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The rural county I grew up in got tired of empty promises and with cash from the Obama administration has started rolling out fiber county wide. You can get gig

by a2tech 3y ago

The rural county I grew up in got tired of empty promises and with cash from the Obama administration has started rolling out fiber county wide. You can get gigabit fiber for a reasonable cost 10 miles from the nearest town and down semi maintained dirt roads. Any place the electrical lines go.

t3rabytes 3y ago
It works (and is the best option bar-none) until the big few lobby the state to outright ban municipal ISPs as happened in my state (NC). So frustrating.
- uberman 3y ago
  While simultaneously saying broadband is available in your area because one house in the entire census track has it. We challenged the agreement with the town and they told us that we techmically had fiber service but it would cost 50k to activate it since they had to run fiber from their pop. Coupled with informing us that once we did so, our neighbors could then hook up for 49 bucks.
  - chimeracoder 3y ago
    > We challenged the agreement with the town and they told us that we techmically had fiber service but it would cost 50k to activate it since they had to run fiber from their pop. Coupled with informing us that once we did so, our neighbors could then hook up for 49 bucks. If only there were a way to spread that cost equally among the people who would benefit from it, and a legal structure for collecting that payment, representing the interests of the constituent people, and ensuring that the telco held up its end of the arrangement!
- AzzyHN 3y ago
  It baffles me that people are in support of that kind of thing. I doubt the majority of voters are, but the fact that anybody would say "yeah we should have our utilities privately managed for profit" is absurd
  - znkynz 3y ago
    The question that would be asked, is "do you want the government subsidising and disorting the internet market"
    - mjevans 3y ago
      Unlike: Do you want the government paving roads for you to drive on?
    - chimeracoder 3y ago
      > The question that would be asked, is "do you want the government subsidising and disorting the internet market" The other question that would be asked is, perhaps less explictly, is "do you want to drive [employer of X,000 jobs in the region] out of the state?". It doesn't matter if those jobs would be replaced by superior jobs at a publicly-operated telco, or if some of those jobs are complete bloat (and therefore paid for by inflated utility bills among all subscribers). Nobody wants to engage in that argument; it's a losing battle. Yes, there's an easy answer to that, but when faced with the option of a short-term sacrifice in exchange for a long-term collective gain, people invariably opt not to take it.
solardev 3y ago
Was your county able to get muni broadband? How did you fight the big companies?
ProllyInfamous 3y ago
Any electricity customer in EPB's jurisdiction can get 20gbps (synchronus) fiber to their door — this includes dead-end dirt roads beyond multiple one-lane bridges (i.e. "out in the sticks"). 300mbps is only $59 (including all fees). More publicly-owned utilities should exist, similar to Chattanooga/Hamilton County, Tennessee.
mdasen 3y ago
Massachusetts created a program to provide middle-mile connectivity in the rural western part of the state and then towns hooked up the last mile. A lot of them already had municipal electric companies who did it or they partnered with a small company for the last mile stuff. It's not cheap, but it's definitely reasonably priced. It's $75/mo for gigabit with a 2Gbps backhaul to the wider internet serving around 500-600 homes in my friend's town. And that's not some intro rate where it skyrockets once the promo expires so it's actually reasonable. The town has a much higher broadband adoption rate than the US as a whole despite being sparsely populated (under 100 people per square mile). It's also not a rich area with per-capita income under $32k. In the US, 71% of households have wired broadband, 89% in Massachusetts, and 93% in his town. So I'd say it's a pretty great success. Since the article talks about South Carolina, I'll note that SC is the 7th lowest for households with broadband at 83% (that includes wired, wireless, and satellite). AL, WV, LA, AR, NM, MS round out the bottom 7 (MS being bottom). Massachusetts is the 9th highest with the top 8 being WA, CO, UT, CA, NJ, NH, OR, MD (WA highest).
- thfuran 3y ago
  >gigabit with a 2Gbps backhaul to the wider internet serving around 500-600 homes in my friend's town That sounds rather oversubscribed.
  - nucleardog 3y ago
    Yeah 3mbit/household doesn’t really sound great here unless your other options are even more limited. I don’t know what typical over subscription rates look like, but 20% of the homes watching Netflix at once saturating the entire town’s link sounds… high. I’m in the boonies and the DSL connection I had as a redundancy for a time was 7mbit down, and that’s by far the slowest of the options available to me.
    - ftth_finland 3y ago
      3 Mbps/household is right about the lower bound for average Internet usage. It's not optimal, especially going forward, but it's fine for now. Upping those 2G backhauls to 10G is simple and cheap, however.

