Slashdot Mirror
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."
Headline says gigabyte network, then the summary says gigabit. Finally, it turns out it's 100mbps.
By the time you finish reading this comment it will be 56k.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Canada.. figures.... Do that in the states and get sued into bankruptcy.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
From TFA:
On Thursday, the board of O-Net gave approval for residents to get access to a full gigabit (or 1,000 megabits) per second of bandwidth
I guess it was too much to expect someone posting as AC to actually click the link in the summary.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Olds, Alberta
(Population eight thousand)
Getting high speed internet in Alberta anywhere outside a larger population centre has been virtually impossible, so it's interesting to see rural towns take the problem by the horns on their own with success.
crazy dynamite monkey
It says Gigabyte not gigabyte... so it must mean the network features customizable voltages and clock speeds for easy-to-use overclocking and a good warranty policy.
Its been attempted but usually fails due to local corporate citizens derailing it as some kind of communist love fest.
why can't we have something like that is usa?
On the other hand, it is socialism. Using the government to do something for the greater good of society.
I live in Sweden and pay $5 per month for a gbit. It's partly sponsored by Microsoft's program for people with no hands, but still. Just saying.
And because many other people here also have gbits, torrents work wonders. US probably isn't the same.
Alberta Residents Complain About Internet Content Filtering Plan
I wonder if they will notice a large population influx. /me calls his realtor
Though for practical purposes, I find dividing by 9 tends to give more realistic numbers.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
"Because we're a community-owned project we get to balance out profitability versus what's best for the community."
I'm from America, so could someone please explain to me what that last part of the sentence means. Does it have to do with Q4 fiscal projections, or stocks, or something else? I just don't understand what this whole "community" thing is.
No, it's politicians grandstanding buying things private industry has spent a trillion dollars developing. Without the latter, the former has trouble bringing you a loaf of bread.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I'd still rather pay 5.70$ for 100 megabits, which would still 20 times faster than my current connection at nearly 40$ per month. Gotta love monopolies in small towns.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
Well how else do you get a network interface built onto a motherboard, duh.
When you cant win, ad hominem.
There are lots of towns in the US, big and small. that have un-used fiber laying around, which was installed the last time they ripped up their streets for remodel, or which was built into subdivisions as a conditions of their permitting process. Most of this is used to tie a few buildings public buildings together, or (an a sad number of cases) not used at all.
There entire counties that have fiber running to every minor town. (Google county fiber network = 14 million hits).
Most of these towns don't have fiber running everywhere. So turning it on ind the downtown core is often avoided simply because it will cause a clamor for fiber everywhere from the rest of the tax payers. Some of it has been in the ground so long nobody knows if it works or not. Since it wasn't being used, in some cities it has been damaged by construction and nobody was even aware of it. Some towns are putting up FREE PUBLIC WIFI, using their fiber. And almost as soon as it is turned on the "won't somebody think of the children" crowd shows up demanding censorship. There are a lot of political land mines to dodge when putting this stuff to use. So far too much of it sits idle.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Are you really this dumb?
Do you know what started this whole internet thing?
Nothing is stopping private companies from doing this, yet none of them do. Here in America #1 corporatist funtime land we can't get 1Gb connections for $570 let along $57.
The title of the summary disagrees with the summary itself, but TFA says gigabit.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Who cares who owns it(well I'm sure the people of the town do), that's a distinction that drives the line between communism and other systems. Socialism is defined by the character of trying to maximize the social good of government, regardless of the common conflation between socialism and communism.
Tell me again how private institutions invented the Internet of all things. I'm pretty sure that that is one very clear example of something that was developed by government research.
neither. it says afterwards "100 megabits per second"... which is one tenth of a gigabit
sorry, 1000megabits... is one gigabit.
Network or most serial PHY interfaces (e.g. Ethernet, Firewire, USB, I2C) are always specified with bit as the base units as the PHY level only worry the raw '0' or '1' and not payloads..
