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Gigabit Internet Access Now Supported By 84 US ISPs

An anonymous reader writes: According to Michael Render, principal analyst at market researcher RVA LLC, 83 Internet access providers have joined Google to offer gigabit Internet access service (all priced in the $50-$150 per month range).Render's data shows that new subscribers are signing up at an annualized growth rate of 480 percent each year. That "annualized" is an important thing to note, though; this is early days, and adding a few households, relatively speaking, means an impressive percentage change.

120 comments

  1. 84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit access by gavron · · Score: 3, Informative

    The article summary needs to specify that it's about offering RESIDENTIAL service. Thousands of ISPs offer gigabit Internet access in datacenters and businesses all over the US. 84 of them also reach the home.

    Of note - ALL current US ISPs offering RESIDENTIAL gigabit service do so on the oversell model, such that they CAN deliver UP TO 1Gbps to a customer, but likely will be delivering less as they share upstream bandwidth across facilities, areas, and customers. This is not a Bad Thing -- it's how the costs are leveraged across multiple residential customers so it is 7-10x lower than business-grade gigabit service.

    This is a really great thing!

    E

  2. 1st post ! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    1st post !

    1. Re:1st post ! by ArcadeMan · · Score: 3, Funny

      Guess who's not using a gigabit connection?

  3. Coming soon to nowhere near me. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The joys of living in a half dead town full of half built subdivisions and the illusion of ISP competition.

    1. Re:Coming soon to nowhere near me. by paradxum · · Score: 1

      At least you have the illusion of ISP competition. I don't even have that. It's Comcast or nothing for me.

  4. Gigabit speeds, though? by Gaygirlie · · Score: 2

    I'm curious as to how close to actually getting that 1 Gbps the people are. The people I've seen showing screenshots of Speedtest or similar stuff are mostly getting 1/3 of the advertised speeds, but is that the norm or are they just unlucky outliers?

    1. Re:Gigabit speeds, though? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      UP TO a gigabit! ISPs gotta eat too!

    2. Re:Gigabit speeds, though? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hell, how many people have only THEORETICAL access to it? IOW, there's a cable box that can be reached at that speed IF THERE WERE A CONNECTION. Or it's available, BUT NOT SOLD (happens here in the UK with BT, who upgrade the junction but this is to "justify" the government broadband rollout cash. Nobody is being connected at the higher speed.) Or is shared with 150 others.

      You know, the connection rate is 1Gbps, but there's no way you get even 20Mbps.

    3. Re:Gigabit speeds, though? by Bert64 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Speedtest sites don't tell the whole story, especially at higher speeds...
      Some of the speedtest sites are only on 100mbit themselves, even those on gigabit are usually sharing the bandwidth at their end... And then there's peering, the interconnect between your isp and the speedtest site might not have 1gbit of free capacity at the time your testing. The end devices (or the software running on them) might also not be up to the 1gbps rate - lots of cheaper gigabit nics can't handle wire speed, long or bad cabling, flash based speedtest apps etc.

      I've had a box with 1gbps in a data centre for a few years now, and i can quite happily pull 1gbps doing torrent downloads and from some linux mirror sites, but i get a lot less from speedtest sites and many things download a lot slower because the other end or something in between can't handle it.

      You need to test a variety of different things, and at different times of the day...

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    4. Re:Gigabit speeds, though? by wbr1 · · Score: 1

      How many servers can or will return those speeds? A big pipe is not just useful for a single point connection. Being able to have ten 100gbs connections simultaneously is a bigger thing.

      --
      Silence is a state of mime.
    5. Re:Gigabit speeds, though? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Gigabit really taxes many of the involved devices. A likely bottleneck is the home router. Few can actually route, firewall and NAT a gigabit, even if they have gigabit Ethernet for the WAN and LAN ports. The speed test web sites also need to be able to deliver those speeds, and the browser can only measure up to a gigabit if the CPU is fast enough to handle that kind of download in a (single-core!) Flash or HTML5 app. Those aren't just raw streams to /dev/null. Similar problems appeared when 50mbps service became available and people tested with Windows XP, which needs modifications to the IP stack configuration to be able to receive a 50mbps TCP stream with non-local latencies.

    6. Re:Gigabit speeds, though? by Shinobi · · Score: 1

      A friend of mine consistently gets high speeds both up and down on his 1gbit/s down/500Mbit/s up residential connection, here in Stockholm. He frequently does SCP/SFTP transfers to and from clients where he gets 900Mbit/s+ down and 480Mbit/s up, even during primetime. So it all depends on where you are, your ISP etc, and not generalize that just because ComCast and other US ISP's do something, the rest of the world is the same.

    7. Re:Gigabit speeds, though? by Gaygirlie · · Score: 1

      I never said anywhere that the rest of the world is the same, I was quite specifically asking about the US ISPs mentioned here. Here in Finland I have always gotten the advertised speeds myself, like e.g. right now I'm on a 260Mbps connection and I get that full 260Mbps day in, day out -- there's no variation to that, it doesn't go up when people go to work/school and drop when they come back or anything like that. However, I often come across stories from the US where ISPs can't even maintain 1.5Mbps connections, let alone 1Gbps, and I was just kind of looking for if someone here had some first-hand experience to share on these things.

    8. Re:Gigabit speeds, though? by Gaygirlie · · Score: 1

      Well, I don't have a 1Gbps connection, I only have 260Mbps, but e.g. Github always seems to saturate my connection more than happily. Similarly, when I download latest ISO of Ubuntu or updates to one with apt-get I get close to cap. Quite frankly, the only servers that I can think of at the moment that have trouble handling faster download - speeds have been those where ASUS and AsRock have their driver - and firmware - updates; everywhere else I am pretty consistently getting full bandwidth's worth. It's especially fun installing a 40GiB game from Steam at full blast -- doesn't take all that long.

      Yes, this is all anecdotal and all, so take from that what you will, but I am definitely under the impression that at least all the bigger servers can totally handle such speeds these days.

    9. Re:Gigabit speeds, though? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I get consistent 200 mbps up / down on my connection which is rated at 200 mbps.

      Of course this is in Singapore, and it's torrents that's able to fully use my bandwidth usually. Most single server downloads tend to have bottlenecks.

    10. Re:Gigabit speeds, though? by Bengie · · Score: 1

      Same thing over here. People only think most servers can't handle it because their ISP's peering sucks. I get 1Gb/s from nearly all main servers, Eve Online paths, Windows Patches, Blizzard, YouTube, Netflix, Twitch, Steam. Even during the 8p-11p rush.

    11. Re:Gigabit speeds, though? by Bengie · · Score: 1

      If I even set my system to use European YouTube servers, I still get full 1Gb speeds.

    12. Re:Gigabit speeds, though? by bbn · · Score: 2

      Most speedtest servers are hosted on 1 gigabit/s which means you will probably never be able to get a clean 1 gigabit/s reading from those. That would require that you got the server all by yourself and that wont happen.

      We are an ISP that sell gigabit. We host our own speedtest.net server on a 10 gigabit/s. It might be considered "cheating" as the user will only be measuring our internal network. But there is simply no other speedtest server nearby that is able to give consistent good readings. There are a couple that will give you ok readings ("almost 1 gig") but that depends on the time of the day and you might have to try several times.

      And no, our transit connections are not congested. However ISPs that do not market themselves as selling 1 gig or more will have no reason to establish 10 gigabit/s at all interconnections. But that also means traffic to them will be limited by the interconnection.

      Take a look at any IX member list and notice how many companies have only 1 gbps or slower ports. Our users will never get 1 gig to those guys if the traffic goes that route. Remember there will always be other traffic on the port as well.

      However, if a user has traffic to multiple destinations he will usually be able to take full advantage. So it is good for families. You will never be slowed down by what others are doing in your household.

    13. Re:Gigabit speeds, though? by Bengie · · Score: 1

      It depends on who is running those 1Gb ports. If they're a company that does not stream bulk data, then their ports will probably never be at capacity anyway. Your customers will still get 1Gb/s speeds, but only for the fractions of a second it takes to transfer their small web pages.

      The company I work for only has a 2Gb connection to the Internet and hundreds of thousands of live connections at peak usage, yet our peak bandwidth is around 1.2Gb/s. Of course those 100K+, if they all had 1Gb connections could flood our connection if the data being transfers was sustained, but sustained is not a normal usage for us. All of our bandwidth is micro-bursts.

  5. bullshit by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    fuck fake internet
    20meg, 30 meg, 1 gig, 10 gig,.. WHat difference does it make? How fast you can download from a Cache? all this fake internet shit from content providers , unless your ALSO paying additionally for cable tv, your going to be blocked from streaming services, e.g. History Channel, Spike, CNN, hell, even lame ass CSPAN is now requiring you to have a separate cable subscription
      30 megs here , things are occasionally slow as fuck or missing" from dns, downloads are randomly truncated, some sites are still slow as fuck (microsoft updates, youtube , google maps)

  6. Okay but using a typical browser for download by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Okay but using a typical browser and typical site for download, what download rate do you get? I get maybe 1/10th of what my independent speed tests - to their far-flung servers - say I have available. And I am 1/10th Gb. So how does Gb really translate for single downloads?

