Neighbors Build Their Own Lightning-fast Fiber-optic Network (msn.com) 65
Somewhere in Silicon Valley is a man "standing up to internet giants Comcast and AT&T," reports the Mercury News. (Alternate URL here.)
"Comcast told him it would cost $17,000 to speed up his internet. He rallied 41 South Bay neighbors to build their own lightning-fast fiber-optic network instead " Tech-rich but internet-poor, residents of the Silicon Valley neighborhood were fed up with sluggish broadband speeds of less than 25 Megabits-per-second (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload — the federal definition of a home unserved by adequate internet. Frustrated by the take-it-or-leave-it attitude of internet providers, they created their own solution — and now this tony enclave has one of the fastest residential speeds in the nation.
Scott Vanderlip, a software engineer, said Comcast gave him a $17,000 estimate to connect his home to the faster internet service at a neighbor's home. "You got to be kidding me — I can see it on the pole from my driveway," Vanderlip said, remembering his reaction to Comcast's quote.
So the self-described "town rebel" jumped at the chance to partner with a startup internet service provider called Next Level Networks. If Vanderlip could rally a few neighbors willing to invest a couple thousand dollars, Next Level would get them very fast internet. That was in 2017. Now, Vanderlip is president of the Los Altos Hills Community Fiber Association, which provides super-fast speeds — up to 10 Gigabits-per-second upload and download — to its over 40 association members, letting them transfer huge files and load webpages in the click of a computer mouse, Vanderlip said.
That's 125 times faster than the median download speed in Santa Clara County.
It helped that his home "also happened to sit near a local school with a spare fiber optic internet connection," the article points out.
But a startup internet service provider called Next Level Networks also handled "the infrastructure procurement, contracts, logistics and retail — essentially providing the residents a turnkey fiber optic internet service — while Vanderlip and two of his neighbors, who joined with an investment of $5,000 each, bought the fiber optic infrastructure, crowdsourced new members and mapped out an initial fiber route to their houses."
Thanks to Slashdot reader k6mfw for sharing the story!
"Comcast told him it would cost $17,000 to speed up his internet. He rallied 41 South Bay neighbors to build their own lightning-fast fiber-optic network instead " Tech-rich but internet-poor, residents of the Silicon Valley neighborhood were fed up with sluggish broadband speeds of less than 25 Megabits-per-second (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload — the federal definition of a home unserved by adequate internet. Frustrated by the take-it-or-leave-it attitude of internet providers, they created their own solution — and now this tony enclave has one of the fastest residential speeds in the nation.
Scott Vanderlip, a software engineer, said Comcast gave him a $17,000 estimate to connect his home to the faster internet service at a neighbor's home. "You got to be kidding me — I can see it on the pole from my driveway," Vanderlip said, remembering his reaction to Comcast's quote.
So the self-described "town rebel" jumped at the chance to partner with a startup internet service provider called Next Level Networks. If Vanderlip could rally a few neighbors willing to invest a couple thousand dollars, Next Level would get them very fast internet. That was in 2017. Now, Vanderlip is president of the Los Altos Hills Community Fiber Association, which provides super-fast speeds — up to 10 Gigabits-per-second upload and download — to its over 40 association members, letting them transfer huge files and load webpages in the click of a computer mouse, Vanderlip said.
That's 125 times faster than the median download speed in Santa Clara County.
It helped that his home "also happened to sit near a local school with a spare fiber optic internet connection," the article points out.
But a startup internet service provider called Next Level Networks also handled "the infrastructure procurement, contracts, logistics and retail — essentially providing the residents a turnkey fiber optic internet service — while Vanderlip and two of his neighbors, who joined with an investment of $5,000 each, bought the fiber optic infrastructure, crowdsourced new members and mapped out an initial fiber route to their houses."
Thanks to Slashdot reader k6mfw for sharing the story!
GOOD (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck those telcos. I hope these chaps make bank giving south bay decent service.
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They've banned such practices in STATES by buying up local politicians; usually Republicans who seem to just view free enterprise as selling their elected power.
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Those nasty Republicans abuse their exclusive power in California so badly!
