Municipal Fiber Network Will Let Customers Switch ISPs In Seconds (arstechnica.com) 184
An anonymous reader shares an Ars Technica report: Most cities and towns that build their own broadband networks do so to solve a single problem: that residents and businesses aren't being adequately served by private cable companies and telcos. But there's more than one way to create a network and offer service, and the city of Ammon, Idaho, is deploying a model that's worth examining. Ammon has built an open access network that lets multiple private ISPs offer service to customers over city-owned fiber. The wholesale model in itself isn't unprecedented, but Ammon has also built a system in which residents will be able to sign up for an ISP -- or switch ISPs if they are dissatisfied -- almost instantly, just by visiting a city-operated website and without changing any equipment. Ammon has completed a pilot project involving 12 homes and is getting ready for construction to another 200 homes. Eventually, the city wants to wire up all of its 4,500 homes and apartment buildings, city Technology Director Bruce Patterson told Ars. Ammon has already deployed fiber to businesses in the city, and it did so without raising everybody's taxes.
Canada (Score:2, Informative)
This is desperately needed in Canada. We pay the highest internet rates in the world and changing ISP's can be a nightmare.
Re:Canada (Score:5, Funny)
Wait, what? We can change ISP's?
Re: Canada (Score:2)
While I agree that we need to do something about the high prices, I've never had any issues with switching providers.
Of course, I only have two choices, so its not exactly crowded with options. I choose soley based on price. Customer service isn't exactly an issue for me. I'm enough of a power user, I guess.
I have flip flopped 3 or 4 times in the last 10 years. My current ISP is Fiber Optic at 100Mbps Up, and 20Mbps Down for, and no data caps for $99/mo. It's pretty reasonable. Even moreso because I use it
Re: Canada (Score:2)
My providers speed should read 100Mbps Down, and 20Mbps Up. Not sure how I fsked that one up. :-)
Re: Canada (Score:2)
Sasktel in Saskatchewan. :-)
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Canadian municipalities have started to take notice. The Ammon model involves the municipality building its own fiber network for facilitating access to competing gateway providers. It's an interesting model for addressing the last-mile problem, but doesn't go far enough for communities with too few ISP's in town. Unfortunately, this is far too often the situation in smaller Canadian communities.
I think Ammon is doing great things for their citizens and businesses, but it won't be a panacea for every small
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This is exactly what I've been proposing for YEARS. Finally, someone with the guts to actually try it. HELL YEAH !
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We don't. GAS is private but regulated, not municipal.
Re: Canada (Score:3)
We have a similar model in South Africa where the incumbent telco offers DSL and fibre wholesale, their retail arm offers both standalone DSL or DSL bundled with a data account. Competitors can sell either just DSL lines or data accounts or both. Data accounts can either resell the wholesale arm's internet service, or use the "IP Connect" which is a capacity-based product providing access to the DSL network to do whatever they want with the traffic.
The first (accounting-only approach) allows the wholesale a
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Why do you need an ISP at all, then? (Score:2, Insightful)
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Usenet?
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ISPs provide usenet still?
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Tech support isn't free?
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Tech support for clients who are having problems and want to call tech support? Do you think the municipality will have a phone line when the ISPs are the one making the money?
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Who said anything about repairs or infrastructure? We're talking about over-the-phone tech support here.
Have you ever seen normal people trying to setup their computers to connect to the Internet, send email, etc? They need tech support.
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Sending e-mail? Sure, if you wanted to also offer e-mail services. Not a requirement. For that matter, who uses ISP email these days? I can count on one hand the number of @isp email addresses I've seen in the last decade.
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source to cite : NJ & NY power companies...
pole / line maintenance is shared and billed equally to all, lot's of fighting about it, but it works
consumers have a choice of whom to buy the electric from, and consumers pay a line charge.
at least that was how it was back up to 2003 ( I no longer have power from NJ )
so in your case, the 10 isp's would be in a meet-me room somewhere that belongs to the city,
the switches, pole, and fiber would be the cities issue.
Re:Why do you need an ISP at all, then? (Score:4, Interesting)
1. Last mile, connecting the users to the network
2. Edge interconnect, which routes traffic to/from end users and the backbone
3. Backbone, which connects all the ISPs
1 and 2 constitute what we colloquially refer to as the ISP. If 1 is a municipal fiber network, then that means an ISP is just an interconnect between the fiber network and the backbone?