    And I don't mean ganging TCP connections. I mean a typical browser used by the masses to download a single, very-large zip file.

    1. Re:Okay but using a typical browser for download by ledow · · Score: 1

      Your use case is very last decade.

      Nobody downloads single files over HTTP for anything serious. Half my users don't even understand what a ZIP is, and those that vaguely do think of it only as a folder.

      Streaming, multiple cloud servers, torrents, etc.

      A Gigabit isn't to have a 1 second download. It's to have multiple downloads simultaneously at the speed that only one download can enjoy now. Hell, even web browsers download multiple things in parallel from a website nowadays,

    2. Re:Okay but using a typical browser for download by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hell, even web browsers download multiple things in parallel from a website nowadays

      Yes, the web has gone to hell, but it's not bad enough that you need a gigabit ISP, yet.

    3. Re:Okay but using a typical browser for download by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nice, but not an answer. If a server cannot send a single file at 1 Gb/s then the use case means Gb is not effective. Dilly-dallying a webserver for bits and pieces won't ever approach the fabled Gb rate. The truth is, no single connection will ever get Gb rates. No server FARM will send your single IP Gb/s. How could it? Unless you and it were the last machines on Earth. The fact is, the Gb rate is hype. Those willing to pay for it won't know, or care, since like you say, half your...your what? don't even know what a zip file is, so how could they possibly understand what their actual download speed, from real-life servers, is? You said it yourself. They can't. They only see the bill, "Super-mumbo Gb upgrade . . . $300.00".

    4. Re:Okay but using a typical browser for download by Bengie · · Score: 1

      Server farms can have hundreds of gigabits of bandwidth. Some server farms build near an IX where they can buy up 100Gb/s of dedicated bandwidth for $5k/month. Getting 1Gb/s to/from any metro area on Earth is not hard. You also seem to have some misconception that services need to send a sustained 1Gb/s. Most services only need to burst data. 1Gb/s for 1/100th of a second or so.

  7. Whats left unsaid... by jonwil · · Score: 3, Informative

    Whats left unsaid is how many ISPs (including those that dont yet exist except on paper or in someones head) would LIKE to offer super fast broadband but are unable to because local or state authorities have been convinced by dinosaur companies like Comcast and Time Warner to block alternative ISPs comming into the area and providing good access.

    If governments at all levels stopped listening to the dinosaur ISPs and their friends in Hollywood and started listening to the people who elected them, the number of people able to get gigabit service (or even just super fast service) might start to be a meaningful percentage of the total population.

    1. Re:Whats left unsaid... by jbolden · · Score: 3, Interesting

      How is someone going to track an ISP in someone's head? Townships are not going to allow some ISP to pull out the 15% most profitable customers so that Comcast or Time Warner pull out and 85% of their township has no internet or all. Which means the contract is going to highly regulated and expensive. Someone is going to have to come in with a credible claim. To do that they are often going to need to provide other utility services cable TV and phone being the most common. Those are both regulated industries.

      The business internet market is a much less regulated market and while the quality is much higher, the prices are many times higher. Commercial gigabit connections are generally a few thousands not a few hundred dollars a month. Connection charges can range from say $1500 to $11k, they aren't $99-129.

      Smart people are doing a very good job weighing the various interests in networking and putting together compromises that meet most of them. Those dinosaurs are doing a very good job of providing tremendous bandwidth at low cost to 99% of America's 130m households. There is no conspiracy and there are no easy fixes. Government is tremendously supportive to increasing bandwidth almost everywhere. I'm sure there is some corruption but corruption is a lazy excuse for people who have no clue about the economics of the industry to pretend that things could be fixed if only the government got out of the way.

    2. Re:Whats left unsaid... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      If by "very good job" you mean things like "behind Andorra and Romania, while you pay more for worse speeds and service", then sure, it's a very good job!

      In Hong Kong virtually the entire country is on half-gigabit for $25/month. You are FAR behind.

    3. Re:Whats left unsaid... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      European and most Asian countries have much higher average population densities than the USA. Suburban living / a car culture makes lots of services much more expensive to deliver. Internet is one of those services. Put the 130m American homes into apartments concentrated inside cities with limited numbers of suburbs and heck 10g residential internet might well be reasonable.

      That's not the world we live in. In the world we live in, the USA is going to lag Hong Kong forever and it should.

    4. Re:Whats left unsaid... by lars_stefan_axelsson · · Score: 1

      That's not the world we live in. In the world we live in, the USA is going to lag Hong Kong forever and it should.

      While I agree that places like Hong Kong are an anomaly, you also lag countries like Sweden and Finland...

      --
      Stefan Axelsson
    5. Re:Whats left unsaid... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      Sweden and Finland are perfect examples where median population density is quite a bit higher than the USA. Both countries have huge spaces which are very sparsely populated. However for both countries the vast majority of their population is concentrated tightly in narrow areas which are very cheap to wire. So the result is almost all Finns and Swedes can get internet more cheaply.

      You really won't find anything like America's population distribution anywhere outside Africa, that's the point of comparison in terms of density, though obviously the per capita income disparity makes a comparison lagging i.e. what they are doing now is similar to what was happening in the USA during the 1990s.

    6. Re: Whats left unsaid... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ... state or local authorities have been convinced ...?

      Yes, convinced by cash when the regional subscriber agreements were signed. Your government, acting in your best interest, sold you to a cable provider in return for cash and services (e.g., that public access channel you enjoy watching so much).

      It's working just as intended. The governments are getting the cash (which helps fund their pensions). The service providers have their monopoly on selling you and your community services.

      Of course this could be changed. You could work with your neighbors to either:
      1. Elect idealistic politicians who are motivated by the "public good" and not my money
      2. Dangle enough cash in front of your current government so that it unilaterally "changes the terms of the deal." Of course you would want nothing in return for your cash except an "open market."

    7. Re:Whats left unsaid... by Bengie · · Score: 1

      Suburban densities are optimal. It costs most per customer to install fiber in a big city than a medium city. Tearing up concrete and drilling holes through large many story apartment buildings is much more labor intensive than drilling a hole into someone's basement.

    8. Re:Whats left unsaid... by Raenex · · Score: 1

      Smart people are doing a very good job weighing the various interests in networking and putting together compromises that meet most of them. Those dinosaurs are doing a very good job of providing tremendous bandwidth at low cost to 99% of America's 130m households.

      Did you pull that 99% figure out of your ass? Here are those "smart people" at work:

      http://www.publicintegrity.org...

    9. Re:Whats left unsaid... by guruevi · · Score: 1

      If TWC/Comcast threatens to pull out, I would let them and give the copper to the newcomers. The copper in your street (cable, phone, even fiber) has been paid several times over by the taxpayers from federal, state and/or local funds. Give it back already or charge a reasonable price.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    10. Re:Whats left unsaid... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      You have to get the fiber to them. Even if it costs 10x as much to hit 50-150 apartments there is huge savings both in wiring them up and more importantly getting the fiber to them. For example Verizon spent $23b for the FIOS footprint is has. For NYState where the footprint is suburban that works out to $750 per house to get fiber to them and $600 per house for installation. They can do city apartments much cheaper than that.

    11. Re:Whats left unsaid... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      Oh just realized you were saying big city vs. medium city. That I'm not sure about. It might be cheaper to do smaller buildings than the very high costs in a big city. I'm talking suburbs, and X-burbs vs. big or medium cities.

    12. Re:Whats left unsaid... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      What does public broadband have to do with the discussion? This was about cost of providing service not how it should be paid for.

    13. Re:Whats left unsaid... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      I don't think you mean copper when we are talking internet. In terms of copper though Verizon and AT&T would love to rid themselves of all their copper. Whenever they get the chance they dump it on less regulated providers who bundle it up for PRI or bonded T1s.

      As for fiber no generally it hasn't been paid for. The companies are still paying down their investment in residential internet. And this is happening as the number of subscribers is dropping not increasing meaning they might never pay it down interest adjusted.

    14. Re:Whats left unsaid... by Raenex · · Score: 1

      It's about big ISPs and government screwing up broadband access. You decided to pull the 99% figure out of your ass. You defended the big ISPs and government. Now when presented with some contradictory information, you want to dodge it.

    15. Re:Whats left unsaid... by guruevi · · Score: 1

      Copper as in either cable or DSL has been paid for under FCC Title II. Verizon FiOS has classified itself as Title II to get the subsidies and tax breaks for it's rollout. ISP's have been collecting and permitted to keep federal and state "taxes" on every bill to implement higher bandwidth services since at least the nineties.

