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32 Cities Want To Challenge Big Telecom, Build Their Own Gigabit Networks
Jason Koebler writes: More than two dozen cities in 19 states announced today that they're sick of big telecom skipping them over for internet infrastructure upgrades and would like to build gigabit fiber networks themselves and help other cities follow their lead. The Next Century Cities coalition, which includes a couple cities that already have gigabit fiber internet for their residents, was devised to help communities who want to build their own broadband networks navigate logistical and legal challenges to doing so.
Fuck Comcast, Time Warner, and AT&T
Nice to see Boston on the list. I hope other cities join in when they see this.
Because the big telecom will sue the cities who plan to do that and will do everything they can to prevent it, bringing out old contracts and laws against it/lobbying to prevent it by paying off congress like the bunch of corrupted a-holes they are. Yet you can't use those against them (like the Telecommunications Act of 1996) because they just don't care/pretend they did something when they really didn't.
Nice to see cities stepping up to build better network infrastructure
And if we can hold onto Net Neutrality, even better.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
After the lawyers get theirs, how much is left over for construction? Well, I wish them the best of luck, and hope they just build it, despite what some judge who is paid to tie things up for a good long time says.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
my prediction is that they will build the network get some cash out of subscriptions for a couple of years and then sell it off to one of the big players.
exactly the same happened in my town during the late nineties with cable internet
Even with my tiny less then 6mb connection AT&T continues to threaten to charge me more for exceeding their 150gb bandwidth limit. They are already sucking over $100 a month from me, yet they still want more. It is way past due for the entire U.S. to consider cruising the internet as neceassary as cruising the roads. This is required infrastructure as necessary to survive today as highways were 30 years ago. So many mundane tasks such as keeping up with current events and even paying your bills necisatate using the internet that considering it a luxory is really out of synch with the current reality. The internet as become necessary for everyone to have, so the internet must be free for everyone to access.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I didn't have Javascript on for the third page (that seemed to have some sort of map). Why wasn't there just a list of 20 cities? BTW, lovely pink highlighting on the first page. Information is dead, long live content-free web pages.
In 3 months, 19 states will pass laws banning municipal fiber networks.
There is no need to throw up your hands and give up. Chatanooga managed a high speed public interenet. http://money.cnn.com/2014/05/2.... Plus, you have people like Lawrence Lessig going after the root of the problem of corruption, and getting some serious traction with Mayday PAC. http://mayday.us./ Hell, even I am trying to fix the problems, but I am not getting too much exposure or traction. http://i-party.us./ But I still have hope. There are too many people trying to fix the problem of corruption and increasing monopolistic control for everyone to fail.
Join the IParty!
GCI has stated its intention to have Gigabit Internet in the state of Alaska in 2015. Won't really matter much because latency to the lower 48 will still suck. But it's a start.
Sad thing is It's a Monopoly(illegal) when a business uses government to stomp other competitors and this is what is happening. Government is ignoring the freaking law.
North State has done this in High Point, NC and the surrounding cities. It works, and OMG it works well. 100 a month for 250 channels, 1 Gig internet, and a landline. Flat rate. No big brother. No filtering. No raping on bills and nickel and diming BS. http://northstate.net/
If other cities can do this or better, then go for it. Having this infrastructure in place free's up money and increases tech production throughout. It's about time people took internet infrastructure as seriously as electric power. Without it, your civilization is a 3rd world ghetto.
for those who are curious, the cities are:
Ammon, ID
Auburn, IN
Austin, TX
Boston, MA
Centennial, CO
Champaign, IL
Chattanooga, TN
Clarksville, TN
Jackson, TN
Kansas City, KS
Kansas City, MO
Lafayette, LA
Leverett, MA
Louisville, KY
Montrose, CO
Morristown, TN
Mount Vernon, WA
Palo Alto, CA
Ponca City, OK
Portland, OR
Raleigh, NC
Rockport, ME
San Antonio, TX
Sandy, OR
Santa Cruz County, CA
Santa Monica, CA
South Portland, ME
Urbana, IL
Westminster, MD
Wilson, NC
Winthrop, MN
Meh Verizon is just going to buy the city network when it gets it's own people in office. This way they can have tax payers build the network and then buy it cheap.
...perhaps then people will finally wake up and realize just how much your government supports the concept of monopolies.
In the meantime, enjoy playing in the kiddie pool while you still can. I'm sure they're already greasing palms to ensure kiddie pools are outlawed soon.
Unless there's a coup-de-retardante the next couple of elections I see(hope) internet gets its rightful place as a regulated municipal service. Like water. Juicy data water.
Hope the mayor from Leverett, MA recovers from that 4 bit gif virus that's been going around
...for the dinosaurs that are the "telecom giants."
The world is passing them by, moving on, and leaving them behind. It isn't happening as quickly as I'd like to see, but it is inevitable.
I wrote mine today telling him that this would be a election great pony to ride.
"If approved, this ballot measure would reestablish city autonomy for investing in community broadband services currently limited by Colorado Senate Bill 152 pdf (SB-152). SB-152 significantly limits the ability of municipal governments to provide broadband services, including potential partnerships with private entities. SB-152 includes a provision allowing Colorado municipal governments to exempt themselves from the law’s provisions via a public vote.
