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Houses With Tails
nnfiber writes "What if home owners could also own their Internet connection? Tim Wu, of New America Foundation and Derek Slater, Google's Policy Analyst, say this can be a new effective way to encourage broadband deployment — an important issue in 'America's economic growth.' In his post, Timothy B. Lee says: 'That might sound like a crazy idea at first blush, but Wu and Slater do a great job of explaining how it might work. The key idea is "condominium fiber," an arrangement in which a number of neighboring households pool their resources to install fiber to all the homes in their neighborhoods. Once constructed, each home would own its own fiber strand, while the shared costs of maintaining the "trunk" cable from the individual homes to a central switching location would be managed in the same way that condominium and homeowners' associations currently manage the shared areas of condos and gated communities.'"
The housing market is crap already, adding other overheads won't make things better. And I bet the cable companies/isp's would not like the idea of joe sixpack competing with them.
Seven Days with Ubuntu Unity
just to deal with the 'tail'. Too much administrative work to do on a volunteer basis, too little to do on a paid basis. But it might work with a pre-existing organization such as a condo, coop or home owners association.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Sounds like a red-light district to me.
I don't think so!
As soon as something on the trunk broke due to any reason, all the neighbors are going to come banging down my door as being the "tech-savvy" person.
Neighbor 1: "Umm... the internet won't work anymore."
Neighboar 2: "My emails won't send!"
Neighbor 3's kids: "unmm liek i cn't tlk to my bff jill?"
It seems to me that taking the responsibility for the line away from the Telecoms is asking for more problems when something breaks. It's bad enough already when they have to be talked into rolling a truck to fix an issue on lines they maintain. With privately held fiber, I really don't see any advantage. The Telecom, or a private contractor, would still have to be called whenever the private fiber had issues. This seems like it would add middlemen and fingerpointing without really giving any benefit.
I really don't think that the average consumer is going to care about something like this.
For most, a 5Mbps cable connection is much much much more than they ever will (or can) use. The only thing that will drive high-bandwidth stuff like this is media. Websites like this are certainly a step in the correct direction, but until we start seeing dedicated media appliances in peoples homes, it isn't going to happen.
On top of that, think of something (other than streaming media) that your average home-owning consumer is going to use that would require large bandwidth. There aren't many. Sure, some of us geeks use services like Usenet or (and I've never seen this in practice, only rumors of it) bittorrent that are capable of filling up our connection but, relative to the amount of joe-sixpack/plumbers there are out there, we are a small small minority.
Any devs wnat to make a "hulu" box with me?
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
Your neighbor's resources=their money, your resources=your time and knowledge. You could possibly create a full-time and well-paying job for yourself running your neighborhood's network.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
now, maybe as a renter my view of Home Owners Associations (HOA) and condos are a little flawed... but condering there have been cases where HOAs have stopped people from putting up solar panals, fences, planting trees, even a back yard clothes line... what is to stop them from likewise restricting and controlling broadband?
sorry, your torrenting is degrading the value of our community internet, we are going to have to block that.
instead of a half dozen telcos to deal with for net neutrality, you will have thousands on thousands of HOAs
the preceding post was not spell checked... suck it.
Just because you live near each other doesn't mean you play well together. Especially when money is involved. How could you possibly do this and not have someone ticked off for paying more than they think they should. Should my mother who doesn't even own a computer be subsidizing everyone elses usage? Or what happens when someone who believes in the RIAA moves into your neighborhood and then starts enforcing his beliefs on you. Sounds crazy, but how many people get fined a year because they have too much crap on their condo deck, or some other abserd thing. Oh, the arguments may or may not be rational, but that won't stop them. Especially in a neighborgood that spans a large age group. Instead of get off my lawn, it'll be get your porn of my internet.
"Once constructed, each home would own its own fiber strand, while the shared costs of maintaining the "trunk" cable from the individual homes to a central switching location would be managed in the same way that condominium and homeowners' associations currently manage the shared areas of condos and gated communities."
So, that is to say - not at all? We have a hard enough time collecting homeowner's fees as it is. I can only speculate that it would be harder at a higher cost.
And what are you supposed to do if/when one home stops paying its part? Not upkeep that portion of fiber? Have everyone else absorb the costs?
Mods: Disagreeing with me != my post Offtopic / Flamebait.
World without hate or war, invaded. Tragic?
Why not just get fiber to the house from a normal provider like Verizon? Is this an alternative method for people who live out in the boonies or what?
I don't think this idea has been thought out all the way.
I like the idea, but for neighborhoods with association members that are not technically adept, what will they do to maintain the network? Do it themselves?? I don't think so. If they attempt it, it will be a support nightmare. If they are unwilling/unable, they will have to hire an outside person/firm to help them support the network. We already have this with ISP companies with dedicated IT support staff.
This would work with people living in the neighborhood who know what they're doing, but I don't think this will work on a wholesale basis. And God forbid I move into a neighborhood that has adequate neighbors maintaining the network, just to have them move away later, and have the neighborhood drunk take over the network administration.
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
This is already happening (and has been for years) in resort communities. Typically the arrangement starts with a central authority, in Colorado I worked with a few unincorporated Metro Districts for example, that owns and maintains all of the infrastructure. The infrastructure provided service to most homes and condos. The arrangement to provide service was made with a property management company that in turn contracted with the individual homeowner associations. The HOA assessed dues and the property management company collected the dues. Then the property management company reimbursed the utilities for their service.