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And in many cases, local caching servers for services like Netflix and YouTube and Akamai and so on, designed to keep the ISP's bandwidth bill under control. And in some cases, they may own big chunks of the backbone. For example, Comcast owns pipes that reach various parts of the U.S., so connections from Comcast customers might travel within the ISP's own network for a large portion of its route.
Either way, a good chunk of your monthly bill go
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Re:Why do you need an ISP at all, then? (Score:4, Informative)
That's correct. This is just last-mile infrastructure, like back in the day when you had to dial into the ISP over telephone wires not owned by the ISP. In both cases, the ISP still has to physically connect to the upstream provider miles away (this isn't cheap), configure and maintain the routing protocol (this requires technical knowledge and coordination with the upstream provider who isn't interested in talking to the end user), and pay by the gigabyte for data.
Services like e-mail and personal web space are just extras that an ISP might provide if they feel like it.
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Short answer: Dealing with customers.
If the city is only providing infrastructure then they do not need to deal with issues like billing, collections, etc. While the infrastructure costs money it is mostly an upfront cost. Sure, squirrels will do their damage and there will be money spent here or there on maintaining it, but the real headaches for offering Internet access in an ongoing fashion are the customers.
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It's important because building out last-mile infrastructure is expensive and risky compared to any other capital investment an ISP has to make. Furnishing bandwidth to a decent-sized community is cake for an ISP, and so having a municipality like Ammon bring the customer's fiber connection to the ISP's door is really gift-wrapping it.
And it makes a lot of sense, too. We've seen that ISPs are loathe to spend significant time and money building out the last-mile infrastructure, only to have to face competiti
Re:Why do you need an ISP at all, then? (Score:4, Informative)
An internet connection consists of the following:
1) The router in your home
2) The physical wire to the ISP
3) The router/hub/switch at the other end.
4) The connections, peering agreements, bandwidth purchases, etc.. the ISP has to the outside world.
5) The person you call when you have a problem.
Honestly, most of the problems I have ever had with my internet is either with #4 or #5, so this seems like a step in the right direction.
When I get ping times of 1000ms, dropped packets, slow download speeds, jitter, blocked ports, etc... it's almost always #4 and I have to call #5 to deal with it.
We have something similar in my town where a local ISP piggybacks their DSL on the local phone carrier's wire. I've heard that their connection is better but unfortunately you have to pay them AND the local phone carrier so your bill is significantly higher.
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IP management? Technical support? Secondary services, like email, or storage/backup, web hosting, voice? There's an endless list of ancillary businesses ISPs can be in besides IP dialtone.
Yes, you could buy that stuff elsewhere, but people have demonstrated a tendency to like bundles and some services (like backup or storage) may just work better when they are basically on the same wire.
The IP address part is increasingly important with static IPs becoming scarcer -- a budget ISP could be the dynamic non
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An IP address? DNS? Gateway?
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Packing too many users into shared, virtual best effort peering deals per state or city is one reason to select a better provider.
A better provider might actually have invested in their own real backhaul deals to offer much needed fast accessed other parts of the nation to totally avoid shared slow local commercial networks.
Capitalism and freedom to pay for and select a provider can be a g
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Here's my observations, as an experienced ISP CST and admin.
In the scenario of muni backbone + private provider, the ISP you choose will primarily be your BILLING SERVICE. Also, they take responsibility for customer service and technical support, they're an intermediary between you and the municipality who won't talk with you directly. A concierge. And they're likely to provide "value added" services which the other ISPs don't, and which you can't get for free. I can't think of a single thing this last coul
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I recently got fiber from a l
MDUs (Score:2)
Good luck with the Multi-Dwelling Units. You can run fiber to the building (an Optical Network Terminator (ONT)), but running it to the unit is pretty damn difficult. Most MDUs don't have conduit suitable for fiber, most just have old telephone cable (no CAT5/e/6/etc), and the cable companies just run their cable up the outside of the building and drill a hole through the walls (which is unsightly and may not be allowed by the building owner). Wireless seems to be crap in terms of delivering services to
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Good luck with the Multi-Dwelling Units. You can run fiber to the building (an Optical Network Terminator (ONT)), but running it to the unit is pretty damn difficult. Most MDUs don't have conduit suitable for fiber, most just have old telephone cable (no CAT5/e/6/etc), .
