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Network The Internet

Comcast, Beware: New City-Run Broadband Offers 1Gbps For $60 a Month (arstechnica.com) 110

Posted by BeauHD from the sign-me-up dept.
A municipal broadband service in Fort Collins, Colorado went live for new customers today, less than two years after the city's voters approved the network despite a cable industry-led campaign against it. Ars Technica reports: Fort Collins Connexion, the new fiber-to-the-home municipal option, costs $59.95 a month for 1Gbps download and 1Gbps upload speeds, with no data caps, contracts, or installation fees. There's a $15 monthly add-on fee to cover Wi-Fi, but customers can avoid that fee by purchasing their own router. Fort Collins Connexion also offers home phone service, and it plans to add TV service later on. Connexion is only available in a small portion of the city right now.

"The initial number of homes we're targeting this week is 20-30. We will notify new homes weekly, slowly ramping up in volume," Connexion spokesperson Erin Shanley told Ars. While Connexion's fiber lines currently pass just a small percentage of the city's homes and businesses, Shanley said the city's plan is to build out to the city limits within two or three years. "Ideally we will capture more than 50% of the market share, similar to Longmont," another Colorado city that built its own network, Shanley said. Beta testers at seven homes are already using the Fort Collins service, and the plan is to start notifying potential customers about service availability today. The city reportedly issued $143 million in bonds to finance the city-wide network. Fort Collins has a population of 165,000. The two residential internet packages that Connexion is offering are the $59.95 gigabit plan and 10Gbps plan for $299.95 a month. Shanley told Ars that "there are no taxes and fees on internet service," aside from the optional $15 charge to use city-provided Wi-Fi hardware instead of a customer-purchase router.

The broadband service also offers a gigabit Internet and phone service bundle for $74.90 a month. "Phone service on its own starts at $19.95 a month," adds Ars. "When TV service is available, there will be an Internet and TV bundle for $119.90 a month, and a bundle of all three services starts at $144.85."
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Comcast, Beware: New City-Run Broadband Offers 1Gbps For $60 a Month More

Comcast, Beware: New City-Run Broadband Offers 1Gbps For $60 a Month

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  • Colorado does it again (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Longmont, about 45 minutes south of Fort Collins, also has gigabit internet for $60 / month. It's fantastic. Two years and I've never had to call support for anything.

  • Beware Indeed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 ) on Friday August 30, 2019 @08:43PM (#59142866)

    For perspective, I pay $100 / month for 250 / 15 from Xfinity as I type this. Internet only, no TV or Phone bundle with it.
    My own cable modem and router. Terabyte cap, but I've never even come close to it.

    If municipal broadband was offered here at the price mentioned in the article, Xfinity would lose EVERYONE because
    the only competition is either Cellular Data, Satellite, or *DSL running on the shittiest copper plant in existence.

    *When I had DSL, I was lucky to get 56k out of it. It was beyond pathetic.

    • Kind of makes you wonder why they haven't been scrambling to upgrade service nearly everywhere. Yes, replacing all that old copper would be expensive, but municipal services have been leading the charge for 1 Gbps connectivity in the US for awhile now.

      The big telcos and cable companies still have the pull to roll out service faster than any municipality. They're dragging their feet.

      • Re:Beware Indeed (Score:4, Interesting)

        by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Friday August 30, 2019 @10:48PM (#59143074) Journal

        Kind of makes you wonder why they haven't been scrambling to upgrade service nearly everywhere.

        1. People who think that government is always bad. There are some of these idiots who post regularly on /..
        2. Lobbying and money put into opposing municipal ISPs.

        Note that the latter has been successful, with some states passing laws that put high barriers against cities building their own ISP service.

        • Comment removed based on user account deletion

          • What about private-publics making bond issues and then paying back the bonds with the profits from the ISP expansion? Not everyone is using tax money to build these municipal systems.

            Also who is actually starting an ISP today that isn't just a reseller for one of the cable/telco monopolies?

