Gigabit Speeds At Home In the US 249
An anonymous reader writes "The Electric Power Board of Chattanooga is preparing to offer 1 Gigabit speeds at home by the end of the year. 'The city-owned utility announced today it will boost its broadband service to 1 Gigabit throughout its service territory by the end of 2010. Such a connection will be 200 times faster than the average broadband speed in America and the fastest of any US city.' The NY Times reports that the service will cost $350 per month. 'Mr. DePriest of EPB does not expect brisk demand for the one-gigabit service anytime soon. So why offer it? "The simple answer is because we can," he said.'"
More info (Score:4, Informative)
Re:More info (Score:5, Informative)
Yet the price isn't bad (Score:3, Informative)
Re:"At home" (Score:4, Informative)
Where I live 400Mbit is about $1000/month (that has to be adjusted for the fact that the price and salary levels here are generally a fair bit above the US, but still). The 1000 Mbit option is "call us for price". I think you'd better be sitting down if making that call for a quote.
The only consolation is that we don't oversubscribe over here. You get what you pay for. But boy, do you ever pay.
Re:More info (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The price is actually pretty nice (Score:4, Informative)
I know nothing about it, but my guess is that it's only 1 Gbps to the router room of the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga. From there it presumably rides their T1 to the Internet. (Or whatever they have.) Also, it's probably 1 Gbps download / 128 Kbps upload.
It's symmetrical. https://epbfi.com/you-pick/#/fi-speed-internet-1000 [epbfi.com]
Re:More info (Score:3, Informative)
You get a cable company offering, a crap DSL offering,
Japan is the world's second fastest country (over 10 Mbit/s average), and everyone is wired with this "crap DSL" of which you speak. Some have upgraded to Fiber, but DSL is the dominant techology.
Re:The price is actually pretty nice (Score:4, Informative)
From there it presumably rides their T1 to the Internet. (Or whatever they have.)
1992 called...
Re:Yet the price isn't bad (Score:2, Informative)
Yea, its a great idea till you realize they probably don't have more than 200GB/s total data transfer capability out of their organizations infrastructure.
So awesome, you and your friends can split a 1GB connection to the power companies network, where you'll be sharing 200GB of their bandwidth between several thousand other 1GB connections.
This isn't a $350 for 1GB of available bandwidth all the time. Its $350 for bursting up to 1GB assuming they have the external bandwidth available, which will not happen very often if ever in the beginning and will certainly get worse as time goes on.
You'll get 1GB rates sometimes ... and you'll pay extra after 100GB of transfer, effectively making all that bandwidth just pointless in practice and little more than great marketing.
They provide 1GB connections because 'they can' and 'it makes a great thing to put on marketing materials' to suck people from the one other option in town (DSL probably), but you won't actually be able to use 1GB/s of bandwidth very often, its just not cost effective at that bandwidth.
Re:The price is actually pretty nice (Score:3, Informative)
My thoughts exactly. I don't think I've seen a T1 link in 15 years.
Backbones run at substantially higher speeds - I recall from an exchange that most backbones are 560mbps fibre usually grouped in to 2, 4, 8, or 16 links.
I can't believe the ignorance of some people on slashdot to think that you could run a 1gbps service on a T1.
Re:The price is actually pretty nice (Score:3, Informative)
You said misuse the line. I presume by misuse you mean attempting to do malicious things other than peer to peer?
No. Not at all. Misuse is almost impossible, but an example could be running your new YouTube adult videoservice on it. Or run your own ISP and resell the bandwidth to 10,000 other people.
Since they are selling below cost, they are not expecting you to use the line 100% 24/7. They are expecting normal usage from an individual, family or small business (not hosting).
If you keep to that usage pattern, even if you do bittorrent 24/7, they will make a ton of money. Because you will not be using that gigabit of bandwidth for more than a very small fraction of the time.
Re:The price is actually pretty nice (Score:4, Informative)
You'd be wrong. The Electric Power Board of Chattanooga is not financed by the city government, it's actually a co-op under the authority of the TVA. The TVA might have purchased it from Chattanooga, but it's independent now. And even this roll-out of infrastructure isn't being paid for by the Electric customers, the bond issued is, and it's being paid back by the services being provided.
So...it's actually kind of good for all of us who live here. It's forced Comcast and AT&T to both get on the ball, because otherwise they'd have to just throw up their hands and give up. I've seen more utility service trucks on the streets the past year than I have since the last time I was in an area hit by a hurricane.
Besides as much as the local people around here bitch about their property taxes, I know that wouldn't happen anyway.