Speaking from personal experience (I wired my new house as it was being built with CAT3), you don't need CAT5 for short runs. 100BASET runs just fine over CAT3 at my house (100ft or so)
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You run Cat-5e or Cat-6 for Gigabit.
Re: MDUs (Score:2)
Live in an MDU. 8 townhouses, 4 on the north side, 4 on the south side, we each have our own yards and such, with a common hallway down the middle (with security doors on each end, and a door into each unit.
My ISP ran Fiber in 2 years ago. It took 1 day to get it into all of the units. They were pretty good about it, and did need access to each unit. They simply drilled a hole through the exterior of one of the end units (closest to the alley), then drilled a small hole and placed conduit through the connec
Re: MDUs (Score:2)
* Stupid Touchscreen *
From what I gather each unit is wired from there to have RJ45 receptacles on each floor. So when a user signs up all they need to do is bring in a modem and hook it all up.
My last apartment I don't know how they would do it, though. 32 unit, 4 floor, apartment building. We had a single copper twisted pair coming into each unit. That would be a nightmare to wire with fiber optics.
DSL (Score:2)
Good luck with the Multi-Dwelling Units. You can run fiber to the building (an Optical Network Terminator (ONT)), but running it to the unit is pretty damn difficult. Most MDUs don't have conduit suitable for fiber, most just have old telephone cable (no CAT5/e/6/etc), and the cable companies just run their cable up the outside of the building and drill a hole through the walls (which is unsightly and may not be allowed by the building owner). Wireless seems to be crap in terms of delivering services to them as well.
MDUs are hard unless they are properly wired when they are built. If someone has figured out the right approach, I'd love to know what it is. The payback on running fiber to an MDU is "Never".
Throw in a DSLAM in the building. The newer DSL gives you perfectly adequate speeds within the building unless you're moving massive datasets or non-incremental hard drive backups every day, for example. I have about 60/75 MBps and the limiting factor is probably the wireless, not the DSL connection over the POTS line. Sure, it's not giving you high-speed fiber, but it's fine for most stuff.
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Yup. That's where G.fast come into play. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Ewwwwww.... Such an ISP would lose customers so fast compared to an actual* fibre ISP here in Sweden.
*Under Swedish regulations, FTTC+DSL does not count as a fibre connection
Re:MDUs (Score:4, Informative)
Running Cat-5e or Cat-6 to each individual unit is no problem, it's the standard approach for MDUs etc here in Sweden, with one or more RJ-45's inside each unit.
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Running Cat-5e or Cat-6 to each individual unit is no problem
So how do they do it? Rip out the walls of each unit and run the fiber manually? Sounds expensive but maybe they can swing it.
Or do they run the fiber outside of the building? Or something else?
I'm very interested to hear how they do it so easily.
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Depends on the structure. Sometimes, it's external conduits, sometimes they use existing conduits for telephone or TV. And sometimes, they do it the way you suggested. It's often up to the owner to decide. In rental apartment complexes etc, the local network can often belong to the entity that owns the buildings, and the ISP's just provide administration, tech support and external connectivity.
Where I live, they use the same conduit that the cable TV proiver uses, and then break out to a RJ-45 port.
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Unfortunately, as GP implies, there's a good number of MDUs with no conduits whatsoever (caveat: anecdotal experience). I live in one, for instance, and you can see the TV coax cable stapled to the side of the building going to the different rooms of each apartment. No idea how the phone is routed - I assume they just strung it inside the wall like an electrical cable when the building was built in the 50s.
In that situation, bashing holes in the walls is about the only choice.
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It's not as if we don't have that problem either, plenty of buildings built before the 50's, a fair amount of 19th century buildings, and still some even older buildings.
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just a quick round up to help the discussion with fibre installs
http://www.thefoa.org/tech/ref... [thefoa.org]
what? that's absurd! (Score:5, Funny)
You can't just pit ISP against each other like this! How do expect companies to overcharge for services if they have to compete for customers?! Clearly these cities don't understand the nuances of capitalism! ;)
out of the ISP's hands - so what is the ISP for? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, if an ISP is only a retailer of services on the dumb pipe that everyone has access to, what is the ISP's purpose, other than billing and helping users get access to the pipe? Why not take the fiber into the city's hands to begin with?
The story here isn't that a town has made it easy for customers to switch providers with the click of a button -- it's that a city has taken the role of ISPs completely out of providing the infrastructure and removed the excuses that ISPs that their quality of delivered bandwidth per $ differs for unjustifiable reasons.
