually quite true. Read about the 1964 Presidential election and you'll see not much has changed.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  It depends on what you mean by large scale, but there is nothing unusual about a development with hundreds of new homes, with complete utilities (maybe even a small wastewater treatment system for the development).
fib739mnsi 10y ago
Uhh, you do realize the areas most receptive to fiber have been conservative red states and cities, correct? https://fiber.google.com/about/ https://fiber.google.com/about/ By contrast, California municipalities have made building fiber difficult[1]. [1] http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/blog/morning-roundup/2013/05/why-google-fiber-isnt-in-california-yet.html http://www.bizjournals.com/sacramento/blog/morning-roundup/2...

digi_owl 10y ago

Norway is a mix of things. In more urban areas, its the cable TV provider that rules (often a subsidiary of the former government telecom monopoly). And out in rural areas it has been mostly DSL. But recently local power companies have started deploying fiber, many of them partnering with a single company for the ISP side of things.

technofiend 10y ago

We've tried, man. Billions of dollars were given to Verizon, AT & T, etc to build out infrastructure. They took the money and did little or nothing. We have "regulatory capture" which is where an incumbent lobbies and gets state or federal regulations that blocks competition. A widely cited figure states that the average broadband customer costs Comcast less than $2/month for broadband internet. Yet they charge more than $50/mo to supply it and recently rolled out data transfer caps. Without any real competition Comcast, et. al. can do what they like. Google's switching to wireless is in part an acknowledgment that competing in the wired space is costly and fraught with hurdles including lawsuits from incumbents. Could we wire the nation tomorrow with gigabit everywhere? Well not literally, but if there was a "moonshot" program that captured the public's imagination yeah I'd imagine we could get it done in a few years. We've done it before when we really wanted to - the Rural Electrification and Highway programs are two examples from the last century. But it would represent an incredible change from how business is done today and the resulting lawsuits would drag on for decades after the work was done.

botexpert 10y ago
Still, fast wireless depends a lot on fiber. I think it's practically impossible to have a good wireless internet network without cables.
godzillabrennus 10y ago
Guess this means we should see Google at http://www.wispa.org/ http://www.wispa.org/ next year :-)
hash-set 10y ago
We have worse than that now--we have an FBI and DOJ that have become political enforcement only.
greedo 10y ago
Imagine if in 2009, instead of ephemeral "shovel ready" projects, we invested in building fiber to every home.
- 10y ago

prostoalex 10y ago

That model is useful for environments with high population density living with relatively compact terrestrial coverage. The costs will vary wildly when you apply this model to wire up Arizona, Nebraska, or even greater Los Angeles area.

greedo 10y ago
Allo is bringing fiber to a lot of communities in Nebraska, and the dominant ISPs are freaking out. Six of the seven served locations aren't large towns by any measure. https://www.allocommunications.com/ https://www.allocommunications.com/

sii 10y ago

While this is true to a certain extent I wouldn't go as far as calling this the Swedish model. There are plenty of companies that own and are continually rolling out new fiber in Sweden, especially when you start looking outside the large cities. I would guess that IP-Only (Bynet) and Telia alone are currently putting more fiber in the ground than the state run networks combined. For rural areas a lot (most?) of the new fiber is built by local organisations and payed for by the members, EU-subsidies and partnerships with companies that take over the operations of the networks once they have been built. That said, both IP-Only and Telias fiber networks are Open networks that allow the customers to choose from a number of different ISP for their internet connectivity.

slightlycuban 10y ago

We're trying. Our not-too-far-off alternative is to require whoever owns the physical cable within the city to sell services to other providers (usually for a regulated fee). Basically what we did for long-distance phone service. The recent FCC ruling stopped short of doing just that, but it isn't a stretch of the imagination for the FCC to apply full teleco rules to cable providers in the US. Of course, every ISP is going to lobby extremely hard against that. But one can only hope...

ryen 10y ago

>ensure that the networks are continually upgraded. How is that ensured? At least in the US, munis and federal govt are notoriously slow on upgrading tech. Often requiring legislative (slow) approval and tax increases to get it done.

henrikschroder 10y ago
The Stockholm municipal fiber company is wholly owned by the city, makes a profit, and reinvests every single krona into upgrades and expansion. It took 20 years or so, but they started with the most lucrative routes in the inner city, serving companies and universities, and then slowly expanded their network over the years until they're now at a point where I think they've covered almost every home in the city. No tax money used beyond the initial funding, since it's a profitable company, and no legislation required, since it's just a company. And the competition can't whine either, because this company isn't doing anything they couldn't do.

johndevor 10y ago

> For example, I have 250/100 mbit/s for free. This isn't "free" - your taxes pay for it.

Symbiote 10y ago
No, his pays for it with his rent, the same way my rent includes heating. The owner of the building has probably signed a deal to get a good rate for everyone. Fine if you like it, but a waste of money if you'd prefer a different provider.
- johndevor 10y ago
  Nope. > The municipalities own (most of) the networks The municipalities use his tax money.
  - Symbiote 10y ago
    You appear to have an agenda here. Please read the original comment in its entirety, beyond the first half of the two sentences you misleadingly quote. > municipalities own (most of) the networks and all the fiber cables, letting companies use them for a small(ish) fee. > For example, I have 250/100 mbit/s for free. My rent pays for this. He pays rent to the landlord, the landlord pays the broadband company for service to all the apartments, the broadband company pays the municipality to use the fibre network. The fibre network might have used tax money initially, or it might have been laid with income from usage fees from other areas. There's no ongoing use of tax money for the network.

nodesocket 10y ago

Fact check.... I spent nearly a month in Stockholm in July. Stayed with friends and none of them got close to 1Gbps. In-fact speeds were similar to mine here in San Francisco (50 - 100Mbps).

zamalek 10y ago

The model in South Africa is extremely similar: single country-wide governmental telco/last mile (Telkom) and competing private ISPs. It doesn't work at all. My 10Mb ADSL is currently sitting at 6Mb because of "line optimization." Resolving the last issue on my line took 8 months. I pay €65 for this because there is no other choice. We have a moniker for this pit of incompetence: "Hellkom." As we speak, private ISPs are rolling out their own fibre-to-the-home in order to break loose of Hellkom. Hellkom is responding by launching their own FTTH packages that are 3x the cost and have caps that can be depleted in a day. What works for the Swedish will not work for everyone.

awqrre 10y ago

it's good for privacy, maybe

Grishnakh 10y ago

>I think the Swedish (Nordic?) model for bringing internet connectivity to it's citizens is superior. That's no surprise. The Scandinavian countries are superior nations to every other country on Earth, except maybe Switzerland. Every quality-of-life study ranks them at the very top.