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Colorado Town Offers 1 Gbps for $60 After Years of Battling Comcast
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- srbby 7y agoEn el cielo las estrellas, en el campo los arados y en el medio de tu culo mi chorizo Colorado.
- martin_a 7y agoSpeak/Write English on here please, so anybody can understand you. Thanks.
- Leires 7y agoAs a Spanish speaker, I can tell you it was a troll comment not worth translating.
- Beltiras 7y agoAs a user of Google Translate I can tell you that the resulting text is somewhat hilarious.
- bencollier49 7y agoIs that actually a rule on here?
- sbarre 7y agoNothing about language is indicated in the guidelines or the FAQ.
- martin_a 7y agoEs ist einfach eine Frage der Höflichkeit, dass wir in der "Quasi-Weltsprache" Englisch kommunizieren. Ich denke das trägt im Internet allgemein zum Verständnis bei und sollte dementsprechend auch hier zum guten Ton gehören. Ob man es in irgendwelche Regeln schreiben muss weiß ich nicht, ich dachte ich kann ja trotzdem mal danach fragen. Better this way?
- bencollier49 7y agoWhy not? Spanish and German are widely spoken; if people want to use them to communicate, then let the market decide by virtue of the number of upvotes and responses they get.
- mdkdog 7y agoaccording to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_number_of_speakers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_languages_by_total_num... , German does not even make the top 10 ...is 12 just after "Urdu". I would not call German a "widely spoken" language.
- 14 7y agoI-yay eally-ray ink-thay e-way ould-shay all-yay eak-spay and-yay ite-wray in-yay ig-pay Atin-lay ere-hay on-yay Ackernews-hay.
- 14 7y agoIf you see my comment below in pig Latin clearly the downvotes indicate people do not like it. Despite pig Latin to English translators existing and really there is no difference then any other language I was down voted. As far as I was aware HN is an English site and we should all try and communicate in that language when possible. Websites don’t automatically translate and don’t always do a perfect job of doing it so if we came to HN and had to try decipher all the posts it would quickly become tedious.
- mooreds 7y agoSo excited for Fort Collins. Internet access, particularly last mile "in the ground" access, seems like a natural fit for a utility model.
- sbarre 7y agoI pay 75$ CDN for 1Gbps with no cap in Toronto, and I used to think we had it bad in Canada.. "Fighting" with a local cable company (monopoly I assume?) to offer a 1Gpbs service in 2019 is depressing.
- robert_foss 7y agoYou must be one of the lucky ones in Toronto. I remember having only pricier, capped & slower FTH solutions.
- abledon 7y agoBell?
- microcolonel 7y agoThat's because of Beanfield. Outside of the core of Toronto that is not the case. If you go all the way to Burlington, it starts costing about $300/mo, if they are even willing to install it. I'm hoping Beanfield continues to expand their area of competition.
- sbarre 7y agoIt's more than just Beanfield. I live in a condo building and Beanfield wasn't even an option here. If that was the case, I'd never have been able to get this plan, right? I agree that it's certainly due to competition, but it's not as reductive as that. Also, I have a co-worker who lives in Milton and he has the same service as me for basically the same price (he's in a bundle though).
- microcolonel 7y ago> If that was the case, I'd never have been able to get this plan, right? Not so! The pressure helps people who aren't even technically covered by competitors. That's the beauty of it. :- )
- how2cflags 7y agoAh, I have a friend in a downtown condo who uses their 1Gbps service and he hasn't had any issues with them. Sadly I'm in an older town house so my options are Bell or Rogers, neither of which can offer symmetric fiber as the cost to deploy wouldn't be worthwhile their time.(Oddly Bell installed fiber in the older building across the street from me into all the units.) Either way, I ended up going with Teksavvy. No marketing nonsense or calls to up sell anything and I get 300/20 for 62 a month without a contract.
- Donald 7y agoAs a FoCo resident, Comcast sent me an email saying that they're "upgrading our network" and "increasing your Internet download speed". Not really clear what that means until I see an updated rate sheet. I'm sure this is entirely a coincidence and has nothing to do with the fact that they suddenly have some competition now.
- whalesalad 7y agoSeems that most cable providers do this when an incumbent moves into town. It’s happened to me in two separate metro areas and just happened to my buddy in Phoenix.
- TheGallopedHigh 7y agoSorry to nitpick but incumbent should be used the other way round. Namely Comcast is the incumbent (currently “holding office”) and the new town ISP is the new comer
- whalesalad 7y agoThanks for the thoughtful correction. I won’t make that mistake twice!
- jkilpatr 7y ago> "upgrading our network" They actually where not doing this before because it's probably a bad idea. Modern cable networks look like this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_fiber-coaxial#/media/File:HFC_Network_Diagram.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_fiber-coaxial#/media/Fi... Fiber goes to copper which then splits out to a large number of homes. The copper line near your home can do multiple gigabit but that needs to be shared with everyone else on the tree. So selling higher speeds is easy, but reaching them for everyone requires splitting trees with new fiber drops. Providers usually do the first and only some or none of the second in order to sell bigger numbers and compete with Fiber. A similar thing happened to DSL trying to compete with cable, lets look where that is now. https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/measuring-broadband-america/measuring-fixed-broadband-eighth-report https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/measuring-broad... See chart 15.3, DSL across the ISP industry only provides advertised download speeds 40% of the time. In any other industry this would be considered blatant fraud.
- onyva 7y agoWe have a café ran by a French family in our building on a side street. It’s been getting raving reviews on TripAdvisor before it opened its doors. Reviews include cooked dishes which the place is not allowed to serve since they’re not suppose to have a full working kitchen and ovens. Also noteworthy: very similar description appearing over and over. TripAdvisor is a scam. I’ve seen it in many places I’ve visited and sent in reviews. There’s hardly a correlation between the review and reality. Mostly it’s a service Americans need because of their complete and total luck of exposure to other cultures when they travel, so they need someone to give a meaningless rating.
- Etheryte 7y agoCould someone please explain the background to someone not from the US? Why is competition so scarce in this field in the US? Is it just the cost of infrastructure over large distances, or is something else at play here?
- cptskippy 7y agoIt's that and incumbents get laws made to preserve their monopolies or make it more expensive for competition to start up.