They are saying that customers don't actually want to be differentiating their choice on artificial limitations on their bandwidth quality (which should be the same for everyone). If ISPs are really competing based on other value that they add (customer service?) and not their monopoly over a public infrastructure, let them do so and see what customers actually start to choose based on.
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This also adds a single point of failure to all ISP offerings.
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This also adds a single point of failure to all ISP offerings.
True, but most areas with fiber effectively become single-supply since there's very, very little incentive to lay down a second fiber grid. At least here in Norway they'll usually get 70-90% to sign up and the other fixed offers go away since mobile broadband usually works as a temporary solution. And they certainly could do redundant connections and data centers for everything but the last leg, so one guy with a backhoe can't take out more than a small neighborhood. In practice though peering points tend t
No it doesn't (Score:2)
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As oppose to the single point of failure for all one cable offering most places have?
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It doesn't "add" anything to the situation at all. It's extraordinarily rare that a municipality allows more than one ISP to lay fiber. Even assuming they had the foresight to require the ISP allow competitors to have access to the fiber at reasonable rates, you'd still have a single point of failure. The only difference is that in this particular municipality's case, the single point is in the control of a public entity charged with keeping it running, rather than in the private hands of a private ISP with
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highly innovative! Like how most cities deal with Water and Sewer...
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"because most towns grant the franchise to dig up streets / string cable to one company only"
This hasn't been true since the early 1990s. There may not be an _economic_ incentive for a new provider to enter a market, but exclusive franchises have been banned for well over 20 years.
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And by the way, fiber is a public infrastructure generally, because most towns grant the franchise to dig up streets / string cable to one company only.
Also, (and I know I'm about to oversimplify a little, but...) there's not much point in having multiple fiber runs all throughout town, even if the town allows it. It's sort of like if you had a few different "road providers" who each had to run their roads into your neighborhood, creating separate driveways for each road. It's inefficient.
Or if you are going to run redundant lines, make it part of the same system, and design it all to provide real redundancy. Right now, businesses frequently get multip
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That's the irony of the current situation. i'm in a city where there's municipal fiber going in, and consequently comcast beat them to the punch and have 2gig service available nearly everywhere. Now ever centurytel is realizing that they need fiber if they want to compete.
In theory by the end of this year I'll have three fiber choices, each offering at least 1 gig symmetric (and i actually spotted in a locate that AT&T have fiber less than 50' from my house so that's another potential option).
Of course
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Why not take the fiber into the city's hands to begin with?
This gets around the "unfair competition" drum that the monopolistic ISP's beat on relentlessly, as well as removing the "natural monopoly" drum beat at the same time.
If the city owns the infrastructure, then the natural monopoly problem is solved: only one set of wires is run. But then there is the second solved "problem": private companies cannot argue that the city is "unfairly" competing against privately owned companies. The city is letting private companies manage and operate the service, but withou
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It's not changing ISP's that's difficult.... (Score:2)
Can't wait (Score:2)
Close but not their yet (Score:2)
This is a thick last mile with the muni building a L2 backbone. That effectively means you're stuck going through their switchgear regardless of ISP. CWDM is a far better option let the ISP's run their own switch and CPE gear and the muni deals with the cross connects and frequency assignments. Bonus points for requiring MACsec by the ISP's.
Mind you a muni might still run a L2 network it makes a lot of sense to allow ipv6 connections to schools 911 etc as well as offering lifeline internet and the like.
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What's the value of varying CPE?
I would think you would benefit from some standardization on CPE.
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If it's a requirement for the muni system you're locked into whatever the muni feels like. Great they support 1gb today but what if you want jumbo frames even QinQ(inQ) tagging? What happens when a provider wants to offer 10ge? Ethernet is currently ubiquitous and looks to stay that way what if something better comes along? An all optical L1 network can deal with any of that it does not care light within this frequency range (well defined ITU standard) with all passive devices in the muni network. You'
In related news (Score:5, Funny)
Judging by the poor quality of the cable, Comcast, Time-Warner, and AT&T have fallen under suspicion.
When questioned of their whereabouts, they could not provide any solid proof of their activities during the hours of 9 AM to 5 PM.
This is the right model (Score:2)
Mainly because it reflects the same model that cities have been in forever for the physical road network. They build the roads and everyone has equal access to them. The services provided over the road network depend on who you want to buy them from.