          • Re:Beware Indeed (Score:5, Insightful)

            by AntronArgaiv ( 4043705 ) on Saturday August 31, 2019 @07:37AM (#59143520)

            It's not that governments are always bad. But it's pretty shitty when you start/invest in a business and then the government comes along and competes against you using TAXPAYER funds.

            I would agree with you if we were talking about a bakery, or a manufacturing company.

            But Internet is arguably a public utility. It's taking the place of Ma Bell. And, reliable as it was, POTS wasn't cheap,
            Look at it this way: if the residents of a town think they can collectively provide Internet service to themselves for less money than Comcast is charging, why shouldn't they be allowed to try? This isn't a case of "Government" forcing something on a community, this is the community saying, "we can do it cheaper" and taking on the risk themselves.

          • when you start/invest in a business and then the government comes along and competes against you using TAXPAYER funds

            I agree that is bad.

            However, large ISP's like Comcast are essentially government. You cannot offer private competition against them, they will use government to stop you.

            Therefore I see municipal broadband as more a case of government competing against government... that sounds like a good idea, internal competition.

    • ... or *DSL running on the shittiest copper plant in existence.

      I may have you beat, here in Silicon Valley.

      In the subdivision where my townhouse lies, the mid-20th-century copper plant is underground along the back of the lots facing the elementary school playground. They replaced the pedestals recently. But the underground cables were (and still are) sufficiently damaged that there are far too few good pair left.

      When the rainstorm took out both my phone lines a few years back, they replaced the lines to

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Zebai ( 979227 )

        Yea this is how most repairs go these days. Anything that requires any real long term work or investment is just patched to the barest minimum to get working "for now". Most repairs to underground cabling is not replacing the cabling that's damaged, no they will adjust the levels of an amplifier or just attach to you to different port that's getting a better connection or run a patch/split from another location. You'd be surprised at how many times someone who's had something fix now has a neighbor who

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by raind ( 174356 )
      Got AT&T fiber at my house for less, flipped Comcast the bird.
      • How can AT&T be better than Comcast ?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by OYAHHH ( 322809 )

        Not a Comcast cheerleader here at all. But I hate AT&T with all the hatred I can muster. Good luck dealing with AT&T, they have always treated me badly.

      • I've never had Comcast, but I've had to deal with AT&T's crappy DSL and DirecTV until recently when a local ISP expanded to cover us. Hours on hold trying to get their automated phone system to get you to the right department every few months because they screwed up your bill. I'm convinced they are run by incompetent jackasses.

    • That's not bad. I had 100/5 for $100. I got a TV bundle that needed a $150 install. We never turned on the 20 year old receivers that we rent for $20/month.

      So we could apparently get rid of one of the receivers. But if we remove both the very basic TV bundle stops and the net only price is.... $100!

      Anyway, ATT Fiber finally came after 7 years. It's 1gb/1gb for $40 and that is a 2 year contract. Of course Comcast priced itself down to $60 all of a sudden... for new customers.

      To give more history, it took Com

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by cb88 ( 1410145 )
      I could easily hit a TB cap even on charter 200/10 if I tried.... you just need to try harder :P

      Say I wanted to backup some data from a friend or from work, I could hit 1TB in 11hours lol theoretically.

    • 100/100 from FiOS #39.95 a month contract free. They offer a gigabit tier for $70 or so. Diminishing returns for me at that point.

    • I live nearby Ft Collins and Longmont, and its funny - now that those cities have relatively cheap gigabit internet service, Xfinity has been quietly offering its own gigabit internet for $70/mo. I recently upgraded to that after paying the exact same amount for their 250/15 service.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by fgouget ( 925644 )

      For perspective, I pay $100 / month for 250 / 15 from Xfinity as I type this. Internet only, no TV or Phone bundle with it.

      For another comparison point but in the other direction, I pay 35€/month [www.free.fr] (~$39) for 1Gb/s down, 600Mb/s up (tested to 870Mb/s / 450Mb/s), no cap, fixed IPv4 address, IPv6, WiFi roaming, 100+ TV channels some of which in 4K, recording and replay services, unlimited landline phone calls to 100+ countries, and 2 hours of cell phone calls to 100+ countries and from countries within Europe but essentially no data to go with that. Adding an unlimited 4G+ plan would be an extra 20€/month.

