Small Town Builds Its Own Gigabyte Network; Cost To Citizens $57/month

An anonymous reader writes "On Thursday, the board of O-Net gave approval for residents to get access to [full gigabit bandwidth] for the same price that they currently pay for a guaranteed download speed of 100 megabits per second — $57 to $90 a month, depending on whether they have bundled their internet with TV and phone service. ... the town realized that it couldn't attract technology-based businesses and that bandwidth was a challenge even to ordinary businesses. It came up with a plan — it would install a fibre network throughout the town that would connect to the larger inter-community network being built by the government at that time — the Alberta Supernet."

Comments

the Alberta Supernet

[fustakrakich]

Canada.. figures.... Do that in the states and get sued into bankruptcy.

Re:never happen in the states

[smooth wombat]

No, it's because the three major providers in the U.S. sue the municipality for trying to offer what the provider refuses to do, and at a similar if not lower price. The companies claim they can't compete against the government entity.

It's like the batshit crazy ex who doesn't want to be with you but also doesn't want anyone else being with you.

Either way, you're screwed.

PRIVITAZATION

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

The boondoggle that keeps picking your pocket, on the premise that if more people are inserted as middle-men, the cost of service will go down.

"Competition in the market" is true for goods produced through labour. It does not account for structural differences in the sale of services and delivery, or in extractive "rent seeking".

Re:PRIVITAZATION

[Anonymous Coward]

This as opposed to what? As I understand the US broadband "market", it's mostly oligopolized, with pretty much all of the ISPs being shit, and without anyone being able to do much about it. Start-up costs are prohibitive, so no chance of meaningful competition coming down the road. So you've already got the "sucking terribly" option, only at much higher prices than at 'cost', because it's cost+rentierism (due to the ISPs being oligopolists).
At least with a government offering the option that "sucks terribly" you have a chance of finding an ear; good luck going that route with a big ISP.

Re:PRIVITAZATION

[nmos]

The lack of competition in the U.S. isn't due to startup costs, it's due to government granted monopolies. In most of the U.S. it's illegal for a second cable or phone company to come in and start laying lines even if they want to

Re:bits and bytes

[l_bratch]

If we assume that the AC was just poking fun at the title/summary disagreement, then it was a fair comment.

Re:That's socialism

[DontBlameCanada]

I disagree.

My university was one of the first to get plugged into the Arpanet when it started expanding. Back then, my questions posted to the bulletin boards at the time were answered truthfully and frequently accurately. Information was accessible, there wasn't alot back then, but it could be obtained. Ftping the index.txt from a site would provide a carefully hand maintained index of what was available with a description and other relevant data.

Now if you look for something like, "nearest gas station", you'll instead get bombarded with ads for cars, motor oil, car wash products etc while waiting for Google to start delivering the search results while they update their database of search terms you're interested in.

I'd like the old, non-privatized internet back, thanks.