- jessaustin 7y agoSo true! There is a giant federal agency, FCC, the primary purpose of which is to preserve telco monopoly. Few people realize this is FCC's purpose. As usual, it's informative to pay more attention to results than to marketing. Even supposed "reforms" (why would an agency functioning in accordance with its stated goals need reform?) like the 1996 law have primarily led to increased revenue for monopoly telcos.
- rectang 7y agoWhenever you hear "deregulation", think "choosing winners". The form of "deregulation" we get from Ajit Pai's FCC selectively advantages the incumbent oligopoly of telcos, leaving in place the most grotesque market-distorting regulations and removing controls on vertical integration which allow for the expansion of telco power into other industries. Market failure can take myriad forms. The ISP situation in the US is a particularly maddening variant.
- jessaustin 7y agoThe "deregulation" of 1996 had many examples of this. ILECs were allowed into long-distance phone service, which they used their monopoly LEC rents to dominate. UNE-P tricked CLEC/ISP investors into thinking they'd be allowed to compete, but since none of the requirements it imposed on ILECs were enforced, those investors ended up selling their equipment and customer bases to ATT/VZN for pennies on the dollar. The Daughters Bell were allowed to reconsolidate from only the most profitable territories, while money-losers like Hawaii and rural New England (e.g. Fairpoint) were unloaded to fools who weren't capable of serving them well. In every case, the monopolist won.
- Jnr 7y agoI live in EU. I pay 15 EUR per month for 1 Gbps.
- pmjordan 7y agoThe EU is a big(ish) and diverse place. We pay about twice that for 40Mbps VDSL and about 2.5x that for 50Mbps LTE. To be fair, we could get something slightly (~20%) cheaper as we've got a "business" deal to get static IP addresses on each connection. The fastest consumer package we could get at this location (cable) is 500Mbit/s down, 40Mbit/s up for €80/month. (Their business level contracts top out at 300/40 Mbps and €200/mo)
- josh2600 7y agoThe EU is also smaller and dramatically denser than the US. Nationwide service in the US is categorically different than servicing a nation in Europe. The rollout costs are dramatically higher.
- ThaJay 7y agoCompare a US state to a EU nation and the differences are not insurmountable.
- kalleboo 7y agoWhy do services have to be nationwide? Sweden didn't get wired by nationwide services, there are tons of local fiber ISPs that only service one city. Case in point: The article. The US needs more of that. Do that in every town and you're sorted.
- clinta 7y agoPart of this is the legacy of the federal government promising monopoly status to telcos in exchange for them bearing the cost of providing services in rural areas. If the market had been allowed to work, and rural Americans did not get service until it was profitable we'd have a much different market in the US today.
- mac01021 7y agoI have no sense about network infrastructure or what it costs but, FWIW, I would much rather have 100Mbps for something like $10 per month.
- cptskippy 7y agoThe cost difference between infrastructure for delivering a 100 or 1000mbps capable connection is negligible. It's delivering it sustained to multiple people that's hard. There are arguments about whether it's better to divide 1000mbps of bandwidth equally between 10 people or giving them all the ability to consume the full 1000mbps. It really depends on the traffic load, most people will never keep a 1000 Mbps connection saturated but as soon as someone finds a way it will negatively impact everyone else sharing the bandwidth. The reality is most ISPs don't split 1000 Mbps between 10 people to give them each 100 Mbps, they'll split it between 20 or 30 people and give them 100 Mbps max because those provisioned customers are all unlikely to demand their full 100Mbps simultaneously.
- bojo 7y agoWe pay $165-175/mo for unlimited 1gig plans here in Alaska. I have no idea why :(
- metalliqaz 7y ago> Alaska
- dub4u 7y agoI'm in the Philippines and I pay $200 for 10Mbps :-(
- achow 7y agoIn India.. ~$20 for 100Mbps (data capped at 400GB) ~$85 for 1Gbps (data capped at 2.5TB)
- bawabawa 7y agoI'm in the PH as well and I pay 55 USD (2,899 PHP) per month for 100Mbps. Ok, I am happy most of the time with 10Mbps but I have occasionally a good surprise.
- misterdoubt 7y agoI'm in the wealthiest county in my state in the U.S. and the best I can get is $50/mo for spotty ~12mbit hotspot service with 95% uptime that I have to physically restart every other day when it craps out entirely... It theoretically has a data cap at 50 gb but it isn't enforced.
- atupis 7y agoFinland paying 9€ for 100Mbps.
- wsc981 7y agoI live in rural Thailand, near the border with Myanmar and we pay about 18 EUR for 60 Mbps download, 25 Mbps upload speed.
- godelmachine 7y agoI remember watching in Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj how greedy monopolistic ISP corporations like Comcast are trying hard to outlaw town based internet offerings. Must watch - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xw87-zP2VNA https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=xw87-zP2VNA
- djzidon 7y agovideo not available
- godelmachine 7y agoGoogle - “Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj why your internet sucks”
- djzidon 7y agoGuess my work has this blocked due to restricted mode. Had to read the fine print
- thoughtpalette 7y agoAlso recommend this episode. They go into details on several different CO cites/towns that are implementing it as well as the lobbying aspect from Comcast, etc.
- pulse7 7y agoSuch business attempts should be punished by the law!
- metalliqaz 7y agohahahahaha, good luck with that such business creates its own law!
- baybal2 7y agoWhere America stands out in Internet deployment is that it never had a period of copper Ethernet being deployed in the last mile. And I think this is why most American's still don't see 100mb/s speeds as something normal these days. On other hand, quite a few places in the world saw 100mb/s Ethernet as their first Internet option, and never seen a rationale to fall back to slower alternatives. For them, the speed been only growing up for the last 20 years.
- dfsegoat 7y agoNitpicking title: 'Town' vs. 'City', bugs me as a former CO resident. Ft. Collins is huge (~170k people compared to most CO towns which are 400-10k ppl). The title sort of leads you to believe it was a folksy, rural community effort. In reality Intel, AMD, Broadcom and a major State University are located there and that probably helped the effort substantially. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Collins,_Colorado#Major_industries_and_commercial_activity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Collins,_Colorado#Major_i...
