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Municipal ISP Makes 10Gbps Available To All Residents
An anonymous reader writes: Five years ago, the city of Salisbury, North Carolina began a project to roll out fiber across its territory. They decided to do so because the private ISPs in the area weren't willing to invest more in the local infrastructure. Now, Salisbury has announced that it's ready to make 10 Gbps internet available to all of the city's residents. While they don't expect many homeowners to have a use for the $400/month 10 Gbps plan, they expect to have some business customers. "This is really geared toward attracting businesses that need this type of bandwidth and have it anywhere they want in the city." Normal residents can get 50 Mbps upstream and downstream for $45/month. A similar service was rolled out for a rural section of Vermont in June. Hopefully these cities will serve as blueprints for other locations that aren't able to get a decent fiber system from private ISPs.
I mean, isn't that the way it works? The companies that refuse to provide service sue for 'unfair competition' anyway? Then the nice judge shuts the whole operation down?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Why not buy up one 10Gbps line and sell 50Mbps lines for $30/mo while making a nice profit?
How much for an anonymous seedbox?
EPB has said they'll be rolling out 10gb in the near future (within the next year). Given their 1GB prices, I expect they'll be far cheaper than $400 per month.
I might get it just because. I've got their 1GB service and about the only times I peg it are if I'm downloading a torrent.
Do you have reason to believe they don't have static IPs? We sure have a lot of reason to believe they do probably have static IPs, since they claim the main reason for so much seeming excess capacity is that they're trying to keep it usable for future businesses (i.e. servers).
The car analogy here is that someone announced cheap car fuel, and you're saying, "but if it's going to go into cars without front windows so that you can't see where you're going, then this fuel is useless." True, but irrelevant and kind of stupid.
Go on, tell us some more of your ideas for hypothetical wastes of time. No, wait. I think I am even more creative than you. Let me try.
If this network can only route to odd-numbered addresses, then it's a waste of time.
If web pages fetched over this network can only have titles starting with the letter F, then it's a waste of time.
If the 10GBps service has a data cap of 5 Megabytes per month, then it's a waste of time.
Hey, you're right. It is kind of fun to say this stupid shit.
They lost $ 12.5 Million last year. They owe the Water & Sewer Department $ 7.6 Million. They already offer 1 Gig service and have all of two customers. The reason they aren't getting sued is because it isn't worth Time Warner's trouble.
State and local taxes are deductible from federal taxes, so the more a state or municipality taxes to subsidize a service, the greater the implicit federal subsidy.
Cities should stop being ideological about this. The federal government is willing to take money from communities that rely on the private sector and give it to those that use local government instead.
Take the money and run!
Even if they weren't, there's always dynamic DNS services.
http://www.homes.com/for-sale/salisbury-nc
Municipal broadband is outlawed in my state, and most others too. Ironically, even with Chattanooga, one of the most famous of the municipal broadband cities, the rest of Tennessee can't get it because it's been outlawed in the rest of the state.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
If they don't offer static addressing, then it's a waste of time.
Why? I've never missed having static addressing on my home connection.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Wanna talk about socialism, look at all these free software projects where they just give it away to people who need it and don't pay the people who make it. That's some crazy Commie shit right there, bro.
In 2014 they generated $4.8 million in revenue and after expenses had $229,000 to show for it. Add in depreciation (a substantial expense for a capital intensive company), amortization, interest, and other expenses and they were taxpayer funded to the tune of $144,110. That's almost 1% of all property tax revenues.
It will be interesting to see if they can be profitable as their services scale past 3,000 customers and service more of their 33,000 residents and even more businesses.
If they don't offer static addressing, then it's a waste of time.
Anything can be negotiated if the money is right.
/29 so I had five usable static IP addresses with complete forward and reverse DNS resolve at my disposal. Was pretty awesome.