An open-access fiber network would be great because there's all kinds of creative uses for it, most of which stall as independent business ideas because they start or end with "Step N. Build municipal fiber network."
Such a network could get used for lots of t
Yay! What's old is new again! (Score:5, Interesting)
This is how internet service used to be! The current generation growing up just naively assumes that your local telecom company is your ISP, and can't even wrap their head around this idea that you could choose an ISP separately from the company that shows up to your front door to wire it.
This is the market solution to Network Neutrality. The "golden age" of the internet was back when the telephone companies just provided the wires, and people could sign-up for whatever ISP they wanted. Then, when telecom companies bought out the ISPs, and the two markets combined into a single vertical slice, is when the problems started. With monopoly came DNS servers that redirect you to ads, paid prioritization of traffic, no more static IP addresses, no more allowing people to run servers, etc. Network Neutrality is so much a battle about restoring the internet to the way it was. I fear it won't be successful unless we restore competition to the ISP market again.
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The regulatory infrastructure killed the DSL providers. They had to lease their lines from the telecoms, while also competing with the telecoms. They were doomed. I used one of the last ones, Cavalier Telephone, for years.
Excellent model, not new (Score:2)
A town in which I once lived built a cable TV system somewhat similarly. They contracted the building of the infrastructure and granted the builder the first year of service. After that, potential service providers (only one per year for all users; programming service plus hardware maintenance for the system) competed for the annual contract. Annual competitions meant that that town's cable TV system offered far more at significantly lower prices than any other municipality around. The infrastructure belong
WOW. Wide Open West (Score:2)
Regardless, they have multiple ISP, TV,and Phone providers that end users can pick from.
How would this work? (Score:2)
Seconds? (Score:2)
That's how it works here in Sweden (Score:2)
Yes, that's how it works here in Sweden, and has for the last decade or so.
Of course an open network allows you to switch ISP just by calling them (or indeed using a web page), and of course no equipment needs to be changed, what would be the point of an open fiber network if it did?
The fibre company (used to be city owned, but is now private) run the fiber network including end-points (CPE) and the ISPs deliver service. I can currently choose between eight different ISPs.
But yes, it takes several hours to
Re:lawsuit (Score:4, Informative)
"We were able to come in, use their fiber where it traditionally would have cost us quite a bit to do our own infrastructure, so time to market was much quicker. It gives us access to the customers that they're already doing business with," Barbara Sessions, director of engineering and operations at Silver Star Communications, said in the ILSR video.
CEO Jared Stowell of Fybercom, another ISP using Ammon's network, doesn't mind the competition enabled by the open access model. "We like the competition," he said. "It keeps us on top of the game so we can continue to provide a superior product and no one gets lackadaisical."
and:
There are six ISPs offering service to businesses over the open access network
ISPs don't like municipalities competing for customers, but in a situation where the municipality is bringing the customer to the ISP, many are apparently on board.
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Wait till it's an incumbent ISP who will scream bloody murder and hold it up for a decade in the courts. Sure the 6 news ISP's are happy is new business without a last mile.
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Franchise agreements are usually municipal based. Once those agreements expire (and they all do), then the resident ISP has no real choice.
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Monopoly cable TV agreements were often for 50 years and any renegotiation resets the time.
The interesting thing about those types of contracts is they involve an "educational programming" requirement. I'm not sure any cable TV company offers that any more because Discovery and The History Channel sure don't. MTV was used to convince towns that they could keep the rebellious kids at hone in front of the TV rather than doing what teenagers do.
Many municipal cable tv contracts can be torn up because they s
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Realistic arguments: the municipal fiber will eventually be less capable than newer technologies, or perhaps it will become saturated. (I don't think those arguments hold much water since the municipality can upgrade as needed.)
I don't see why layer 1-2 infrastructure necessarily has to be owned by the city, they just need to be well regulated. E.g. don't allow them to also provide Internet services, or force reasonable pricing, etc.
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Realistic Arguments 101: Make sure they are realistic. In the case of Fiber, the data rate is limited only by distance and fiber type. When building out new infrastrcture, that fiber is put into conduit. Conduit being the actual "hard" part of the job. Once the conduit is laid, you can pull new and updated fiber through as often as needed. Average lifespan of fiber is 10-15 years.
And fiber doesn't need regulation, being just a conduit. The end points are all that matter. Since one is customer, and the other
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Funny... I could swear that I said
(I don't think those arguments hold much water since the municipality can upgrade as needed.)
