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So, the exact same situation as the US? Are municipal ISPs legal? Do they pull the same trick of begging for government money to build rural infrastructure and

by t-3 4y ago

So, the exact same situation as the US? Are municipal ISPs legal? Do they pull the same trick of begging for government money to build rural infrastructure and then never build anything?

thayne 4y ago
Not exactly the same. In the US, there are multiple Cable and Phone companies, but they basically carve up the country into regions, so they don't compete with each other in the same region. And in the US the cable/phone companies typically sell directly to consumers rather than having an intermediate ISPs that rent the infrastructure. But there are some similarities, and from the original article it sounds like the infrastructure ISPs want to be more like the US.
- kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
  DSL service in the US can be provided by independent ISPs. The telcos killed them off by letting their copper wires rot so useful broadband isn't achievable.
  - zekica 4y ago
    DLS on loops longer than 1000ft/300m is not competitive at all today. 1000ft can give you 70/20Mbps with VDSL2 (dedicated bandwidth of 17MHz) or 120/40Mbps with VDSL2 vectoring (dedicated bandwidth of 34MHz). The second option requires and uses much more electricity in the street cabinet. Neither option compares to DOCSIS 3.0 (no requirement to update splitters), DOCSIS 3.1 (requires updated splitters in the networks) (shared bandwidth up to 2GHz) and those won't be able to compete with Fiber's shared or dedicated 1THz+ bandwidth.
rstat1 4y ago
>Are municipal ISPs legal? Depends on the state. In mine (NC), they aren't not unless you had one before the telcos bribed the General Assembly to pass their build outlawing it. They're legal in a fair few of the states out west. There's one in Utah called Utopia which is a grouping of 11 cities that even provides a 10gbps service.
randomdata 4y ago
> Are municipal ISPs legal? Most certainly. Tbaytel, Bruce Telecom, and CityWest are municipally owned. Sasktel, provincially. There are also a number of cooperatives, which has proven to be a nice model as well. My family farm in Canada is connected with fibre, offering gigabit service, by one of those co-ops. Canada's rural internet landscape is half decent as the big players never established themselves there. > Do they pull the same trick of begging for government money to build rural infrastructure and then never build anything? Yes, there are some known instances of that.
bregma 4y ago
Municipal ISPs are completely legal, but it gets complicated. Where I live (rural area), a private ISP covers the county with fixed wireless and competes with a national ISP that does the same but with satellite for infill where there is no tower coverage. The various levels of government announced plans for massive funding to provide "high speed" internet everywhere, and Bell manages to be the only qualifier for our county, taking the entire subsidy to the tune of millions of dollars. They still do not provide fixed wireless service to this day but they do continue to provide backbone and peering to the other ISPs. Eventually, and unreliably.

by t-3 4y ago

So, the exact same situation as the US? Are municipal ISPs legal? Do they pull the same trick of begging for government money to build rural infrastructure and then never build anything?

thayne 4y ago

Not exactly the same. In the US, there are multiple Cable and Phone companies, but they basically carve up the country into regions, so they don't compete with each other in the same region. And in the US the cable/phone companies typically sell directly to consumers rather than having an intermediate ISPs that rent the infrastructure. But there are some similarities, and from the original article it sounds like the infrastructure ISPs want to be more like the US.

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
DSL service in the US can be provided by independent ISPs. The telcos killed them off by letting their copper wires rot so useful broadband isn't achievable.
- zekica 4y ago
  DLS on loops longer than 1000ft/300m is not competitive at all today. 1000ft can give you 70/20Mbps with VDSL2 (dedicated bandwidth of 17MHz) or 120/40Mbps with VDSL2 vectoring (dedicated bandwidth of 34MHz). The second option requires and uses much more electricity in the street cabinet. Neither option compares to DOCSIS 3.0 (no requirement to update splitters), DOCSIS 3.1 (requires updated splitters in the networks) (shared bandwidth up to 2GHz) and those won't be able to compete with Fiber's shared or dedicated 1THz+ bandwidth.

rstat1 4y ago

>Are municipal ISPs legal? Depends on the state. In mine (NC), they aren't not unless you had one before the telcos bribed the General Assembly to pass their build outlawing it. They're legal in a fair few of the states out west. There's one in Utah called Utopia which is a grouping of 11 cities that even provides a 10gbps service.

randomdata 4y ago

> Are municipal ISPs legal? Most certainly. Tbaytel, Bruce Telecom, and CityWest are municipally owned. Sasktel, provincially. There are also a number of cooperatives, which has proven to be a nice model as well. My family farm in Canada is connected with fibre, offering gigabit service, by one of those co-ops. Canada's rural internet landscape is half decent as the big players never established themselves there. > Do they pull the same trick of begging for government money to build rural infrastructure and then never build anything? Yes, there are some known instances of that.

bregma 4y ago

Municipal ISPs are completely legal, but it gets complicated. Where I live (rural area), a private ISP covers the county with fixed wireless and competes with a national ISP that does the same but with satellite for infill where there is no tower coverage. The various levels of government announced plans for massive funding to provide "high speed" internet everywhere, and Bell manages to be the only qualifier for our county, taking the entire subsidy to the tune of millions of dollars. They still do not provide fixed wireless service to this day but they do continue to provide backbone and peering to the other ISPs. Eventually, and unreliably.