Small Town Builds Its Own Gigabyte Network; Cost To Citizens $57/month 269
An anonymous reader writes "On Thursday, the board of O-Net gave approval for residents to get access to [full gigabit bandwidth] for the same price that they currently pay for a guaranteed download speed of 100 megabits per second — $57 to $90 a month, depending on whether they have bundled their internet with TV and phone service. ... the town realized that it couldn't attract technology-based businesses and that bandwidth was a challenge even to ordinary businesses. It came up with a plan — it would install a fibre network throughout the town that would connect to the larger inter-community network being built by the government at that time — the Alberta Supernet."
Started out impressive (Score:5, Funny)
Headline says gigabyte network, then the summary says gigabit. Finally, it turns out it's 100mbps.
By the time you finish reading this comment it will be 56k.
Re:Started out impressive (Score:5, Informative)
The 100 megabit figure is what they currently have, not the new network.
The summary is right, but the subject (gigabyte vs gigabit) is wrong.
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In bumfuck where I live, 57 dollars a month will get you 1.5 megabits. Within a bowshot you can get medicom cable or u-verse dsl but neither reaches here.
Re: Started out impressive (Score:4, Funny)
Just attach some cat6 to the arrow before you take your bowshot.
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The summary is right, but the subject (gigabyte vs gigabit) is wrong.
Perhaps they are using a Linux box with a Gigabyte motherboard as a firewall.
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No it doesn't, it clearly states that they will receive 1000mbps for the same price as they currently pay for 100mbps.
Re:Started out impressive (Score:5, Informative)
...
You are an idiot.
The 9/10 is 9/10th of a cent. So the price is really 3.999, instead of 3.99.
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lol it is the same confusing thing they do with gasoline in the US. they try and make it look better by using some retarded system. internet companies wouldnt be able to get away with giving 5 megabits per second of the majority of the people realized that one megabit is only 1/8 of a megabyte. gasoline is the same way, they use 9/10 of a gallon to price their gasoline... everyone thinks they are getting a full gallon for the price listed, but they are only getting 9/10.
You are wrong. You are buying a full gallon, but where they get you is that while they are posting a price of $3.25 a gallon, they are actually charging you $3.259 a gallon. It's 9/10 of a cent more than the posted price. This pricing comes from the days of low priced gas when the price may have been 12.3 cents a gallon
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You won't find a gas station in the US that charges $3.00 per gallon. ALL gas stations in the US tack on 9/10 of a cent. The closest you'll get to $3.00 is $2.999. The next cent will be $3.009.
and sales tax on top of that? you guys really have ridiculous consumer protection agencies, you should just put 10% of the tsa and nsa budget on that so maybe people wouldn't flip out after living there for two years.
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In the example, $3.25 buys you ~0.9972 gallons, not 0.9.
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Network capacity has always been measured in bits and powers of 10, not 2. 100BASE-T is 100,000,000 bits per second. A full DS-1 line is 1.544 Mbps. Analog modems include rates such as 2400 bps and 33.6 Kbps.
The isn't some nefarious marketing plot. I've never heard of any network service or medium specified in bytes per second.
Stop making stuff up out of ignorance.
the Alberta Supernet (Score:5, Insightful)
Canada.. figures.... Do that in the states and get sued into bankruptcy.
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Actually you don't even need to get sued; the big ISPs in some states have lobbied for laws that disallow municipal internet after one town successfully set up a network, because I think Comcast basically refused to provide them adequate service.
Re:the Alberta Supernet (Score:5, Informative)
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That's such a gross display of corporatism.. crazy. How can companies basically make laws to benefit big business and no one has a problem with it? I'm sure the government is just looking out for the people.
This country seriously needs a reboot. The corruption is so blatant and the apathy is even worse.
City not named in Summary (Score:5, Interesting)
Olds, Alberta
(Population eight thousand)
Getting high speed internet in Alberta anywhere outside a larger population centre has been virtually impossible, so it's interesting to see rural towns take the problem by the horns on their own with success.
