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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 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
It gets better as sections of Boston get FIOS from Verizon. but for reasons known only to monopolies Verzion stopped rolling out new FIOS in Boston. I guess the market isn't big enough for them.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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.
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
I met the VP in charge of FIOS. I point blank asked him. It came from above his pay grade. The irony is he gets AT&T DSL at his house and they have no plans to expand uverse there.
Until the current top CEO is gone FIOS is dead in the water. He came up thru the ranks of Verizon wireless and thinks charging people more for less service is a totally awesome idea. They are busy reneging on every deal they made with every municipality they promised to roll it out to. Your politicians (on both sides of the isle) are all well bought and paid for and there is not a thing you can do about it.
Verizon isn't seeing the return on capital for FIOS; that is well known. They think they can increase subscriber rates in areas they have covered and recover the capital that way.
What they completely miss is the fact that the use-cases that will drive more valuable service plans only exist when ~gigabit networks are available everywhere.
The problem I see with either approach is that business internet costs aren't going down fast enough to push that evolution. You get better speeds for less in a co-lo, but that doesn't help enough if you use a single office location.
ATT, Comcast and Verizon just lowered rates and expanded fiber coverage to the same 32 cities.