      I could also p

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by fgouget ( 925644 )

        For another comparison point but in the other direction, I pay 35€/month [www.free.fr] (~$39) for 1Gb/s down, 600Mb/s up...

        To clarify a potential ambiguity, these are all-included prices: do not add VAT, do not add local, regional or national taxes, do not add extra for the "modem" rental (it's included), do not add extra for the TV decoder (except for the higher end 10Gb/s offer where it's a one time 480€ purchase).

  • Anyone know what the angle is? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Friday August 30, 2019 @08:45PM (#59142872)
    They've traditionally just bought off local governments to prevent municipal broadband. If they couldn't buy off the locals they bought the whole state and got laws passed banning muni broadband.

    Have they just not gotten around to one of those laws in Colorado? I can't imagine they'll let this stand. Once people see it working they'll want it for themselves. Kind of like how Medicare for All is polling around 70% nationally.

    • Re:Anyone know what the angle is? (Score:5, Informative)

      by therealobsideus ( 1610557 ) on Friday August 30, 2019 @09:42PM (#59142986)
      They spent a lot of money trying to stop it and failed. Colorado does have a law on books prohibiting outright municipal telecommunications offerings, except if there is a ballot referendum opting out of Senate Bill 152 (Colo. Rev. Stat. Ann. 29-27-201 et seq). IIRC, when Fort Collins did their ballot initiative it passed with 57% of the vote. There's about 100 cities in Colorado that opted out of Senate Bill 152, allowing them to explore municipal offerings.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by cb88 ( 1410145 )
      Medicare for all is a con though... what people really want is affordable healthcare, regardless of how it is provided.

      Heathcare used to be affordable in the past... and certainly is affordable in other countries. The excuses made for high costs never hold water. The problem we have now is too much complex regulation, we need simple and effective regulation. Not just more bureaucracy (medicare) which will tend to drive up costs since they'll be able to just buy out whoever is in charge... kind of like how

      • Re:Anyone know what the angle is? (Score:5, Interesting)

        by whoever57 ( 658626 ) on Friday August 30, 2019 @10:52PM (#59143090) Journal

        Heathcare used to be affordable in the past... and certainly is affordable in other countries. The excuses made for high costs never hold water. The problem we have now is too much complex regulation, we need simple and effective regulation. Not just more bureaucracy (medicare) which will tend to drive up costs since they'll be able to just buy out whoever is in charge

        Please explain why government-run healthcare is cheaper and delivers better outcomes in countries where healthcare is run by the government.

        • We're talking about gov't insurance (Score:4, Interesting)

          by rsilvergun ( 571051 ) on Saturday August 31, 2019 @09:55AM (#59143812)
          e.g. it's single payer, not single provider.

          Government run healthcare means the gov't runs everything. To be honest that works too. But in the US we're much better off with single payer because we already have a large, well run single payer system in place, Medicare, and it just needs a bit of beefing up to cover what it doesn't cover now.

          As for why gov't run healthcare is more profitable:

          a. Healthcare is fundamentally about insurance. Not everybody gets sick or injured, but we don't know _who_ will until they're in their 60s (when everyone starts breaking down) and even then we don't know _how_ they'll get sick. Insurance does best with the largest pool of insurees, and the largest pool is the entire nation.

          b. As a healthcare consumer I am ill equipped to make informed decisions. I can easily figure out the best snake cake to buy (it's moonpies & RC cola) and I can figure out the best car to buy with some work and I can even with a _lot_ of work figure out the best home to buy. I can't shop around for a heart transplant. It's too complicated, there are too many factors involved, and I'm only ever going to get 1. The same goes for my pharmaceuticals. If I had the training to know which drug to buy I'd be a doctor

          c. Finally and most importantly, we're seeing Venture Capitalists buying up life sustaining drugs and hospitals left and right. Let me ask you this (don't answer, just think about it): How much would you pay so your wife, husband or child could walk? How much would it be worth that they don't spend the rest of their life in a wheelchair?