In practice, things were quite as clean. Besides the service provided by the metro district, service was also provided by the local telco if the individual homeowners wanted that instead.
Anyway, resort communities provide a pretty good model for how to do it in the rest of the country.
----- obSig
I'm sure thinkgeek do a T-shirt for that eventuality.
I'd totally chip in $30/mo to get reliable fiber to my condo. I don't know if I could convince my neighbors, but if we have a >90% adoption rate, it wouldn't be that hard as long as it is cheaper than cable. Also, we'd need to have a third party company maintain it for us.. I don't want to be designated on-call for internet issues.
Great, all I need is my homeowners' association determining what kind of internet connection I get. What if half of them are happy with dialup? What if some of them don't even want to pay for an internet connection? What if some of them are delinquent on their payments and my connection gets cut off?
How about fuck those guys and let me manage my own connection instead of unnecessarily making it a shared responsibility where decisions are made by a committee of people with no mutual interest?
Working with telcos is a pain. The problem is NEVER on their side. Why don't you reboot all your equipment first? Did that fix it?
I deal mostly with T-1's and that technology has been around for about 50 years. Yet I still cannot get the providers to TEST the lines when I say there is a problem. HELLO?!? You should ALREADY know there's a problem when one of the circuits goes into an error state.
Now, imagine trying to get the telco to deal with a problem connecting to your network with all your neighbors complaining to you.
From TFA:
No. Those are all devices INSIDE the house. They are NOT the connections themselves.
Lots of homes have water filters and water heaters. But very few homes own the water pipes.
While in theory this seems like a good idea when it comes to implementing the plan home owners would be chasing their own tails.
Neighboar 2: "My emails won't send!"
Quit being selfish. It's not really fair to expect a wild pig to understand the ins and outs of networking.
Duh. That's what I say. Not to you, but to the industry. You are absolutely right. Infrastructure should be owned by the community. Local infrastructure, such as the last mile connection, should be owned by the subdivision (homeowner's association) or town. It is absurd that we allow companies own this infrastructure, allowing us to be victimized by their self-interested deployment schedules. Communities could do it now and have success: all they need to do is become a non-profit ISP, and charge the customer the same way they charge now for water, etc. The community would be in the driver's seat, not Verizon, etc. The reason this did not work with AT&T is because it was a vast monopoly over all communities, and so it had no incentive to innovate. If the community ISPs are local, there will still be many technology providers and they will compete for community-based business.
In my experience, the people who ask others for tech help are the least likely to be willing to pay for it. And they certainly aren't willing to pay market rates.
And when you decide to move? The entire neighborhood goes to hell in a handbasket.
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
Classy. The subtle twist on the word "tail" along with the allegory towards Mr. Bryant's affairs made this a decent and well thought out troll. Could be improved by getting first post, and perhaps adding some punctuation.
8/10
Repair costs for physical damage to said "trunk" could be costly. How many homeowner associations have a member competent in fiber splicing? Not to mention the difficulty in finding exactly where physical damage is located. A backhoe trench is pretty obvious, but damage on an aerial run pole-to-pole is not so obvious.
It is easy to say 'homeowner is responsible for their "tail" and the association is responsible for the "trunk"', but who pays the expense of diagnosing every problem which comes down the pipe?
What about one-call utility protection services? Most states in the USA have a one-call utility location service. You need to either register (and mark your own lines when called or pay someone else to do so) or accept that anyone digging in proximity to your lines will believe there are no obstructions. (and thus will not dig carefully.)
Repair, support, service, damage prevention, and infrastructure hardware. Deal with these issues in a comprehensive manner and you're pretty much an ISP. What was the point again?
At which point your neighbors will then begin to dictate what content will and will not be allowed on the connection, "in the same way that condominium and homeowners' associations currently manage the shared areas of condos and gated communities" now.
No thanks.
Proverbs 21:19
Holy Crap! This is like, a FREE GOLD MINE!
Unlimited tech support opportunities! Exclusive contracts! Clueless users ensuring a steady supply of work! Bottomless pits of fodder for "Customers Suck" and "Stupid, Stupid Enduser" blogs! Angry phone calls at 3AM! People knocking on your door asking you to fix their plumbing and interwebs!
This is a BOFH's Wet Dream!
[End Of Line]
Well, then I guess they would be out of luck, and if they don't want to pay for the service, they can find someone else to get it from. I see nothing in TFA that states that entire neighborhoods would be forced to take part. If there are other options available, they can go ahead and buy a service from them.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
This kind of sharing at the edges is already exactly what people do with WiFi attached to wired broadband. Lots of people use neighbors' broadband when they first move in, before their own wire is installed. Lots of other people too cheap to pay for expensive broadband are piggybacking on their neighbors' WiFi. And plenty of other people's guests just use neighbors' WiFi because it's easier than plugging in with more cables, especially if the broadband adapter doesn't have extra hub ports.
The problem is that the telcos/cablecos prohibit sharing one's broadband account with the neighbors. They insist on monopolizing the delivery of broadband to everyone, even after years of failing to deliver it to lots of people (usually because it's priced too expensive, but often because the telco/cableco has higher profit elsewhere while they ignore wiring whole neighborhoods).
If people weren't prohibited from sharing their broadband connections, they would include more people in the broadband Net. Some people would offer WiFi, others would offer wires. Competition among them (lacking in the telco/cableco duopoly) would force everyone's prices lower.