I only mentioned regulation for cases that the city doesn't own the conduit and lines. Obviously if Comcast owns that infrastructure then it would probably prefer not to allow other ISPs to use any of it.
Re:lawsuit (Score:5, Insightful)
Since one is customer, and the other is one of several ISPs, then what "regulation" is needed?
Someone has to run the fiber, maintain it, replace it, and decide who gets to use the free space in the conduit (because someone eventually will).
If the government doesn't own the fiber or the conduits, then it will have to regulate the companies that do.
Want a real life example? Look at utility poles.
My state has laws that force utility companies to share poles when there is space available on them. Most states have similar regulations. Why? Because they didn't want to share with anyone, and we don't want 10 poles on every block. There is occasional squabbling, but it works.
What are the chances that the industry will behave better with fiber or underground conduits? Not very good, I would say.
I personally don't care if a service is managed by a dicknosed bureaucrat or an assfaced CEO. My ideological preference is whatever actually works. They can figure out how to play nice with everyone and deliver what people want, or they can go to hell.
Heavily-regulated residential utilities seem to be both reliable and affordable, so I'll roll with that. I have no complaints about my electric, water, gas, or sewage. Only the minimally-regulated cable and internet industry seems to be jacked up---at least in the five states where I've lived. So I have no problem trying to make the cable/ISP industry more like the others. If that doesn't work, walk it back and try something else.
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Last-mile fiber has no repe
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As I recall, a city in north central US tried to do this a few years ago because the existing ISP refused to upgrade their last mile infrastructure. The ISP sued the city claiming it would be "unfair competition" for the city to own the last mile infrastructure.
Also, a friend of mine in a different city joined a local co-op that was building its own last mile infrastructure. When they approached ISPs to offer service to its members over their infrastructure, all the ISPs responded that they would only do so
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So the ISP's formed a cartel and made sure they extorted the local co-op? Somehow that sounds like a clear trade violation. I'm pretty sure ISP's stupid enough to try that over here would be facing courts pretty quickly.
We're having both municipal networks and local co-ops, and most ISP's are pretty happy to just provide internet and leave the last mile to the co-op.
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If I recall, it was Monitcello, MN.
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If they do it like here in Sweden, it'll be strictly VLAN'd
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I'd like to see details on how they set up their municipal network.
Ah, but for that kind of information you would have to go read the article!
Re:Meaningless headline (Score:4, Insightful)
breaking any of the rules will no longer be a mere TOS-violation, but breaking the law — enforced not by clueless customer support, but by the (equally clueless, but armed) police. Even if you escape a fine, you will be banned from the city's network and there goes your ability to "switch ISPs".
Yes, in much the same way that you are carted off to jail and permanently blacklisted when you are late paying for tap water or garbage collection.
What are you going on about?
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I was referring to speed-traps and traffic cameras [citizensto...ameras.com], actually. Ringing any bells? Do you think, your downloads of torrents or "excessive" Netflix-watching will be tolerated by the city any better, then your driving "at excessive rate of speed"?
As I said, if the town owns the cables, then the town is the ISP — yet another governmen
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It appears you don't know what ISPs do, or even how networks work, but that didn't stop you confusing your high opinion of yourself with knowing things! Yay for you!
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A solution in search of a problem. Actually running cables to each house is rather easy. Where it is not done, it is due to local governments' interference, "sensible regulations", and bribe-seeking [wired.com]...
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User Taxes are okay, if you don't have service, you don't pay the tax. Heck, even using a Muni Bond would be an "okay" way to fund the initial infrastructure build out. Again letting the people choose (via bond election) rather than mandates by bureaucrats a thousand miles away.
And this will be the REAL open market to all sorts of new and interesting products/services.
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Most Dutch citizens already have this service and churn is pretty low. I have seen an ISP fold precisely once over the last decade, and ISPs without customer service do indeed see migration of existing customers to better service providers. The excellent staff on the helpdesk is actually one of the things my current ISP advertizes and also one of the reasons I'm their customer.
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You aren't really changing ISPs, the City is still the ISP. They still get you connected to the Internet, but instead of directly connected to the Internet, they connect you to an intermediate, who charges you a surcharge to get to the rest of the Internet, and presumably offers you some other value added services, though for me I don't know what they would be.
The city is not the ISP. The city runs a metro area network. 3rd parties are selling internet access over the MAN. Basically, they're following the same model that Texas uses for electric utilities.