          Right now there's a VC who's busy figuring that out and buying up access to things like hip and knee replacements. They're using their vast wealth to become the gatekeepers to medicine that radically changes quality and duration of life. They're turning Medicine into the iBook; a luxury item few can afford but that is so desirable that it's still insanely profitable. With the difference being I can live without an iBook, I can't live without the heart medication that keeps me alive.

          • d. Administrative costs are much, much lower in a non-profit health insurance system, which is where a lot of the savings come from (I touched on this with the Venture Capitalists but didn't state it plainly).

            e. Preventative care is incredibly valuable. In America people don't go to the doctor until the damage is done and it's much, much more expensive to treat.

            On a side note point (e.) is where "free" money comes from in a social democracy. Basically inaction costs money too. If it costs me $1000 t

        • Please explain why government-run healthcare is cheaper and delivers better outcomes in countries where healthcare is run by the government.

          Put simply, those countries health care systems are focused primarily on the needs of sick people, not shareholders.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by mtrip ( 2684377 )
      Source? Medicare sucks. You really don't want to be on it. Fuck medicare for all.

  • Can we stop this? (Score:2, Informative)

    by msauve ( 701917 )

    There's a $15 monthly add-on fee to cover Wi-Fi, but customers can avoid that fee by purchasing their own router.

    A wireless access point (AP) is not a router. A router is not an AP. Just because they're often found combined into a single box doesn't make it correct to say "router" when referring to an AP, as was done here.

    (Also, most consumer devices which connect to an ISP are _just barely_ routers, they typically don't support routing protocols, or even do full IP routing [multicast routing is typically

    • I think it's too late at this point. Just like how people call tissues a kleenex, or adhesive bandages band-aids, the general popuplation has co-opted the name.
    • Good thing this isn't a network architecture lecture where the difference might actually matter. No one cares and everyone knows exactly what is meant.

  • Comcast have two choices here... (Score:3)

    by Z80a ( 971949 ) on Friday August 30, 2019 @08:57PM (#59142898)

    Either they improve their own network and get competitive, or...
    You know, lawyers, bribes..

    • Considering that the city has floated $150M in bonds to pay for it, and only provide service (right now) to about 20 houses, I don't think Comcast has to worry for a while....

      Got to wonder whether the 20 houses are in the same part of the city, or whether they belong to people with connections....

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by cb88 ( 1410145 )
        It's almost certainly a pilot neighborhood... probably new construction.

        That said it doesn't take terribly long for stuff to get installed if they actually start working on it... that's the real question. It just becomes a repetitive process of adding a new street each week etc... so while the initial pilot might be 20-30 houses, you can conceivably be doing hundreds of houses a week if you have several crews doing neighborhood setup an a few dozen tech's to do the house end of things.

  • Chattanooga had this 15 years ago (Score:3)

    by elrous0 ( 869638 ) on Friday August 30, 2019 @08:59PM (#59142906)

    Unfortunately, no other city in Tennessee can get it because the whore legislators there got bribed by the scared cabelcos to pass a law to make it illegal for other cities to follow suite.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by methano ( 519830 )
      The same thing happened in NC a number of years ago. The city of Wilson did their own fiber and provided a better and cheaper service and the NC legislature... Well, I can't say it any better than you did.

  • At one level having the government provide low cost high speed internet is great. At another it seems worth reading the contract very carefully to see what data they are allowed to access and what they can do with it. (of course the same applies to commercial vendors).

    • That might bother me if I didn't just assume that NSA already has direct access to whatever they want anyway. If you don't control all the hardware and software that makes up your communications, it is pretty safe to assume the government can get to it.