Socialism is defined by the character of trying to maximize the social good of government, regardless of the common conflation between socialism and communism.
Baloney. Socialism is government ownership of the means of production. Period. Sometimes that works well. Sometimes it turns out bad. But to say it is "socialism" only when it turns out well, is nonsense.
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".
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
The whole point of a government, and by definition its job.
Unfortunately, no American knows that anymore, because corporations told him government must be evil, because government "regulates the free market", which is another way of saying "forbids said corporations to abuse the citizens like the only law is that of the jungle". When in reality, US government IS said corporations, and the only reason anything is ever "regulated" at all, is because corporations fight each other, using the government as their weapon, so they can blame everything they do on it.
If America needs one thing, then it's an *actual* government. By the people, for the people.
But hey, I never got how US society managed to equal being social to being evil anyway... Being social is half the damn reason we humans are so successful in the first place! It's kinda our thing.
Agreed. The Internet is a DARPA baby. I would say that corporations interests is what's preventing the Internet from progressing faster.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
If we assume that the AC was just poking fun at the title/summary disagreement, then it was a fair comment.
No, it's politicians grandstanding buying things private industry has spent a trillion dollars developing. Without the latter, the former has trouble bringing you a loaf of bread.
Said over the Internet, brought to you by the US government (Internet -> ARPANET -> Department of Defense -> US government). Which is rather beside the point anyway, unless you're still fighting the ghost of early 1900s Soviet-era socialism what it means in a modern context is the government collecting taxes to provide public services which they may or may not be buying from private companies. There's no contradiction between a public road or a public hospital or a public whatever being built by private companies. But sure, give all the credit for everything to private companies. Let me guess, libertar... I mean libertarian?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Nothing is stopping private companies from doing this, yet none of them do.
False.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Now that I think about it, neither gave a frequency, so both can be correct. Perhaps the title was implying per eight seconds and the summary was implying per second.
Probably not though.
Offering gigabit to endpoints isn't that hard. Gig Ethernet is cheap these days, GPON is likewise cheap for metro type situations. However, you can hook all the endpoints up at gig but if your backhaul to other providers isn't good, then it doesn't matter. You can have "gigabit" but only to other nodes on the network.
So that'll be the real question is what kind of bandwidth they can buy to hook this network up to. That'll determine if it is really fast internet to homes and businesses or just a big LAN with slow 'net access.
So 1 company does it in a couple towns, for more than $57 but less than $570 and you think that proves something?
Is it? I can't tell if it's owned by the government or owned by the individual members of the community. (Yes, there IS a difference.)
Yea, but supposedly it's a government of, by, and for the People, so theoretically they're the same thing here in 'Merica.
Theoretically.
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Rather than have an extended debate over an what amounted to an aside, I'll just concede the point and withdraw my original statement.
From TFA:
On Thursday, the board of O-Net gave approval for residens to get access to a full gigabit (or 1,000 megabits) per second of bandwidth
I guess it was too much to expect someone posting as AC to actually click the link in the summary.
I guess it was too much to have the headline correct "Small Town Builds Its Own Gigabyte Network; Cost To Citizens $57/month"
Socialism is government ownership of the means of production.
No, you're thinking of communism. And yes, there is a difference, despite their constant interchangeable use in conservative talking points.
Also, neither one is fascism.
It's probably worth pointing out at this juncture that one of the things that spurs competition, growth and new technology is the fact that stuff is sold for a profit--sometimes a really huge one.
There would be far less drive to push further and further if it were not for the profit carrot being dangled... if everyone were buying from a municipal ISP for just about break-even costs, we might end up stagnating.
Too much government control is bad.
Too much corporate control is bad.
Now let's sprinkle in corporate control of government through lobbying dollars and astronomical consultancy fees for former government officials...
People suck.