- smt88 7y agoI looked into this, and Ft. Collins is a "Home Rule Municipality" under state law, meaning it can name itself either a town or city. It seems to have chosen to be a city, so you're right. Around the world, it seems that there's one consistent criterion for something being a city: it must have self-rule and a certain amount of government structure. Some places (notably not the US) have population requirements, but those tend to be really low (100-1,000 people)[1]. I personally appreciate the headline saying "town" in a colloquial sense, because I don't think of 170,000 as "huge" and it's significant that it's not a large city doing this. For context, Ft. Collins is not in the top 150 most populous US cities, and to even reach the top 50, it would have to more than double in size. 1. https://www.thoughtco.com/difference-between-a-city-and-a-town-4069700 https://www.thoughtco.com/difference-between-a-city-and-a-to...
- gadders 7y ago>>Around the world, it seems that there's one consistent criterion for something being a city: it must have self-rule and a certain amount of government structure. It used to be in the UK you needed a Church of England Bishop (and a cathedral) but now you have to apply to the Lord Chancellor.
- NLips 7y agoTo add flavour in the guise of figures: The largest city in the UK is (Greater) London, population ~9M. This is an outlier. The next largest is Birmingham, population ~1M. The smallest city (by population) is St Davids, population ~1800. This is also an outlier. Most cities are 100k to 1M. However, there are a decent number of towns >100k. The largest town is Reading, population 230k. There possibly isn't a smallest town worth defining - there's no objective divide between villages and towns.
- microcolonel 7y agoAs somebody who really dislikes the idea of being forced to subsidize a municipal network, I like that they have some success. The cost of competing with Comcast should not be so great that people find this necessary.
- someguydave 7y agohttps://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2017/10/23/fort-collins-voters-to-decide-150-million-gamble-in-broadband-industry/ https://pagetwo.completecolorado.com/2017/10/23/fort-collins... Indeed, this is taxpayer-subsidized “competition”
- microcolonel 7y agoThe problem is that everyone is paying for it, especially given the way property taxes typically work.
- rtkwe 7y agoDemocracy, if you don't like it vote for people against it and if it wins still that's the breaks sometimes. Some things work better with collective action than private enterprise especially things that require large build outs of infrastructure that you don't want duplicated: eg roads, you're paying to maintain a lot of roads you never drive on because their existence benefits everyone.
- microcolonel 7y agoIn that sense, I would not be against a municipal government installing a system of conduits and/or dark fiber, and charging ISPs and other fiber users for it (provided they had some reasonable obligations to conduct the whole business transparently). I think conduits and dark fiber are both more similar to roads (and utility poles and the structural cables between them) than actual internet service; and the nice thing is that new private entities, provided they are not preempted by rigid bylaws, are then enabled to seek out a better standard of service without duplicating the whole infrastructure.
- orblivion 7y agoAfter a long period of my life not having the fastest in speeds at home, I ended up going all in and telling Comcast "give me the fastest Internet you have". So I'm paying for 400Mbps. ...what do I need all this speed for? What could someone possibly do with 1 Gbps? It's not as though web pages will load faster, they have their own throttling. I don't think I need 400Mbps to stream 4k video. Torrents don't seem to take advantage of the full bandwidth. I could see the benefit if I were doing 10x as much stuff _at the same time_. So is this for large families or businesses? I'm considering going down to about 100 and saving a few bucks.
- cameronbrown 7y agoThroughput - not all about speed. Downloading a game on Steam should not cripple my ability to watch TV, as an example. Plus most machines are off auto updating nowadays, I shouldn't have to suffer because my laptop/phone/TV/toaster decided to patch itself when I don't have any control over that.
- orblivion 7y agoSo it sounds like you're talking about doing multiple things at the same time. Fair enough, I just think 400Mbps is beyond even the point where that matters for me living alone. Though I don't torrent much, perhaps if I did I'd feel the difference.
- JelteF 7y agoDownloading Steam games is one thing that actually takes advantage of my 750Mbps.
- xuki 7y agoTo stream 4K contents you only need 20-30Mbps. But for any kind of big download (game updates, OS updates, etc), being able to finish in less than 5 minutes is fantastic.
- bschwindHN 7y agoIt's the ability to do multiple heavy transfers at the same time, youtube videos loading instantly, game updates finishing within a minute, apps downloading in a few seconds, and never having your connection be the bottleneck to accessing a website. It's even more important when multiple people are sharing the connection.
- fullstop 7y agoI have never been more envious of my brother until now.
- hanklazard 7y agoAfter many years of using Comcast because it was my only option, I recently had my breakup call with them. We have Verizon Fios as an option and at their lowest tier speeds, we get 100 mbps symmetric (and every time I've checked the speed over the past week, it has been as advertised). Our overpriced Comcast plan was giving us "up to 60 mbps" but we were getting, wait for it, 1 mbps in the last few weeks of our plan. We could barely load modern web pages in a reasonable time and streaming anything was a mess. Glad to see that Colorado cities and towns are at least being given the option of building their own high-speed infrastructure. If successful, it should provide a great example for the rest of the country.
- howard941 7y agoVerizon offloaded their Floriduh operation to Frontier but fortunately the fios is already built and I too see the 100mbs symmetric. Unfortunately like Comcast (spit), Frontier believes in abusing its loyal customers so I'm going to revert to Comcast (spit) and play the bounce between the two every year because $230/mo is way too much to pay for cable & internet & unused landline.
- johnday 7y agoTwo hundred and thirty dollars? Per month? Bloody hell. I'm on the highest consumer rate that BT offers and that costs £45/mo.
- wil421 7y agoDoes BT include a huge TV package with set top boxes (fees), premium movie channels (HBO etc.), a modem\router (fee), internet, voip, and likely a handset fee? That’s the only way it would get to $230. I’ve paid between $70-$115 for symmetrical gigabit and that’s the most expensive you can buy. A £45 plan might be 100mpbs down and maybe 10 up. From BT’s website: >ULTRAFAST FIBRE PLUS £54.99 Average speed 145Mb Speed guarantee of at least 100Mb £54.99 is actually a worse plan that what AT&T offers. I can get 1gbps up/down for $70.
- 7y ago
- post_break 7y agoATT brought 1gig fiber to my neighborhood (probably because I'm in NASA's backyard). I have gig symmetrical unlimited for $70 a month. Comcast of course tries to offer the same but with cable and you and I both know it wont be symmetrical, or anywhere close to the speed you pay for. It's funny how quickly Comcast will bend when there is a competitor in the area. Just down the street where there is no fiber they will gladly charge you $100 a month for 50 meg down.