The telcos/cablecos would hate it. But so what? We all hate them, for many good reasons.
--
make install -not war
Sounds like a horrible idea. Most of my neighbors are renters. I have never even met many of the property owners. Who's going to go in on the fiber connection with me?
While in my utopia a fiber connection would be just as attractive an add on to a rental property as a dishwasher or off street parking, I know it's not that way for most people. Hell, many of the units around me don't even have central air yet.
Luckily under the current system, i can get uverse regardless of my neighbors
Then they can continue to pool their resources and hire someone, or educate themselves and do it themselves.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
I agree with the general reaction I am reading.. and at the same time an ambitious group of people could see this as an opportunity to provide an installation and maintenance service to the neighborhoods and other associations. If it became popular and lucrative then surely the ISPs would start offering the same deal to keep their extorti.. er um, "business model" alive. Soon after the ISPs and telco's and cable co's and other monop.. er um, "companies" jump on board, we'll be right back to square one because the fiber lines will be driven up to at least $300 a month.
some bunch of crabby little old twits meet at 3 am in a crack house to set new rules, with no announcement, and you get screwed.
yeah, know all about those condo associations.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
If would probably think this a great idea, if
I had not lived in appartments or houses with shared facilites - parking spaces, pools, whatever.
1. Everybody treats 'shared' resources with zero respect.
2. Everybody bitches about the cost. Some don't pay.
3. There's a regular shitfest disguised as a 'resident's association meeting' or something. Always dominated by a few activists whose opinions inevitably are the reverse of yours.
4. The people hired by the 'association council' to do installation & maintenance are always more expensive and less competent than people you've picked.
5. Whenever something breaks, it's always faster and cheaper to fix it yourself, so the vaguely competent end up doing everything if they want their hall lights, garage door, cable to work...
So, I can do without the pool, but depend on this setup for my (vital for work) broadband?
Noooooooooooooooo!
Homeowners associations are notorious for mission creep - how long before they would want content filters?
this is old. when i rented a townhouse, rented an apartment for my undergrad and did the same for grad school the same exact model was being used...verbatim. there are already huge fiber networks doing just this...not just in apartment spaces but even in residential areas. i own a house now and have a 50 Mbit connection to my house in a similar "HOA" fiber community.
Yeah nerds are all a blight on society, until the people need something computer-related. Nerds should demand this condo-fiber idea never happens, because it will detract from our World of Warcraft time. Techsup is best handled from India, IMHO.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
My mom lives in a gated retirement community, where the overwhelming majority of the population is seniors. Many of them have computers, which they use to do all sorts of things, from browsing the Web to making Skype calls to their family around the country. Few of them are really what you would call "computer literate." Most of them seem to know some guy who lives in the neighborhood who has taken it upon himself to be smarter than your average bear. They might not necessarily pay that guy out at "market rates," but when you start to add up free dinners, free bottles of scotch, etc., plus just being a well-known and respected member of your community, being the local "tech guy" has its plus side.
Breakfast served all day!
I think we've been 'arking up the wrong tree, Fido.
Mutate!
Mutate!
this definitely needs a mod up. summarizes it well.
There's a reason the US started out as a republic.
Please note that prior to Jackson, individual voters did not even elect the president, it was state legislatrues. The founding fathers knew how awful mob rule could be. The last thing we need is for the internet to be destroyed by the "tyranny of the majority"
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
As with most condo associations, it would be great till the little old lady down the street wants to rip the whole thing out and go back to token ring. Everyone would laugh at her and call her stupid and then she would sue the association for bias against a minority in the group.
Laws governing these associations don't allow them to be pure democracies. It's very easy for one or a few disgruntled individuals to cause major headaches for the majority even if the majority is working in the best interest of the collective.
Let's have the PEOPLE pay for it! This way, the telcos can still buy solid chrome hookers!
Yes, because we all know this same thing happens with community run water districts....oh wait.
Trust me.
This has been going on for ages in Denmark.
Local community calls up some provider, they dig in cables, each home owner coughs up with the money for the digging+cables (around 10.000DKR ($1800) the houses value increase by the value of the new cables - cables belong to the houses, switch boxes etc. belong to whatever provider you choose.
Seriously US, get with the times!
They want attribution
Help stamp out iliturcy.
This reminds me of a previous slashdot posting.
If you haven't hold a place in the HOA board, you can not know how much apathy these people have towards absolutely necessary things like taking care of road, sidewalks etc, and most of them are old timers. Do you really want to leave the destiny of your precious fiber to the whim of a handful of geezer busy-bodies ? I sure don't. Not a great idea in my opinion. Having a network admin, paid part time, like 2 hours per month plus incidentals to manage it, is more plausible for this type of outfit.
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
...and you've re-invented the concept of a municipal utility.
You need to read up on the telephone system someday. We had "community telephone companies" in the 1960's. As the rest of the Bell system modernized with electronic switching, these guys still had mechanical crossbar switches.
Innovation? Nah, there wasn't enough money in a small telephone company to do it. Lots of these places had less than 1,000 customers and one switch.
This has been tried in the past and it didn't work very well. I guess you could say it worked well enough to get some people phone service, but nobody was very happy about it.
We're well past the point of fooling around with these schemes. If we believe water and sewage should be public infrastructure (and cheap and universally available), then that belief should extend to internet access too. This can be bought about through political action. Certainly, the telcos are very active politically.
Of course you can't live on goodwill and scotch alone.