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    16. Re:Whats left unsaid... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      You aren't contradicting anything I'm saying. You are talking about something entirely irrelevant, the payment model. Big ISPs are not screwing up broadband access in preventing municipalities from offering it, they are screwing up socialized access. Socialized access has had huge problems remaining viable where it has been tried as costs of management and administration explode. Whether one things those viability issues can be overcome or not has nothing to do with whether fiber gets laid. A socialized ISP needs fiber as much as private ones do. Municipalities are just a big customer.

    17. Re:Whats left unsaid... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      Fios was until recently not Title II. The FCC classified it as such, potentially not Verizon. Verizon wanted FIOS private. As for the fees on the bills, they haven't been able to keep that. That's a tax collected by the FCC and used as a subsidy for rural access. It was working well until a few years ago and now is starting to fail as the FCC keeps raising the minimum bandwidth.

    18. Re:Whats left unsaid... by Raenex · · Score: 1

      You aren't contradicting anything I'm saying.

      You claimed, "Those dinosaurs are doing a very good job of providing tremendous bandwidth at low cost to 99% of America's 130m households."

      I challenged your 99% figure. I also linked an article that shows "those dinosaurs" preventing access from being expanded to people who don't have it.

    19. Re:Whats left unsaid... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      http://www.statista.com/statis...
      http://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/f...

      Also the dinosaurs they weren't preventing access in the sense we were talking about. If the municipality was being blocked from offering wifi then a local company had wired up the area. No one prevents access where they can't or won't provide service.

    20. Re:Whats left unsaid... by Raenex · · Score: 1

      http://www.statista.com/statis...
      http://a.tiles.mapbox.com/v3/f...

      So your 99% figure was bullshit, based on your own links.

      Also the dinosaurs they weren't preventing access in the sense we were talking about. If the municipality was being blocked from offering wifi then a local company had wired up the area. No one prevents access where they can't or won't provide service.

      Read the fucking article. These were areas whose needs were not being met and the dinosaurs lobbied, threatened to sue, or sued their way to prevent municipalities from offering services that would meet their needs.

    21. Re:Whats left unsaid... by lars_stefan_axelsson · · Score: 1

      Sweden and Finland are perfect examples where median population density is quite a bit higher than the USA. Both countries have huge spaces which are very sparsely populated.

      Yes, that is true. However, even these parts of the country, at least in Sweden, have good broadband access. It's actually cheaper and easier for them than more urban areas, since there's more farmland/forest where digging is cheaper and easier. They're using national government money/legislative support to get a feed and then create co-ops to do the actual installation. It's been quite a thing for the past decade at least. (As a case in point a friend just got fibre to his farm, where his nearest neighbour is a kilometre away, at about the same time that his house, much more urban, was hooked up. Co-op in the country, and ISP in the burb.)

      Now, when it comes to urbanisation, I would have always thought that the US was more urbanised than Sweden in particular (we're still in the process of urbanising), but according to Wikipedia you're less urbanised, by one measure at least. However, not by a lot. I'd say that the differences in degree of urbanisation does not explain the majority of the large differences in broadband access or price. My money is on other factors, chiefly unhampered oligopoly in the market combined with regulatory capture. Both of which we lack. (We even got the former government telecom company to start installing open fibre networks, i,e. where you have your choice of ISP, rather than being tied to just them. And we didn't even have to legislate, just compete... People realised a bad deal for a bad deal.)

      (Interestingly Norway is much worse off, relatively speaking. Mainly due to a lack of government support. Instead choosing to leave it to the market, which means the telecom incumbent(s). Guess what the results are? Yepp, much more like the US. Lack of access, and where you can get it, more expensive.)

      --
      Stefan Axelsson
    22. Re:Whats left unsaid... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      I'm not sure what a coop means. Fiber costs about $300/m to fully install. But 1km is still within the range of a fast local ethernet connection and that can be done in a way that's durable for about $10/m. Those are the sorts of prices American businesses pay for getting access from an access point. Possibly rural Sweden is more like the USA business market. Which BTW has lots of competition but the prices are way higher.

      As for government subsidy, we don't have subsidy for internet in urban areas. We do have a tax (of a few dollars per months) that's collected in profitable area to help provide it in rural areas. Its possible that the numbers are being distorted by government in Sweden. As for oligarchy and regulatory capture.. I'm assuming you mean monopoly and regulatory capture. We don't have monopoly or much regulation for the business market and prices are much higher than residential cable companies. So for that explanation to work you would need to explain why in the absence of those two factors the same house has a higher cost of business ethernet. Or why small business ethernet (provided by the cable companies usually for about $10/mo more than residential) is so much cheaper than the business service. So for example

      So for example in Verizon territory for $380 / mo you can get 500mb of FIOS business internet with QoS for phone and static IPs. That's about $100 more expensive than the residential version. It also is somewhere between 2x and 20x less expensive than buying a 500mb ethernet circuit (say for MPLS) from Verizon in the same areas. I.e. where we don't have monopoly or regulatory capture it costs more to buy the noncaptured service.

    23. Re:Whats left unsaid... by lars_stefan_axelsson · · Score: 1

      Yes, sorry I meant co-op. As in "cooperative".

      And of course I meant "oligopoly"...

      And the subsidies are mainly EU, subsidies. Not Swedish per se. (And they're for rural areas. In the cities we have competition, which makes the market work.)

      Myself, I pay $50 or so for 100/100Mbps including IP telephony. Fibre in an open city network (laid down by one of the utilities, district heating in my case), with my choice of ca eight different ISPs. I paid nothing for installation, but a more reasonable price would have been around $2500, which is what most people pay these days. In a rural setting you get about as much extra per drop in various (EU) subsidies.

      --
      Stefan Axelsson
    24. Re:Whats left unsaid... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      $50 for 100/100 is about what Americans pay in almost all areas. Certainly it is well above what Americans pay just for port excluding line. The issue of EU subsidies I think is important because I was trying to look at total cost not cost to consumer. A taxpayer subsidy is just cost shifting. That would be like Americans talking about how much cheaper cell phones are in the USA excluding the fact that $20 / mo of their bill goes to subsidizing the purchase price of the phone.

      $2500 for a rural connection seems very cheap. I'd be curious how that is pricing out. I suspect that's being heavily subsidized somewhere. Again American consumers don't pay anywhere near that but they pay a higher monthly bill to cover the connection charge.

    25. Re:Whats left unsaid... by lars_stefan_axelsson · · Score: 1

      $2500 for a rural connection seems very cheap.

      No, its usually about twice that, with the rest in subsidies from the EU. But, the power of a co-op should not be underestimated. Since they can both do work and grant land (cheaply).

      And when I check speedtest net, they list an average of $3.52/MBps which would give a much higher cost for 100/100. This article from the BBC also lists much higher prices; $90 for speeds over 45 Mbps on average. (Granted it's two years old).

      Now, that rural infrastructure is subsidised is no surprise. Everyone does that, even you. Only problem is you only do it for phone service, which used to be important. We've said that internet service is equally important, while you don't. That's the gist of the problem.

      And that's where your regulatory capture comes in. There have been numerous stories here on slasdot on states that have explicitly forbidden local municipalities to be involved in fibre/broadband, instead legislating that that can only be done by corporations. Who then don't actually deliver any infrastructure. Municipalities or co-ops are in most of these cases banned by law from addressing the problem. If that's not regulatory capture, I don't know what is...

      --
      Stefan Axelsson
    26. Re:Whats left unsaid... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      Everyone does that, even you. Only problem is you only do it for phone service, which used to be important. We've said that internet service is equally important, while you don't. That's the gist of the problem.

      We do subsidize rural internet. There are several dollars per month used to pay for rural connections. Also LEC charges are designed to encourage telco expansion into rural areas and thus move money from the phone system to the business internet.

      As for 3.52 MBps that's 2 T1s. In lots of rural areas the extra copper lying around make that sort of connection a potential, though generally the cost might be almost nothing to install but a 3 year commit at $300/mo. Again aimed more at business than residential but a farm could buy that sort of connection. Still more expensive but there is nothing like the EU to subsidize. You all get stuff for the taxes you pay.

      And that's where your regulatory capture comes in. There have been numerous stories here on slasdot on states that have explicitly forbidden local municipalities to be involved in fibre/broadband, instead legislating that that can only be done by corporations. Who then don't actually deliver any infrastructure.

      There is nothing to prevent a municipality from forming a public corporation and offering services that way. That is they can do it providing they are upfront about how much it is costing and how it is being paid for. We do that commonly for road systems which cost far more than internet. What the Republican states are concerned about is that there is not a situation where the municipality is hiding the cost of broadband by embedding it in other budget items that use the tax system to subsidize while at the same time pricing corporations out of the market.

      In other words they don't want socialized internet. They also of course allow for subsidies to private companies to get them to build out. I may not agree but the situation is not quite what you say. Co-ops BTW are perfectly legal in the USA everywhere to the best of my knowledge.

      So I'm disagreeing with you on the state of American law.