- tehlike 7y agoA few months back, i switched to att fiber for 70$, and called comcast to cancel it. They said they will match the price, and that my att installation has 30 day free cancellation period and i should really take that. Give it to me for 35, then i would consider.
- post_break 7y agoI'd rather pay more money to a competitor than stay with comcast at this point.
- proverbialbunny 7y ago>ATT brought 1gig fiber to my neighborhood (probably because I'm in NASA's backyard). Could be because Sonic is in the area and is a better ISP.
- post_break 7y agoI'm in Texas, no Sonic here.
- toast0 7y agoWhere you in Google's abandoned list of chosen city/metro areas? About 6 months after that list came out, AT&Ts fiber list came out and there was a lot of overlap, and then Google was like hmm, maybe wireless?
- zer0faith 7y agoNorth Alabama (Huntsville) ? Rumor had it google fiber was coming that way.
- sandwall 7y agoTHIS, so much of this. We've moved beyond telecommunications as a luxury, it is a necessity in this day and age. IF competition can't make it accessible, we the people deserve the option to do so.
- zer0faith 7y agoya know... it's past time that they declare internet access a utility (like water, power, electricity) and tell garbage companies like Comcast to shove it.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 7y agoWill never happen as long as "Government bad!" is the predominant thinking in our culture.
- papaver 7y agofunny, comcast tried to do the same thing in longmont, CO and lost. we've had fiber unlimited 1gb up/down for $50 (i think $70 for new customers now) w/ no contract for over 3 years.
- rb808 7y agoThe first year it seems great. The real issue is 10 years down the road when people are using 5G and giving up their internet connections, who is left paying for the infrastructure and the union jobs?
- move-on-by 7y agoI don't think you understand how limited 5G is. The range is basically the same has your home WiFi router. Without a fiber infrastructure to back it, 5G is nothing. If the city is no longer able to sell direct internet, then it will just sell/rent the infrastructure to whatever to 5G provider there is.
- rb808 7y agoI brought up the 5G as an example of something that could change in the future. The problem is no one knows what is going to happen in 10-20 years. Its easy to spend public resources and have a great cheap service, maintaining this for decades is a different problem and it'll be interesting to see how it pans out.
- ilikehurdles 7y agoHow is that different from the infrastructure the private industry (allegedly) maintains?
- rb808 7y agoThe difference if the network loses money, or few people use the network in 10 years time it wont leave the residents with big bills.
- ilikehurdles 7y agoSomeone has to pay to clean up the unused or derelict infrastructure in either scenario. The private company can declare bankruptcy and skip town much easier than the town government can. A town can also choose to ignore infrastructure maintenance the same way that private entities do. They can also choose to change the funding or price model or level of service, same as the private entity.
- wonderwonder 7y agoSigh, guess its time to move to CO. If it means getting away from spectrum its worth uprooting my life. /s ... maybe But really the inconsistent speeds provided by cable companies, crazy pricing structure that often include things such as bundling a land line that I will never use and the clear area specific monopolies they run are outrageous. If ever an industry needed to be investigated for price fixing and running monopolies its the cable industry.
- polpo 7y agoLongmont, just south of Fort Collins, was the first city in Colorado to build out a municipal ISP, and it’s inspired surrounding cities to do the same. It’s where I live and it was a not-insignificant reason why I chose to move here. So far it has been a resounding success for the city. The buildout completed on time and adoption rates are higher than initially expected (the city planned for 37% but the last number I saw was around 54%). In my experience, the service has been so good as to be totally invisible. And I know my $50/mo rate will never rise. I wish Fort Collins the same experience. The fact that they both cities have municipal electric service will help this significantly.
- longcommonname 7y agoTheres still locations here that can't get fiber. The local hospital is owned by a church and they own apartments adjacent to the hospital. These apartments are surrounded by others that get fiber but the map still shows they aren't planned.
- torwayburger 7y agoIf there is some geographical last mile type issue to bring internet to these buildings that are surrounded by fiber, it could be helpful to pitch the church/hospital with a wireless link from one of the fiber pops. I have brought service to medical and hospital buildings in this way before and it's always worked out well.
- dantillberg 7y agoIn the case described above, the topography is "completely flat", and the internet provider in question already provides electrical service to the premises.
- torwayburger 7y agoThat should mean they have public utility status, access to public poles etc. It would simplify such a solution. I've deployed such links in a flat scenario as well.
- iamsb 7y agoIt is incredible how similar electricity utility and internet utility delivery is happening. For first 30-40 years, governments and private enterprises were competing quite a bit over who can have the monopoly in providing electricity. I recently read a book which deals with impact of electricity from social, political, industrial perspective. https://www.amazon.com/Age-Edison-Electric-Invention-America/dp/0143124447 https://www.amazon.com/Age-Edison-Electric-Invention-America...
- Teknoman117 7y agoThen they all started freaking out when people could generate their own power.
- jrochkind1 7y agoIn Baltimore City, your only choice for broadband is Comcast. They charge $75/month for 25Mbps down. I believe that's about double what they charge for the same speed in places where they have competition.
- paco3346 7y agoI sure hope you mean Mbps otherwise I'm moving there!
- jrochkind1 7y agoYes, you're right, corrected!
- throwawaynihil 7y agoDamned socialists! How dare they try to undercut good patriotic americans like Comcast?@$!?#@!# Who are they to want to pay less for better service on a utility that costs 1/5 as much to run than it costs to use?? Go back to Russia!
- AngeloAnolin 7y agoI wonder if it is a well established knowledge that ISPs are a profitable business model, why is it that local governments take the cudgels of offering their constituents? Are there legal restrictions in place that would prevent government organizations from doing so? Or is it more on the technical perspective on why this is not being explored? I see that public services at some point would include providing internet access as something vital alongside use of technology for services.
- Companion 7y agoComcast will likely (if they are not already) try to get a state law passed.
- kbumsik 7y agoI pay <$20/mo (22,000 KRW) for 2.5Gbps with a free modem having a 10Gbps ethernet port in South Korea, with a 4-years contract. I know it is very unfair to compare it with such a small country but $60 still sounds too much.