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So basically (Score:4, Interesting)
Comcast wanted 17K to connect him to the fast network, but he and two neighbors got better internet access for "only" 15K.
Still seems like a lot.
Re: So basically (Score:5, Informative)
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Re: So basically (Score:5, Funny)
Spoken like someone who has never been stuck with Comcast.
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Re: So basically (Score:3)
The fellow in the article would have HAPPILY paid several thousand to get service from Comcast, he drew the line somewhere around $17K.
I think most people are happy with Comcast service,
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The fellow in the article would have HAPPILY paid several thousand to get service from Comcast
That was to avoid having to deal with city government, etc. to get a line pulled across property lines and under streets. Yes there is something more annoying than dealing with Comcrap, but at least the city won't lock you into a subscription.
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I think most people are happy with Comcast service,
I think you have never used Comcast or paid attention to industry rankings. They are a comprehensively ghastly company that is widely loathed for perfectly excellent reasons. They are technically incompetent, their customer service is largely imaginary, and they will continue billing you incorrectly even after you cancel your account.
Comcast should be razed to the ground and the earth salted under its smoking remains. Their attempt to escape by changing the name to Xfinity is only mildly amusing.
Re: So basically (Score:5, Insightful)
But they did something cool. Which is better than most of us do, just consuming content on our devices.
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But in cost/Mbps, they kicked ass.
The data rate isn't that interesting (Score:4, Interesting)
The actual data rate is about the least interesting bit in the story. It would be interesting if it was over copper, where data rates are a real problem. But on fibre, plug in a different transceiver and off you go. 10 Gbps cost (*checks fs.com*) say forty dollars an endpoint, so twice that for a link. Bring it to 400 and the price goes up to two thousand-or-so per link. Bring it down to 1 Gbps and it's... huh, prices have gone up a tad, maybe fifteen a link.
The bigger chunk of cost is in the rest of the infrastructure. Laying the fibre, dealing with the council for the rights-of-way. Switches (and eventually, routers) to handle all that traffic. Interconnecting, getting your traffic out into the world.
The big upshot of doing it yourself is having full control over the entire path. For one, it means freedom from phone drones denying any problem could possibly be at their end, and idiot marketeers trying to sell you things you neither want nor need.
And of course, telcos will only sell you what little they think you'll accept at various carefully calculated price points. So it's actually hard emulating their level of suckage if you do it yourself.
But it's worth noting that you can do this. This grassroots interconnecting is what started the internet (RFC 1: "We linked up a couple computers across sites, ain't that cool?") so it's cool it's still a possiblity.
And it's somewhat ironic that people felt they needed to do this in Silicon Valley.
But in some sense, the strangest thing is that so few people realised they could. It probably would've been far more economical if suburbs got together and do a community thing than everyone ordering from one or two telcos and getting individual service. The downside is that you need to organise, and be --and stay-- on good terms with the neighbourhood, rather than deal with a far-off telco (and bitch about it to the neighbours).
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But they amortized it across 38 other households to bring it to a little bit more than the average installation cost of Comcast.
Having experienced this (second-hand, fortunately) in real life - I suspect that is exactly what would have happened with the Comcast install. The dude would have to pay that huge sum up front to get the install done; but then he would start getting money back as other people also bought into the service.
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Why would Comcast give him his money back? have you ever dealt with them? That's not how they typically operate.
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Yes, I was talking about a real, very similar situation with Comcast that one of my best friends experienced.
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Funny thing is they will probably never really need more than 50Mbps or so, unless they are pirating all sorts of DVDs or running 8K TVs or something.
Re:So basically (Score:5, Interesting)
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What cell phone company lets you pay less for only getting 3G speeds?
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Where is he getting internet that's 8 bucks a month is my question.
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I suspect he mispoke - but either way usmobile.com will be my next cell provider when totalwireless/verizon goes completely away eventually
you can pay for just what you need there unlike most providers
like this poster, I only pay for the "slowest" verizon fios plan available (not even sure - something like 300 mbps symmetric) which is more than 99% of people need
3G? (Score:2)
Which carrier is this? I know American carriers already shut it off or will soon (VZW).
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Funny thing is they will probably never really need more than 50Mbps or so...