    27. Re:Whats left unsaid... by guruevi · · Score: 1

      I don't think I have to point out some thing that was widely covered by media about a year ago: http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
    28. Re:Whats left unsaid... by mgcarley · · Score: 1

      That doesn't excuse poor access in places like NYC, LA, Seattle, Chicago (you name it) - the conditions in those localities are similar enough to places like HK, Singapore or Tokyo that there's not a sufficiently significant difference in the actual technical ability or financial outlay for companies (or municipalities) to install properly high speed Internet and charge what users pay in a place like HK.

      --
      Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com) // t: @mgcarley
    29. Re:Whats left unsaid... by lars_stefan_axelsson · · Score: 1

      In other words they don't want socialized internet.

      And this is why I'm glad that I'm here, instead of over there. What purpose does the municipality serve other than to serve its inhabitants? And what better way to serve them than with infrastructure, especially that kind which succumbs to a natural monopoly anyway? (Running many different fibre networks is as dumb as running many different electricity lines, or roads, to a house).

      Now, if you want to preserve the market, then by all means, do what we do here, and stipulate that the municipality can't offer service on said network, instead having to open it to all and sundry who want to do so. That provides the customer with both potentially high speed internet, even in out of the way places. If you look at the places where e.g. the local electric company rolled out fibre and was stopped by legislation (Tennessee?), these markets weren't served by anybody else, and still isn't), and you have a market for service where companies can offer there services. Legislating against the electric company pulling the fibre is just counter productive; legislating that they would have to open their network, now that would be another thing.

      But as that would lead to real competition, at a lower total cost, not crony capitalism, I don't have high hopes for you...

      --
      Stefan Axelsson
    30. Re:Whats left unsaid... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      If you read the article it is a bit more nuanced:

      FTTP, the fiber is Title II
      FIOS the service is Title I

      Which makes sense. But I don' see how that proves that the public has paid for the fiber that exists on modern broadband connections. You certainly could argue in a well populated area that's had broadband for 20 years that something like 3mb/sec broadband connections were semi-public (since things like the colo to remix signal were never public). If that's what you mean by copper... I guess one could grant that to smaller operators if it is still functioning and in the ground. But I'd assume that's sort of what happens it probably being sold to players like XO who are using it for lower cost business connections.

    31. Re:Whats left unsaid... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      LA and Seattle don't have densities close to HK or Tokyo. HK is $200 / home to wire. But you are absolutely right those cities have densities that make replacement plausible.

      New York has even better densities, it does has geological problems and incredibly old infrastructure. New York still has some of the public water using wooden pipes, I have no idea when they stopped using wood but.... However we are lucky because New York is right now doing a major build out in the poorer areas starting. The preliminary wiring for FIOS (that's not all the way to the door but having an access point for buildings) was $3.5b. So you are at several thousand / home. Over say 60 months $2k even without interest is going to have to be an extra $33/mo. Which is generally too much for to pool for poorer people which lengthens the payoff time, which slows down the rate of improvement which... The people living in poorer areas of New York could have FIOS in under a year (with some much sooner) if the city would mandate that building owners had to cooperate.

      There is no question we have the technical ability to put in gigabit or heck potentially 10gigabit internet to every home if we were starting a network from scratch. If we were starting from scratch in 2015 we would likely do that. What I was arguing is the system we have in the USA is not the result or stupidity or corruption.

    32. Re:Whats left unsaid... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      What purpose does the municipality serve other than to serve its inhabitants?

      Well government's primary purpose is law enforcement and public essentials (like fire). In general America, particularly our red states like services to be provided by private organizations. But again the laws here don't prohibit a municipality from offering those services. You cited Tennessee. Tennessee prohibited public electric companies from offering those services without running it like a public utility. Which meant no cherry picking. They were however free to use another structure, like setting up a public corporation or a separate agency. Your description of USA laws are simply not true.

      hese markets weren't served by anybody else, and still isn't) .. Legislating against the electric company pulling the fibre

      And that's not true either. In Tennessee it is perfectly legal for an electric company to operate an internet service in an area where private cable companies do not want to provide broadband. What they weren't allowed to do was cherry pick off areas that the cable companies did want. And in fact Tennessee just recently passed a law allowing electric companies to provide dark fiber without having to meet public standards, which is exactly what you are talking about with having multiple players. Municipalities even in Tennessee can operate dark fiber network they just can't provide a consumer level service.

      But as that would lead to real competition, at a lower total cost, not crony capitalism, I don't have high hopes for you...

      You are simply mischaracterizing American law and talking about how things that are perfectly legal and quite easy to do are impossible under American law. I'm not saying the situation is Europe may not be better, utilities work better with a more powerful and more coercive government. But I am saying that you are mischaracterizing the problems in the USA.

    33. Re:Whats left unsaid... by mgcarley · · Score: 1

      It's a combination of more than just stupidity and corruption - many other things are at play, in my view.

      A 5 year ROI is basically unheard of in an infrastructure build - 20-25 is about where it's at, because it's expected to last 50 (or more). Besides, it's fiber - the infrastructure required to put in 1gig vs 10gig is basically no different - you replace a device on either end when it comes time to upgrade, no extra building required.

      One thing we also have to remember (which is often not cited or taken in to account by the naysayers) is that we only really need to concentrate on the last mile when thinking about a build like this - we don't need to care about the 500 miles in between towns - the middle mile is already done (for the most part) and has reasonably healthy competition (unless Zayo keeps buying everyone, then that might disappear), so in the vast majority of cases there's probably already fiber that can easily supply n*10gig or better to a CO/fiber hut/cabinet/etc.

      Population density on a nationwide scale is a BS argument and personally I've never found a good argument other than FUD from incumbents and lobbyists as to why *any* built-up area of nearly any size can't have reasonably priced 100-meg or even gigabit Internet if they'd just build that last mile fiber.

      Hell, why not start in smaller towns? No doubt there would be fewer issues with building and permitting, not to mention less resistance than there is in a place like NYC (landlords, city council etc). These are often the towns [incumbent] forgot, and by the time they realize, it'll be too late for them to do anything.

      By comparison, NZ's fiber build is has a CPPP of about US$2k - the cities are generally low density and the entire thing is on a fault-line so in many respects they face some similar problems to the US, except on a smaller scale (fraction of the size, fraction of the population). More to the point, you have towns even with populations under 1,000 being wired with fiber. Last I checked, some parts of the build are even ahead of schedule and at the end of last year they had a competition to find the town most wanting of gigabit service - and the town that won got it along with the privilege of saying first in the southern hemisphere and so on. No additional build was required to jump from what started out as a 100mbit/s service to reach a 1gbit/s service over and above what was already being put in.

      So what's different between us and the US? We as a nation are generally enthusiastic about fiber and most of the country is all for it, in part because it was sold to us as an investment in the future - to beyond 2020. Unlike here where the concern is for this year and next, at best. Which is probably why Frontier expects nearly $300 for gigabit service which allegedly became available where I am just a couple of months ago (though I've never seen a truck-roll for it, I had been waiting for it to be announced for nearly 2 years already, as the deal was struck in Q3 2013). FWIW, they only wanted about $150 for 100mb service - which is 2.5x more expensive than the cableco and about 1/3 what I can get a 100mb dedicated fiber circuit (complete with 4-hour SLA) for.

      --
      Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com) // t: @mgcarley
    34. Re:Whats left unsaid... by lars_stefan_axelsson · · Score: 1

      You cited Tennessee. Tennessee prohibited public electric companies from offering those services without running it like a public utility.

      That's not what I've read from the FCC ruling that nixed that law. I must confess that I haven't read it all, but can you cite that which supports your point? What I've read from i.e. the amicus briefs to the FCC the law prohibited the electric company from servicing someone that didn't get their electricity from same company (or wasn't "in the area serviced"), not that they did any of the things you mention. (And in either case the FCC didn't like that law and struck it down).

      But I am saying that you are mischaracterizing the problems in the USA.

      OK, I'll bite. What would be a fair characterisation then? Or isn't there a problem to begin with? (Again the FCC in their 2015 broadband report seems to think there is.)

      --
      Stefan Axelsson
    35. Re:Whats left unsaid... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      What I've read from i.e. the amicus briefs to the FCC the law prohibited the electric company from servicing someone that didn't get their electricity from same company (or wasn't "in the area serviced"), not that they did any of the things you mention.

      I think what you are talking about is one case the Electric Power Board (EPB) of Chattanooga offering Internet and video service to residents. Absolutely terrific internet service. Comcast claimed they were using ratepayer funds. Ratepayer funds are from the state governments. Using them for a purpose not allowed by law is approaching embezzlement. When you talk about southern states there is also federal involvement since their utilities often came out of New Deal legislation.

      And in either case the FCC didn't like that law and struck it down

      The FCC can't strike down a state law. They can argue in court against it or work towards its repeal. They aren't that powerful.

      . What would be a fair characterisation then?