      Maybe Apple is safe with their end to end encryption but even those have flaws that other security companies have found and exploited. I wouldn't be surprised if NSA is sitting on some zero-day bugs that they won't even share with the FBI because they are eit

  • Clearly city-run Internet works. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Ryan Rife ( 4765537 ) on Friday August 30, 2019 @09:12PM (#59142944)
    Completion is good, but when cities like this and Chattanooga can offer superior service for a fraction of the cost it shows that Internet-as-utility instead of as-a-Service works.
    • It's great if it works but it can be done by private companies as well. US Internet in Minneapolis has offered the same pricing for years and was the first company in the world to offer consumers 10 gigabit.

  • Something similar happening in my town (Score:5, Informative)

    by Ogive17 ( 691899 ) on Friday August 30, 2019 @09:26PM (#59142958)
    We have an Indiana based company installing fiber in my neighborhood right now. $60/month for 1gb/1gb, which is much better than what I'm getting for $83/month to Spectrum (Time Warner).

    Adios Time Warner, you had your chance.

  • So the real cost is (Score:3, Informative)

    by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Friday August 30, 2019 @10:59PM (#59143110)

    The city reportedly issued $143 million in bonds to finance the city-wide network. Fort Collins has a population of 165,000.

    So the actual cost is:

    • The average household has 2.5 persons.
    • The latest stats [census.gov] are only 89% of homes have a computer, and 77% have Internet. So if you figure it's gone up to 80% in the last few years,
    • ($143 million) / (0.8* 165000 / 2.5) = $2793 per home + $60/mo
    • If you figure the equipment will last for 7 years before it's obsolete and needs to be replaced, that works out to a net ($2793 / 84) = $33/mo.
    • For a total amortized cost of $93/mo. Which is actually a bit more than Verizon charges for Gigabit fiber [verizon.com].

    Shanley told Ars that "there are no taxes and fees on internet service,"

    OK, I want to encourage experimentation with public Internet to see if it's cost-competitive with private ISPs. But that's just blatantly unfair. The only reason to experiment with this is because you think a public service can provide Internet for cheaper (at a given level of quality/speed) than a private service. If you're forcing private ISPs to add taxes and fees to their service, then you gotta add them to the public service as well. Otherwise it becomes "successful" only because it's receiving a government subsidy, and you've legitimized all the arguments against government-funded Internet access.

    • The city reportedly issued $143 million in bonds to finance the city-wide network. Fort Collins has a population of 165,000.

      So the actual cost is:

      • The average household has 2.5 persons.
      • The latest stats [census.gov] are only 89% of homes have a computer, and 77% have Internet. So if you figure it's gone up to 80% in the last few years,
      • ($143 million) / (0.8* 165000 / 2.5) = $2793 per home + $60/mo
      • If you figure the equipment will last for 7 years before it's obsolete and needs to be replaced, that works out to a net ($2793 / 84) = $33/mo.
      • For a total amortized cost of $93/mo. Which is actually a bit more than Verizon charges for Gigabit fiber [verizon.com].

      Shanley told Ars that "there are no taxes and fees on internet service,"

      OK, I want to encourage experimentation with public Internet to see if it's cost-competitive with private ISPs. But that's just blatantly unfair. The only reason to experiment with this is because you think a public service can provide Internet for cheaper (at a given level of quality/speed) than a private service. If you're forcing private ISPs to add taxes and fees to their service, then you gotta add them to the public service as well. Otherwise it becomes "successful" only because it's receiving a government subsidy, and you've legitimized all the arguments against government-funded Internet access.

      A few additional considerations:

      First, you assume that after 7 years, all the equipment will be thrown away, and all the HW, SW, business processes, etc. will be created from scratch. Since that won't be the case, only some fraction of the $143 million needs to be spent again.

      Second, the big fallacy in comparing the USPS versus UPS/Fedex is that the USPS is hamstrung by being forced to provide service to all households, including those that are more expensive to service. If the private corporation were eq

    • Why are you adding the $33 to the $60? Normally, the rates that utilities charge include the costs of capital (loan/bond payback and interest) in addition to the cost of the service. IOW, the $60 rate should already include the $33 bond payback (+ interest). Is there evidence this is not the case here?

