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.'"
No, but (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:More info (Score:5, Insightful)
Everyone bitches about Comcast's service, but then isn't willing to pay for quality service. We shouldn't be surprised that we're always in a race to the bottom.
Re:Government tax theft! (Score:5, Insightful)
Some (few) things are best provided in a monopolistic environment. Utilities (like power) and infrastructure (like this) are typically in that category. However, that's best in a public monopoly, not a for-profit, private monopoly.
Re:More info (Score:1, Insightful)
And Comcast's metrics are bullshit; you'll be lucky to pull in half of that. Fucking PowerBoost gimmick.
Re:More info (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Awesome.. (Score:4, Insightful)
There's no incentive to upgrade if the consumers are forced to pick from amongst X number of similarly-priced oligopoloies. I didn't spell that right, but I don't think most people know what that word means anyway so fuck it.
Anyway, in Canada there's not even that. I can get cable from Shaw or ADSL from Telus. Those are exactly all of my choices unless I want to go to dial-up.
Re:More info (Score:5, Insightful)
We, as in the USA net services, are never in a race to the bottom. We have no competition, almost all markets are locked into duopolies. You get a cable company offering, a crap DSL offering, and if you're really lucky, FiOS. There's very little impetus to upgrade service levels, when they do they're only trying to get you onto a dearer packaged deal.
A race to the bottom is when you have real competition in a market and all the companies have to actually compete for our business. That means reducing profit margins and upping service, just to stay level. That is something we will never see in the US. This is precisely why the US is tumbling down the internet performance league tables year upon year. Stop the duopoly crap and let others, including local municipalities, get involved. Only then will the consumer see a win.
Re:More info (Score:5, Insightful)
The "high" price? Only thing "high" is you. What are you smoking, that $350/mo for 1Gbit seems "high?"
Split among 10 people, that's $35 pp for 100 Mbit. How much does your cable, DSL, or fiber provider charge for 100 mbit service? Do they even offer it?
Split among 100 people, it's $3.50 pp for 10 Mbit. How much does your cable, DSL or fiber provider charge for 10 mbit service?
This service is almost unbelievably cheap!
Re:More info (Score:3, Insightful)
a crap DSL offering
What makes DSL "crap"? It's usually cheaper than cable and if the ISP knows their stuff you'll always get what you pay for. When I had Verizon DSL I got 100% of my bandwidth 24/7. By contrast, I've never been able to peg Roadrunner except at 3am. Their "turbo" tier is a joke too -- I can't peg the standard tier during normal hours, why the hell would I pay more money to get more bandwidth I can only use at 3am?
DSL might be slower than cable but it's a perfectly viable option for many (most?) people.
Re:More info (Score:1, Insightful)
There's no point to letting others get involved because the cost of entry is too high. In this economy, it's probably too high for most municipalities as well.
What we really need to do is bite the bullet and have the government lay fiber to every house in the area. If Comcast (or whoever else) wants to offer service, they pay the government to use the fiber and for space in the POPs. The POPs are all peered with the usual Internet backbones, and Comcast would pay to use those as well. (Probably they'd pay per-subscriber on one end and regular 95th percentile bandwidth on the other.) The government then charges cost plus some extra which it can use for equipment upgrades and that sort of thing. Everyone pays the same rates.
Problem is how to get there from here. The established players would doubtless scream bloody murder. Probably the best approach would be simply to buy the infrastructure from the aforementioned established players at, say, a 50% premium. The cost would be no longer having the ability to set rates, but... it might be enough money to induce CEOs and board members to vote for the plan in the hopes that they'd be able to get out with their money before any of the other shareholders raised a big enough stink. It would mean making the government -- and it would pretty much have to be the Feds, here -- a party to, in essence, the defrauding of millions of shareholders, though. So while it might be the "best" approach in the sense that it's the least unlikely to happen, it's certainly not best in any other sense.
Re:The price is actually pretty nice (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't believe the ignorance of some people on slashdot to think that you could run a 1gbps service on a T1.
I on the other CAN believe the ignorance of people on Slashdot. Just because they have access to information doesn't mean they understand it.
Re:Gigabit? That's even faster than ... (Score:1, Insightful)
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a train filled with hard drives.
Re:The price is actually pretty nice (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The price is actually pretty nice (Score:3, Insightful)
" If only one user in three will misuse the line, but the other two use it reasonably, they will still come out with a profit."
What do you mean, "misuse"? Using it as per the contract conditions is "misuse" in your book?
But there is a "catch": at $350/month (almost) no one is going to use it. So even if it produces slight loses they can go to the marketing budget: "Electric Power Board of Chattanooga: the fastest Internet connection you home can get".
Even better. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's actually even better than 100Mbps per person sharing it, as long as each of the 10 persons uses it in a reasonably intermittent fashion. Everybody can get more than their share some of the time as long as nobody gets their whole share all the time.
Re:More info (Score:3, Insightful)