      The problem with American broadband there really isn't one. America given its population densities is a broadband success. We have a huge percentage of the population getting ever increasing speeds at a good price point. Its not perfect but I don't think of this as a failure.

      The problem with American municipalities offering broadband is that they want to play fast and loose with funding. If there was a up or down vote on whether internet should be taxpayer supported the vote would be no. But cheap internet is very popular so if the municipality makes the funding mechanism opaque the taxpayer subsidy is much more popular. Basically the problem we always have with government: 70% of Americans think the government spends too much and needs to cut spending however the moment you name any specific government program we fund 70% of Americans think that's a good use of taxpayer money and support the spending. Internet is just one more example of the inconsistent beliefs about government spending of the middle 40% of American voters. Republicans are mostly opposed to those sorts of financing games to expand government while Democrats are mostly in favor.

      The law allows municipalities to pay for internet. It allows for everything you suggest easily. What it mostly doesn't allow for in those states is making it opaque and without making it opaque it lacks enough public support to become policy. The FCC under a Democratic administration of course is going to support making it opaque since they strongly support better broadband as a public good.

    36. Re:Whats left unsaid... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      A 5 year ROI is basically unheard of in an infrastructure build - 20-25 is about where it's at, because it's expected to last 50 (or more)

      No it isn't. 25 years ago the home internet infrastructure didn't even exist. A few years later it would have been extra capacity at LECs since people were using the cooper phone lines more hours per day. A few years after that it would have been DSL and coax connections capable of 5mbs or less. All of which are totally worthless now. Payoff in 60 months was on the high end, the company needs to make some profit on their infrastructure spend. If people start demanding faster relative speeds that means faster upgrades the spend goes from 60 months down to 36 or so. I'm not picturing 300 months for decades if not a century.

      we don't need to care about the 500 miles in between towns - the middle mile is already done (for the most part)

      100 towns * 5000 residential homes each * 2 gb/s * .2 average usage = extra 200k gbs of traffic or 200 pb/sec of traffic. That's a big deal.

      Or since we are talking nationwide. America has 130m residences.
      130m* 2gb/sec * .2 usage = 52 ebs of traffic. Our middle mile is remotely close to handling that.

      We don't even have the technology to support a middle mile that large even if we were willing to spend a fortune. Now of course your point about delivering fiber capable of doing say 10gbs and only delivering 100mbs now is true. Any new infrastructure being put in in 2015 should be able to go faster than 1gbs. We agree there.

      I'm having trouble with your pronouns who is us? You seem to be shifting from a NZ perspective to a USA perspective. Anyway... that's the economics. If American towns think they can get 50 years out of a fiber buy then they can certainly pay for it. But they don't so they won't. And that's the point of my posts. People think internet is cheap to provide while the reality is it is very expensive to provide and they are paying a fair estimate for what it costs given a reasonable payoff matrix. If you think the matrix is grossly mispriced then invest in telcos because they are sitting on a goldmine or own your own fiber / become an ISP. Which it appears you have.

    37. Re:Whats left unsaid... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      -- 100 towns * 5000 residential homes each * 2 gb/s * .2 average usage = extra 200k gbs of traffic or 200 pb/sec of traffic. That's a big deal.

      Sorry that should be 200 tbs not pbs .

    38. Re:Whats left unsaid... by lars_stefan_axelsson · · Score: 1

      The FCC can't strike down a state law. They can argue in court against it or work towards its repeal. They aren't that powerful.

      I'm going to have to leave this now, but as a parting shot: The Washington post explicitly says that the FCC does indeed have the power to "preemt" state law (direct quote). (As I understand it without having to go via a court, though I assume that the state can sue the FCC if they want to appeal the decision).

      Is this a mischaracterisation of the actual legal process?

      --
      Stefan Axelsson
    39. Re:Whats left unsaid... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      First off I want to point to one paragraph: Nineteen states have laws on the books that limit such networks. They range from strict prohibitions on any or most municipal broadband service (Texas and Nevada), to requirements that a municipality hold public hearings or a referendum before offering service, as in Alabama, Colorado, Minnesota and Virginia. At least 89 communities around the country have publicly owned fiber-optic networks.

      As for this case of preemption in Tennessee this is kind of nuts but overturn or preempt is too simple. The FCC here (https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-preempts-laws-restricting-community-broadband-nctn) argued that Tennessee outright violated Federal law and told a municipality to go ahead and violate state law. What's important is the FCC argued that the restrictions limited competition and regulating competition is FCC not the states. The FCC however specifically stated the states can simply ban municipalities from offering broadband services. What they weren't allowing was the state to regulate the market in a way that differs from the FCC because that does fall under FCC jurisdiction.

      So the FCC is allowing the states an out here if they really hate municipal broadband. North Carolina is more interesting because the FCC specifically listed some of the provisions of their law which were barriers to investment and others that were not. Because of the out, allowing the states to ban, you avoid many of the problems if the FCC had simply preempted. The way you were phrasing it Tennessee to resist might very well have the municipal officials arrested, though of course that would move the federal case from lazily working its way through the system to urgent. Tennessee also might simply refuse to regulate the new company at all, denying it any state protections. They could deny them any ability to borrow. ... That is Tennessee has the ability to defacto ban even if they can't dejure ban and thus the FCC was wise to recognize that.

        I suspect the Sixth Circuit (USA federal court) where this case is heading is going to create a framework for how to handle this. Probably what they are going to say is the FCC is entitled to challenge state laws in federal court but not entitled to just tell municipalities to ignore laws the FCC disagrees with.

      This is subtle and not the norm.

    40. Re:Whats left unsaid... by mgcarley · · Score: 1

      A 5 year ROI is basically unheard of in an infrastructure build - 20-25 is about where it's at, because it's expected to last 50 (or more)

      No it isn't. 25 years ago the home internet infrastructure didn't even exist. A few years later it would have been extra capacity at LECs since people were using the cooper phone lines more hours per day. A few years after that it would have been DSL and coax connections capable of 5mbs or less. All of which are totally worthless now. Payoff in 60 months was on the high end, the company needs to make some profit on their infrastructure spend. If people start demanding faster relative speeds that means faster upgrades the spend goes from 60 months down to 36 or so. I'm not picturing 300 months for decades if not a century.

      You say that 5 years is about the maximum but here's the thing though: most of the copper in use for the DSL and cable networks is a decade or more old. Sure, it wasn't designed or installed with even an inkling of what was to come, but your twisted pairs are probably nearly as old as your house - which could be 20, 30 or even 50 years.

      I can't speak for you, but my house in the US was built in the 1930s, and the internal telephone cabling looks like it was installed in about the 70s or early 80s - and many of the pedastals in the town say either GTE or Verizon on them, so I would speculate that the cables from the CO or pedestal are well over a decade old, possibly nearing 2 decades, and certainly have not been replaced in the last 5. So the ROI timeframe was almost certainly more than 5 years and I would personally be surprised if it were that short, and that is the expensive part of building a network.

      The less-expensive bit (the DSLAMS) "only" runs at around $100 per port for VDSL gear (that's Alcatel Lucent pricing, YMMV according to your vendor, FTTH pricing isn't too far off - 100mb modems can be had for about $53 each in quantities as low as 1,000 for stuff with 100mb ports and anywhere from $115 to $350 for gigabit stuff depending on the vendor) - and that amount of money even over 5 years amounts to a fairly trivial amount per month.

      Other than that, you'll have some OPEX for powering and maintenance along the way but to make DSL happen it's not really *that* expensive if the lines are already in place. It's all the legal stuff, permitting, digging, labour (and in some countries, bribes) that really run up the bill when building a last-mile network. Or also, in some case, if you're not allowed to trench or build your own poles, paying the monthly or yearly fees for pole access can also end up pretty expensive, but with a high enough penetration rate the amount per end user isn't terribly significant if you're paying $50-100 or more per month.

      we don't need to care about the 500 miles in between towns - the middle mile is already done (for the most part)

      100 towns * 5000 residential homes each * 2 gb/s * .2 average usage = extra 200k gbs of traffic or 200 pb/sec of traffic. That's a big deal.

      Your numbers are a bit off by a couple of orders of magnitude because ISPs tend to contend traffic - by what ratio will vary by provider but very few of them will have 100% of the bandwidth they sell on the middle mile (I'm fairly certain almost none do, I know bengie's ISP in rural where-ever-he-is does as he has mentioned this in many discussions on similar topics, but his ISP is probably the exception which proves the rule).

      I know that up until recently (late last year), the local ILEC had 2gb/s for a town of 30,000 people (about 10,000 households) and several surrounding smaller towns (for a total population of maybe 75k) - while offering DSL speeds ranging from 3 to 40mb. Sure, it was not always great during peak hours, but those links have been upgraded to a couple of 10gb/s links (in part because as of about 2 months ago, said ILEC has a pilot gigabit

      --
      Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com) // t: @mgcarley
    41. Re:Whats left unsaid... by jbolden · · Score: 1

      Remember this thread started with a conversation about the cost of going to 1gbs. Customers that are having to move from say 30-200mbs to 1gbs+ are going to want more than 1-2mbs dedicated. They are going to want much more than 300gb / month total. Your numbers are way too low for connections that fast. For example residential traffic in the USA is becoming much more steady because of things like Netflix. Netflix needs about 7mbs and that's not including other traffic in the household. And that's all running comfortably on today's 50mbs type connections not for near future when Netflix is using 8x as much and people are pulling down multiple streams.

