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Municipal Fiber Network Will Let Customers Switch ISPs In Seconds (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader shares an Ars Technica report: Most cities and towns that build their own broadband networks do so to solve a single problem: that residents and businesses aren't being adequately served by private cable companies and telcos. But there's more than one way to create a network and offer service, and the city of Ammon, Idaho, is deploying a model that's worth examining. Ammon has built an open access network that lets multiple private ISPs offer service to customers over city-owned fiber. The wholesale model in itself isn't unprecedented, but Ammon has also built a system in which residents will be able to sign up for an ISP -- or switch ISPs if they are dissatisfied -- almost instantly, just by visiting a city-operated website and without changing any equipment. Ammon has completed a pilot project involving 12 homes and is getting ready for construction to another 200 homes. Eventually, the city wants to wire up all of its 4,500 homes and apartment buildings, city Technology Director Bruce Patterson told Ars. Ammon has already deployed fiber to businesses in the city, and it did so without raising everybody's taxes.
This is desperately needed in Canada. We pay the highest internet rates in the world and changing ISP's can be a nightmare.
I have to admit ignorance in this as well. I know of 3 things which are required to connect a home to the internet.
1. Last mile, connecting the users to the network
2. Edge interconnect, which routes traffic to/from end users and the backbone
3. Backbone, which connects all the ISPs
1 and 2 constitute what we colloquially refer to as the ISP. If 1 is a municipal fiber network, then that means an ISP is just an interconnect between the fiber network and the backbone?
"We were able to come in, use their fiber where it traditionally would have cost us quite a bit to do our own infrastructure, so time to market was much quicker. It gives us access to the customers that they're already doing business with," Barbara Sessions, director of engineering and operations at Silver Star Communications, said in the ILSR video.
CEO Jared Stowell of Fybercom, another ISP using Ammon's network, doesn't mind the competition enabled by the open access model. "We like the competition," he said. "It keeps us on top of the game so we can continue to provide a superior product and no one gets lackadaisical."
and:
There are six ISPs offering service to businesses over the open access network
ISPs don't like municipalities competing for customers, but in a situation where the municipality is bringing the customer to the ISP, many are apparently on board.
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
You can't just pit ISP against each other like this! How do expect companies to overcharge for services if they have to compete for customers?! Clearly these cities don't understand the nuances of capitalism! ;)
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
That's correct. This is just last-mile infrastructure, like back in the day when you had to dial into the ISP over telephone wires not owned by the ISP. In both cases, the ISP still has to physically connect to the upstream provider miles away (this isn't cheap), configure and maintain the routing protocol (this requires technical knowledge and coordination with the upstream provider who isn't interested in talking to the end user), and pay by the gigabyte for data.
Services like e-mail and personal web space are just extras that an ISP might provide if they feel like it.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
This is skirting the real story here -- which is that such public infrastructure could be managed by a public entity (or a private entity charged with providing the highest quality bandwidth) with no incentive for excess profit or attempts to limit the bandwidth / quality because they want to increase profits. And by the way, fiber is a public infrastructure generally, because most towns grant the franchise to dig up streets / string cable to one company only.
So, if an ISP is only a retailer of services on the dumb pipe that everyone has access to, what is the ISP's purpose, other than billing and helping users get access to the pipe? Why not take the fiber into the city's hands to begin with?
The story here isn't that a town has made it easy for customers to switch providers with the click of a button -- it's that a city has taken the role of ISPs completely out of providing the infrastructure and removed the excuses that ISPs that their quality of delivered bandwidth per $ differs for unjustifiable reasons.
They are saying that customers don't actually want to be differentiating their choice on artificial limitations on their bandwidth quality (which should be the same for everyone). If ISPs are really competing based on other value that they add (customer service?) and not their monopoly over a public infrastructure, let them do so and see what customers actually start to choose based on.
An internet connection consists of the following:
1) The router in your home
2) The physical wire to the ISP
3) The router/hub/switch at the other end.
4) The connections, peering agreements, bandwidth purchases, etc.. the ISP has to the outside world.
5) The person you call when you have a problem.
Honestly, most of the problems I have ever had with my internet is either with #4 or #5, so this seems like a step in the right direction.
When I get ping times of 1000ms, dropped packets, slow download speeds, jitter, blocked ports, etc... it's almost always #4 and I have to call #5 to deal with it.
We have something similar in my town where a local ISP piggybacks their DSL on the local phone carrier's wire. I've heard that their connection is better but unfortunately you have to pay them AND the local phone carrier so your bill is significantly higher.
Running Cat-5e or Cat-6 to each individual unit is no problem, it's the standard approach for MDUs etc here in Sweden, with one or more RJ-45's inside each unit.