- metalliqaz 7y agoit's pretty damn good in USA
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- gok 7y agoThe business plan is interesting: https://www.fcgov.com/broadband/files/broadband-business-plan.pdf?1555622083 https://www.fcgov.com/broadband/files/broadband-business-pla... Key points: they're expecting this effort cost $130-$150m, not pay for itself until 2033 or so, and only get around 28% market share. If Comcast/CenturyLink drops their prices slightly, uptake might be substantially worse.
- a_wild_dandan 7y agoComcast now (surprise, surprise) offers 1Gb lines for $90. I jumped on it. But when the city's fiber rolls out to my location, I'm sprinting toward Connexion. Cancellation fees be damned.
- bproven 7y agoYou will also get gig bi-directional with the city - afaik comcast is only offering 20-30Mbit uploads for their gig service. But yeah surprise! City announces city internet service and comcast slashes gig from $200-300 a year ago down to $70-90 lol
- joshuaheard 7y agoI pay the same with Cox: $60/mo for gigabit internet (with bundle). There's a Cox store in my neighborhood with helpful service. I don't see the issue here. Why can't the town just invite competition instead of doing it themselves? My experience is that government is the least efficient method for delivering services.
- unwary_querier 7y agoCenturylink and Comcast are a little skiddish around here (Northern Colorado). Prices have dropped, advertising with headlines such as "best customer support" are ubiquitous and Centurylink even upgrades my linespeed for $0 two years ago. Competition is working, though I'll jump ship to Connexion (muni ISP) as soon as I can.
- sebringj 7y agowow, i hope this creates a movement to buck the trend of telecoms as they were only there to keep the status quo so they didn't have to keep costs low and profits high for themselves without care of how it affected progress at such a fundamental level of internet bandwidth and the innovation that can come out of having incredible speeds. F* the telecoms and F* comcast.
- breatheoften 7y agoDenver internet is remarkably bad — very expensive for 10-20mbps service with not great reliability. Very jealous of Ft Collins ...
- bproven 7y agoDenver is very much in bed with Comcast. It is after all Comcast's major headquarters. I would bet DEN is that last domino to fall once all other CO cities implement municipal internet.
- beauzero 7y agoSylacauga, AL in the US also has very cheap housing and municipal internet. This is just an FYI as we looked there when we were looking to move to facilitate remote work.
- jmspring 7y agoThe small town where I live in North Eastern California gets it's internet from a local co-op that provides both electrical and internet services to the local community. Part of where I chose to purchase when I moved up here was based on getting fiber. It's been rock solid, but it's about $110/mo for (recently updated) 100/20 fiber. Previously, people were stuck with line of site wifi (can be problematic with a lot of trees) or satellite. Their roll out has been interesting. In some areas, they have taken advantage of legacy cable feeds (cable companies pulled out awhile ago). Sometimes they were successful, some needed repair, and some just flat out didn't work. The service got kick started with grants for rural internet service.
- webo 7y agoSimilar story here in Fayetteville Arkansas. I’ve been enjoying a truly gigabit internet for $80/mo since 2017. AT&T and Cox still don’t have anything remotely close to the gigabit speed in residential areas. https://www.ozarksgo.net/internet https://www.ozarksgo.net/internet
- dbuder 7y agoI pay $60 aud for 8-9mbps. I'm in Sydney, 3km from the city and I cannot connect to our 100mpbs if you're super lucky NBN which has been "running" for 8+years - $90aud from a cheaper ISP. Malcom Turnbull messed up our internet infra, became Prime Minister, didn't do anything to fix it and walked out on the job last year. I can't connect to the NBN because it hasn't rolled out in my area, I've lived in or near the city cbd the whole time the NBN has been going on and I have never lived on a street that was connected.
- faebi 7y agoIs anybody getting 10Gbps already?
- sshanky 7y agoIn Phoenix, CenturyLink's gigabit service has finally arrived in my neighborhood. At $65/mo, no contract, I get fiber right to the house and 1 gig up and down. I was glad to stop paying almost $100/mo for Cox's 300 megabit service.
- linsomniac 7y agoCenturyLink, in particular, but also Comcast, has brought this upon themselves... They are doing everything they can to protect their existing infrastructure and do as little as possible to upgrade services. I'm thinking of back in '98 when QWest was rolling out DSL, the would only connect you to a central office. They refused to put DSLAMs in the pedestals, because if they did that they had to allow CLECs to do the same and CLECs could start "cherry picking" service locations for DSL. One very rural community ("Ruby Ridge?") had to sue to get the right to put in DSLAMs. DSL was dependent on how many wire feet you were from one of the two central offices in town. Compared to my inlaws up in Saskatoon Canada: Similar size city, they deployed DSLAMs in the remote terminals and ran fiber to them and used the copper to the house for the last mile and covered the whole city. Remember, the telcos got a $2 billion rate hike to enable them to deploy fiber to the home by the year 2000. Except for a few small trials (I used to work at QWest), they just pocketed the money, no large scale fiber buildout was done. Until Fort Collins passed the "we are going to build out our own fiber network", Comcast was really dragging their feet on upgrades. You can get gigabit now for around $100/mo, if you commit to a year. I'm just sitting on 120mbps for $90/mo, because people the next neighborhood over are getting door hangers saying the city fiber is coming soon.
- metalliqaz 7y agoFiber is slowly making its way through my town and I'm looking forward to the speed, but more than that I'm looking forward to telling Comcast that I don't have to put up with them anymore. I picture it like that episode of South Park, except with the roles reversed.
- cptskippy 7y agoIn the late 90s fiber was widely deployed by Telcos in the US in anticipation of future demand growth that never occurred due to the ability to extract greater bandwidth out of single fibers. Bellsouth had fiber laid in much of suburban Georgia in the late 90s that remained dark. In the early 00s they were offering internet to some communities by running fiber to a box on the side of the house that converted it to 10mbit Ethernet capped at 1.5mbps and calling it "DSL". I'm not sure what ever became of this infrastructure. I know that Google and others were buying up dark fiber networks but my understanding was that they were acquiring long haul links and not stuff deployed in communities.
- linsomniac 7y agoNotes: The $60/mo gigabit in Fort Collins is symmetric, gig up and down. They also have a $300/mo 10gig service.