You also need blackjack and hookers.
dumb idea why not just wait until your city gives you free wireless internet as part of their spy on people campaign. As noted previously on http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/11/22/1514250
I get this attitude all the time. My reputation as a "computer guy" spread through the neighborhood like wildfire. Next thing ya know, people are knocking on my door at least 3 or 4 nights of the week expecting free tech help.
My best response is to demand an annoying chore in return. For example,
Neighbor: "My DSL isn't working...you got a sec to check it out?"
Me: "Sure! I'll get started after you have finished cleaning my gutters! You've got a ladder, right?"
They usually smile and think you're kidding at first. If you don't budge, you've either got a paying customer (via services) or one less knock on your door when you're trying to eat.
No one who has lived with the train wreck a HoA or condo association tends to cause would ever find this a good idea.
they'll be telling to somebody else?
Rural electrical cooperatives do much the same thing for electrical power.
Too late already here. They are already talking about it.
Don't forget the blow
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
What idiot thinks that negotiating cost, authority, accountability and responsibility for a fiber trunk with any number of neighbors greater than zero is going to be feasible?
What planet are you from? Because on my planet my one neighbor maintains an unsightly junkyard of decaying plumbing supplies in his backyard. My other neighbor always parks their cars in front of my yard because their garage is full of useless shit and they don't want cars in front of their yard. The neighbor across the street?? Well, he maintains two vicious junkyard dogs in his concrete/gated frontyard. They spend all day leaping at and barking at everything that moves. The neighbor next to him? he's abandoned one dead, totaled in a car crash, Toyota Rav-4 on the street like some sort of mad-max art tribute.
And somebody thinks there's going to be some magical, happy, functional negotiation about a shared high-tech resource with these kinds of people??
Puuuuhleeeease!
I will never live for sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.
Sorry, but I can not go along with that. If the city I live in ran everything like they do the water system, I would have limited phone, cable TV, and power on weekends. May work some places, but not here.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
This is whyas part of the monthly maintenance fee is set aside for repairs.
Then you bill your rate.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Many new developments in San Jose, CA paid for the internal and connecting T1 lines etc... About 10-14 years ago.
In fact; Forget the Tailpipe!
May the Maths Be with you!
The same neighborhood pools that were segregated by banning blacks in the south as late as the late 1950s?
And the modern cyber equivalent would be only the middle and upper middle class would be able to afford net access under this system leading to a permanent marginally employed and under informed cyber underclass of "untouchable" manual laborers.
Thanks but no thanks. Hasn't the financial crises shown that the cut throat "ownership society" not only is not cruel and greedy, but doesn't work very well. Do we really want a fiber bubble and then fiber crash?
More Sweden, less Dicken's England please.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
This kind of networks already exists over here in Romania; we call them "Neighborhood Networks", (not to be mistaken with Windows' same folder, or what it is). They exist since the late '90s, and they're being massively brought off by traditional ISPs for they customer base. In their beginning, these networks would be the only way to get broadband of any kind; they would span anarchically over several condo blocks, cables ran in trees, routers secured in plastic bags... the good ol' times... Some are active to this day, they turned into mini-ISPs. They even have private peerings with each others, and even launched an exchange (this: http://www.interlan.ro/?lang=en&t=1) They're widely credited by the geek community in Romania to force the major ISPs to deploy true broadband and bring down the prices.
When someone calls you saying that their Internet explorer isn't working, what are you going to do?
"Oh hold on there, let me get my reflectometer out and test the fibre for breaks. Hmm. Looks like a potential break 432m down the line. Can I borrow your shovel? Here, carry my arc fusion splicer, I'll need that."
Come on. What would be done is you would hire a company (a power company for example, Enmax does stuff here) to lay the fiber and then have an agreement with them for them to maintain the lines for $x/mo for y years. The monthly fee would be split up amongst the homeowners.
Copyright 2010. All rights reserved. This comment may not be copied in any way including, but not limited to caching.
See for example: http://loudounextra.washingtonpost.com/news/2007/may/21/suburbs-locked-high-tech-lure/
Ibid.
My HOA is the closest thing to the SS since the holocaust..."just following orders" was actually the excuse when I received a deed restriction violation for the moving truck on the day I moved in. Apparently, if you can't teleport or unload your entire moving truck in less than 15 min you're not welcome (btw, I had a moving company so it's not like it was there for 4 hours). I certainly don't want them to have a say in my internet as they haven't gotten a single part of real world management right.
Wiring a Neighborhood?
While not exactly the same, some of the same issues did come up.
Sweden, 10/100 Mb/s Fiber to houses. in the neighborhood people took extra on their mortgages for the high speed connection. Back in 1999.
Neighbor 1: "Umm... the internet won't work anymore."
Neighboar 2: "My emails won't send!"
Neighbor 3's kids: "unmm liek i cn't tlk to my bff jill?"
And that's when you stop your SETI@Home, Electric Sheep, the torrent server, Streams and every other daemon that's been using their share of bandwidth.
In rural areas, many utilities are managed in this manner, especially water, but often other utilities such as sewer systems. Most rural water districts are formed by a group of neighbors getting together and forming an association, hiring an engineer, and arranging financing (often government backed grants and loans). Board members are voted in from the utility users to manage the system.
It is not unusual for a rural customer to pay $5,000 for the right to connect to a water system for instance, then pay all costs to get the service installed, even on the system side. Once in service the rights to the service very much stay with the property. The homeowner is responsible for maintenance from the service connection to their home after installation, while the district as a whole takes care of maintenance on the distribution side of the connection. This is obviously handled as part of the monthly fee.