That's pretty much my thinking as well. I popped for 600 Mbps service, and I'm getting what I paid for and then some. I just ran Ookla Speedtest and got 947 Mbps down and 26 Mbps up, which is significantly more than I'm paying for. (This is Comcast. It doesn't suck everywhere, apparently.)
In reality, if I go download a big file or do practically anything useful, I won't get a tenth of this speed. Nobody's servers can feed data fast enough to fill up a pipe this big. This would only be useful if I had severa
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I'm confused.
My speed sucks? Honestly, I grew up on a 300 baud acoustic coupler modem, and this seems fast.
Re:So basically (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe you missed the best part, they don’t have to have service through Comcast.
Re: So basically (Score:4, Interesting)
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> Still seems like a lot.
I've driven in that area. I can't imagine how many millions each of those homes is worth today. The tiny modest homes are in urban compacts that already have service.
Re: So basically (Score:1)
What year is this? (Score:5, Interesting)
I have dozens of stories about this just in my local area. And the response from the national providers was to actually lease fiber access from these networks and even pick up the cost of last mile for a lot of users. Now, the farmers who did the digging are being paid for their Internet access which actually is causing them to need less subsidies for farming.
The story is always the same. Someone with a modicum of technical skill, the willingness to make phone calls and a desire for faster naughty website access steps up and just does it. I do not really see what is news worthy anymore.
Re:What year is this? (Score:5, Informative)
It must be nice to be in the 1% for internet speed (Score:3)
In the midwest where it's all local monopolies we're still Oliver Twisting for whatever crumbs we over pay for from Comcast and other assorted thieves. This is true of all utilities, not just internet connectivity.
Re: What year is this? (Score:1)
So... (Score:5, Insightful)
So 40 neighbors coughed-up $5K each to join this network, with unspecified on-going costs, because he didn't like the $17K connection the local ISP offered.
It would be great to know why the bill was $17K - while most here will yell GREED, and that. Oils be part of it, I suspect federal, state, and community regulations require an approach that involves licensed engineers providing detailed drawings, impact studies, and likely tearing up a roadway.
It's nice that the fellow could 'see the pole' but that doesn't eliminate regulations the ISP had to follow. (ISPs aren't free to just run cables randomly around a community.)
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> I suspect federal, state, and community regulations require an approach that involves licensed engineers providing detailed drawings, impact studies, and likely tearing up a roadway.
No. Franchise agreements usually specify actual engineering data to justify costs, but they also grant ~10-year monopolies so the provider (this one in particular) just does whatever it wants. $22K for a quarter mile is pretty common.
Enforcing the franchise agreements in court costs more and municipalities love pushing cos
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No, two other neighbors coughed up 5k. So 15k to run the cable for the neighborhood. At 38 other paying neighbors, sayyyy, 30 bucks a month, you're looking at a bit over a year to break even, not counting maintenance costs or what it costs to run the local access point.
Dupe or not a dupe? (Score:2)
I know I've heard this story a few months ago, but it seems the name is different, so it must be the same situation with another person. A quick search only found these:
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/04/04/2140232/comcast-wanted-man-to-pay-19000-after-falsely-advertising-service-on-his-street [slashdot.org]
https://news.slashdot.org/story/22/08/10/1431223/man-who-built-isp-instead-of-paying-comcast-50k-expands-to-hundreds-of-homes [slashdot.org]
"load webpages in the click of a computer mouse" (Score:2)
Share with neighbor (Score:2)
Comcast gave him a $17,000 estimate to connect his home to the faster internet service at a neighbor's home.
So you pay your neighbor to share their internet (perhaps increasing it to the maximum available to them) or getting a totally separate, additional connection at their home, then link it over using Wifi and directional antennas.
Lightning-fast? (Score:2)
Re: Lightning-fast? (Score:1)
Comcast Told Me The Same For Years (Score:5, Insightful)
My house sits quite a ways back off the road. It took years to get the previous cable company to run a drop to the house; in fact, we had to catch them on a "free installation" loophole. As a result, they installed a sub-par drop line that the techs 30 years ago said never met specification. In fact, the previous company refused to even discuss anything regarding upgrading the line.