Ashland, Oregon did this many years ago. From what I've heard from people that live there, it's worked out well.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
Network or most serial PHY interfaces (e.g. Ethernet, Firewire, USB, I2C) are always specified with bit as the base units as the PHY level only worry the raw '0' or '1' and not payloads..
That's because the actual bitstream isn't really in data bytes. There can be all sorts of odd control bits and groups thereof tacked on. If you want an old-time horse-and-buggy example. remember that ASCII was originally a 7-bit code. The 8th bit was for use by hardware as a parity bit. And TTY devices often also had start and stop bits. Sometimes even 2 stop bits. So a "byte" over a modem could potentially be 11 bits long, and that's before the modem itself contributed anything.
The ;really good thing about the ay the country was originally designed was that it allowed for exactly this type of thing.
While the federal government had very little to do with a persons life the State and the Local Community were able to much more.
They had the ability do do many things. While the federal government guaranteed the right of the people to move freely to or away from these types of experiments.
Competition between States was a good thing.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Socialism is government ownership of the means of production.
No, you're thinking of communism.
No I am not. Socialism is an economic system. Totalitarianism is a political system. Combine the two, and you get totalitarian socialism, which is communism. Just like fascism is totalitarian capitalism, as clearly stated by the founder of Fascism, Benito Mussolini: "Fascism ... is the merger of state and corporate power."
So explain that 1Gb connection they can get.
Not everyone has those same motivations. I work harder at a job that pays less than I could get elsewhere. Here I don't have politics to worry about and can curse like a sailor. I set my own hours and can work from home when I want. I have a lot of freedom in all aspects of my job. To me that is worth a lot more than money.
Considering this is only possible by them jacking into the (expensive, very slow to actually roll out, many years in the making) provincial government's Supernet project, I really don't think it's a case of "rural towns tak[ing] the problem by the horns on their own".
I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!
Government invented the internet. Private companies made it useful.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Small scale Socialism is really good. (Individual chruches, Community) Large scale Socialism is really bad. (Federal / State Governments, THE CHURCH)
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Go away troll.
He found one company doing something outside their normal scope. This is like saying toothpaste is free because the dentist gives you a little bit at each visit.
Boy.. you must be new here. Everyone knows is was invented by Algore.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B - D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0 45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Is it? I can't tell if it's owned by the government or owned by the individual members of the community. (Yes, there IS a difference.)
Yea, but supposedly it's a government of, by, and for the People, so theoretically they're the same thing here in 'Merica.
Theoretically.
...except that this small town is in Canada, not the US of A.
However, were this a town in the U.S. one of the telcos (or all of them) would sue repeatedly for unfair competition until the service cost $5700/customer (to account for legal fees) and then when it shut down would tell the residents not to worry, they expected to set up a 1Mbps network there within the next 30 years and meanwhile, enjoy their $9.99/month 28k dial-up.
For some reason either the state legislature, the courts, or both would buy that argument.
COOL! Send me $500/month , for progress!
Unlike the telcos, I have no history of pocketing the money and running, so while you don't know me at all I am already a step up.
The ;really good thing about the ay the country was originally designed was that it allowed for exactly this type of thing.
While the federal government had very little to do with a persons life the State and the Local Community were able to much more.
They had the ability do do many things. While the federal government guaranteed the right of the people to move freely to or away from these types of experiments.
Competition between States was a good thing.
Um, the towns that have tried to do this in the US have often fallen victim to lawsuits from private companies due to "unfair competition".
But that doesn't matter, because this town's not in the US. It's true that the way the country was originally designed allowed for exactly this type of thing. It also allows for Crown Corporations, where the people by default own stock in the incorporated entity. This leads to the public actually getting dividends and rebates when a crown corp turns a profit. It's somewhat surprising that this is in Alberta though, where privatization is a big thing, and I'd expect more American-style lawsuits regarding unfair competition.
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.
It says it costs people "the same as what they currently pay for 100mbit". So it's giving them gigabit speeds for what they used to pay for 100mbit. ($57-$90)
The summary is poor, and the headline is just plain wrong. This is fail on a level I've not seen since...
