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The Internet Government

Colorado Kills Law That Made It Harder For Cities To Offer Internet Service (arstechnica.com) 63

Posted by BeauHD from the good-on-you dept.
Yesterday, Colorado eliminated a 2005 law that required local governments to hold an election before offering cable television or telecommunications service, "a process that pitted city and town leaders against well-funded broadband industry lobbying campaigns," reports Ars Technica. From the report: Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, signed a bill to eliminate that law yesterday. The bill had been approved by the State House in a 48-14 vote and in the Senate by a 31-4 vote. Both chambers have Democratic majorities, but the votes didn't go entirely along party lines; all of the "no" votes came from Republicans, but other Republicans joined Democrats in approving the bill. The bill signed by Polis "gives local governments the authority to provide broadband service, either on their own or by partnering with industry service providers, without holding a local election," the Governor's Office of Information Technology said.

"Each local government is in a unique position or different phase of connecting residents to high-speed Internet, and this bill allows them to establish broadband plans that meet the needs of their communities," Colorado Broadband Office Executive Director Brandy Reitter said. Going forward, cities and towns won't have to hold elections to opt out of the 2005 restriction on municipal broadband. A vote to opt out of the state law didn't guarantee that a city or town would build a network, but the vote was a necessary step and in some cases resulted in a municipal broadband service.
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Colorado Kills Law That Made It Harder For Cities To Offer Internet Service More

Colorado Kills Law That Made It Harder For Cities To Offer Internet Service

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  • I moved to southern Colorado almost five years ago and had two choices for Internet: ADSL or satellite, and I know better than to get satellite unless there's no other choice.

    • âoeADSL or satelliteâ doesnâ(TM)t tell us much. ADSL can vary between âoemiles from the exchange and 500k/sâ and âoethereâ(TM)s fibre to a cabinet just down the road, and I get 200Mb/s downâ. DSL is by far the most common way that people get internet in the UK, and most get somewhere in the region of the latter. Even in the middle of nowhere in the highlands, I get 40Mb/s down.

      • DSL is by far the most common way that people get internet in the UK, and most get somewhere in the region of the latter. Even in the middle of nowhere in the highlands, I get 40Mb/s down.

        While we have a few high speed DSL networks in the USA, by far most of them are still working with old standards that literally cannot deliver those speeds even with short cable runs, and there are still tons of places you can't even get DSL at all. Pacific Bell promised to have DSL everywhere by the year 2000. Then they got bought by SBC, which got bought by ATT, and 23 years later there's STILL coverage holes.

      • Yes, I know; I used to do senior-level support for an ISP. My point was that satellite by nature has a long delay built in because just pinging the router one hop away requires going up to orbit and back, twice. You can have a fat pipe that way, but there's always a long delay before you get anything. ADSL may not get you as much data per second, but you start getting it much sooner.

    • I know better than to get satellite unless there's no other choice.

      Starlink is real, and it's spectacular.

      Yeah five years ago though? You were screwed.

      • Really? Have they gotten rid of the lag caused by having to go up to orbit and back twice?
        • Ping times to common sites are faster than what you have. Do a trace route and watch how many hops you take with LOADs of processing.
    • Actually, starlink has better service than most ADSL.
      • Whoosh! Satallite service has to go up to orbit and back as both its first hop and its last. That's a built-in lag that you can't eliminate without violating the laws of physics.

        • Sure, but if the bandwidth on the satellite connection is faster than the ADSL, then lag gets canceled out. I don't have ADSL or satellite, so have to rely on Google for the speeds, but assuming these are right, you won't even notice the lag given the difference in speeds. I'm seeing 50-250 Mbps for Starlink, and a max of 24 Mbps for ADSL2+. So there would have to be significantly more lag in the satellite connection to be slower than ADSL2+.

          That being said, Starlink doesn't have the lag of previous satelli

          • Try using traceroute instead and take a look at the first hop outside your home, because it's going to be the longest one if you're using satellite.

            • Try using traceroute instead and take a look at the first hop outside your home, because it's going to be the longest one if you're using satellite.