Then came the Comcast buyout. I was hoping things would be different, as my slow DSL connection was already aging. They'd be happy to do it...to a price of $35,000. They also concluded, as part of the study; that the drop line didn't qualify for any service and promptly shut everything off. So not only were they not going to upgrade the line, but they were literally denying me service at this point.
Now, as far as regulations go; Comcast already had access to the poles. Even checking with our local power co-op, who owns the poles; they verified that there was literally nothing stopping them from upgrading that line. There were no regulatory hurdles as the drop had been in place for about 10 years at this point. I even contacted the county government to find out if they violated franchise agreements by pulling what service I had out from under me. They had, but the local government at the time sided with them and said, "it's your problem".
Then...a man walked up to my house one afternoon from another large telco that had a bad reputation, Verizon. He was signing people up for FiOS, or trying to from his pitch. I had frustration immediately set-in as I told him all the shit I'd dealt with Comcast not only wanting me to foot the bill for the infrastructure upgrade; but disconnecting my service. To my surprise, this man was willing to put it in writing that it would cost me nothing for install. "We've got so much fiber in our warehouse we could run 3 or 4 lines back here," he said. I signed on the line, got an install date, and waited for the shit to hit the fan.
Two weeks after that visit; Verizon trucks were pulling fiber to my house while a technician installed the ONT and gladly hooked it up to all my existing wiring. My lunchtime, I was off copper and on their fiber. While I dislike some of their policies over the last few years; they at least came through. Granted it was part of their larger scheme to get rid of all the copper in my area; after getting drug through the mud, it was nice to be able to have reliable internet.
Of course, after Verizon trucks started rolling, Comcast started their smear campaigns against them. They finally offered to upgrade my drop, at no charge to me.
I firmly let them know they lost that game and could get fucked. I have gigabit service now...something Comcast absolutely cannot provide to anyone in my neighborhood. I might not like Verizon as a corporation; but I hate Comcast even more. If there was a co-op or alternative provider doing gig fiber in my area; I'd switch. But at least I'm getting a decent quality of service from the side of duopoly that was willing to invest in me as a customer.
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Yup. The only thing that used to be underground was the copper phone line. It's still in the ground but it was put out of service when they put fiber in. There's a pole back here by my house, one up by the road, and one in the middle. The feed from the pole to my house however, is underground. The co-op tends to only do underground in subdivisions where it's required...or in areas that require underground feed. They'd rather spend all the money doing right-of-way maintenance. Everyone raised questions about
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> They finally offered to upgrade my drop, at no charge to me.
I've seen rural broadband projects where they wouldn't offer service and as soon as a provider appeared then they suddenly changed their mind (seemingly to undercut a potential competitor which could eventually expand).
It's simply not a matter of proving a market anymore. In 2022 everybody wants decent broadband.
Totally sociopathic behavior.
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Back about 18 years ago my town became the testbed for the now failed BPL technology, Broadband over PowerLines. This was technology to deliver something like 10mbps service directly over the power grid; RF coupled directly into the distribution lines. You just plug the modem up to your power, plug the computer in to ethernet, and that was it. The technology itself worked because the RF signals could pass through the distribution transformers.
The bad part was it literally violated every FCC rule for RFI; an
where does BW to backbone come from? (Score:3)
As far as laying connections for last-mile connections, I laud their actions, but where are they connecting to backbone connections, and wouldn't their increased BW usage be siphoning BW from where ever they are connecting? They mentioned a school that they are connecting through(?). Wouldn't that school's usage go up noticeably such that the upstream provider might noticed the increased traffic and want to charge for larger usage?
Re: where does BW to backbone come from? (Score:1)
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in the base article, do they need to provide their own microwave link to somewhere? How do they hook their aggregate fiber network to the rest of the internet -- and as you say the PtP connection may not be cheap -- doesn't that add a potentially large ongoing cost to their service? If they don't setup their own PtP traffic aggregator, they would need to hook into someone else's network setup -- and that's where the combined traffic of all those fiber hookups would get measured against whoever owns the ne
IRA has internet wrong (Score:2)
I know Tony Enclave (Score:2)
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It would benefit every neighborhood to do this (Score:1)