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Though the question will be backhaul (Score:2)
Offering gigabit to endpoints isn't that hard. Gig Ethernet is cheap these days, GPON is likewise cheap for metro type situations. However, you can hook all the endpoints up at gig but if your backhaul to other providers isn't good, then it doesn't matter. You can have "gigabit" but only to other nodes on the network.
So that'll be the real question is what kind of bandwidth they can buy to hook this network up to. That'll determine if it is really fast internet to homes and businesses or just a big LAN with
Hardly "on their own" (Score:2)
Considering this is only possible by them jacking into the (expensive, very slow to actually roll out, many years in the making) provincial government's Supernet project, I really don't think it's a case of "rural towns tak[ing] the problem by the horns on their own".
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Getting the link was the key yes, however this should serve as a model for other towns that want to get connected via Supernet.
16 TV Theme Packages (Score:3)
why can't we have something like that is usa?
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why can't we have something like that is usa?
You can. So stop whining and buy some Congressmen. If the telco's can do it, B.F. KS can do it. Right?
News From the Future... (Score:2)
Alberta Residents Complain About Internet Content Filtering Plan
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Right, with a market solution you are at least sure of not filtering....Oh wait. [slashdot.org]
Fucking libertards who always drag in their fairy-tales when this comes up. Move out of your Mom's basement into the real world, and until you do, shut up while the adults talk, OK?
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Yeah, and if you're upset tumblr did that you can go to flickr. Or photobucket. Or DeviantArt. Or imgur. Or...
If the municipal ISP starts filtering, you're pretty much SOL.
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Not really. If I go to a public library, school, etc. there's all kinds of filters in place because busybody groups vote for laws requiring them "for the childrenz". There's no similar filters on the commercial ISP access I buy at home.
The problem with making the government your ISP is that eventually pressure groups are going to begin using the political process to limit what you can and can't do on it.
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No, those exist because no one stood up to those idiots. The same busy bodies can do this to a private company as well. They try it all the damn time with TV.
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I disagree. Public resources should not be filtered. If someone is touching himself in a library arrest him for it.
From TFA.. (Score:3, Funny)
"Because we're a community-owned project we get to balance out profitability versus what's best for the community."
I'm from America, so could someone please explain to me what that last part of the sentence means. Does it have to do with Q4 fiscal projections, or stocks, or something else? I just don't understand what this whole "community" thing is.
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57$ for gibabit internet? (Score:3)
I'd still rather pay 5.70$ for 100 megabits, which would still 20 times faster than my current connection at nearly 40$ per month. Gotta love monopolies in small towns.
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It's about 20 times after than my current connection at 50 dollars a month, too (which, granted, also comes with a phone landline we didn't want, and aren't allowed to not pay for). Small town not required: I live in LA county, in one of the top 50 most populous cities in the US (though really, LA county is just one giant city anyway, certainly as far as laying cables would go.)
Lots of unused fiber (Score:5, Informative)
There are lots of towns in the US, big and small. that have un-used fiber laying around, which was installed the last time they ripped up their streets for remodel, or which was built into subdivisions as a conditions of their permitting process. Most of this is used to tie a few buildings public buildings together, or (an a sad number of cases) not used at all.
There entire counties that have fiber running to every minor town. (Google county fiber network = 14 million hits).
Most of these towns don't have fiber running everywhere. So turning it on ind the downtown core is often avoided simply because it will cause a clamor for fiber everywhere from the rest of the tax payers. Some of it has been in the ground so long nobody knows if it works or not. Since it wasn't being used, in some cities it has been damaged by construction and nobody was even aware of it. Some towns are putting up FREE PUBLIC WIFI, using their fiber. And almost as soon as it is turned on the "won't somebody think of the children" crowd shows up demanding censorship. There are a lot of political land mines to dodge when putting this stuff to use. So far too much of it sits idle.