Back when it was common to get one's DSL Line through the phone company, but to have one's service provided by a third-party ISP, I had my line through what's now Centurylink and my service through a local ISP that evolved from an old Macintosh User's Group, which provided me with a
Residential customers probably can't expect static IP addresses unless the ISP offers an option to pay a little extra, but then again, if it's cheap residential service they might not permit the subscriber to host much in the way of services or might not want to offer static IPs. Business customers will obviously be able to get static IPs.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
There are many differences between a home and a business. This is one of them.
If they don't offer static addressing, then it's a waste of time.
Why? Is all internet access a waste of time without a static IP? If you're running a business, then buy a business plan. If you're not running a business and it matters to you, get a dynamic DNS service.
The Daddy casts sleep on the Baby. The Baby resists!
While I mostly think this is great, I wonder if they should be in the "business" of supplying actual layer-3 connectivity or whether they should just be maintaining the fiber plant and selling access to it to other companies willing to provide actual IP connectivity?
Maybe a purely internal municipal ISP makes sense for supplying IP connectivity to municipal offices, schools or other parts of the government.
The part that makes me kind of leery is the fact that the government is the ISP and this creates a certain conflict. Does the fact that the municipality runs it mean that the police have greater access to monitor the network or some increased motivation to use municipal control to go after "evildoers"?
It's not hard to see how this could also morph into the kind of local political control that those in power use to stay in power.
Public utilities. All it accomplishes is letting some cronies skim off the top. Is the myth of capitalist efficiency really so attractive that we'll keep ignoring the 97% profit margin isps have?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
What about the Gulags that residents of Salisbury were shipped off to, and the political commissars patrolling the streets? Didn't these people pay any attention to the warnings from the telecommunications companies about what would happen if the government was allowed to institute socialist internet? ..what do you mean none of that happened?
Well, what about the crippling taxes to pay for it, while fatcat government bureaucrats refuse to answer the phones, harass people, change their customer account names to things like "Asshole", refuse to let them cancel service, and generally make their customers' lives a living hell? ...what do you mean, that was Comcast?
Wait a year or two and see what happens to the Cable and Satellite providers in the area.
That's what I want to see
From TFT (the title):
Municipal ISP Makes 10Gbps Available to all Residents.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I think the model like DSL service should be the one that municipal fiber follows -- the municipal fiber just provides the layer 2 connectivity and you choose which ISP you want.
If somebody wants to start a geek-centric service with static IPs and where technical support is limited to setting reverse DNS, great, they can buy a rack or whatever at the municipal fiber hosting center and sell that service to whoever's interested.
If Comcast or AOL or whoever wants to offer their mega-consumer focused service with dynamic IPs, webmail, coupon offers, ad-injection, great, they can lease a rack, too and sell that.
Plenty of cheapskates and technophobes will pick the consumer service for all the add-ons and technical support and the geeks willing to spend the same or just slightly more for static IP service with none of the bullshit can pick that.
There was a time where a company I knew set themselves up as an ISP choice for DSL. Employees could get DSL from the phone company, choose their employer as their ISP and they had basically a hardwired VPN to work (that solution has some issues in terms of personal-vs-work access, but IIRC from the network guy at that company I talked to they had an entirely separate Internet provider they routed that traffic over). I think whatever setup and operational cost was greatly mitigated by reduced costs related to remote access and the legion of VIPs who wanted their personal ISP bill reimbursed because that "expense" got taken care off at wholesale.
The analogy that makes the most sense is the roads. The city builds 'em, fixes 'em and sets some pretty basic usage rules, but you buy your transportation and delivery services from other companies. If I want a pizza, I pick whoever provides the pizza I want and they just use the road to get it to me.
Meanwhile there's 40 Gbps ports all throughout campus and 3 100 Gbps ports, while most people rarely get 20 Mbps in the rest of the city.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Salisbury's solution to this problem is on the right track but it's not the correct solution. If companies sue for unfair competition, they'll win. Governments should not be ISPs or content providers.
