8 ms·

Fed up with slow and pricey Internet, cities start demanding gigabit fiber

• ihsw 13y ago
  Maybe the municipalities should start asking Google why they were rejected. I'm extremely skeptical that cities are opening up to competitive fiber offerings -- a lot of it is political wrangling that most aren't even willing to deal with. Cut the red tape and they will come. Fuck the exclusivity wheeling and dealing.
  • subway 13y ago
    My understanding of the Louisville RFI is that it is to be an open access network. The prospect of a local fiber plant providing last mile connectivity between various ISPs and customers excites me greatly.
• Amadou 13y ago
  "The old model was 'everybody has to have service,' which is where cable and telephone came from," Smith said. "This is a model that says, 'we can be patient while demand builds.' We'd like to see some of our most disadvantaged served, but we're not starting out with 'everybody must get service immediately.'" My understanding is that Chattanooga's gigabit service was rolled out as quickly as they could as limited by funding to everyone within the service area. My understanding is that they are the only city in the US with such complete gigabit coverage. I've read that they are now selling consulting services to other communities looking to do gigabit rollouts. I'd like to know what their take is on that philosophy since it seems to be the opposite of what they did and they seem to be significantly exceeding revenue targets. http://www.chattanoogan.com/2013/9/17/259342/EPB-Increasing-Fiber-Optic-Speeds.aspx http://www.chattanoogan.com/2013/9/17/259342/EPB-Increasing-...
  • crymer11 13y ago
    From what I recall, EPB initially planned for the fiber network to be used for their smart grid, which encompasses all of their service area, and then after that was built, they realized they had the capacity to run an ISP. They had the benefit of much of the infrastructure needed to deploy the fiber network already in place and not having to deal with access rights.
• HeyLaughingBoy 13y ago
  Gigabit! I only dream of that. I'm happy that my ISP claims I can get 30 MBps here 10 miles outside town.
• beachstartup 13y ago
  here's some data points: we're located in santa monica / west LA, in the middle of town, and our building had, until last year, had the following options for bandwidth: * adsl ... $40/month for 3/.25 megabit * EoC (sdsl) ... $1500/month for 15/15 megabit * Bonded T1 / T3 ... insanely expensive. Time warner business class moved in with fiber to the building and now we have: * cable modem over coax muxed into fiber switch @ roughly $300/month for consumer-level speeds (30/5 megabit). which is what we use right now. * Fiber to fiber (ethernet switch on customer premises): 10/10 megabit starting @ $1300/month (worse than EoC above) 40/40 megabit $2400/month 1gbps/1gbps for $14,000/month (yes $14 THOUSAND/month. we pay $400/month at the datacenter for each of our 1gbit/1gbit links w/ a 100 megabit commitment.
  • adrr 13y ago
    Those time warner prices are cheap. I was quoted $6500/m for 50/50 for a Venice based install. There was already a fiber drop at our building from them, so there was no install cost for TimeWarner.
    • deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  • aaron42net 13y ago
    If you are in Santa Monica City proper, Santa Monica has a not-well-known fiber network: http://gismap.santa-monica.org/GISMaps/pdf/smFiberOpticsZoning.pdf http://gismap.santa-monica.org/GISMaps/pdf/smFiberOpticsZoni... TrueCar uses the city's fiber network to connects between its buildings with dark fiber, get a gigabit cross-connect to its colo in downtown LA, and 500 megabits of nLayer bandwidth to the offices. The service has been fantastic and is cheaper by far than anything else we found. See http://www.smgov.net/departments/isd/smcitynet.aspx http://www.smgov.net/departments/isd/smcitynet.aspx for contact info.
    • beachstartup 13y ago
      unfortunately, we are literally on the other street of the city limit (centinela).
• massysett 13y ago
  Genuine question: why the obsession with gigabit? What applications demand it?
  • teddyh 13y ago
    What application would demand more than 640k of RAM? Or, to quote: “One day sir, you may tax it.”.
    • smoyer 13y ago
      I had an Apple IIe (with 64KB of RAM) when the PC came out (with 640KB of RAM) and I also once stated "what is anyone going to do with that much RAM?" - It sounds silly now, but it taught me a lesson about automatically rejecting new technologies and 5 years later I was part of the company who was first to send CATV signals over fiber optics.
  • wmf 13y ago
    What I see is an obsession with getting it for no marginal cost. If you're already paying $70/month for 20 Mbps, of course you wouldn't turn down gigabit for the same price (even if Web pages or Netflix won't load any faster).
  • alecco 13y ago
    Vídeos, videoconferencing, uploading data, backups, peer to peer legal/other. Usually the proportions are 8mbit downlink and 100k uplink. Sharing data from nodes is hard.
  • foobarqux 13y ago
    Cloud sync for your entire hard drive. Thin clients. Faster spin up of environments that are sourced from the Internet (virtual machine configuration, bundle install, docker images). High(er) definition video. Multi-party video conferencing.
  • wmeredith 13y ago
    Streaming 3D in 4k would use it. Removing bottlenecks makes things possible.
• breckinloggins 13y ago
  As an Aggie and former Bryan / College Station resident (of 15 years), it's fantastic to see them taking a lead on this. BCS has always been pretty good for high speed internet (I had 2Mbps cable in 1999), but the price disparity between residential and business is insane, and speed increases have stalled somewhat in recent years. Suddenlink is pretty good, but that area has been the target of rather frequent cable company acquisitions and mergers (TCA -> Cox -> Suddenlink just while I was there), so it's not a foregone conclusion that things will stay "ok". I love living in SF, but I have to admit I kind of like the idea that my "little Texas town" will probably get gigabit and a sensible fiber infrastructure long before SF or most parts of Silicon Valley will.
