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100Mbps Internet Access For $1000 Per Month
A reader writes "Cogent, a startup ISP that has just recently completed their fiber optic network across the US, is now offering 100Mbps internet access for $1000 a month in some major metropolitan areas." A few caveats of course - I'm not sure how close to actually connecting people they are - but it does sound like a nice deal.
If you take the time to look at their website:
Cogent has many distinct market advantages to enhance your real estate investment... from
this page.
This is being marketed as something to install in the apartment building you own, not really as a personal connection to the internet.
On the other hand, considering building managment, do you really want the building super to also be your sysadmin?
This was posted before by timmy. Article here.
I always thought that college was a place that sold 100Mbps internet access for $1000 a month... And it came with free live-motion chicks viewable through the window panel on my wall. I don't know if they were real though; never went outside my room. Of course I am of that select population that would, when given the option of a date and a LAN party, pick the latter. And if there are girls at the LAN party, it counts as a date, right?
"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes."
-E. W. Dijkstra
Hi!
What Cogent is doing is part of a small but growing phenomenon--commonly called "metropolitan area networking." The basic idea is to wire a densely-populated area like a campus network--connecting to the larger Internet through a few gateways just like a university or corporate network would. The benefits of doing this are reasonably obvious: wiring an entire "campus" at once represents a single construction project, rather than becoming a years-long incremental installation of line after line after line. Typically the network service is provided with an Ethernet switch rather than a router--the host "Ethernet service provider" typically will also offer network management services for network participants.
Another emerging provider of MANs is 3rd Wire, which is presently in discussions to wire the downtown "Digital District" in Allentown, Pennsylvania. 3rd Wire is publicly indicating that they expect bandwidth costs to drop dramatically over the next 5 years--they expect to provide bandwidth within the Allentown Digital District at approximately $400/GB within a year, and their business model projects that price to drop to roughly $50/GB of bandwidth in five years.
Mind blowing? What they're doing--and they are by no means the only people doing this--is seeing that there is critical mass in providing fiber in that "last mile" to the end user. And they're being helped, in part, by communities that recognize that "urban infrastructure" in the 21st century will require bandwidth just as much as it requires paved roads and traffic signals. Those communities are actively working to bring in providers to wire their communities--reasoning (entirely correctly) that high-tech firms are going to gravitate to cities with gigabit bandwidth for sub-K bucks.
Incidentally, several posters have mentioned that this is meant "for business only"--not so. Certainly the Allentown Digital District very much wants to use the metropolitan area network to revitalize business in downtown Allentown--but we also want to encourage urban redevelopment in the surrounding neighborhoods with the offer of dramatic bandwidth for small dollars. If you can live and work a couple of blocks apart, and have gigibit Ethernet at home and at work, wouldn't that be attractive? We think it will be.
Full disclosure: I'm heavily involved with the Lehigh Valley Partnership and the Allentown Digital District.