- marviel 7y agoAnother datapoint is Chattanooga, TN, with their municipal 1Gbps / ~$65 plan. https://epb.com/home-store/internet https://epb.com/home-store/internet They had plans to expand the service to the surrounding area, but Comcast lobbied to prevent it... https://www.techspot.com/news/68941-residents-rural-chattanooga-almost-had-10-gbps-internet.html https://www.techspot.com/news/68941-residents-rural-chattano...
- driverdan 7y agoThey've expanded it to cover anyone who gets their electric from EPB which is a surprisingly large area.
- Scottopherson 7y ago$67.99 exactly. My bill has always been the exact price that they list on their website; no extra fees or taxes randomly popping up on the billing statement.
- segmondy 7y agoWhere's the blueprint on how to do this. I really would love to see my city do this. I hate Comcast.
- adonnjohn 7y agoNot getting my hopes up but oh do I wish that Denver could/would follow their example....
- rudolph9 7y agoI don't understand why the upload speed is so slow for all the comcast packages. I reside in Portland, OR and Comcast seems to be the only descent option. However, the fastest upload speed I could get without springing for $300/month fiber was 35Mbs. I wound up paying $70/month for a package that provides 1000Mbs down and 35Mbs up despite only having modem that supports upto 283Mbs down just so I could get the faster upload speed.
- rudolph9 7y agoOk, just got done with the Comcast technician at my home and and unfortunately Comcast is not able to provide my router with a boot config to support higher upload :( I just get the default we is still giving me 5Mbs upload and somewhat ironically I now get 300Mbs download (previously 70Mbs). Has anyone put a custom boot config file on a home cable modem? Any resources you would recommend? Is this a fools errand?
- jalgos_eminator 7y agoWe have fiber through Frontier in certain parts of the metro as well. A few years ago I lived in a place in Beaverton with a 30/30 fiber connection for $35/month. My parents have fiber as well. They were original Verizon FiOS customers before Frontier took over.
- humble_engineer 7y agoGoogle fiber came into my neighborhood this week and nearly every single person on my block came to the install demonstration. These old companies are going to die and good riddance.
- thorwasdfasdf 7y agoWe really need to start voting against politicians that are in bed with comcast and At&t. Is there some kind of list or online database where we can see which of our local politicians are supporting comcast and at&t with these horrible regulations that prevent open competition?
- shmerl 7y agoSome details here: https://www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/net_neutrality/ https://www.opensecrets.org/news/issues/net_neutrality/
- tryptophan 7y agoNet neutrality is a completely difference issue. It has nothing to do with why its hard to make an ISP competitor.
- shmerl 7y agoRelated though. Anti-competitive ISPs also don't like net neutrality, since it's essentially aimed at curbing anti-competitive network behavior. Quite unsurprisingly, the same bad actors are usually opposed to direct ISP competition. I.e. if they oppose net neutrality, high chances are they oppose municipal networks as well. To put it differently, once they have monopolist mentality and anti-competitive behavior, it spills out to everything.
- bogomipz 7y agoCongrats Fort Collins! The only other successful municipal broadband offering I'm aware of it Chatanooga, TN which is sited regularly when discussing municipal broadband. So its nice to have two examples to hold up to other municipalities considering similar. I hope the Fort Collins rollout receives the attention it deserves and perhaps inspires other municipalities to take the same initiative. Kudos to everyone who got this done!
- nosequel 7y agoI live in Fort Collins and use Comcast Business (because I depend on my internet for work) and 1 GB internet (only downloads) is $499.95 / month in comparison. I cannot wait for my municipal account.
- fortran77 7y ago> "Ideally we will capture more than 50% of the market share, similar to Longmont," vs > These ISPs don't want to spend money to improve or expand service into lower ROI areas,These ISPs don't want to spend money to improve or expand service into lower ROI areas, I love competition, of course but they're both doing the same thing.
- readhn 7y agoLove it! Congrats to internet users of Colorado!!!
- js2 7y agoI'm glad the telecoms weren't able to buy the legislature in CO like they did in NC in 2011: Under H129, municipal broadband programs like Wilson's "Project Greenlight" would be pretty much impossible to replicate if a cable company serves just 50% of the households in the area with "high-speed" internet. https://www.wral.com/news/state/nccapitol/blogpost/9625657/ https://www.wral.com/news/state/nccapitol/blogpost/9625657/ Fortunately, NC is now considering loosening the restrictions: House Bill 431, the FIBER NC Act, would allow counties or cities in areas with little or no broadband service to spend taxpayer dollars to build their own infrastructure for it and then lease the network out to a private service provider. https://www.wral.com/plan-to-allow-municipal-broadband-systems-in-rural-nc-clears-first-hurdle/18555959/ https://www.wral.com/plan-to-allow-municipal-broadband-syste... That said, I'm fortunate in my town to get AT&T 1Gbps for $70/mo. The alternative, Charter (which I had for years when it was TWC), is awful on both pricing and service. I think it was the threat of Google Fiber that got AT&T to move its feet. Years later, still no Google Fiber anywhere near me, though supposedly they are still expanding in the area. A few miles away in a neighboring town, folks have access to Ting Internet (1Gbps for $89/mo) and seem happy with it.
- linsomniac 7y agoAside: I can't figure out what I'd even do with 10gig symmetric at home for $300/mo. I'd be tempted to run a distro mirror for the city, the last time I ran a mirror I had 30mbps I could give to it. I'd push for 10gig at the office when it comes, but we'd have to upgrade everything except a few dev servers...
- lonelappde 7y agoHow is running a distro mirror from home better than running it from a colo or cloud service?
- qes 7y agoWell, is running a distro mirror from home better than running none at all? Because that's what it usually comes down too. I'm already paying for the home connection and not fully utilizing it. I would have to pay more to run it from a colo or cloud.
- linsomniac 7y agoThe primary way it's better is that many of the distro mirroring services have ways to announce the mirror for specific networks, so people requesting packages in Fort Collins could get them from a local mirror, rather than going across transit.
- tzs 7y agoIf that is $300/month is for uncapped 10 gig symmetric, he could serve up to a bit over 3 million gigabytes of data in a month. That would cost something like $100k in outgoing bandwidth costs if at a cloud service.
- baby 7y agoThat is still quite expensive!