The correct solution to this, which is also the correct solution for the last mile problem, is for the city government to own and maintain the infrastructure that exists in public rights of way, and create a new utility just like most cities have for their water and sewer systems. Then, run all the fiber to a "connection point" where any number of private providers can bring their content and any house or building may connect through the public fiber utility. Of course, any number of ISPs, telephone companies, and other content providers may bring their stuff to the city's connection point, and thus our capitalist free enterprise system is allowed to function unimpeded by the government. End consumers can freely choose between providers, and that will be the end of the bullshit shoveled by Comcast, Time Warner, Wave Cable, et al.
I really don't understand why governments don't jump at the chance to do this. A brand new public utility is a WHOLE NEW INCOME STREAM, where the government gets to send out bills and collect money. All the have to do is hire a contractor to maintain the infrastructure, buy insurance to protect from natural disasters, and then collect money from everyone FOREVER.
For the record, I'm a conservative, and I'm very much pro capitalism and against excessive government. However, unlike the anarchists and other extremists to the right of me, I recognize that we need government to provide certain basic minimum functions for the public good. So before I get accused of being a pro-government communist, I humbly submit that providing utilities to all the city's homes and businesses is one of those necessary functions.
Capitalism will keep all the private providers in check. There's no way Comcast and it's ilk would behave the way they do if they had to compete for your business. If the voters become unhappy with the prices they're charged by the fiber utility, it's their responsibility to vote the bums out and elect representatives who will change maintenance contractors, change insurance companies, and do whatever else is necessary to keep prices low. Therefore, on both public and private fronts, all the power lies in the hands of the people. It's exactly that kind of individual empowerment that conservatives stand for.
With so much money hanging in the balance and knowing the government has no actual work to perform, why doesn't every municipal government jump on the bandwagon and solve the last mile problem once and for all? ...and use the same solution to provide service to towns like Salisbury?
One of the things that we've seen in the USA is that there's a very positive correlation between competition amount and service provided.
Areas where there's no competition tend to languish and suffer slow speeds for high amounts of money. Areas with competition tend to get lots of bandwidth at very reasonable prices in comparison.
I'll note that the 'competition' has to be competitive - sometimes you get the Cable & DSL companies essentially colluding so they're more or less the same level of mediocre.
I don't read AC A human right
You know, I would like to have a dynamic IP that changes every 24 hours or 48 hours. I guess my country is IPv4 rich, but anyway you get a residential connexion with a nominally dynamic IP, that doesn't change for years on.
Go IPv6 and stop whining. You can have a million free static IPs.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
locations that aren't able to get a decent fiber system from private ISPs.
What? Invisible hand of the free market not working? How strange, we were all told that capitalism solves every problem, through magic.
Apparently it's better at turning trees into toilet paper (see article above) than infrastructure. Which, btw., is also falling apart in the US.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
No mention on if the 10Gbps plan is capped.
Also business plan pricing is not public information and I feel that's dishonest.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
What's this? Your libertarian poutrage? You know, because there is no need to address anything you posted there since it's all bullshit.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
That is the case for most broadband connections. This isn't the old days of modems where people disconnected when not in use. There is no reason to have dynamic addresses anymore, everyone stays connected 24/7/365 unless there is a power outage or line outage, so why not make the whole network static, it makes everything easier in the long run.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Found the Comcast marketing director!
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Awesome! Shall nominate for the best universal rebuttal on the Internet.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
:-) Happy to be of service!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
I've never missed having static addressing on my home connection.
I was simply commenting on the fact that many businesses likely would want static addressing. Not all, but many. I don't doubt that you don't miss it on your residential connection. Most people wouldn't.
What's the problem? The people there voted for it. Do you not believe in democracy? They also have the choice to use Comcast or AT&T, do you not believe the market can decide?
Bot really. DHCP makes the connection plug'n'play, static does not. Most customers have no clue what an IP address is and where/how to set it. You'll only create more work for little gain.