Ashland, OR (Score:4, Informative)
Ashland, Oregon did this [ashlandfiber.net] many years ago. From what I've heard from people that live there, it's worked out well.
19th century wants their corporations back (Score:3)
Surprise, people with a common interest banding together and pooling their resources to make it happen is a model that can actually work.
Thinking about it, that's how corporations originally got started. You know, before they turned into immortal international government-corruption special interest lobby groups.
Re:bits and bytes (Score:5, Informative)
From TFA:
On Thursday, the board of O-Net gave approval for residents to get access to a full gigabit (or 1,000 megabits) per second of bandwidth
I guess it was too much to expect someone posting as AC to actually click the link in the summary.
PRIVITAZATION (Score:5, Insightful)
The boondoggle that keeps picking your pocket, on the premise that if more people are inserted as middle-men, the cost of service will go down.
"Competition in the market" is true for goods produced through labour. It does not account for structural differences in the sale of services and delivery, or in extractive "rent seeking".
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Re:PRIVITAZATION (Score:5, Insightful)
The lack of competition in the U.S. isn't due to startup costs, it's due to government granted monopolies. In most of the U.S. it's illegal for a second cable or phone company to come in and start laying lines even if they want to
Re:bits and bytes (Score:4, Insightful)
If we assume that the AC was just poking fun at the title/summary disagreement, then it was a fair comment.
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Now that I think about it, neither gave a frequency, so both can be correct. Perhaps the title was implying per eight seconds and the summary was implying per second.
Probably not though.
Re:bits and bytes (Score:5, Funny)
It says Gigabyte not gigabyte... so it must mean the network features customizable voltages and clock speeds for easy-to-use overclocking and a good warranty policy.
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The title of the summary disagrees with the summary itself, but TFA says gigabit.
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It says it costs people "the same as what they currently pay for 100mbit". So it's giving them gigabit speeds for what they used to pay for 100mbit. ($57-$90)
The summary is poor, and the headline is just plain wrong. This is fail on a level I've not seen since...
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Since the last time you read a summary on Slashdot, I assume.
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This is fail on a level I've not seen since...
the previous story?
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Except most of those customers will probably connect to their routers wirelessly using 802.11g adapters, for a whopping 54mbits to the Internet...
"I don't understand what all the fuss is about, the Internet doesn't seem any faster to me!"
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On the other hand, it is socialism. Using the government to do something for the greater good of society.
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Are you really this dumb?
Do you know what started this whole internet thing?
Nothing is stopping private companies from doing this, yet none of them do. Here in America #1 corporatist funtime land we can't get 1Gb connections for $570 let along $57.
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Nothing is stopping private companies from doing this, yet none of them do.
False [wikipedia.org].
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So 1 company does it in a couple towns, for more than $57 but less than $570 and you think that proves something?
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Do I need to quote you again?
Nothing is stopping private companies from doing this, yet none of them do.
I may be being pedantic, but you were being hyperbolic, and only one of those things is actually wrong. Besides, they're not even the only company (or, for that matter, municipality) offering 1Gbps Internet in the US (costs vary, some are as low as $35, most much higher). I'll leave the Googling up to you.
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You are right I should have figured this would happen on slashdot. I should have set the constraints better.
Now find one in a major market or available in a not extremely limited area for that kind of money.
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Go away troll.
He found one company doing something outside their normal scope. This is like saying toothpaste is free because the dentist gives you a little bit at each visit.
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Google isn't the only company doing this in the US.
Its just that we don't want to do your homework for you.
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It's probably worth pointing out at this juncture that one of the things that spurs competition, growth and new technology is the fact that stuff is sold for a profit--sometimes a really huge one.
There would be far less drive to push further and further if it were not for the profit carrot being dangled... if everyone were buying from a municipal ISP for just about break-even costs, we might end up stagnating.
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So explain that 1Gb connection they can get.
Not everyone has those same motivations. I work harder at a job that pays less than I could get elsewhere. Here I don't have politics to worry about and can curse like a sailor. I set my own hours and can work from home when I want. I have a lot of freedom in all aspects of my job. To me that is worth a lot more than money.