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by watanuki ( 771056 )

      The city issued bonds, basically borrowed $143m to build the network. That means the $143m was not taxpayer money and not a cost to the taxpayers.

      However, the city will need money to pay back the debt when the bonds mature.

      This is where the $60/mo/home goes, towards paying back the $143m, not as a cost in addition to it.

      Using your numbers, $143m works out to be $33/mo/home. So, each month the city actually runs a $60 - $33 = $27 profit per home.

      From a resident of the city's perspective, he/she is paying $

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cfalcon ( 779563 )

        > That means the $143m was not taxpayer money and not a cost to the taxpayers.

        Come on, taxpayers have to pay that back. Yes, of course, they are charging money each month, but often that just eaten up by administrative and maintenance costs.

        Anyway, I'm sure Comcast got some kind of help with capital too, or something. Some places I've lived have garbage collection paid for by the city (aka by everyone), and other places I have to hire some private company to haul away the trash. There's nothing inher

        • > Come on, taxpayers have to pay that back.

          Taxpayers have to pay only if the city runs a loss.

          The parent poster made some assumptions and came up with some numbers. I was just explaining to the parent poster what his/her numbers mean.

          I am aware that there are factors not in the calculation, the interests on the bonds for one, the others include administrative and maintenance costs, like you said, or that not every internet-connected home in the city is a subscriber to the city network, etc.

          Whether or no

    • LOL, you are adding costs and income on the same side as if they are both costs.
      The $60 can be used to pay off the $33, why is it being added?
      The $143 million is a cost (money spent).
      The $60 per month is income. They should be on different sides of the equation and as such should be subtracted, resulting in money left over.
    • Double your cost to $66 since you skipped this part: "Ideally we will capture more than 50% of the market share, similar to Longmont"

      And that does not include maintenance.

  • My little town (new) in the Blue Ridge Mountains is already rolling out a 1gbps fiber service in-town. It's gotten up to about 2 blocks from my place, and I'm told it's moving about 6 blocks per year. Of course, we have a major research university here, which I'm sure helps. The price is currently $45/month without caps. There are only about 40,000 people here, and probably half of them are students, so the focus on connectivity is appreciated, I'm sure. Other than the muni broadband, you have two basic cho

  • "Phone service on its own starts at $19.95 a month," adds Ars. "When TV service is available, there will be an Internet and TV bundle for $119.90 a month, and a bundle of all three services starts at $144.85"

    What's up with that? Here in NL (and many other European countries), ISP will often throw in 1 or 2 phone lines for free, or for a couple €. I thought about getting rid of the TV package and install FreeSat (still got a dish somewhere in the shed), but the price difference is hardly worth the effort. I pay around €60/mo for 300Mb up/down plus 2 phone lines and basic "cable". Dropping the TV package would bring the price down by €10 only. In the US you do get way more channels, but I woul

    • What does the phone service get you? Can you call all over the EU with that? This $20 covers an area almost 2.5x the EU.

      But most likely the charge is there to discourage adoption and from providing it to a smaller set of people. Except for the older generations, most have cellular for their main lines.

      • I had to look it up since I don't actually use these lines. So: the line is free and you can call anywhere of course, but not for free. Charges are what you'd expect to pay on a traditional phone line (and they sell plans for heavy users). Does that $20 include free unlimited calls within the US? Then that might be a pretty good deal for certain people...

  • The government of Islesboro, Maine provides municipal broadband to every home and business on the island---yep, an island accessible by ferry off the coast of Maine---with the option to have 1-gigabit state-of-the-art fiber-to-the-premise broadband Internet access. Subscribers, who choose, pay a $360 yearly subscriber fee. That's $30/month! More information at: http://townofislesboro.com/com... [townofislesboro.com]

  • I know how we can make our money back after that ransomware attack... letâ(TM)s become an internet provider!

  • I haven't been to the US for a while, but is $60 supposed to be cheap?

    My neighbors get 10Gbps for about $55...

  • Now instead of a single city we need a national plan for all cities and rural areas. If government run programs are so inefficient and terrible Comcast has nothing to worry about.

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