      We know that home providers right now are underprovisioned. 7pm to 11pm they are only able to deliver 4mbs per home on average, while at times like 4:00 am they can do 18mbs / household and customers express satisfaction. And again that's with many customers buying as little as 10mbs. We know that 2mbs dedicated is less than 1/2 what customers are getting now in the worst markets.

      My .2 multiplier I think is fair for good quality peak usage (what the original poster wants). But even if I am to high it is nothing like a .001-.002 as a multiplier. 1000x to one overprovision you just aren't delivering anything like 1gbs of bandwidth.

      As for my house. I have about 8 copper lines running to my house. I have a switch box which connect the outlets to up to 3 of those incoming lines. I also have an older system using lead wires inside glass. 2 of those lines were setup for DSL. 0 of them are supported by the phone company today. All of that is abandoned infrastructure.

      As for ROI... Remember where I started. 5 years to pay off the original investment (no profit) then Y years of profit. The goal of infrastructure is not to break even,. not to have an ROI of 0. Your $120 box is a perfect example. You are renting it at $5/mo which means a 24 mo breakeven point not 25 years. A 25 year payoff would be you renting the box for $.40 / mo, a 50 year payoff $.20/mo.

    42. Re:Whats left unsaid... by mgcarley · · Score: 1

      Remember this thread started with a conversation about the cost of going to 1gbs. Customers that are having to move from say 30-200mbs to 1gbs+ are going to want more than 1-2mbs dedicated. They are going to want much more than 300gb / month total. Your numbers are way too low for connections that fast. For example residential traffic in the USA is becoming much more steady because of things like Netflix. Netflix needs about 7mbs and that's not including other traffic in the household. And that's all running comfortably on today's 50mbs type connections not for near future when Netflix is using 8x as much and people are pulling down multiple streams.

      You're quite right, but even then the increase in usage per subscriber doesn't necessarily correlate with the increase in speed, that is to say, a 50mbps customer going to 100mbps doesn't necessarily double their usage - it may go up by 20-50% or it may even stay near the same as it was before. A much larger jump, say, going from 2 or 4mbps to 100mbps might have that effect though.

      We know that home providers right now are underprovisioned. 7pm to 11pm they are only able to deliver 4mbs per home on average, while at times like 4:00 am they can do 18mbs / household and customers express satisfaction. And again that's with many customers buying as little as 10mbs. We know that 2mbs dedicated is less than 1/2 what customers are getting now in the worst markets.

      My .2 multiplier I think is fair for good quality peak usage (what the original poster wants). But even if I am to high it is nothing like a .001-.002 as a multiplier. 1000x to one overprovision you just aren't delivering anything like 1gbs of bandwidth.

      That's why my numbers are padded to account for 10mbps dedicated which is what I'm working from - that works out to a contention ratio of 100:1 for gigabit connections (a stupid metric, IMO) and comfortably allows 1.5TB per month per subscriber if you're assuming an average of 50% utilization on your trunks with some room for burst/peak.

      Individual providers would of course tweak numbers according to their customers habits and availability of capacity to other networks, route costs and so forth, but again, what we're talking about here is large ISPs have cores in several separate areas of the country, so what we're talking about is 130tb/s of core routing and interconnecting bandwidth spread across *all* the major ISPs (let's call it 20tb/s and some change each), divided by region (say 5tb/s per region) which is very doable - if I'm in California, I don't expect my ISP to be trying to deliver say Netflix from their Atlanta core unless said ISP is terrible at routing, I'd expect it to come from San Jose or whereever.

      Then you're looking at distributing bandwidth from those large areas to any given point over trunks which get progressively smaller as you get to smaller towns - n*100gb turns to 100gb which becomes n*10gb which becomes a single 10gb link for a small town because obviously a town with 1,000 households doesn't need 100gb or indeed 13tb/s to it - and that 10gb link would contended by say 1,000 households (100:1) which roughly works out.

      As for my house. I have about 8 copper lines running to my house. I have a switch box which connect the outlets to up to 3 of those incoming lines. I also have an older system using lead wires inside glass. 2 of those lines were setup for DSL. 0 of them are supported by the phone company today. All of that is abandoned infrastructure.

      Alright, but how long were those lines in service?

      I would suppose that *IF* the ROI on that wiring was 5 years, it's because back in the day, Ma Bell charged a fortune for everything because they could - telephones were somewhat of a luxury, long distance was expensive as hell and so on and so they basically had huge margins.

      However, margins are a lot thinner these days but that doesn't change the

      --
      Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com) // t: @mgcarley
    43. Re:Whats left unsaid... by mgcarley · · Score: 1

      What I meant to say in the last paragraph was:

      that $2,000 becomes $500 or $300 or whatever the case may be **per household**

      --
      Founder & COO, Hayai India (hayai.in) / USA (hayaibroadband.com) // t: @mgcarley
  8. Re:84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acce by jellomizer · · Score: 2

    It is in theory... However right now I am not seeing the need for it. I am currently at 10-15mbs about 100x slower... I am able to stream HD video, while browsing the web at the same time. Unlike the old days of dial up when I started at 2400bps and even when I went to 14.4k and 28.8k even when I got to college and we had about 1-5mbs It was a point where we wanted more speed. However now unless I am downloading the latest Linux/BSD distribution ISO that I feel like playing with. It doesn't feel slow or non-responsive any more.

    However I expect once a good portion of people switch to GB speeds, I will need to upgrade, because sites and services will be designed to handle the new average bandwidth Streaming 8k video, more teleconferencing tools etc...

    --
    If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
  9. So you have it.... Now what??? by Your+Average+Joe · · Score: 2

    How many sites will let you download an ISO at gigabit speed?

    So this Gig speed will only be used by a junkie with a 4K TV, or a dozen kids with 802.11ac laptops with malware. Maybe you will try to use it for work so they can replicate the SAN to your house? Maybe you will try to run your own mail server or serve up ammeter porn?

    How many SOHO WIFI routers can really do GIG on the Ethernet ports or even supply 802.11ac at full speed for 1 client? Sounds like a lot of clueless home users calling into the ISP bitching about how the "Internet" is slow. Are those clueless chaps really going to fork out more than $200 on a good WIFI router or an Enterprise device?

    Me 60/4 meg Charter because that is the slowest they sell. I never see even 7 meg per second when downloading files but the speed test they do always show I should be able to do 60. ;)

    --
    Your Average Joe
  10. Re:So you have it.... Now what??? by ledow · · Score: 1

    60Mbps = 7.5MBps.

    Not sure at all that I'll judge my future spending on someone who doesn't get this.

    Gigabit has tons of uses and don't equate "ISP's" with "consumer-only ISP's". Businesses will happily pay for Gigabit speeds, therefore small businesses will do too, therefore work-at-home people like graphic designers or similar will do too.

    It's not a question of whether the hardware can take it (the ISP's can always supply compatible hardware because nobody knows what the fuck ADSL2 vectoring, or DOCSIS 3 is, so the ISP has to supply sufficient shit anyway). It's a question of is the value there? Are there limits? Is it available? What's the install cost? How much are you paying per Mbps? etc.

    60Mbps is fine but lots of people need more. It would take you two days to download my steam folder alone. Put several kids in the house, a mother who works from home, a father who mirrors the family photos to his brother's house, etc. and you're fucked.

    There's not really an upper limit on what Internet speed I would like. Maybe one endpoint can't flood my connection (I wouldn't want it to) but nowadays there's a lot more than one device online, one user online, going to one destination.

    Fuck, on 60Mbps (which IS more than I currently use at home myself, but because of cost nothing else) it would take me all day to sync my Google Drive to a new device, for instance.

  11. Re:So you have it.... Now what??? by SuricouRaven · · Score: 2

    The general rule I use is to divide mbps by ten to get MBps, rather than 8. The slight over-division compensates for various overheads - headers, dropped packets, etc.

    It'd be better if we weren't stuck on such tiny MTUs still, but backwards compatibility demands it: Anything over 1500 bytes is probably going to run into an ethernet segment somewhere and go wrong.

  12. Editor fail by thsths · · Score: 1

    We always suspected that submitters and editors do not understand maths, but now we know it.

    The key word is "percent", not annualized. There is nothing sneaky about annualizing - they just compare one quarter to the same quarter next year. But putting it into relative growth figures makes it look impressive.

    Personally I think we will see tremendous growth in 1Gb connections for a while. It is a standard technology transition process, and it is clearly entering the rapid growth phase.