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COOL! Send me $500/month , for progress!
Unlike the telcos, I have no history of pocketing the money and running, so while you don't know me at all I am already a step up.
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Tell me again how private institutions invented the Internet of all things. I'm pretty sure that that is one very clear example of something that was developed by government research.
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Boy.. you must be new here. Everyone knows is was invented by Algore.
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No, it's politicians grandstanding buying things private industry has spent a trillion dollars developing. Without the latter, the former has trouble bringing you a loaf of bread.
Said over the Internet, brought to you by the US government (Internet -> ARPANET -> Department of Defense -> US government). Which is rather beside the point anyway, unless you're still fighting the ghost of early 1900s Soviet-era socialism what it means in a modern context is the government collecting taxes to provide public services which they may or may not be buying from private companies. There's no contradiction between a public road or a public hospital or a public whatever being built by pr
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My university was one of the first to get plugged into the Arpanet when it started expanding. Back then, my questions posted to the bulletin boards at the time were answered truthfully and frequently accurately. Information was accessible, there wasn't alot back then, but it could be obtained. Ftping the index.txt from a site would provide a carefully hand maintained index of what was available with a description and other relevant data.
Now if you look for something like, "nearest gas statio
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And then got trampled into the ground by large companies that do their best not to let it get more useful.
Perhaps the ball is back in government's court to push it to the next step.
Then we can let private companies have their turn.
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Who cares who owns it(well I'm sure the people of the town do), that's a distinction that drives the line between communism and other systems. Socialism is defined by the character of trying to maximize the social good of government, regardless of the common conflation between socialism and communism.
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Socialism is defined by the character of trying to maximize the social good of government, regardless of the common conflation between socialism and communism.
Baloney. Socialism is government ownership of the means of production. Period. Sometimes that works well. Sometimes it turns out bad. But to say it is "socialism" only when it turns out well, is nonsense.
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Rather than have an extended debate over an what amounted to an aside, I'll just concede the point and withdraw my original statement.
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Socialism is government ownership of the means of production.
No, you're thinking of communism.
No I am not. Socialism is an economic system. Totalitarianism is a political system. Combine the two, and you get totalitarian socialism, which is communism. Just like fascism is totalitarian capitalism, as clearly stated by the founder of Fascism, Benito Mussolini: "Fascism ... is the merger of state and corporate power."
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Is it? I can't tell if it's owned by the government or owned by the individual members of the community. (Yes, there IS a difference.)
Yea, but supposedly it's a government of, by, and for the People, so theoretically they're the same thing here in 'Merica.
Theoretically.
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Is it? I can't tell if it's owned by the government or owned by the individual members of the community. (Yes, there IS a difference.)
Yea, but supposedly it's a government of, by, and for the People, so theoretically they're the same thing here in 'Merica.
Theoretically.
...except that this small town is in Canada, not the US of A.
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Is it? I can't tell if it's owned by the government or owned by the individual members of the community. (Yes, there IS a difference.)
Yea, but supposedly it's a government of, by, and for the People, so theoretically they're the same thing here in 'Merica.
Theoretically.
...except that this small town is in Canada, not the US of A.
What, you mean we haven't annexed that territory yet? Shit, no wonder maple syrup is still so damn expensive...
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However, were this a town in the U.S. one of the telcos (or all of them) would sue repeatedly for unfair competition until the service cost $5700/customer (to account for legal fees) and then when it shut down would tell the residents not to worry, they expected to set up a 1Mbps network there within the next 30 years and meanwhile, enjoy their $9.99/month 28k dial-up.
For some reason either the state legislature, the courts, or both would buy that argument.
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However, were this a town in the U.S. one of the telcos (or all of them) would sue repeatedly for unfair competition
Not so sure that would happen.
There are a lot of cities and towns putting up free wifi networks in certain areas, simply because the have the ability to do so.