Unlike porn, which yada yada rimshot hey-ooh!
Do I need to quote you again?
Nothing is stopping private companies from doing this, yet none of them do.
I may be being pedantic, but you were being hyperbolic, and only one of those things is actually wrong. Besides, they're not even the only company (or, for that matter, municipality) offering 1Gbps Internet in the US (costs vary, some are as low as $35, most much higher). I'll leave the Googling up to you.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
And then got trampled into the ground by large companies that do their best not to let it get more useful.
Perhaps the ball is back in government's court to push it to the next step.
Then we can let private companies have their turn.
You are right I should have figured this would happen on slashdot. I should have set the constraints better.
Now find one in a major market or available in a not extremely limited area for that kind of money.
Government invented the internet.
Private companies made it useful.
Odd... I was happily using the Internet before private companies were allowed on it. Seemed quite useful to me for transferring files, allowing ease of access to information (yay Gopher/FTP/Archie/Veronica/Jughead/elm/nn/telnet)! and even selling my own stuff and doing remote work (yes, some of us could telecommute 20+ years ago).
The majority of what privatization has brought to the internet is a) entertainment and b) spam and malware. Everything else could probably be done just about as well without being connected to the Internet -- even without TCP/IP.
For that matter, CableNet really is an entertainment network that has a peering arrangement with the Internet already.
Is it? I can't tell if it's owned by the government or owned by the individual members of the community. (Yes, there IS a difference.)
Yea, but supposedly it's a government of, by, and for the People, so theoretically they're the same thing here in 'Merica.
Theoretically.
...except that this small town is in Canada, not the US of A.
What, you mean we haven't annexed that territory yet? Shit, no wonder maple syrup is still so damn expensive...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
Except most of those customers will probably connect to their routers wirelessly using 802.11g adapters, for a whopping 54mbits to the Internet...
"I don't understand what all the fuss is about, the Internet doesn't seem any faster to me!"
However, were this a town in the U.S. one of the telcos (or all of them) would sue repeatedly for unfair competition
Not so sure that would happen.
There are a lot of cities and towns putting up free wifi networks in certain areas, simply because the have the ability to do so.
(I live in such a town, where the Public Utility District has fiber to spare and is putting up free wifi).
So far, no lawsuits. even though the fiber and the bandwidth to support it are all paid by tax dollars.
There have been court cases that have selected this issue, and municipalities and county government is free to do this.
Inevitably, free wifi will re-prove the tragedy of the commons as over use will force the governmental unit to drastic bandwidth limitations simply because they have to pay the upstream backbone networks.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Surprise, people with a common interest banding together and pooling their resources to make it happen is a model that can actually work.
Thinking about it, that's how corporations originally got started. You know, before they turned into immortal international government-corruption special interest lobby groups.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Google isn't the only company doing this in the US.
Its just that we don't want to do your homework for you.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
It ain't homework.
I know you can get it, in some very limited areas. It simply is not a real option for the vast majority of people, even ones living in very high density locations. Having the government roll it out will for quite some time be the only real option if we cared.
Small scale Socialism is really good. (Individual chruches, Community)
Large scale Socialism is really bad. (Federal / State Governments, THE CHURCH)
The majority of the developed world with successful socialist government would like to know why large scale socialism is really bad... sure, it gets abused, but so does capitalist government. There's nothing wrong with being social, as long as those being governed actually keep social ties to those governing. As soon as you build up a layer of bureaucracy between the two, the problems start. Bureaucracy is not socialism though.
From TFA:
On Thursday, the board of O-Net gave approval for residents to get access to a full gigabit (or 1,000 megabits) per second of bandwidth
Bandwidth is measured in Hertz. I don't actually care how much bandwidth they use to deliver my 1 Gbps of channel capacity.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
ironic isnt it it the demands of the free market lead to a socialist solution.