Most states have laws governing the formation of such districts. I wonder how they apply to Internet service?
the entire HOA escrow account, over $300k, that was being accrued to cover road paving when it was needed. No bonding because he was a neighbor. We have had a legal fight to remove the president of the HOA that has cost 6 months and probably $50k in legal fees.
And I want another HOA like entity? Not on your live.
Seriously, you have got to be effing kidding. Most HA's are so over-run with busybodies that they already make life almost unbearable for the average homeowner. Can you imagine them in control of your internet, too?
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
I had this more than 5 years ago. We shared a symmetric 4 Mbit connection in our flat, connected on simple CAT5. "Service" was done by a few volunteers and there was a clear understanding that this was not a "service guaranteed within X hours" kind of thing. We HAD to pay through a standing bank-order so nobody had to chase those who forgot to pay. For USD 15 per month, it was the best internet connection I have ever had, felt at least as smooth as my current 8/1.5 ADSL. My boss currently runs a network for +/- 80 families. The only problem they have is if people plug WIFI routers wrongly and a second DHCP server appears on their network. Then it is door to door Gestapo style.
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
Someone should start a company that supplies Internet access to a group of houses by connecting them to a common high-bandwidth backbone connection. You could probably even get the government to kick in some money to get started with the promise of widespread highspeed connections.
No no no. You misunderstand my friend. What I am suggesting is that the customer of the telcom companies should be the communities. Not you and me. You and I have no clout. I am not proposing lots of little ISP companies, each developing its own technology. I am proposing that the last mile be owned by the community. The last mile merely lays down technology conduits. The technology is developed by the telcos. That is what I am proposing. It is very different from the many little phone companies approach.
I think the idea will work well for community developments but the idea is very narrow. Ownership of a fiber line would be considered just the same as ownership of the standard telephone lines that run through your walls. Although the infrastructure is not nearly at par with this idea, I'm sure that when fiber becomes widely available owners of Homes (not community prop./condos) will own their fiber connections as well. One thing to point out is that homeowners will most likely never own in any part switches or other devices that are not attached to the property.
Could be. Perhaps the subdivision. And one can always make it a priority with one's vote. Perhaps some communities should try it. (Maybe some have?) I expect it would work well in some places and not in others, depending on how important it is to the local constituents. But right now, if you don't like something about the last mile provider, you can't do anything, because there is usually one, and maybe two, and they don't really respond to the complaint of a single lone customer. They own the cable going to our house, and they know it, and they use that as leverage over us.
Because we already have the technology, and no one does it.
I can already buy cheap wifi adapters and link two wifi nodes together. In my complex alone, I can see a half dozen routers. Multiple problems:
It's a cool idea, one I wish we could make work. But unfortunately, the limitations are economic, not technical. Any attempt to fix this is going to look like the telephone monopoly all over again.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
You also need blackjack and hookers.
Awww... screw the whole thing
The machine unmakes the man. Now that the machine is so perfect, the engineer is nobody. -Ralph Waldo Emerson
They're actively running fiber all over the place for their FiOS service. Check with them first, and then let them do all of the heavy lifting!
Ok, I just had to respond to those who say it can't work, it can and it does.
Granted I live in a cohousing community, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohousing, so I will concede that we are not your typical HOA.
However, my community through its HOA signed an bulk agreement with our local cable company to provide both internet and cable TV at a discount. Everyone wanted internet but only one-fourth wanted cable TV. Every house is connected for both internet and cable TV but you pay the HOA only for what you use (honor system). It is not part of your HOA dues but you pay it with your HOA dues.
For those who want premium features, the cable company has a la carte pricing. For individual problems, I have my neighbors contact the cable company. For more systemic problems, I step in and contact cable to ensure better service.
This arrangement is working for us.
There are also other communities (Great Oak Cohousing in Ann Arbor, MI, Eastern Village Cohousing in Silver Spring, MD and there are others) who also cooperatively arrange to bring the cost of broadband cheaper than we did. (They are larger communities and have more techies.)
So neighbors working cooperatively together can get services cheaper.
Don't forget the blow
I thought that's what the hookers were for?
I think you misunderstand: HOAs are a form of local government: You pay "taxes" to them, and they try to provide some value in return. Also, they fine you if you break their rules.
But you do have a point: Much like labor unions, HOAs have outlived their usefulness and need to be stripped of their power they hold over their constituents. Note: this may require a "hostile" takeover by conspiring neighbors, like voting in new management that refuses to enforce the rules except against the former tyrants, so they'll move out and the HOA can be abolished by unanimous vote.
We don't want to own the fiber, because then we have to pay the service crew to maintain it when it's hit by a fallen tree or flooded by a ruptured pipe (or even if we do want to pay for that, we get shafted by our lower priority for being such a minor player).
Realistically, this should be purchased on our behalf by the local city government. Perhaps the service should be provided at-cost to the individual, with a little extra padding for rainy days (sometimes literally).
More realistically, this is entirely stupid. There won't be any need for this "last mile" in a few years (the time it would take to implement the thing anyway), since high-powered wifi/wimax/etc solutions will be feasible by then. With that in mind, you're not owning something that has anything to do with where you live, you're merely owning a piece of virtual bandwidth somewhere. This further highlights the stupidity of the suggestion, as it's along the same lines as commoditizing fresh air (which has actually been proposed as a way of ensuring pollution is kept in check, see an Inconvenient Truth).