I was simply commenting on the fact that many businesses likely would want static addressing. Not all, but many.
No, most city-sized businesses are not going to worry about static addressing, because most businesses that size are not going to want to be saddled with managing their own servers. They'll hire that function out to a full-time data center that can offer higher reliability and better security. Yes, there are high-profile failures in security, but you're still more likely to have a more secure site if you hire someone to do it that does it on a large scale than if you say "Hey, Billy was the high school computer geek, let's hire him to be our IT department!".
Is this unfair competition? Well, let's see. A city says "big company, if you want to operate here these are all the rules you have to obey", and then the city creates their own rules and uses the power of the taxpayer wallet to undercut the big company they claim they wanted to provide the service. I'd say that would be "yes". You can't restrict a company from providing a service and then use that failure as an excuse to do it at taxpayer expense, at least not in a fair way.
They also have the choice to use Comcast or AT&T,
"Hmmm, let's see. I'm paying taxes now for a gigabit network connection I don't really need (but my neighbors wanted me to help them pay for) and I could use that, or I could pay taxes for a network I don't need AND pay Comcast for service I do want, too." If you don't see the unfair competition side of that statement, then there is nothing to discuss.
What's the problem? The people there voted for it. Do you not believe in democracy?
De Tocquville (sp?) had the right idea. Something along the lines of "a democracy can exist only until the majority learns they can tax the minority to pay for free stuff."
You apparently believe that democracies cannot be wrong, and yet I suspect that you would denounce as wrong those democracies that have voted in things like mandatory sentences for drug possession and defense of marriage laws.
You can do static addresses with DHCP. It stand for dynamic host configuration protocol, not dynamic address allocation protocol.
If it's static you're going to do it once, and that's it.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Good points. However, I didn't say most businesses would care. I was careful not to, in fact, in order to avoid this kind of diversion. A lot of good that did me!
I'm not joking. I've been on the business side of buying high-availability internet access and some businesses will assume that such a low price means they can expect lots of downtime and/or extended periods of reduced performance. While the price of three nines has gone down from "my day", it hasn't gone down that much and I would be wary of a service provider who undercut the competition by such a significant amount.
They also offer 50Mbps symmetric to residential customers. They are currently cash positive, just not yet paying down the principal. So for the resident, it comes down to price vs. performance like any other consumer decision.
Significantly, Comcast and AT&T seem to believe municipal broadband is a real threat since they are willing to spend bucketloads of money trying to kill it.
I believe in a functioning constitutional democracy. Where such exists, I support it. The U.S. federal version seems to be dysfunctional ATM. The tail tends to wag the dog.
So for the resident, it comes down to price vs. performance like any other consumer decision.
Except that the playing field is rigged in favor of the municipality. The "customer" is paying in taxes, and then is expected to make a free choice between the municipality service and a commercial company.
This is the same rigging that works against private schools. People who are already paying taxes to the public schools have less money and less incentive to buy a private education for their children, so private schools are the haven for rich kids.
Significantly, Comcast and AT&T seem to believe municipal broadband is a real threat since they are willing to spend bucketloads of money trying to kill it.
Of course it's a threat. A highly-regulated private company cannot compete against a government "company" that can set its own rules and dip into the general fund to cover any losses.
I believe in a functioning constitutional democracy. Where such exists, I support it.
Then you have no qualms with state DOMA laws. Ok.
The U.S. federal version seems to be dysfunctional ATM.
ATM? Automatic Teller Machine?
In any case, the US "federal version" is not a "constitutional democracy", it is a "democratic republic". Not even for the two national officeholders we elect is it a true democracy, we elect people who vote on our behalf.
Wow. Only way they'd be getting away with that is if the $135 also includes a pretty good cable package. Or they're like me, my phone company doesn't want to offer me DSL, so cable was my only choice.
