Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
Hmm, well sometimes you need a little socialism to keep the capitalists in line.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
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
Unfortunately, the last mile tends to be a natural monopoly, as far as municipal planners are concerned. They don't want companies to come in and compete over the easiest to serve neighborhoods, and leave people in less dense areas out of luck. Planners like that often lose votes. So they have to make a company agree to cover everyone, and then make sure no competitor comes in and serves just the easy areas. See? It just ends up being a monopoly.
So rather than have some new private company come in and take over the monopoly, cities are just deciding to provide services themselves. They do it with roads, sewers, water, and other utilities. Why not internet? You need right of ways, permits, etc. But you don't need to be a genius entrepeneur to run fiber and connect people to the Internet.
Join the IParty!
Indeed, I'm mostly a libertarian and I view this as not really any different than a neighborhood, town, or city getting together and forming a cooperative. My reaction is 'good on them! Fie on established businesses that are failing to meet demands'.
I don't read AC A human right
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.
ATT, Comcast and Verizon just lowered rates and expanded fiber coverage to the same 32 cities.