Rather than thinking of interesting ways to re-privatize the ISP industry modeled after real estate, I'd prefer to see interesting ways of nationalizing the ISP industry modeled after the interstate highway system or the post office; the internet is a public service for the people, regulated for safety and throughput in manners that corporations would never do (do you really think it's worth UPS's while to have offices in towns in the middle of nowhere? of course not; it's nowhere near profitable, which is why the USPS, the Highway system, and Amtrak will never even resemble profitable enterprises).
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
We believe electricity (and natural gas in many places) should be public infrastructure, and it is, yet it's delivered by private companies, not the government. However, those companies are considered public utilities, and as such are heavily regulated, to the point that their prices are set by the government. Water and sewage in some places is the same way, but in other places is run by municipal governments. Trash in many places is a utility, and is either government or privately run.
I'm not sure I see the advantage in having the government deliver internet access, when not just one, but multiple methods (telcos and cablecos) of connection exist in most places through private industry. I do think there's some room for more regulation by the local or state governments, but what we have is already working decently. If the government wanted to do it, it'd either have to buy out some company's infrastructure, or pay billions to lay their own fiber to everyone's house.
It sucks that internet access isn't cheaper than it already is, and is more expensive than some other countries, but we also don't live nearly as densely as people do in places like Europe and Korea, so naturally it's more expensive to install infrastructure here.
The problem in the USA is that the government is generally much more corrupt here than in industrialized countries, which is why we have many of these problems. Maybe in my lifetime, we can become an industrialized country, rather than a corrupt 3rd-world country, but I'm not hopeful.
In fact, forget the blackjack and goodwill!
My mom lives in a gated retirement community, where the overwhelming majority of the population is seniors.
Of course you can't live on goodwill and scotch alone.
You also need blackjack and hookers.
Will bridge and octogenarian widows do?
And when you decide to move? The entire neighborhood goes to hell in a handbasket.
Threaten to do so unless they pay market rates.
This doesn't fix the main problem: the local loop monopolies will still extort as much as possible, for the necessary connection between the "community fiber" and the "real Internet", at the metro level fiber. Stating that the "last mile" is the main cost driver, and that house tails will fix that, is complete monopoly-driven fantasy B.S. The primary cost will always be the local loop private monopoly extortion taxes.
Here's what we need: part of the future Network Neutrality Bill should provide the possibility for people to use their own homes, without restriction, as network hubs, and form peering agreements at will. No ISP that connects to them can restrict allowing them peering agreements with anyone else.
Adjoining lot neighbors then dig a few feet of pipe between their homes, on their own property, but meeting at an agreed point on their fence line. They peer with each other, and own equipment that will automatically load balance their bandwidth between a shared pool of ISP uplinks, based on cost of bandwidth, QoS, etc. Once a big enough neighborhood of adjacent >=100Mbps peers is formed, new ISP players will have less to worry about in the last-mile build-outs -- they will just have to find the nearest neighbor in the group with a manageable adjacent CO, or find one neighbor in the group willing to host their equipment onsite within range of an existing management point.
I still don't get why the streets/highway/interstate analogies don't get more penetration when talking about Internet governance. Please try to imagine how awful driving would be, if different private monopolies each owned a piece of your commute. That's exactly the situation we have with Internet connections today. Unfortunately, only government can really fix that. Private at-home peering with neighbors is just a grassroots way of starting in that direction. The bigger changes need to happen at the Interstate network level, through forced competition, neutrality fair-play rules, and other government policy acts.
managed in the same way that condominium and homeowners' associations currently manage the shared areas of condos and gated communities
Which means very poorly and with a certain air of arrogance(from exclusionism) towards both the inside and outside.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Being in AT&T territory, that's not going to happen short of regulation - and cable only came here when it was everywhere else. Not as a middle of nowhere, but a fairly large Midwestern city.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
Maybe in my lifetime, we can become an industrialized country, rather than a corrupt 3rd-world country, but I'm not hopeful.
Go live in an actual, corrupt, third-world country and see how you feel about that after a while. If you don't think other countries are just as corrupt, you're stupider than you look. They may be better at hiding it, and their citizens may be more used to going to the government dole for handouts, so they're less suspicious, but it's there.
You don't make the poor richer by making the rich poorer. - Winston Churchill
The whole point of this (which has been overshadowed by TFA bringing HOAs into it) is to separate the last-mile infrastructure from the IP service.
(TFA is NOT the originator of this concept)
Nobody in their right mind is suggesting that your HOA should be your ISP or that you should buy Internet service from anyone other than existing ISPs.
What is being suggested is that we should stop this system of perpetualy renting the physical cables that run into our homes.
Paying up front the true cost of running a fiber strand from your house to the nearest carrier neutral datacentre frees you from monopoly opression forever.
In this scenario you can switch Internet or phone or even TV providers at the push of a button. That puts you in the position of power.
- the cost of the last-mile is 60-80% of your current Internet service bill.
- if you are going to buy your house rather than rent it then why not buy rather than rent your last-mile fiber?
BTW, I'd like to offer to buy your driveway and rent it back to you for the next 40 years.
Be warned, I may at some point be 'forced' to restrict the weight of your car so as not to unduly stress my poorly maintainted ashphalt.