I don't read AC A human right
So, private companies, in their greedy quest for the almighty buck, did not see this as a profit-opportunity.
This is not necessarily true. Even large companies have limits.
If you have the manpower and equipment to upgrade 5 service regions annually, and Bumfuck, IN is the 28th most profitable region to upgrade, then the residents of Bumfuck will be waiting a long time. It is often the case that several possible actions are profitable, and so a company does what is *most* profitable.
And nevermind the fact that most areas have a monopoly or duopoly on ISPs, which means little or no competition and therefore little return on investments in infrastructure. The municipal authorities cannot fix that problem, but they can introduce a baseline service to create some pressure.
If the incumbent ISPs believe they can offer better, then maybe they will finally have a strong financial incentive to do so. If they cannot offer better than municipal governments, let them go bankrupt.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
The tax money is/was a loan to get the operation bootstrapped. It's a sunk cost. Tax money is not paying any operational costs at all, so the municipal broadband is on a level playing field with Comcast that got a monopoly for many years to bootstrap it and AT&t which got billions in federal funding (and years of monopoly status) to bootstrap it's broadband offerings.
So no, it REALLY, REALLY (i'm for real about this) is a price vs. performance decision. If the others want to compete, they might want to correct the things that routinely get them at the top of the most hated companies in America list.
I never claimed the states have a functional democracy. Then there's that whole constitutional thing that limits what sorts of laws can exist.
ATM = At The Moment.
ATM = "at the moment" in that context I believe.
"If they don't offer static addressing, then it's a waste of time."
I'm sure they will have IPv6, which is the same thing.
The interest is being paid from revenue currently. The intent with expansion (ongoing, paid from revenue) is to pay the whole thing off from revenue.
another approach is to build a fibre infrastructure that providers can lease on a per-premise basis. then they all have use of the same network (no basis for those "road rage" lawsuits) and the city still gets the advantage of being a place with speed. "per-premise" means one home can have one internet provider while their neighbor has another.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
From your post (the post on which I commented):
er, yes? TFA, hell, it's in the summary and *title* is about residential connections. The great-*-grandparent declared that without static IP addresses it's "a waste of time".
And for businesses, I reckon *most* probably won't care about a static IP address. I think the number that run outward facing serves on site is probably pretty small.
All in all, except for a few businesses large enough to get a special deal anyway, a dynamic IP makes little difference, so this is anything but a waste of time.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
the municipal broadband is on a level playing field with Comcast that got a monopoly for many years to bootstrap it
Non-exclusive franchises are not monopolies. Municipal broadband gets to write their own rules for what service they can provide, Comcast did not. The field is not "level".
So no, it REALLY, REALLY (i'm for real about this) is a price vs. performance decision.
Yes, it is, and one of the prices that has to be considered is the tax money that is already going to cover the losses of the municipal operation and the interest from any loans that were used to issue bonds to cover the buildout.
Please read again VERY carefully, they are cash POSITIVE. That is, no further taxes are going to operations. Their debt is the existing loans from the government to do their build-out.
My home is zoned dual use residential and commercial. We have a business downstairs and all the servers and stuff you would expect a business to have.
When Comcast come and try to tell me (monthly) that they can give me faster internet than my Frontier (25/25) fiber connection, I ask can they offer static addressing and the answer is no.
I pay 'bend over and take it' business rates for internet service with a tiny static subnet and port 25 unfiltered.
This is not a good situation. The ISPs are doing what they can get away with, not what the customer needs. Competition clearly isn't working to correct the situation.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
I was simply commenting on the fact that many businesses likely would want static addressing. Not all, but many.
No, most city-sized businesses are not going to worry about static addressing, because most businesses that size are not going to want to be saddled with managing their own servers. They'll hire that function out to a full-time data center that can offer higher reliability and better security. Yes, there are high-profile failures in security, but you're still more likely to have a more secure site if you hire someone to do it that does it on a large scale than if you say "Hey, Billy was the high school computer geek, let's hire him to be our IT department!".