The Boulder community would significantly benefit from more economical, higher-capacity broadband services, given the tech-savvy demographic, readiness for next-generation services, and publicly available fiber-optic infrastructure. Learn more about the benefits pdf.
Although the City of Boulder has no current plans to create a public broadband utility or engage in new public-private partnerships, passing the ballot measure would ensure that the planning and execution of new public initiatives would be unencumbered by significant limitations in state law.
Approved Ballot Question
Affirming the City’s Right to Provide Telecommunication Services Shall the City of Boulder be authorized to provide high-speed Internet services (advanced services), telecommunications services, and/or cable television services to residents, businesses, schools, libraries, nonprofit entities and other users of such services, either directly or indirectly with public or private sector partners, as expressly permitted by 29-27-101 to 304, “Competition in Utility and Entertainment Services,” of the Colorado Revised Statutes, without limiting its home rule authority?"
The lack of proper infrastructure can break a city.
Santa Cruz was one of the earlier cities on the internet, thanks to UCSC. Today, access is ass. And they have one of the highest costs of living in the nation. It's often been one of the most-connected cities in the USA, for example it was part of Cricket territory. But today it's ass.
Too bad they couldn't give a rat's ass while I still lived there. The local ISPs are mostly awful. Even the ones that don't suck are slow, slow, slow.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Bah, none in my areas. :(
No matter how many "bah..." you utter ain't gonna change the matter for the better if you don't pick yourself up from your fat ass and DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT !
What I am saying may sound harsh, but the thing that you are expressing is exactly the one thing that is retarding the cities / communities from progressing forward --- When everybody is waiting for someone else to do it there ain't gonna be anything done
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
The city builds the streets but for the most part doesn't provide the services that use the streets.
I don't see why municipal networks need to be any different -- they can let third parties sell networking services from Internet to TV to site-site connectivity. They could even let out bids for infrastructure management of the physical network.
Since government is government, you'll end up with something like public transportation, a low-cost subsidized Internet access but I would think that would be just as much a threat to private service providers as the city bus is to most carmakers.
Well, there is this: http://www.fcc.gov/national-broadband-plan, but there needs to be more.
ATT, Comcast and Verizon just lowered rates and expanded fiber coverage to the same 32 cities.
32 cities don't have a clue as to what it actually costs to do this.
Austin and Kansas City already have Google Fiber. Lafayette, LA also has community-owned gigabit fiber.
At first look this "small" city in Oklahoma is strange, yet with the local of a Google datacenter, seems perhaps the cities leaders see the future of what could be? I'm from Tulsa, and our "highspeed" (at least where I live) is a joke. I'm locked into a semi-illegal "exclusive contract" my apartment complex has with AT&T so nothing other than DSL at a 2.4MB max. But even if my city suddenly "jumped" on this, I still wouldn't see any results at my place for 10-15 years if that.
We could, of course, utilize our flood control pathways to install high-strength water-proofed fiber optics all over the city within a few years. Tulsa's flood control system spreads into every area of the city, and a fiber optic system that mimics the natural flow might add an interesting experiment too. We're far too busy tearing our roads up though to bother with anything hi-tech. Every single semi-major street is torn up or at least has construction road signs causing traffic jams; since the 1980's the construction barrel industry has made millions off us taxpayers.
I'd recommend against pushing that highway analogy. It makes it too easy for them to come back with:
"You don't get to drive 150mph on a highway designed for 70mph."
"We need to make sure overweight trucks don't destroy the road surface for the rest of our drivers."
"If everyone drove as much as you do, the roads would be so jammed that nobody would be able to get anywhere."
Each of these points is flawed, but the analogy you posed doesn't do much to help that.
1. The service you provide is Internet. Therefore, no screwing with packets, strict network neutrality, no port blocking, no prohibition on uses such as servers. In short, plain bandwidth at a price that does not discriminate between customers.
2. You do not regulate yourselves.
3. There are no barriers to future entrants to the market that do not apply to you.
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
If this gains any traction at all, the big Telecoms will shit all over themselves and won't be able to deploy the infrastructure fast enough. This happened with Google making their announcement to do the same thing.
Telecoms are content to do nothing until someone threatens to become a potential competitor.
I live in Lafayette, LA and followed our FTTH (FIber to the Home) roll out pretty closely when it was happening. I was in the first phase of the roll out and received services as soon as they were available. Going from 1Mb download to 50Mb was incredible, I was more interested in the upload speeds since I was streaming to Twitch at the time. Everything worked flawlessly and I never had any issues with the service or connection.
Sadly the services are not offered to apartment complexes around the city. I had to switch back to Cox Cable and it has been horrible, some nights I can't even load websites or watch Netflix, Youtube, or Twitch.
I'm happy to see that more cities are getting fed up with the poor level of service and problems with big telecom's in their area.
Just for reference, here's an interesting bit of news from a few years ago that never seemed to get much notice, but which I think may have something to do with FIOS seemingly grinding to a halt: https://gigaom.com/2011/12/02/...
Basically, it seems to basically boil down to a secret non-compete agreement between the established wireless and wired internet providers to not invade each others markets with new competition.
At least if your City does that however, presumably that would go towards the tax base, and would help them manage their taxes better or be able to lower them, rather than just going to some faceless corporate coffers.
Which is to say, it isn't ideal, but presumably at least the local users might reap some benefit out of it at least.