If they do it like here in Sweden, it'll be strictly VLAN'd
Later that day, Technology Director Bruce Patterson was found garroted by a piece of coaxial cable.
Judging by the poor quality of the cable, Comcast, Time-Warner, and AT&T have fallen under suspicion.
When questioned of their whereabouts, they could not provide any solid proof of their activities during the hours of 9 AM to 5 PM.
breaking any of the rules will no longer be a mere TOS-violation, but breaking the law — enforced not by clueless customer support, but by the (equally clueless, but armed) police. Even if you escape a fine, you will be banned from the city's network and there goes your ability to "switch ISPs".
Yes, in much the same way that you are carted off to jail and permanently blacklisted when you are late paying for tap water or garbage collection.
What are you going on about?
I am literally 3000 tokens away from the chaotic crossbow --Stephen
This is how internet service used to be! The current generation growing up just naively assumes that your local telecom company is your ISP, and can't even wrap their head around this idea that you could choose an ISP separately from the company that shows up to your front door to wire it.
This is the market solution to Network Neutrality. The "golden age" of the internet was back when the telephone companies just provided the wires, and people could sign-up for whatever ISP they wanted. Then, when telecom companies bought out the ISPs, and the two markets combined into a single vertical slice, is when the problems started. With monopoly came DNS servers that redirect you to ads, paid prioritization of traffic, no more static IP addresses, no more allowing people to run servers, etc. Network Neutrality is so much a battle about restoring the internet to the way it was. I fear it won't be successful unless we restore competition to the ISP market again.
User Taxes are okay, if you don't have service, you don't pay the tax. Heck, even using a Muni Bond would be an "okay" way to fund the initial infrastructure build out. Again letting the people choose (via bond election) rather than mandates by bureaucrats a thousand miles away.
And this will be the REAL open market to all sorts of new and interesting products/services.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Realistic Arguments 101: Make sure they are realistic. In the case of Fiber, the data rate is limited only by distance and fiber type. When building out new infrastrcture, that fiber is put into conduit. Conduit being the actual "hard" part of the job. Once the conduit is laid, you can pull new and updated fiber through as often as needed. Average lifespan of fiber is 10-15 years.
And fiber doesn't need regulation, being just a conduit. The end points are all that matter. Since one is customer, and the other is one of several ISPs, then what "regulation" is needed? Once actual competition is in place, I'll be you find new and exciting services being delivered, in ways you can't even imagine right now.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
The town provides a glorified fiber LAN. The ISP is presumably responsible for connecting to the Internet.
You aren't really changing ISPs, the City is still the ISP. They still get you connected to the Internet, but instead of directly connected to the Internet, they connect you to an intermediate, who charges you a surcharge to get to the rest of the Internet, and presumably offers you some other value added services, though for me I don't know what they would be.
The city is not the ISP. The city runs a metro area network. 3rd parties are selling internet access over the MAN. Basically, they're following the same model that Texas uses for electric utilities.
What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
Since one is customer, and the other is one of several ISPs, then what "regulation" is needed?
Someone has to run the fiber, maintain it, replace it, and decide who gets to use the free space in the conduit (because someone eventually will).
If the government doesn't own the fiber or the conduits, then it will have to regulate the companies that do.
Want a real life example? Look at utility poles.
My state has laws that force utility companies to share poles when there is space available on them. Most states have similar regulations. Why? Because they didn't want to share with anyone, and we don't want 10 poles on every block. There is occasional squabbling, but it works.
What are the chances that the industry will behave better with fiber or underground conduits? Not very good, I would say.
I personally don't care if a service is managed by a dicknosed bureaucrat or an assfaced CEO. My ideological preference is whatever actually works. They can figure out how to play nice with everyone and deliver what people want, or they can go to hell.
Heavily-regulated residential utilities seem to be both reliable and affordable, so I'll roll with that. I have no complaints about my electric, water, gas, or sewage. Only the minimally-regulated cable and internet industry seems to be jacked up---at least in the five states where I've lived. So I have no problem trying to make the cable/ISP industry more like the others. If that doesn't work, walk it back and try something else.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
I have been whipping this horse for the better part of a decade as the only real way to stop the abuse of the customer by the ISPs and provide service to all. Of course the ISPs cry that it is unfair. In fact it takes the power of monopoly out of their pocket and puts them in the position of having to compete with other companies that they didn't have to compete with due to paying bribes to the counsels and utility commissions. This is great but you will never see it in medium and large cities as the incumbent ISPs and telcos will simply pay the ones making the decisions to back them and fuck the public.