by a2tech 3y ago

t3rabytes 3y ago

It works (and is the best option bar-none) until the big few lobby the state to outright ban municipal ISPs as happened in my state (NC). So frustrating.

uberman 3y ago
While simultaneously saying broadband is available in your area because one house in the entire census track has it. We challenged the agreement with the town and they told us that we techmically had fiber service but it would cost 50k to activate it since they had to run fiber from their pop. Coupled with informing us that once we did so, our neighbors could then hook up for 49 bucks.
- chimeracoder 3y ago
  > We challenged the agreement with the town and they told us that we techmically had fiber service but it would cost 50k to activate it since they had to run fiber from their pop. Coupled with informing us that once we did so, our neighbors could then hook up for 49 bucks. If only there were a way to spread that cost equally among the people who would benefit from it, and a legal structure for collecting that payment, representing the interests of the constituent people, and ensuring that the telco held up its end of the arrangement!
AzzyHN 3y ago
It baffles me that people are in support of that kind of thing. I doubt the majority of voters are, but the fact that anybody would say "yeah we should have our utilities privately managed for profit" is absurd
- znkynz 3y ago
  The question that would be asked, is "do you want the government subsidising and disorting the internet market"
  - mjevans 3y ago
    Unlike: Do you want the government paving roads for you to drive on?
  - chimeracoder 3y ago
    > The question that would be asked, is "do you want the government subsidising and disorting the internet market" The other question that would be asked is, perhaps less explictly, is "do you want to drive [employer of X,000 jobs in the region] out of the state?". It doesn't matter if those jobs would be replaced by superior jobs at a publicly-operated telco, or if some of those jobs are complete bloat (and therefore paid for by inflated utility bills among all subscribers). Nobody wants to engage in that argument; it's a losing battle. Yes, there's an easy answer to that, but when faced with the option of a short-term sacrifice in exchange for a long-term collective gain, people invariably opt not to take it.

solardev 3y ago

Was your county able to get muni broadband? How did you fight the big companies?

ProllyInfamous 3y ago

Any electricity customer in EPB's jurisdiction can get 20gbps (synchronus) fiber to their door — this includes dead-end dirt roads beyond multiple one-lane bridges (i.e. "out in the sticks"). 300mbps is only $59 (including all fees). More publicly-owned utilities should exist, similar to Chattanooga/Hamilton County, Tennessee.

mdasen 3y ago

Massachusetts created a program to provide middle-mile connectivity in the rural western part of the state and then towns hooked up the last mile. A lot of them already had municipal electric companies who did it or they partnered with a small company for the last mile stuff. It's not cheap, but it's definitely reasonably priced. It's $75/mo for gigabit with a 2Gbps backhaul to the wider internet serving around 500-600 homes in my friend's town. And that's not some intro rate where it skyrockets once the promo expires so it's actually reasonable. The town has a much higher broadband adoption rate than the US as a whole despite being sparsely populated (under 100 people per square mile). It's also not a rich area with per-capita income under $32k. In the US, 71% of households have wired broadband, 89% in Massachusetts, and 93% in his town. So I'd say it's a pretty great success. Since the article talks about South Carolina, I'll note that SC is the 7th lowest for households with broadband at 83% (that includes wired, wireless, and satellite). AL, WV, LA, AR, NM, MS round out the bottom 7 (MS being bottom). Massachusetts is the 9th highest with the top 8 being WA, CO, UT, CA, NJ, NH, OR, MD (WA highest).

thfuran 3y ago
>gigabit with a 2Gbps backhaul to the wider internet serving around 500-600 homes in my friend's town That sounds rather oversubscribed.
- nucleardog 3y ago
  Yeah 3mbit/household doesn’t really sound great here unless your other options are even more limited. I don’t know what typical over subscription rates look like, but 20% of the homes watching Netflix at once saturating the entire town’s link sounds… high. I’m in the boonies and the DSL connection I had as a redundancy for a time was 7mbit down, and that’s by far the slowest of the options available to me.
  - ftth_finland 3y ago
    3 Mbps/household is right about the lower bound for average Internet usage. It's not optimal, especially going forward, but it's fine for now. Upping those 2G backhauls to 10G is simple and cheap, however.