[citation needed]
"I'm not sure I see the advantage in having the government deliver internet access, when not just one, but multiple methods (telcos and cablecos) of connection exist in most places through private industry"
That's called a duopoly, and it's pretty much as bad as a monopoly.
"what we have is already working decently."
If by decently you mean it's slow and overpriced, then I agree.
"If the government wanted to do it, it'd either have to buy out some company's infrastructure, or pay billions to lay their own fiber to everyone's house."
I'd settle for gig-over-copper, which would be light years ahead of the speeds currently available. Hell, hundred meg would have me dancing on the ceiling.
"we also don't live nearly as densely as people do in places like Europe and Korea, so naturally it's more expensive to install infrastructure here."
And yet in cities like New York, which are densely populated, internet access is still expensive and slow. But at the university I work at, 100 miles from a big city, a one gig internet connection costs 5 bucks a month, and our telecom department still turns a profit. Hmmmm...
"the government is generally much more corrupt here than in industrialized countries"
"The government" covers a lot of territory. It's true that many states have passed legislation making it illegal for municipalities to provide internet to their citizens. I trust my local government a lot more than the cable and telcos, too bad our state reps are for sale. But if you think corporate executives are so smart and trustworthy, have you watched the news--or your 401(k) statement--in the last couple months?
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Moderating me troll is inaccurate I believe EVERYTHING I typed there. Troll implies that I am just making things up to get a response which is NOT the case here. You can disagree with my tone which IS harsh, these things make me mad, but if you do then take 2 minutes to type a calm reasonable counter response while calling me me out on my tone, rather than just inaccurately marking me "troll," OK?
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
Sounds like a great way to start a Burbclave (http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=240)
1. build fence
2. install this new fiber thingma dohickie
3. Purchase Nuclear powered rabid pitbull
4. optional, get "reason"
5. PROFIT!!!!
lick the cancle button (at least thats what our Chinese QA says)
Infrastructure should be paid for by the government using taxpayers money for the good of all. These schemes are stupid and illogical, driven by the ideology that says that any form of socialism, no matter how mild, must be avoided at all costs. Well look where that thinking has got you - billions of dollars of taxpayers money being used to feather the nests of incompetent bankers worldwide. Fuck me, if it wasn't such a crying shame it would be hilarious.
Just about the only organization I have to deal with that I like less than the cable companies and phone companies is the local homeowner's association.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I live inside a giant kitty!
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
This is the same concept that was proposed in a white paper by IEEE-USA a few years ago. The idea is to get bi-directional gigabit speed broadband to the home. Any subscriber can become a content provider. The keynote speaker at a workshop on the topic was doing something like this in Canada.
The US now has legacy broadband and is falling behind places like Japan where they are providing multi-hundred-megabit Internet, plus telephone and cable TV for something like $50 per month total. When people come here from places like that they think they are coming to a third-world telecommunications country.
I have likened the impact on innovation to the difference between animal power and engine power. If one horsepower was a fundamental constraint, innovators would try to figure out how to hook up two horses, feed them better, and do similar things. Once you have engine power, the range of innovation greatly expands.
Innovators in countries that have gigabit broadband can think of innovations that our innovators can't imagine because they can't think in really high speed broadband terms.
... or municipally run broadband service. It has one major advantage in that it makes a much smaller target for the telco/cable providers to take aim at. A number of these might manage to fly under their radar. But once they notice, legislation will be proposed, congresspersons will be wined, dined and amply supplied with hookers to see that it is stamped out.
Have gnu, will travel.
live in a duplex try to get the neighbor to agree to new siding my father gave up after 12 years and did his side now their mad at him because they can't get the same deal as they could have buying it with him
Again, I point you to your local electricity monopoly. I don't know about where you live, but I'm pretty sure my power company is not run by the likes of AIG and Lehman Bros., or worse yet, GM and Ford. Power is reasonably priced, and very reliable. And, as I pointed out before, it's highly regulated (unlike the financial industry). Another local power company wanted to raise rates recently, and was prevented by regulators.
Everybody is talking this down, and while i see their points, how hard is it really to lay some wires?, people seem to get along with phone cable sewer and water laid for them, they would never go into a place where they had to get it laid themselves, having communities own this will make people realize how much cheeper it can be and how much they have been ripped off. Water and server are both much more expensive things to run and maintain but they generally cost less, amybe even combined than what companies bill as 'high-speed' internet.
Fiber running is cheap and could deliver faster cheaper connections. If it gained a penetration in homes etc, and isps stoped suing and community that tries to run their own network we could end up with 100Mbit connections for $10/month, it wouldnt cost anything more that keeping the phone system going, and builders and developers would do most the real work, and allready in place communities would have to get together and pay for it themselves as a one-time fee.
Also if the FCC wouldnt be so stupid and instead say that the ISPs are common-carriers AND force them to do things like the telcoms have to do with interoperability it could be possible to do that way. But the best really is public-owned fiber in communities, and the big lines owned and operated (cause it competitive, rather than monopolistic) by private companies on bids to hook up communities, countries, and data-centers. We do it with water, and sewer, and where i am (pacific northwest) power, and it works quite well. Also once fiber is draped it will only be simple upgrades of routers and otherwise the bandwidth should be plentiful, (although speeds--not throughput--should still be capped--on another note i was thinking caps are ok if they are infinite rolling, ie you can go fast but once you fill up you rolling limit your speed will slow down to a speed at which you cant possibly use more than your rolling limit, never will you be cut off)
Stop getting shafted by the ISPs, this is the way
Not to take sides in this particular debate, but... ...tell that to Enron.
