4 ms·

It's an expectations vs reality and software engineers having no experience in real-world construction or government. What a bunch of bright-eyed internet post

It's an expectations vs reality and software engineers having no experience in real-world construction or government. What a bunch of bright-eyed internet posters think would happen: A small city somehow manages to hire a competent staff, paying under market value for talent, to expertly engineer and then construct, a brand new fiber network from scratch, that's done on-time, while buying the latest/greatest available cost effective solutions from multiple vendors, without any red tape or lawsuits, all while owning all of the infrastructure and finally providing services at amortized costs. Citizens could use the network to provide ah-hoc services to other residents and the city could use it to modernize their infrastructure and create connected cities that provide valuable information to their citizens. What happens in reality: A small city thinks they can't do any of the above so they hire a "contractor". Which somehow we've gotten into law that that must be bid on... so Comcast bids under cost to protect it's monopoly. City hires Comcast as a "contractor" to "build" a "new" network. Comcast spends most of the money by providing executives with Vegas trips and catered meetings at the golf course. Once realizing they actually need to deliver something they "leverage their existing assets" to "save money" and force everyone onto their existing cable network that gets .25mbps upload and "500mpbs" download (for 1s at a time, then throttled to 2mbps, 3.5mbps on thursdays) (still counts as broadband) , all while telling Netflix and other content providers they have to "pay to play" to send content to customers... er citizens, to "cover costs". Then, they couldn't possibly let users use their own equipment like a standard router with ethernet handoff "because security reasons" so they need to charge a $45/mo rental fee to all suckers.... er citizens, for "their safety". The city catches wind of this and Comcast promises a Certification program for routers, and "project delays" delay this for multiple years before finally it's announced but it costs $20k to have a router "certified" for your safety... all while they leave the default firmware password of "Icanthearyouoverthesoundsofthecashregisterringing" on all the "secure routers". Oh and theirs a 1gb monthly data cap because thats all anyone would ever need, according to the Comcast CEO.

exabrial 5y ago
Call me bitter, but it's happened. I think the best solution is to break these companies up the way we did with Bell. No national telecom companies, franchises, shared ownership, shared revenue, or profits. Force each company to be a local provider. Outlaw contracts for more than 6months where infrastructure is already built. Why would this work? Take what happened with Google Fiber. In KC where I live, as soon as Comcastic saw an approved "fiber hood", they blitzed the area, and I mean drenched the area, with door hangers, mailings, and other propoganda to sign up for services with 2-5 year contracts that were likely below cost. This prevented Google Fiber from recovering any investment quickly. There's no way a hometown local provider could finance such shenanigans. Creating an ISP for a single neighborhood isn't terrible expensive if there's backhaul in place. Having a plethora of choices would be good for everyone.
deepspace 5y ago
The small city where I live managed to do the first scenario just fine. They did bring in several small ISPs (large ones deliberately excluded) to provide the actual routing to the internet, but the infrastructure is city-managed, and the project was completed on time and within budget. It helps that our electorate is very progressive, and are not always pushing the City to cut expenses at all costs.

exabrial 5y ago

Call me bitter, but it's happened. I think the best solution is to break these companies up the way we did with Bell. No national telecom companies, franchises, shared ownership, shared revenue, or profits. Force each company to be a local provider. Outlaw contracts for more than 6months where infrastructure is already built. Why would this work? Take what happened with Google Fiber. In KC where I live, as soon as Comcastic saw an approved "fiber hood", they blitzed the area, and I mean drenched the area, with door hangers, mailings, and other propoganda to sign up for services with 2-5 year contracts that were likely below cost. This prevented Google Fiber from recovering any investment quickly. There's no way a hometown local provider could finance such shenanigans. Creating an ISP for a single neighborhood isn't terrible expensive if there's backhaul in place. Having a plethora of choices would be good for everyone.

deepspace 5y ago

The small city where I live managed to do the first scenario just fine. They did bring in several small ISPs (large ones deliberately excluded) to provide the actual routing to the internet, but the infrastructure is city-managed, and the project was completed on time and within budget. It helps that our electorate is very progressive, and are not always pushing the City to cut expenses at all costs.