Seems they believe in the if you build it they will come school of economics as opposed to if if you subsidise us we might build it. Damn Unamerican if you ask me.
Yeah; the town's in Alberta, Canada.
That observation is as old as Marx. The Communist Manifesto states that "the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself".
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
And pedantry is measured in posts like yours, apparently.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
1Mbit upstream, and behind a nat. You know its gonna be like that.
Who logs in to gdm? Not I, said the duck.
The big media companies that actually make, and own, the TV programs, will only sell their cable channels in bundles.
The Cable company primarily delivers product to the customer, provides maintenance, tech support of the infrastructure, and bills the customer. The cable companies would sell individual channels, but the media companies would let them.
Is Time/Warner / Comcast / Cox a cable company or a media company?
Don't get fooled by the shell companies... it's the same people making the decisions at the end of the day. They just use the shells to provide layers of protection against collusion and culpability.
Government, on the other hand, doesn't shell well. If done right, the people responsible are actually held accountable.
It has happened repeatedly. In some cases the telcos just cozied up to state legislatures to get bills passed banning municipal networks.
See what happens if your town decides to start providing regular residential internet service to go with that free WiFi.
It's Soulskill, what the fuck do you expect?
Then you do not know how to internet.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
The main problem with the internet now is large corporations Using the power of the government to destroy competition and freeze the market.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Just think how much more the build out costs will be for bigger citys.
Some are doing that at the state level, but in general they are using economic power and back room deals to do their dirty work.
Since the last time you read a summary on Slashdot, I assume.
That's wasn't pedantry, it was wrong. Bandwidth has two different meanings.
There is asymptotic bandwidth, multimedia bandwidth, consumption Bandwidth, capacity bandwidth, and so on.
Context is important.
.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is fail on a level I've not seen since...
the previous story?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I am not sure how you think Large Scale Socialism would work without a massive bureaucracy.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
Learn thew difference between socialism and social ownership.
Hint, this isn't socialism.
I know its' tough. You would have to go all the way down to the monks, and have them transcribe you a dictionary of terms which could take years. If only all the information was connected together some how..
or, If only people would actually look up what they are talking about before post, Even better, if people would question themselves about the things they repeat and occasionally look them up to be sure they haven't become mistaken.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Go read the article. That $57/mo is only a small fraction of the total cost of the system.
The title of the summary disagrees with the summary itself, but TFA says gigabit.
the transfer limit is one gigabyte, obviously.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Like Detroit?
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I agree with your point, but I would just like to point out that socalism means *collective* ownership of the means of production. This may or may not be facilitated the government. Example of extra-governmental socialism in the US would be cooperatives (consumer co-ops like credit unions/grocery stores as well as worker co-ops).
Unfortunately it also puts a Host Protected Area on any hard drive with which it comes in contact.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
used to defend corporations
Probably the best example of the collective not looking after the individual you could find. Most of the corporate 'looking after' you refer to is mandated by legislation and runs counter to profit maximization motives. Henry Ford was labeled a socialist (among other things) by raising workers wages. But he was an outlier in this instance.
Have gnu, will travel.
Socialism is an economic system
How do you implement socialism without an enforcing political system? There are three known means of regulating a population: government, religion, and markets. Those can operate independently or in combination.
Totalitarianism is a political system
That's a feature of a political system.
Combine the two, and you get totalitarian socialism, which is communism
No, communism is a bunch of people living on an farm sharing everything. The totalitarian socialists in the USSR called themselves communists, to try to fool [whomever].
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I guess it was too much to expect the editors at slashdot to a) know the difference between gigabit and gigabyte, and b) to check their own headline before they publish the story...
Ken
You've been here long enough to know that the submitter submits both the headlines and the story,
and that the editors do little except make sure the links are diverted through as many ad supported
sites as possible instead of going directly to the source.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Though AFAIK, "Google Fiber" has only been them buying out companies that already existed, not laying new fiber.