• AdamFernandez 13y ago
  I'm all for the market in most instances, but I really hope Internet access starts to be treated like a utility in the United States. It is approaching the necessity of electricity a century ago (or water, gas, roadways, etc.) The market had zero incentive to invest so heavily in these utilities for such a drawn out return before the government financed the basic infrastructure. I know the analogy isn't perfect for a few reasons, but imagine where we would be if all these other necessities were privatized?
  • smoyer 13y ago
    Actually, the USF fee that's assessed on every phone bill you pay (in the U.S.) was originally supposed to be used to connect schools, libraries and municipal buildings both rural and urban areas with the understanding that once the fiber capacity was in place to service those institutions, the providers would supplement their income by connecting businesses and private residences. In the mid-to-late '90s, I was part of a team that built significant fiber-based distance learning systems in Kansas, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Texas and smaller installations in other states. The schools, a local fiber provider and our company cooperated to submit the grant proposal and the USF funds ended up offsetting enough of the equipment/infrastructure costs that the schools and SP could agree on a rate that the schools could afford. The last of our systems (that I was involved with) was installed in about 2000 but stopped the organization overseeing those services held applications for (from memory) about 18 months. I'm not aware of how the funds are distributed now (if at all) but I know for a while some of the schools we'd connected complained that they were no longer receiving their subsidies. I do know that the fee remained on my telephone bill. So the question is "why didn't the infrastructure installed using USF funds lead to lower prices for consumers?". I think the answer is that Internet pricing for home service in the U.S. is too lucrative - no guarantees on service (yes, you're quoted maximum through-puts but those can be affected by your neighbors) and relatively large bills. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Service_Fund http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Service_Fund
    • SystemOut 13y ago
      The USF funds are distributed (at least partially) through the e-rate program that school districts can use to help fund communication infrastructure. The amount varies but is primarily influenced by how "poor" the district is. I've been involved with some districts in some extremely poor areas that had full gigabit (or more) fiber links between their schools and the district office and then out to the Internet. They get this money by applying through the e-rate grant process. I know of cases where the funding paid for 90% of the cost of installation.
• VladRussian2 13y ago
  having the same DSL connection over recent several years my price has gradually risen from $26 to $40 per month. I'd say something is really wrong with a technology sector if it has such negative price/performance dynamics.
• wmeredith 13y ago
  I would love me some gigabit. I'm in Independence, MO, just east of Kansas City, MO. I just switched to Comcast (puke) for $50/month for 50mbps. I was using ATT Uverse where I was paying $60/month for 16mbps (and actually getting 2mbps, hence the switch). Meanwhile, 10 miles West in KC they're paying Google $120 for gigabit + cable. I wish I could get in on that.
• Amadou 13y ago
  It never hurts to revisit this article: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026...
• jsmeaton 13y ago
  And in Australia we were getting gigabit (rollout was happening), then a new government came to power and said we don't need it, and that copper is fine. http://howfastisthenbn.com.au/ http://howfastisthenbn.com.au/
• ffrryuu 13y ago
  Much like basic wage, gigabit fiber is a universal human right.
• blisterpeanuts 13y ago
  Once gigabit is in perhaps 25% of homes and businesses, everyone else will want it, too, and a tipping point will have been reached. I'm guessing it will take that large a market for the really cool apps to become practical and well known: remote desktops and thin clients that serve up high def TV/movies and real-time high quality video telephone (finally). This will be when television and computers finally converge and we will stop thinking of them as separate and different products. I have to admire Google. They not only envisioned this, but (as usual) very smartly went about implementing a demo. The "fiberhood" approach makes sense; it's the right way to roll out the service (or any non-essential service, really). Make money on neighborhood #1, and that pays for the rollout to neighborhood #2, and so forth. The whole "either everyone gets it or no one gets it" approach goes out the window, and suddenly, every town wants it. Certainly it will have to be provided to "under-served" areas but the important thing is for there to be a solid business model, preferably with competing providers, else all the problems of a utility-quasi-monopoly come into play: indifferent customer service and support, uneven service quality, etc. I can't wait until this comes to my town, just outside of Boston, but for various reasons I suspect Mass. will be among the last places to get it. Anyway--congratulations to those who have it, and just don't rub it in!!
• Hydraulix989 13y ago
  When I was in Seattle, I had CondoInternet fiber which offered 100 mbps for $60/mo and gigabit for $120/mo. Then I moved to Santa Clara, and my options are Comcast (currently paying for $50/mo for 50 mbps and actually receiving 10 mbps) or 24 mbps AT&T Uverse for $60/mo. Why does Silicon Valley, of all places, have such slow and anachronistic Internet options?
• salient 13y ago
  I hope this won't turn into something like: "We offer Gigabit fiber*. Come and get it!" Footnote: Speeds may get no higher than 200 Mbps most of the time. If these investments are going to last for another decade, they need to offer at least 1 Gbps to everyone.
• azatris 13y ago
  Is it really all about the speed race? Why don't I ever hear about quality of service, smaller latencies, etc? Is it because it is less marketable? I am sure ISPs can ultimately do something about it. If I am naïve, then please guide me.
• snarfy 13y ago
  The electric grid was built on subsidized money and is regulated as a natural monopoly. A large part of that grid is made up of utility poles. If you want to be a cable provider or ISP, the easiest way is to put your lines on those utility poles. They are already carrying power lines to people's homes any way. Run some cables and you can avoid the extremely expensive proposition of building secondary infrastructure to support more cables running to houses. When the local municipalities set up agreements with the cable providers, a part of that agreement states nobody else can be on the utility pole. This is why there is a monopoly. If cities are really fed up with pricey internet, they need to re-evaluate these agreements they've made with the all the incumbents.