Except we live above my wife's store and I manage the servers because I'm a crypto and security person at a large techy corporation. I don't trust outside vendors to run my services as well or as flexibly as I can and it's a heck of a lot more expensive to outsource. Outsourcing email to Google is easy and cost effective in money and my time. Outsourcing databases, point of sale systems, not so much.
Is this unfair competition? Well, let's see. A city says "big company, if you want to operate here these are all the rules you have to obey", and then the city creates their own rules and uses the power of the taxpayer wallet to undercut the big company they claim they wanted to provide the service. I'd say that would be "yes". You can't restrict a company from providing a service and then use that failure as an excuse to do it at taxpayer expense, at least not in a fair way.
Unbundle the wires from the ISP. That's how it used to work with DSL. I paid for DSL from my telco, which dropped the packets in frame relay to the ISP of my choice. The telco rules required them to unbundle. They couldn't force me to take their stinking telco ISP although they tried and lied all the time.
If the state provides the municipal wire infrastructure to homes and businesses, that opens the market for competitive ISPs. It's the same as roads. You get your roads from the government but there's competition in the car market.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
If they don't offer static addressing, then it's a waste of time.
Anything can be negotiated if the money is right.
Back when it was common to get one's DSL Line through the phone company, but to have one's service provided by a third-party ISP, I had my line through what's now Centurylink and my service through a local ISP that evolved from an old Macintosh User's Group, which provided me with a /29 so I had five usable static IP addresses with complete forward and reverse DNS resolve at my disposal. Was pretty awesome.
Residential customers probably can't expect static IP addresses unless the ISP offers an option to pay a little extra, but then again, if it's cheap residential service they might not permit the subscriber to host much in the way of services or might not want to offer static IPs. Business customers will obviously be able to get static IPs.
If they don't offer static addressing, then it's a waste of time.
Anything can be negotiated if the money is right.
Back when it was common to get one's DSL Line through the phone company, but to have one's service provided by a third-party ISP, I had my line through what's now Centurylink and my service through a local ISP that evolved from an old Macintosh User's Group, which provided me with a /29 so I had five usable static IP addresses with complete forward and reverse DNS resolve at my disposal. Was pretty awesome.
Residential customers probably can't expect static IP addresses unless the ISP offers an option to pay a little extra, but then again, if it's cheap residential service they might not permit the subscriber to host much in the way of services or might not want to offer static IPs. Business customers will obviously be able to get static IPs.
I used to do this with DSL also. The telco regualtions required them to unbundle the DSL service from the ISP service. They didn't unbundle because they wanted to. They unbundled because they had to.
Paying a little extra for static is reasonable. There's a little overhead in managing the route table and reverse DNS, but it could be done through a web interface if they were smart. However where I live, the price for static is greater than a tripling of the service fee. $35 -> $115.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
While they don't expect many homeowners to have a use for the $400/month 10 Gbps plan, they expect to have some business customers.
This service has been opened up for all residents, and by "residents", they mean residential as well as commercial. Please read the whole summary carefully before engaging in pedantic arguments. Hell, I'd even suggest reading the actual article; you never know what gems you'll find there.
OK Fine. Pendantic arguments, whatever.
Do or do you not agree with the gggp that it is a waste of time because it doesn't offer static IPs.
Simple question.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Again, read carefully.
No one stated that they do not offer static IPs. It was only suggested (in the comments, not the summary or the article) that it would be a waste of time if they didn't offer them.
I would agree that it would be a waste of time if they didn't offer static IPs for whatever reason. However, there's no indication whatsoever that they in fact do not offer them. I'd be surprised if they didn't.
"If they don't offer static addressing, then it's a waste of time."
I'm sure they will have IPv6, which is the same thing.
My ISP certainly doesn't have IPv6. They've failed to provide a rational explanation.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Perhaps you can explain that to Frontier internet.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.