              Via Starlink on my roof:

              1 100.64.0.1 (100.64.0.1) 27.458 ms 30.110 ms 24.007 ms
              2 172.16.251.120 (172.16.251.120) 25.292 ms 30.223 ms 33.332 ms
              3 undefined.hostname.localhost (206.224.64.86) 31.990 ms
              undefined.hostname.localhost (206.224.64.98) 39.605 ms
              undefined.hostname.localhost (206.224.64.86) 46.263 ms
              4 undefined.hostname.localhost (206.224.64.101) 47.542 ms
              undefined.hostna

              • Interesting. Not just the way it reports hosts with no hostname, but the fact that your first hop is about the same as mine, and mine is up in Colorado Springs, with a 260 round trip, as compared to about 700 for yours if what you wrote earlier is correct.

                • Interesting. Not just the way it reports hosts with no hostname, but the fact that your first hop is about the same as mine, and mine is up in Colorado Springs, with a 260 round trip, as compared to about 700 for yours if what you wrote earlier is correct.

                  I'm not either of the two people who previously replied to you.

                  First, that's the results of FreeBSD's traceroute, which is why it differs from what you're accustomed to.

                  Second, the latencies reported in traceroute are not cumulative of ping. Each one is round trip to that hop, including intervening hops. Adding them together double counts the second-to-last hop, triple counts the third-to-last hop, quadruple counts the fourth-to-last hop, etc. Use ping for ping and traceroute for traceroute and you'll con

                  • Second, the latencies reported in traceroute are not cumulative of ping. Each one is round trip to that hop, including intervening hops. Adding them together double counts the second-to-last hop, triple counts the third-to-last hop, quadruple counts the fourth-to-last hop, etc. Use ping for ping and traceroute for traceroute and you'll confuse yourself less.

                    I wasn't adding up the ping times. I know that each ping will normally be longer than the preceding one and was only looking at that first hop outsi

                    • I wasn't adding up the ping times.

                      Then I have no idea where you got 700ms from what I pasted.

                      We do have Dish TV, and it goes out or hangs almost every time we have a thunderstorm...

                      Starlink will start to get a little flaky during a thunderstorm but it doesn't go out and stay out. Latencies start to spike high enough that pfSense will drop it out of my load balancing group, which unfortunately means I don't know what the behavior would be if it was simply allowed to keep running as best it could.

                      Of course, my AT&T DSL will also start to flake out during a thunderstorm, and worse than Starlink. Something, somewhere gets we

                    • Then I have no idea where you got 700ms from what I pasted.

                      That was a gesstimate based on my expectation that the ping had to go up to GEO and back, twice. Clearly, I was wrong.
                    • Starlink is NOT in GEO. It is very much in LEO.
                      Star-link sats are only 700 miles up. That's why the speeds are great.
                      Somewhere down the road, I suspect that Starlink will be approaching a number of large companies and get them to get on-board. That will enable 4-6 hops to anywhere on earth that Starlink services.

                      Compare that to US west, Qwest, now century link where it will take some 20-25 hops to hit say www.cnn.com or www.foxnews.com, while Starlink, will have 4-6 if these are on starlink as well.
                    • Starlink is NOT in GEO. It is very much in LEO.

                      Yes, I know. Now. However, when I wrote the post giving the 700 ms ping time, I didn't.

  • Coincidence (Score:5, Insightful)

    by coopertempleclause ( 7262286 ) on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @09:14PM (#63493094)
    Funny how Republicans are always pro-regulation when that regulation benefits huge corportations...

  • of municipalities exceeding corporate offerings at lower cost, of individuals and coops serving areas the big guys are uninterested in, etc. for this to fail.

    • Re: Too many examples (Score:4, Informative)

      by Jfetjunky ( 4359471 ) on Tuesday May 02, 2023 @10:18PM (#63493178)
      I live in Longmont, CO. We have a local gigabit internet. Its so much nicer. Gbps is Gbps but when we had issues when we were first moving in we called and were immediately connected to someone at the local office who recommisioned our connection right then and there and Boom. Comcast has been going around trying to make exclusive deals with new apartments to box them out.

  • There's no way this isn't going to wind up being funded by taxpayers to some extent whether they use it or not. Sure, they will say that it's funded by user fees but every government service bar none has a financial appetite that always exceeds the direct funding source. They will whine and complain that they don't have enough money and voila they will get what they want.

  • It was insane that monopolies could manipulate us that much. What was being pushed was fiber owned by city, with multiple providers of internet, services. THAT was fought by Comcast and Century Link. Yet, those companies continue to provide garbage service at extreme costs.

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