  13. Re:84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acce by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 1

    For me, video calling would be the thing I'd expect to improve significantly with higher speed access. But higher speed doesn't mean equivalently lower latency, and latency improvement is really what I want.

  14. craptastic by l3v1 · · Score: 3, Informative

    "83 Internet access providers have joined Google to offer gigabit Internet access service (all priced in the $50-$150 per month range)."

    Meanwhile, people still pay ~$40 for a 4mbit at&t line. There being lots of smaller regional players providing some service to a limited population doesn't mean crap in the more global view of how things are standing. Reality is, very many cties how only 1 to 3 choices, none of them really good, and absolutely none of them priced realistically. I don't care about statistics, when we can see the reality wit our own eyes.

    --
    I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
    1. Re:craptastic by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Where I live, which is a city of 24k, my options for internet include one regional company. Some areas in the city also have AT&T but not where I am. They offer good connections but with the quotas netflix and amazon video are only for rare times and when I play youtube videos I always click on the 144 rate when available. Mind you they also offer their own video on demand that doesn't use the quota. It is a game to force us to not drop cable or get too invested in internet video. Speed is great and all but I would prefer 2mbit if it was unlimited.

    2. Re:craptastic by sims+2 · · Score: 1

      $45 for 12mbps/1 after bundling with phone on att buisness uverse dsl here in town of 8k no caps

      $55 for 10mbps/10 standard rate munifiber buisness

      $135 for 8mbps/1 suddenlink cable for buisness

      no caps for business on any
      caps for residents on suddenlink and att
      no caps on munifiber for anyone

      --
      Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
  15. Re: So you have it.... Now what??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Um, that is what jumbo frames are for. Fragmentation will take care of the rest.

  16. I'm stuck with ATT and Comcast by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I pay $47/mo for 1.5Mbps/.25Mbps with ATT and nothing better is offered in my area. I might could get something a little better with Comcast/xFintiy but I refuse to do business with them.

    So I have a choice between shit service or getting screwed and getting shit service. I would love another company to come i but the Georgia state legislature is made up of mostly business worshiping Republicans who have been bought and paid for by well, every big corp that's here.

  17. And IPv6? by jez9999 · · Score: 1

    Great. Now when are they going to offer IPv6? A gigabit bandwidth should be enough for anyone (for the new few 100 years anyway) so time to start concentrating on native IPv6 support as the next "killer feature".

    1. Re:And IPv6? by guruevi · · Score: 1

      Most of these newcomers do it. They'll give you both an IPv4 address and an IPv6 range. Even TWC is doing it, I currently have IPv6 connectivity directly to my computer (which is behind IPv4 NAT).

      --
      Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  18. Re: 84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acc by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Don't forget you've already pretty much optimized bandwidth for your current needs. New applications (4k video streaming, etc.) that you don't currently use may become more common place in your life as they become more accessible.

  19. "Gigabit service" is FRAUD. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 2

    "... the oversell model ... CAN deliver UP TO..."

    At OSCON 2015 last week, I talked with several people about technology companies being wildly mis-managed and very poorly communicated.

    There is apparently no "Gigabit" service. "Gigabit" only refers to the electrical connection speed. The real speed of actual data delivery is whatever the providers want it to be.

    My experience is that speedtest.net exaggerates the actual speed of delivery. Numion is realistic.

    1. Re:"Gigabit service" is FRAUD. by Shinobi · · Score: 2

      I found that Numion did not realistically measure my connection. In fact, when I do manual tests of my own, I easily reach 110Mbit/s on actual transfers(downloaded a game from GOG for example), at 15:09 Swedish time on a saturday, on a nominally 100Mbit/s connection. Upload, I get 105Mbit/s. However, running the Numion tests, it claims I only get 1Mbit/s.

    2. Re:"Gigabit service" is FRAUD. by petermgreen · · Score: 1

      The real speed of actual data delivery is whatever the providers want it to be.

      Not entirely true. the real speed of actual data devliery depends on many factors including

      1: the speed of your client hardware and software
      2: the speed of your local network
      3: the speed of your customer premisis equipment
      4: any congestion/shaping/prioritisation on your ISPs network
      5: any congestion between your ISP and the server host.
      6: any congestion on the server hosts network
      7: the speed/congestion of the servers connection to it's hosts network
      8: the ability of the server itself to keep up
      9: TCP issues. Older TCP stacks had a limited window size which limited the bandwidth at a given latency. Even modern stacks have "slow start" which means it will take a while to get up to the full bandwidth on a "long fat network".

      Some of these factors are under your ISPs control, many are not.

      Afaict speedtest measures about the best case, it uses a nearby fast test server and it waits for the speed to stabalise to allow for TCP slow start.

      I couldn't get numion to work so I can't comment on that.

      --
      note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
    3. Re: "Gigabit service" is FRAUD. by cthulhu11 · · Score: 1

      Just like it's always been with every other last mile technology. Having a DS3 doesn't mean that you're going to slurp Joe Sixpack's blog at 45Mbit/s.

    4. Re:"Gigabit service" is FRAUD. by Cramer · · Score: 1

      Numion? That looks like something from the 80's. Java: Check. FRAMES: Big fat CHECK.

      And I'm sure various site admins love being selected by him as a traffic source. This alone makes his data completely unreliable -- who knows what state those selected sites are in at any given moment.

  20. Re:84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acce by pushing-robot · · Score: 1

    More than 84. My small local ISP offers it and they aren't on the list.

    --
    How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
  21. Re:So you have it.... Now what??? by Your+Average+Joe · · Score: 1

    Well, Well, Well...

    I think you might be the .01% of the Internet users. Most can't spell computer or know how to use it.

    I agree on the backup, but all the commercial companies know how to do backups at night with something as slow as DSL, and all those Cable modem users are not symmetric either.

    If your doing work from home, you either have a competent IT department or you don't. Most larger companies have a remote solution, Server based computing using RDP. PCoIP or the like.

    Graphic designers... Hell they can bury the 1gig connection at work and fill up any disk they have access to, so I am not sure those people have enough patience to try to work from home. Besides if they have a real workstation at work, why the hell do they try to piss off time at home with something that does not have business 3d Graphics, SSD RAID subsystem, dual WQHD/WQXGA displays and TONS of RAM... And I for sure would not spend the coin on that hardware at home. The geek in me wants to have that but I have better things to do with that kind of dollars.

    --
    Your Average Joe
  22. Re:84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acce by Shinobi · · Score: 1

    I'm at 100Mbit/s nominal(110 down 105 up actual), and for my family, sometimes we actually congest it badly, especially now that the kids are getting older.

    The ability to download a game at 80Mbit/s while there are 4 different HD streams going etc is a boon, for example. Or being able to send friends, family or work large files without needing an hour.

  23. For extremely limited definitions of "offer" by Somebody+Is+Using+My · · Score: 1

    Sure, the ISPs offer it... just not to your home. Or mine. Or in 90% of the country. I'm sure many of the ISPs /technically/ provide the gigabit-speeds but the area where people can actually get it is probably very, very limited. This is just another fluff piece from the telecom industry hoping to make people believe America isn't as technologically backward as Europe, Japan or Korea; "Look, American Internet is as fast as in the rest of the world!". They hope to forestall government regulation enforcing mandatory speed minimums for all parts of the country by pointing out that their network technically has this capability... even if 99% of it can never achieve this sort of speed.

    And that doesn't even get into the astronomical prices they are charging for the service.

    When Farmer Bob can call up Comcast and have them deliver gigabit service at the same price as Sue-in-the-city, then they can start boasting. Until then the ISPs are seriously deficient in the service that they have been providing to this nation.

  24. Comcast’s 25 Mbps internet costs $50 per mon by QuietLagoon · · Score: 1

    ...In the final analysis, if Comcast’s 25 Mbps internet costs $50 per month ...

    Around here, since Comcast has little competition, Comcast's 25mbps internet costs well over $50 per month.

    .
    Hopes of seeing anything approaching gigabit speeds this decade are quite low.

  25. Re:84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acce by AchilleTalon · · Score: 1

    Your problem isn't the capacity, you have more than enough. You just need to prioritize access to the network. I don't see why a file download or upload should be done in seconds, that's not a priority task in any way and it can be send in background without disturbing any live sreaming. You just don't use your network wisely. Getting more bandwith will not fix this, you will still congest the network, but for shorter period of time until you will want to download/upload larger and larger files, etc.

    --
    Achille Talon
    Hop!
  26. Re:So you have it.... Now what??? by AchilleTalon · · Score: 1

    Why would you need to download an ISO at gigabit speed? This isn't a critical task, you can run it in background. I don't see the point. Your life is paused until the download is completed?

    --
    Achille Talon
    Hop!
  27. Re:84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acce by Shinobi · · Score: 1

    A file download and upload can certainly be a priority task, like for example sending my father a clip of something at the same time I'm talking to him about what I've filmed, for example.

