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On the other hand, Tacoma Power couldn't make the economics of their own-brand broadband Click Network work, [1] so they cut their losses to some extent by tran

On the other hand, Tacoma Power couldn't make the economics of their own-brand broadband Click Network work, [1] so they cut their losses to some extent by transferring operations to a private company, Rainier Connect. [2] Rainier Connect's Tacoma system is still owned by the city of Tacoma, though, and hopefully there will not be further moves toward complete privatization. [1] https://www.mytpu.org/community-environment/projects/click-network-update/ https://www.mytpu.org/community-environment/projects/click-n... [2] https://www.rainierconnect.com/welcome-click-customers https://www.rainierconnect.com/welcome-click-customers [2]

walrus01 5y ago
Click was built as a coaxial copper last mile network - not comparable in performance to any new build fiber based efforts in the years 2016 and later. In industry terms, it was best charitably described as "HFC" - hybrid fiber/coax, meaning they would have some small amount of fiber to the network node locations of the CMTS, but the actual houses were all served over copper.
- hyperrail 5y ago
  I think we both agree on this, but in case not: I don't think Click's uncompetitiveness was due to inherent limitations of hybrid fiber/coax. These days, cable TV companies routinely sell gigabit or near-gigabit download speeds to their HFC-network customers. Yet Click doesn't sell more than 100 Mbps even now. Click's financial problems may or may not have started because they stopped being competitive - perhaps the causation went the other way - but that failure to change certainly didn't help. For instance, I just picked a random house for sale in Tacoma and tried pricing Internet for new customers from Xfinity (Comcast) and Rainier Connect (former Click). Xfinity offered 1 Gigabit (fine print says 940 Mbps) downloads for $84.99/month on a 1-year contract, increasing to $100 after the contract term. Rainier Connect's fastest offering was only 100 Mbps and cost $104.95/month - pay more to get one-tenth the speed. (These rates aren't exactly comparable, though I think they are still roughly so. In particular, Xfinity has a 1.2 TB monthly data limit, while it's not clear whether former-Click customers at Rainier have one. Click did impose a < 1 TB monthly data cap. [1]) The most silly thing about this exercise is that if you look at Rainier's rates in Puyallup [2], which is not a former Click Network location, you see that they definitely sell gigabit to some customers for only $80 - but apparently not in Tacoma. [1] Rainier posts its own usage policy and Click's policy as separate webpages: https://www.rainierconnect.com/rainier-connect-internet-acceptable-use-policy https://www.rainierconnect.com/rainier-connect-internet-acce... ; https://www.rainierconnect.com/click-network-internet-acceptable-use-policy https://www.rainierconnect.com/click-network-internet-accept... [2] https://www.rainierconnect.com/residential/internet#puyallup-graham-spanaway https://www.rainierconnect.com/residential/internet#puyallup...
  - walrus01 5y ago
    > These days, cable TV companies routinely sell gigabit or near-gigabit download speeds to their HFC-network customers. but ultimately coax is polishing the brass doorknobs on the titanic. gigabit down, yes, but at what contention ratio? and how many upstream channels are bonded for a reasonable upstream speed? It's not uncommon to see something like a comcast setup that is 800 Mbps down, and 16 Mbps upstream. How much traffic throughput can a given section of coax/DOCSIS3 network support if a large percentage of people actually start using their upstream for more than a tiny percentage of the time? in terms of future upgrade path and ultimate life span of the outside plant cable network, singlemode fiber to the home wins every time... one theory as to why the speed offerings from click/rainier connect are so poor is that the coax plant has not been subdivided into small enough sections to actually support anything like gigabit to the consumer. now this would require going through and re-engineering it, breaking parts of the network apart physically, and installing new small CMTS in neighborhood aggregation points.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    > For instance, I just picked a random house for sale in Tacoma and tried pricing Internet for new customers from Xfinity (Comcast) and Rainier Connect (former Click). Xfinity offered 1 Gigabit (fine print says 940 Mbps) downloads for $84.99/month on a 1-year contract, increasing to $100 after the contract term. Rainier Connect's fastest offering was only 100 Mbps and cost $104.95/month - pay more to get one-tenth the speed And it does not mention upload bandwidth anywhere because it will be a tiny amount split between tons of houses and the latency will be terrible compared to domestic fiber. Not to mention Comcast is probably over provisioning by a ton and selling you “1,000” Mbps “burst” speeds for 5 min or something while they slow everyone else in the neighborhood down. I’ve learned from plenty of experience to never trust non fiber to the home marketing numbers. Coax is obviously a much inferior technology.