- fossuser 7y agoIn the Bay Area (Palo Alto) you can get 1 Gbps Comcast service and it works well, but getting it is hard because everything else about Comcast is bad. - It's hard to order the service because the price online is a stupidly high price no one should pay if it's listed at all. - When you call two thirds of the sales reps don't know what gigabit is and will tell you it's not in your area (even though it is) rather than finding out. I've had them tell me it requires a $300 installation fee (it doesn't) or that they'll email me when it's available (it was already available and they wouldn't have). You have to call until you get someone who can do their job. - The upload is capped to 35mbps - I was able to get 1gbps for $89/month, but it required a two year contract. It's also not listed on the bill as this, but as 'performance plus' with a gigabit add on which makes things confusing. - There's a 1 terabyte/month data cap and it's $10 per 50GB after that capped at a max cost of $200. You get two 'courtesy months' of this, but then you get charged. You can pay $50 to have 'unlimited'. After months of using 700GB or so per month suddenly my usage spiked to 2TB so now I have to pay this - it's very hard to determine why (nothing on my end appears to have changed and my ubiquity software shows no massive increase in usage). - Comcast also has a gigabit pro plan which is real fiber to the house (no modem/coax cable) - it's 2gbps up and down, but requires a $1000 installation since they're actually bringing fiber to your house and special hardware to make use of it (also good luck finding a rep that will let you actually buy it - none of them know about it, twitter is best option to find a good support person). While the service once set up is good (except for upload) everything else about interacting with them is terrible. After the two years runs out they'll drop my speed to 25mbps and double the price and I'll have to call and negotiate the plans with a rep all over again. Any interaction with the public website or billing is also pretty bad. All I want is to pay a reasonable price for faster service. I'd even pay more (potentially a lot) if I didn't have to deal with all of this. Even in a competitive market Comcast has problems.
- kstrauser 7y ago> There's a 1 terabyte/month data cap In other words, you're allowed to use your service for about three hours per month. I worked for an ISP and I completely understand the idea behind overprovisioning, because you build your network for average traffic and not the maximum theoretical capacity needed to serve 100% of customers using 100% of their connection 100% of the time. But here Comcast is overprovisioning by a factor of 240:1 -- that is, you can only use your connection at 1/240th of your theoretical capability. That's insane, and demonstrably unnecessary. I use Sonic.net which is a relatively much tinier ISP, but who offers uncapped gigabit for much less than Comcast's capped joke offering. Therefore, people who really want to use their connection heavily are much more likely to go to Sonic.net than Comcast, meaning that Sonic.net probably has a much higher average per-customer usage than Comcast does. And yet, they're still cheaper, still uncapped, and still growing. If Sonic.net can do it, Comcast is just being greedy.
- ajs1k 7y ago1Gbps for $60 ? What a rip-off! Here in Switzerland you can get 10Gbps for $40... fiber.salt.ch
- vvpan 7y agoThis is terrible, but let's not forget that this is actionable. Last presidential election Lawrence Lessig got onto Democratic ballot only to bring up the issue of influence of big money on the democratic process. Which is at the root of the Comcast issue. The Democrats barred him from participating in debates. The issue is not debated even by Democrats and I'm not even talking about Republicans! Support the candidate who will bring up limiting campaign spending, campaign contributions and lobbying - only then things will change. Again, no party so far has done much meaningful on the issue.
- s09dfhks 7y agoThis is great. Upsetting to be locked into a comcast contract in the bay area, paying $145/mo for 220/10. I can only hope the fight continues
- ineedasername 7y agoI like that they're doing this, but is broadband really more expensive than this? The article didn't give current costs in the town, but I pay about $65 right now (east coast heavily populated suburb, maybe that makes a difference?)
- mmanfrin 7y agoToday, in one of the four cities that birthed the very first connections made to the proto-internet (Berkeley), I am finally getting a second broadband option other than Comcast. I'm an hour in to a 4 hour window waiting for my Sonic install. I am so happy to finally be have a choice.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 7y agoSonic fiber is great. It's been over a year, and zero service interruptions or degradations since the day it was installed. Any network issues I now automatically assume are due to my home network or the server I'm trying to access.
- maitredusoi 7y agoFor 60$ you have a Freebox delta in France (sorry only in French https://www.free.fr/freebox/freebox-delta/ https://www.free.fr/freebox/freebox-delta/ ) . It includes 10 Gbps (via fiber cable) + a sound system ( from Devialet, an equivalent to Bose system) + Alexa on the remote controller + 500 Go HDD for video recording or music playback + 200 (international) TV channels + Netflix SD , all inclusive ?! For the little story, french people said 60 $ for all of this Freebox delta was sooooo expensive. After reading the Colorado Town news, I stay amused.
- wuliwong 7y agoPrices vary from country to country on lots of things. How much does gas cost in France vs the USA?
- sydd 7y agohe was not trying to get into a pissing contest, just showing what real competition can lead to. Another data point: I live in Hungary and pay $10 for a 1000Mbps up/200 down internet (plus I think they threw in a landline too, wasnt bothered to check) and could choose from 3 providers.
- eigenloss 7y agoAdjusted for $ per Mbps-month, Coloradans under the Comcast monopoly pay ~100x what you do.
- maitredusoi 7y agoI agree that I don't want to enter in a "pissing contest" , but as I am a programmer I most work from home, so even if gas is really twice the price in France, I'd rather prefer a descend internet speed in a my full inclusive box (so I don't need an Apple TV) in my contryside (away by 50 km from the next big city of Nantes), for a low price than a gas at half price ;) ;) ;) ;)
- lukeramsden 7y agoWish I had that here in N/W Britain. I pay £45 a month, or $56, for 40mbps down and 7 up, and that's just for broadband. Nothing else.
- droithomme 7y agoI pay for a 100mb line. I consistently get on average 1.3mb. Broadband in the US is extremely poor quality and massively overpriced, and also fraudulently advertised.
- akouri 7y agoI find it so hard to grapple that much of SF / Silicon Valley (supposedly the "innovation hub of the world") is subject to near-monopoly by Comcast. AT&T's offerings are 40mbps/5mbps in 2019. So that's obviously not an option. Even Comcast only has 250mb/10mb. In _silicon valley_. In 2019. I had WebPass in one building I was in in 2014, and had symmetric gigabit for $40/mo. Nothing like that has existed in any of the other buildings I've lived in. It's gotten to the point where I'm seriously considering relocating away from the Bay Area due to the lousy internet here.