    But it's also a convenience thing: As it is now, we can now decide on a movie we want to watch and then go and make tea, and when we get back, it's ready to watch, while with your approach, we'd have to schedule it hours or days ahead, which is just head-up-your-ass retarded.

    Also, capacity reduces the time it takes to install games, or get patches, which is where some of the congestion comes from, especially games that use bittorrent, other things is stuff like manually triggered syncing of devices, such as my oldest kid sync'ing her school tablet with the school server to get some material for her homework, including video or sound clips.

    You can claim wisdom all you want, but all you come across as is a miser who sees no value in anything other than your priorities.

  28. Re:84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acce by fulldecent · · Score: 1

    >> all priced in the $50-$150 per month range

    >> Of note - ALL current US ISPs offering RESIDENTIAL gigabit service do so on the oversell model, such that they CAN deliver UP TO 1Gbps to a customer,....

    No duh

    --

    -- I was raised on the command line, bitch

  29. Re:84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acce by aaarrrgggh · · Score: 1

    Think of the Advertisers! Without gigabit residential service, how can they add all that garbage to useful content?!

  30. Re:84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acce by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    He's talking about traffic shaping and prioritization, obviously. There are several approaches which can make your last mile "uncongested" in the sense that you won't notice service degradation anymore, even if there are several large downloads going on at the same time. Prioritization of real-time protocols is one approach, minimum guaranteed bandwidth allocations per device (with currently unused bandwidth made available to other devices) is another. Keeping VoIP working with several P2P clients on the network can be a challenge, but it is doable, and traffic shaping solves it better than more bandwidth would. (Just so we're clear: This is on your own network. ISPs can use stochastic underprovisioning, but should not be allowed to prioritize in any way. They're selling bandwidth. What you use it for is not their concern.)

  31. Re:84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acce by Kjella · · Score: 1

    Your problem isn't the capacity, you have more than enough. You just need to prioritize access to the network.

    That's the wrong end to start in, if removing the resource limitation is trivial that's a better solution than any resource management system, whether good or bad. At least if you're fixing this problem for you and not rolling out a resource-gobbling solution to a million devices. Before lots of applications running at the same time would trash the disk, with an SSD I just don't care since at >10000 IOPS it serves everything at once. The side effect is of course that I'm becoming more indifferent to inefficient solutions, but as long as it doesn't make a difference in practice I don't care.

    --
    Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  32. Re:84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acce by Shinobi · · Score: 1

    He's not just talking about traffic shaping. He's also talking about personal priorities and behavioural patterns.

  33. Re:84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acce by Bengie · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I don't see why a file download or upload should be done in seconds

    Years sound fine to me. Why do we even need to communicate in the first place? The quicker the better, within reason. 1Gb/s is cheap, 10Gb is still expensive, but not for long. There's no reason we should have the fastest cheap networks.

  34. Re:84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acce by Bengie · · Score: 1

    I was reading some search about network congestion. They focused on speeds between 500Mb/s and 2.5Gb/s and all rates showed the exact same congestion characteristics.

    They simulated 10s of thousands of flows with a typical peak hours distribution of the types of flows from realtime UDP to bulk TCP transfers.

    1) Never more than 200 flows of packets in the buffer at any given time. 2) Never more than 30 flows had more than one packet in the buffer at any given time

    Their conclusion was that keeping all flows completely isolated from each other, even if there are tens of thousands of flows in total, would only require tracking 200 flows at any given moment. A Fair Queue AQM like fq_CoDel can in theory scale to very high bandwidths. while fq_CoDel does up to Layer 4 isolation, trunk links could be changed to only do Layer 3 as to keep customers isolated from each other.

  35. In a cache at your ISP? by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 1

    That's interesting. I've seen situations like that, also.

    My guess is that someone else had already downloaded the same game, and it was being held on your ISPs hard drives. So, it wasn't actually being transferred over the internet.

    1. Re:In a cache at your ISP? by Shinobi · · Score: 1

      I don't know of a single ISP in Sweden that does that kind of caching. The only broadly similar thing I know of is ComHem with their NetFlix agreement, and in their case it's essentially stream relaying/reflection and not a fully local(to the ISP) cache.

    2. Re:In a cache at your ISP? by Bengie · · Score: 1

      ISPs tat can do transparent HTTPS proxying? Cool, they've broken HTTPS or hacked your computers.

  36. Re:84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acce by Bengie · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Of note - ALL current US ISPs offering RESIDENTIAL gigabit service do so on the oversell model, such that they CAN deliver UP TO 1Gbps to a customer

    My Midwest USA ISP sells 1Gb/s residential, and they do not say "up to". Instead they guarantee that you will not get congestion on their network or to their transit provider. I have called in on 10ms ping increased and they have fixed the issues. They take congestion spuriously.

    Taken from marketing
    1 Gbps Symmetrical. It’s dedicated symmetrical fiber so speeds never go down or change.

    Extremely large online backups
    Web hosting
    Webinar hosting
    Cloud computing
    Online gaming
    Uninterrupted HD streaming (Netflix, YouTube, Hulu)

    Taken from terms and conditions
    No Unreasonable Discrimination
    The Company does not unreasonably discriminate in its transmission of lawful traffic over the broadband Internet access services of its customers.

    The Company does not block, impair, degrade or delay VoIP applications or services that compete with its voice services and those of its affiliates.

    The Company does not block, impair, degrade, delay or otherwise inhibit access by its customers to lawful content, applications, services or non-harmful devices.

    The Company does not impair free expression by actions such as slowing traffic from particular websites or blogs.

    The Company does not use or demand “pay-for-priority” or similar arrangements that directly or indirectly favor some traffic over other traffic.

    The Company does not prioritize its own content, application, services, or devices, or those of its affiliates.

    The Company does not retain, store or provide customer traffic information, except as required by law under the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act

  37. Re:84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acce by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Simply because you don't have a need for it, doesn't mean others feel the same way. Your experience doesn't reflect everyone else's.

  38. Re:84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acce by Bengie · · Score: 1

    Within the $50-$150 price range?

  39. Exactly. Thanks. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 1

    Thanks for the list.

    "AFAICT speedtest measures the best case, it uses a nearby fast test server and it waits for the speed to stabilize to allow for TCP slow start." (slightly edited)

    Yes, SpeedTest.net is not giving information that reflects the actual user experience.

  40. Re: So you have it.... Now what??? by Bengie · · Score: 1

    Overhead is only about 5% with 1500mtu. Doubling your frame size won't do crap. SANs love larger frames so frames can be the same size as disk sectors, but they are special compared to normal internet data transfers.

  41. bluh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    250 Mbps is $150 from Comcast right now in Houston and I'm about to upgrade from my stupid 120 Mbps "if we like you that day" tier which is literally 100 dollars anyway.

    One day I miught just move to Austin and get real internet from Googlay. because obviously they're never moving it down here.

    1. Re:bluh by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Edit my bad I had more to say.

      The pricing tier sucks bad compared to Google - everyone's does, obviosuly. But the service is quite solid and reliable. No caps. I downloaded ~2 tb in the first month I had it. They have a wide open door though for DMCA complaints which is stupid but what can I do? Stop torrenting, especially things I already own? Yea nah.

      Their CS definitely sucks though just like every other company. I simply tried to ask them if 250mbps was an option at my address and the stupid guy kept trying to upsell me on adding cable service to my bill while also upgrading my internet service, for a bundled price.

      I asked you a simple question. Yes or no, is it available. Fuck your bundles, I don't even have a TV.

  42. Re:84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acce by guruevi · · Score: 1

    You think there is no oversell on business-grade or even carrier-grade bandwidth? Even in a datacenter, the bandwidth is oversold easily at 100:1, unless you're actively peering with someone (at which the point is moot) you're being oversold to an extent. If you want dedicated bandwidth between 2 points, you can typically get that at a 10x price point but that will still be on the same network but at the cost of someone else's bandwidth (residential or business-grade).

    Business-grade is typically just residential-grade (same bandwidth, same connections) but with some extra services (better tech-support, fewer limits, phone lines, dedicated IP's etc).

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  43. Re:84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acce by guruevi · · Score: 1

    Try putting in a (Tomato/OpenWRT/DD-WRT) router and enable the fq_codel (or a similar) QoS algorithm - Multiple video streams, torrenting, surfing and video calling at the same time all became much better/possible.

    --
    Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
  44. Re:84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acce by Mr+D+from+63 · · Score: 1

    I'll check that out.. thanks

  45. Re:84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acce by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    +1.

  46. Re:84 US ISPs offer ***RESIDENTIAL*** gigabit acce by Bengie · · Score: 1

    Some people don't realize that even business grade is statistically multiplexed and not "dedicated" in the overly strict sense of not shared.

  47. Better by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    speedof.me

  48. Yes, but the speed reflects real experience. by Futurepower(R) · · Score: 1

    True. But the good side is that Numion reflects actual experience. Numion visits numerous web sites of big companies and records the speed. That speed is closer to reality than anything that says "gigabit".