walrus01 5y ago

Click was built as a coaxial copper last mile network - not comparable in performance to any new build fiber based efforts in the years 2016 and later. In industry terms, it was best charitably described as "HFC" - hybrid fiber/coax, meaning they would have some small amount of fiber to the network node locations of the CMTS, but the actual houses were all served over copper.

hyperrail 5y ago
I think we both agree on this, but in case not: I don't think Click's uncompetitiveness was due to inherent limitations of hybrid fiber/coax. These days, cable TV companies routinely sell gigabit or near-gigabit download speeds to their HFC-network customers. Yet Click doesn't sell more than 100 Mbps even now. Click's financial problems may or may not have started because they stopped being competitive - perhaps the causation went the other way - but that failure to change certainly didn't help. For instance, I just picked a random house for sale in Tacoma and tried pricing Internet for new customers from Xfinity (Comcast) and Rainier Connect (former Click). Xfinity offered 1 Gigabit (fine print says 940 Mbps) downloads for $84.99/month on a 1-year contract, increasing to $100 after the contract term. Rainier Connect's fastest offering was only 100 Mbps and cost $104.95/month - pay more to get one-tenth the speed. (These rates aren't exactly comparable, though I think they are still roughly so. In particular, Xfinity has a 1.2 TB monthly data limit, while it's not clear whether former-Click customers at Rainier have one. Click did impose a < 1 TB monthly data cap. [1]) The most silly thing about this exercise is that if you look at Rainier's rates in Puyallup [2], which is not a former Click Network location, you see that they definitely sell gigabit to some customers for only $80 - but apparently not in Tacoma. [1] Rainier posts its own usage policy and Click's policy as separate webpages: https://www.rainierconnect.com/rainier-connect-internet-acceptable-use-policy https://www.rainierconnect.com/rainier-connect-internet-acce... ; https://www.rainierconnect.com/click-network-internet-acceptable-use-policy https://www.rainierconnect.com/click-network-internet-accept... [2] https://www.rainierconnect.com/residential/internet#puyallup-graham-spanaway https://www.rainierconnect.com/residential/internet#puyallup...
- walrus01 5y ago
  > These days, cable TV companies routinely sell gigabit or near-gigabit download speeds to their HFC-network customers. but ultimately coax is polishing the brass doorknobs on the titanic. gigabit down, yes, but at what contention ratio? and how many upstream channels are bonded for a reasonable upstream speed? It's not uncommon to see something like a comcast setup that is 800 Mbps down, and 16 Mbps upstream. How much traffic throughput can a given section of coax/DOCSIS3 network support if a large percentage of people actually start using their upstream for more than a tiny percentage of the time? in terms of future upgrade path and ultimate life span of the outside plant cable network, singlemode fiber to the home wins every time... one theory as to why the speed offerings from click/rainier connect are so poor is that the coax plant has not been subdivided into small enough sections to actually support anything like gigabit to the consumer. now this would require going through and re-engineering it, breaking parts of the network apart physically, and installing new small CMTS in neighborhood aggregation points.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  > For instance, I just picked a random house for sale in Tacoma and tried pricing Internet for new customers from Xfinity (Comcast) and Rainier Connect (former Click). Xfinity offered 1 Gigabit (fine print says 940 Mbps) downloads for $84.99/month on a 1-year contract, increasing to $100 after the contract term. Rainier Connect's fastest offering was only 100 Mbps and cost $104.95/month - pay more to get one-tenth the speed And it does not mention upload bandwidth anywhere because it will be a tiny amount split between tons of houses and the latency will be terrible compared to domestic fiber. Not to mention Comcast is probably over provisioning by a ton and selling you “1,000” Mbps “burst” speeds for 5 min or something while they slow everyone else in the neighborhood down. I’ve learned from plenty of experience to never trust non fiber to the home marketing numbers. Coax is obviously a much inferior technology.