--S
-- sigs cause cancer.
Can't live on "free dinners, free bottles of scotch"? Bollocks.
Help children born unable to swallow - www.tofs.org.uk
I want to catch the next rocket there.
Businesses aren't bankrupt? Just yesterday 2 major UK retailers went tits up. Another couple reported losses of tens of millions one year after having record profits.
The stock market recovering?
http://finance.google.co.uk/finance?client=ob&q=INDEXDJX:DJI
but please check the one year view, not the three days one. To say that the stock markets are recovering when the correct interpretation is that they are nervous, jumping all around the place in a downwards trend, is pie in the sky...
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Granpas can play blackjack, but I don't recommend looking for hookers in there!
... based on what, exactly??? Your obviously massive experience of such setups?
This is actually a good idea in practice... there are plenty of places in Denmark that have it, and they typically have 10Mbps connection or more, and pay around 20 GBP (about 40 of your worthless dollars) per month or less.
>20 GBP (about 40 of your worthless dollars)
If the dollars are worthless, then GBP are, by your definition, twice as worthless...
Idiot.
I'd be mostly concerned about #2, the boar. He could ravage your home if you don't fix it soon!
TFA wants to build dark fiber networks using the condominium model, not full-blown ISPs. Homeowners pay to have dark fiber run from their homes to a central carrier-neutral point (underground utility vault, etc), competing carriers plug their electronics and fiber uplink into the customer-owned dark fiber, and the Last Mile problem goes bye-bye. The same idea works for a municipal run dark fiber net or even a privately run dark fiber net. The electric company could run it. I don't really care who runs it so long as it gets built!
Four strands per home should provide plenty of options. Internet from company A on one strand, HDTV from company B on another, landline phone service from dinosaur telco C on another, dedicated line from your home office to company WAN using 10GB Ethernet... not that many people will do that but since fiber optic cable should last for many decades it makes sense to overbuild.
Read the articles TFA links to. They provide much more detail.
WWOT.
Thanks: interesting post and I'm fresh outta mod points. I might add one factor to your scaling-vector limit. Forgive me, it's not pithy or eloquent yet, I'm still working on it.
Proposed item #4)the information-flow of the community does not permit local advantages/disadvantages.
Alternate: 4) The inertia of the information-flow will constrain the community's size.
Intent: when the commune knows of a problem/success UNIFORMLY, the benefits of 1) will be fully realized.
Revisions welcomed; please return to your regularly scheduled topic.
My community in Florida was designed with this central fiber pipe back in 2004. We all pay for our cable/internet through our HOA fee.
P.S. skroops your
"Isn't part of a troll mod the impression that your post leaves on the reader?
Is very inaccurate according to what slashdots own definition of the troll mod is:
"Troll -- A Troll is similar to Flamebait, but slightly more refined. This is a prank comment intended to provoke indignant (or just confused) responses. A Troll might mix up vital facts or otherwise distort reality, to make other readers react with helpful "corrections." Trolling is the online equivalent of intentionally dialing wrong numbers just to waste other people's time."
http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml#cm2500
I assure you my anger at right wingers is not a "prank" and I am not trying to "waste other peoples time" but rather I hope once the facts about right wing sociopathy are more broadly discussed that other people will get angry as well. Dissatisfaction in turn hopefully leads to outcry for positive humanistic sustainable change something very far from a prank indeed. I suspect many people on slashdot who mindlessly hit the troll button have never read the above paragraph and thus have no idea what "troll" really means. If people are going to mod responsibly they owe to themselves to read slashdot's own definition of mod terms IMO.
If my tone seems snide, dismissive, and cynical at times I assure you that is only a reaction to right wing ignorant dismissiveness, misplaced smugness, bullying, and hectoring that IMO ought to be called out in the strongest terms if the U.S. is to not go down a quite literally fascist path. And no it's not a Godwin when people start to behave like actual Nazis laughing at hungry people living with festering sores in the gutter.
Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
If I remember correctly, we already gave the telcos a bunch of tax money to do just this. And they didn't. And now the want more money.
It's attitudes like this that leads to Grandmas Gone Wild.
I don't think that's a fair comparison. Enron was a big company, and a very small part of their operations included electric power distribution (they had a company in the Portland area). Most of their businesses were not electric power distributors (they operated a bunch of power plants, mostly in other countries, but that's not the same as the company that deals with the power lines connected to your house. Most of their plants in the USA were tiny wind farms, not primary power plants.)
Anyway, Enron went under due to massive fraud that was willfully carried out by its leadership. As a result, it's now dead as a company. The vast majority of electric utilities in the USA have not had any such problems.
If you think fraud on the part of corporations is a big problem, you think it would be better to put internet service in the hands of the government, where corruption and mismanagement are much, much bigger problems?
I'm sorry, but I'll take a highly regulated public utility company over a government any day. It's certainly not immune to corruption (say, by paying off the regulators to look the other way), but in practice it works a lot better than just putting things directly into governments' hands.
You also need blackjack and hookers.
With a little flattery you can get plenty of both at those senior centers.
Hey! We have something a lot like this in my city. It's a series of tubes that supply and take away water! The home owner owns out to the property line and this thing call a "utility" owns the stuff in the street. We basically pay enough to keep the system running. It's not a private corporation like Comcast or Verizon. Imagine, thinking of access to to the internet as a public utility! Nah, that's crazy talk.