(I live in such a town, where the Public Utility District has fiber to spare and is putting up free wifi).
So far, no lawsuits. even though the fiber and the bandwidth to support it are all paid by tax dollars.
There have been court cases that have selected this issue, and municipalities and county government is free to do this.
Inevitably, free wifi wil
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The ;really good thing about the ay the country was originally designed was that it allowed for exactly this type of thing.
While the federal government had very little to do with a persons life the State and the Local Community were able to much more.
They had the ability do do many things. While the federal government guaranteed the right of the people to move freely to or away from these types of experiments.
Competition between States was a good thing.
Um, the towns that have tried to do this in the US have often fallen victim to lawsuits from private companies due to "unfair competition".
But that doesn't matter, because this town's not in the US. It's true that the way the country was originally designed allowed for exactly this type of thing. It also allows for Crown Corporations, where the people by default own stock in the incorporated entity. This leads to the public actually getting dividends and rebates when a crown corp turns a profit. It's so
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Too much government control is bad.
Too much corporate control is bad.
Now let's sprinkle in corporate control of government through lobbying dollars and astronomical consultancy fees for former government officials...
People suck.
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Re:never happen in the states (Score:5, Insightful)
No, it's because the three major providers in the U.S. sue the municipality for trying to offer what the provider refuses to do, and at a similar if not lower price. The companies claim they can't compete against the government entity.
It's like the batshit crazy ex who doesn't want to be with you but also doesn't want anyone else being with you.
Either way, you're screwed.
Re:never happen in the states (Score:4, Interesting)
I thought government was inefficient and can't do anything right? How would a super efficient private company ever have trouble competing?
These folks need to get their stories straight.
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That's always my question every time some company royally screws up. Like the plant in Texas which blew up because they lied about how much explosive stuff they had on hand or in my local area, a paving company has to go back and redo some work they did because the work wasn't up to snuff.
Every time a company screws up I say something to this effect on my local board because some guy always whines about the government screwing up and how private industry is always better.
It's like the people who espouse "Fr
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You could say the same thing about private enterprises. The bigger an organization gets, no matter government or business the less efficient it will tend to be. In my job I do a lot of "integration" with big companies, to facilitate passing data back and forth. Our timelines for these things are hours to days, depending on if they want to use our prepared systems or need more custom work. Their time lines are months to years. We also chronically find they are doing a worse job of security than we are.
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Oh, oh I know the answer to this one. What the private companies are (or rather aren't) offering is the best anyone can do under normal, fair market conditions. So if the government can do it, it's because the government is awarding it indirect subsidies and siphoning off costs to be paid with taxpayer money in some unamerican commie conspiracy to destroy private enterprise and replace it with a protectionist government monopoly. Honestly, for some it's so deeply rooted in them that if the government appear
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The companies claim they can't compete against the government entity.
This is an issue if the municipal system is subsidized with taxes, or funded through tax-backed municipal bonds, or receives special access to municipal right-of-ways, or any number of other things normal companies don't have access to. The municipality can easily undercut the competition because they don't have to pay for right-of-ways and, if all else fails, they can force people to pay for their service whether they want it or not. It's the same reason you don't see many private roads; given two otherwis
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Though for practical purposes, I find dividing by 9 tends to give more realistic numbers.
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Network or most serial PHY interfaces (e.g. Ethernet, Firewire, USB, I2C) are always specified with bit as the base units as the PHY level only worry the raw '0' or '1' and not payloads..
That's because the actual bitstream isn't really in data bytes. There can be all sorts of odd control bits and groups thereof tacked on. If you want an old-time horse-and-buggy example. remember that ASCII was originally a 7-bit code. The 8th bit was for use by hardware as a parity bit. And TTY devices often also had start and stop bits. Sometimes even 2 stop bits. So a "byte" over a modem could potentially be 11 bits long, and that's before the modem itself contributed anything.
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People with no hands? Then what's the point of Internet access?
Wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more!
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