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Gigabit Speeds At Home In the US
An anonymous reader writes "The Electric Power Board of Chattanooga is preparing to offer 1 Gigabit speeds at home by the end of the year. 'The city-owned utility announced today it will boost its broadband service to 1 Gigabit throughout its service territory by the end of 2010. Such a connection will be 200 times faster than the average broadband speed in America and the fastest of any US city.' The NY Times reports that the service will cost $350 per month. 'Mr. DePriest of EPB does not expect brisk demand for the one-gigabit service anytime soon. So why offer it? "The simple answer is because we can," he said.'"
Additional verbage. http://www.chattanoogagig.com/
If you could split it 7 ways, that would be a 18 MB line each at $50, which is a good deal compared to the semi-monopoly prices you usually get. Of course, this could vary depending on how close to a gigabit the line will actually get you (although it shouldn't be worse than the big ISPs, and may be significantly better).
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Where I live 400Mbit is about $1000/month (that has to be adjusted for the fact that the price and salary levels here are generally a fair bit above the US, but still). The 1000 Mbit option is "call us for price". I think you'd better be sitting down if making that call for a quote.
The only consolation is that we don't oversubscribe over here. You get what you pay for. But boy, do you ever pay.
I know nothing about it, but my guess is that it's only 1 Gbps to the router room of the Electric Power Board of Chattanooga. From there it presumably rides their T1 to the Internet. (Or whatever they have.) Also, it's probably 1 Gbps download / 128 Kbps upload.
It's symmetrical. https://epbfi.com/you-pick/#/fi-speed-internet-1000
"...Sleep comes like a drug in God's country Sad eyes, crooked crosses in God's country..."
From there it presumably rides their T1 to the Internet. (Or whatever they have.)
1992 called...
Bullish Machine Tzar
My thoughts exactly. I don't think I've seen a T1 link in 15 years.
Backbones run at substantially higher speeds - I recall from an exchange that most backbones are 560mbps fibre usually grouped in to 2, 4, 8, or 16 links.
I can't believe the ignorance of some people on slashdot to think that you could run a 1gbps service on a T1.
You said misuse the line. I presume by misuse you mean attempting to do malicious things other than peer to peer?
No. Not at all. Misuse is almost impossible, but an example could be running your new YouTube adult videoservice on it. Or run your own ISP and resell the bandwidth to 10,000 other people.
Since they are selling below cost, they are not expecting you to use the line 100% 24/7. They are expecting normal usage from an individual, family or small business (not hosting).
If you keep to that usage pattern, even if you do bittorrent 24/7, they will make a ton of money. Because you will not be using that gigabit of bandwidth for more than a very small fraction of the time.
You'd be wrong. The Electric Power Board of Chattanooga is not financed by the city government, it's actually a co-op under the authority of the TVA. The TVA might have purchased it from Chattanooga, but it's independent now. And even this roll-out of infrastructure isn't being paid for by the Electric customers, the bond issued is, and it's being paid back by the services being provided.
So...it's actually kind of good for all of us who live here. It's forced Comcast and AT&T to both get on the ball, because otherwise they'd have to just throw up their hands and give up. I've seen more utility service trucks on the streets the past year than I have since the last time I was in an area hit by a hurricane.
Besides as much as the local people around here bitch about their property taxes, I know that wouldn't happen anyway.