- fiter 7y agoSonic is doing a fair amount of fiber in the east bay. In fact, I just got my fiber connection installed today in South Berkeley. I know AT&T is also doing fiber in the peninsula and in the east bay. I just checked today and the place I previously lived in Oakland now has fiber availability. Large areas of the Richmond and Sunset districts in SF have had fiber installed. It's changing.
- Cerium 7y agoI'm in San Jose and have gigabit symmetric service from AT&T. If internet is a serious issue for you, there are various areas that have good service.
- inimino 7y agoThis is because the tech workers who primarily fill those buildings tend to lack political awareness and hence the wishes of the people get stepped all over by entrenched powers.
- firefwing24 7y agoThis also confuses me as a resident of South Bay Area... I've been researching ISPs every once in a while to see if new ISPs are able to provide decent deals to where I live... As of right now, here seems to be my options... - AT&T used to charge maximum 5mbps/512kbps (for like something ridiculous like 60$/month), until Sonic came around and started using their infrastructure. Now Sonic & AT&T both provide something like 75 or 50 mbps/5mbps internet (for again.. 60$/month) - Unfortunately, Sonic only reaches me through AT&T so its basically the same. - Comcast is what I use for 150mbps/5mbps (around 70$ a month). Recently(and currently) getting episodes of massive uncorrectables. Technician came and found that a coax connector outside was fried, and replaced it.... 5 days later, I'm still getting uncorrectables, so clearly that wasn't the only problem. Fortunately, I'm getting free 20$ every time i complain, so it's sort of worth? lol... - I can technically request comcast for their 2Gbps, but I'm not down to spend a massive amount of money for the installation costs w/ the overpriced monthly price tag. - Common Networks shows most promise, but they can't reach me (despite my city being listed as one of the primary areas). Even just having symmetric 100mbps/100mbps would be a godsend to this shit ISP situation. Edit: formatting
- akouri 7y agoI don't understand why Comcast has such unbalanced offerings. In the Bay Area, a top tier package (over $100/mo) is 250mbps down / 10mbps up. They claim that most people don't need to upload things, so they allocate "more of the pipe" to download. This seems like bs to me. I upload things all the time.
- BillowyFungus 7y agoI wonder when this is coming to san francisco.
- unsined 7y agoI'm taking this thread as an opportunity to pay Comcast a review I owe them as I recently became a first time customer with them: Comcast may have the best deal in most areas by virtue of monopoly, but I can guarantee you that the average customer ends up paying more. I agreed with a rep on $60 per month for just internet, nothing else. The bill comes and it's $83 with basic TV and a service charge. How they did this was they sent me a text message with a link to an agreement and asked if "everything looks right". Being on my cell phone and on my lunch break I just wanted to get it over with and said yeah. They also assume you want somebody to come over and plug in your modem and rent you a router. I explicitly said no to this, but they signed me up for installation anyway. I'm convinced Comcast institutionally trains reps to steer sign ups in this way. I was refunded eventually, but it still cost me time to dispute billing.
- draw_down 7y ago> I'm taking this thread as an opportunity to pay Comcast a review No thank you, we're good without that!
- cwkoss 7y agoFile complaints with any state and local govt agencies that will listen. SOS, ATG, UTC, etc. The more complaints they have, the more regulators are empowered in taking action.
- leesalminen 7y agoI live in the rural part of this county. We don’t get access to this service, so we rely on a small locally operated WISP for internet at our house. I was chatting with this guy recently and he mentioned that getting bandwidth in between Denver and Fort Collins (Greeley, CO) is now insanely expensive. He thinks it correlates with this move by the city and they bought up a whole lot of data to backhaul down to Denver. As a result, his costs have increased a good bit. I currently pay $79/Mo for 5/2mbps. I inquired about getting more of a 50/10 plan and he’s now quoted $250/mo. Ouch. According to him, he has to buy additional bandwidth in order to upgrade my speeds (some other neighbors have also inquired). I don’t think he’s pulling a fast one on me- he’s a neighbor and German and extremely serious at all times ;).
- homerhomer 7y agoI can get 1Gbps where I'm at but since it's price capped at 1Tb, I don't see the point of upgrading to a faster speed. I want faster but if it's just going to lead to some fees then I guess i'm stuck at slower speeds.
- cuttie018 7y agoI just wonder what will happen when 5G will show up on the market. And it will.
- chebureki 7y agoAuburn, Indiana has been offering municipal internet since 2005[1]. The town needed fast internet to keep companies from leaving to big cities. So, the town decided to build on its municipal public utilities to proide also fast internet. Naturally, it ran into resistence from Verizon. But when the town council has asked the company to provide fast internet service to the community, the company said it was too expensive to do that. I remember that because I attended the town council meetings on this issue. [1] - http://www.auburnessentialservices.net/about/ http://www.auburnessentialservices.net/about/
- lo_fye 7y agoStart.ca just offered my friend 1Gbps for $50 CAD/mth (~$35 USD).
- AnnoyingSwede 7y agoMeanwhile in Sweden, 10Gbe broadband for home consumers priced at ~30 Euro. https://www.bahnhof.se/press/press-releases/2018/10/17/varldspremiar-bahnhofs-10-gbit-s-router-for-hemanvandare-snabbast-pa-marknaden https://www.bahnhof.se/press/press-releases/2018/10/17/varld...
- mikorym 7y agoInteresting is that both Verizon and AT&T are in the top 10 of the Fortune Global 500 if you sort by profit. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_Global_500#Fortune_Global_500_list_of_2017 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortune_Global_500#Fortune_Glo.... Scroll up one table for 2018 profits top 10. Note that the reason why BAT is at number 2 seems to be related to some kind of acquisition if you read their wiki page, but the wiki is not complete enough to reference it as useful. If one looks at Comcast's net profit it also looks quite high, but I am not sure where it would place.
- auiya 7y agoThese anecdotes may be a moot point when 5G wireless rolls out. The wireless carriers are going to eat the landline providers for lunch as long as their plans are structured correctly. I'd be happy to own a WiFi router with only a SIM card.