Slashdot Mirror
The Farmer Who Built Her Own Broadband (bbc.com)
An anonymous reader writes from a BBC article: "I'm just a farmer's wife," says Christine Conder, modestly. But for 2,300 members of the rural communities of Lancashire she is also a revolutionary internet pioneer. Her DIY solution to a neighbour's internet connectivity problems in 2009 has evolved into B4RN, an internet service provider offering fast one gigabit per second broadband speeds to the parishes which nestle in the picturesque Lune Valley. That is 35 times faster than the 28.9 Mbps average UK speed internet connection according to Ofcom. It all began when the trees which separated Chris's neighbouring farm from its nearest wireless mast -- their only connection to the internet, provided by Lancaster University -- grew too tall. Something more robust was required, and no alternatives were available in the area, so Chris decided to take matters into her own hands. She purchased a kilometre of fibre-optic cable and commandeered her farm tractor to dig a trench. After lighting the cable, the two farms were connected, with hers feeding the one behind the trees. "We dug it ourselves and we lit [the cable] ourselves and we proved that ordinary people could do it," she says. "It wasn't rocket science. It was three days of hard work."
You would be arrested and thrown in jail for endangering the livelihood of some mega corp.
I mean, really, someone has to put a stop to this sort of thing, or next thing you know everyone will be doing it and then where will the monopolies and the billionaires be?
Rule 35 of the internet: "If it can be hacked, it will be". - Charles Stross
Would a few lines from "Firefly" be out of order?
Dr. Simon Tam: River, b- uh, be careful with that, that's, um... What is that?
Kaylee Frye: That's a post holer. You dig holes. For posts.
Dr. Simon Tam: It's, uh, it's dirty and sharp.
Many people are just afraid of things that are dirty and sharp so they leave that to other people. Turns out if the other people are uninterested, either because they are also afraid of things that are dirty and sharp, or they see no profit in it, then things don't get done. Civilization was built by those that wanted to make their lives better and weren't afraid to do the work themselves. A lot of times that means working with tools that are dirty and sharp.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
From the Twentieth Century Magazine, Vol II, 1910
CO-OPERATIVE VERSUS COMPETITIVE TELEPHONES
A VALUED friend, Mr. Arthur E. Harris, of Boston, has kindly given us the following impressive illustration of the difference between a public utility controlled by a modern commercial corporation, and the same monopoly under co-operation. In the one instance we have avarice as the master spirit actuating the promoters, huge dividends for the favored few and poor service for the people being the result. In the other case we have a fine illustration of fraternalism in business, in which the interest and benefit of the people is the first concernâ€"something that should ever be insisted upon in a government that pretends to represent the rule and interests of the people.
"Some twelve or more years ago," says Mr. Harris, "in the town of Mercer, Maine, where I was born, and where my father still lives, a telephone system was installed among the farmers as a branch of the New England Telephone Company. Stock was sold and the rent for an instrument and the use of the line was fixed at $10 per year.
"Several of our neighbors bought some of the stock and took great delight in boasting to the less fortunate in the neighborhood that it was paying 18 per cent dividends.
"But they were not satisfied with making that profit by the exploitation of their neighbors and began to talk of raising the rental fee.
"The promoter, a man from an adjoining town who had the line put in and who was a member of the trust, was overheard to say: 'We've got to get this up to $15 before we quit.' ' But,' he was asked, 'will the people stand for it?' 'Of course they will. They like it and can't get along without it. We've got themâ€"now squeeze them.'
"Well, in the country money does not come easily and some, including my father, felt that they could not afford to pay any more, much as they wanted to keep the telephones.
"They talked it over and an indignation meeting was called.
"There were two Socialists present, who organized the farmers and put in an independent line upon a Socialist basis - for use, not for profits.
"Each member contributed $25 in money, material or labor, and received an instrument which he owned, and was entited to one vote at all business meetings.
"This amount ($25) from each member of the organization paid all the expense of putting in the new line and left something in the treasury. It was a success in every way and has been running about ten years and costs less than $2 per member each year to maintain it.
"They bought instruments that were much better than those put in by the trust - in fact, two-fifths better.
"In the place of six, as with the trust line, 20 could now talk without the use of the switch, and could hear better than the six could with the trust line because of the superiority of the instruments.
"There are no restrictions upon its use and all are satisfied and contented; whereas with the trust line they were kept in a state of irritation by the mean acts of the managers, who were always on the watch for every penny they could grind out. If company - a visitor or a friend - was heard talking, the question promptly came from central 'Who's that talking?' 'Well, collect ten cents.' Their methods and purpose were like those of all big corporations and trusts - their motto, 'First profits, last use'; or, in other words, the maximum profits for the minimum service.
https://books.google.com/books?id=v0fZAAAAMAAJ&lpg=PR4&ots=puFXQk-1BD&dq=twentieth%20century%20magazine%201910%20competitive%20telephones&pg=PA364#v=onepage&q&f=true
Prove anything by multiplying Huge Number times Tiny Number
Also, if you become profitable, well a company like AT&Fee can come in and undercut you, stealing all your hard earned customers. One could try 2 or 3 year commitments, but that will scare off many.
I'm sure a lot of people would not consider that a bad thing. They want internet and are willing to pay for it. If AT&T at first says that there is no profit in running a line but someone else comes along and proves them wrong then we now have competition. There desire was not to get in the internet business but to get people internet. If AT&T comes along to do better, or buy them out, then the problem was solved.
Competition is good, no? It's not like these people didn't have any internet access, they just didn't like how slow and expensive it was. These people created their own internet to compete with satellite, dial-up, and cellular internet. They were able to do so with lower (or at least comparable) prices, faster speeds, and no data caps (or much higher ones).
This is how business should be done, allow people to go out and compete in the market. All too often though we see people that, instead of trying to do better in business, lobby the government for price controls, government should require that businesses need to offer services to people where there might not be a profit, etc. They see the force of the government, rather than the invisible hand of the free market, as the best means of bringing products and services to market.
Part of a free market is that businesses should be free to fail.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
There's been multiple examples of people deploying their own connectivity solution and starting local broadband services.
It was like that in the early days of the Internet, too. I recall one of the first ISPs in Silicon Valley was a guy with a bunch of equipment in his spare bedroom.
Instead of actual 19" "relay racks" to hold the rack-mount electronics, he built a frame out of two-by-fours, spaced appropriately, and used wood screws to hold the equipment to the frame. Worked like a charm.
I used to call them "Mom and PoPs". ("PoP" = "Point of Presence" - the local place where the wires/fibers/etc. run to and hook up to the networking equipment.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Also, if you become profitable, well a company like AT&Fee can come in and undercut you, stealing all your hard earned customers. One could try 2 or 3 year commitments, but that will scare off many.
I'm sure a lot of people would not consider that a bad thing. They want internet and are willing to pay for it. If AT&T at first says that there is no profit in running a line but someone else comes along and proves them wrong then we now have competition. There desire was not to get in the internet business but to get people internet. If AT&T comes along to do better, or buy them out, then the problem was solved.
Competition is good, no? It's not like these people didn't have any internet access, they just didn't like how slow and expensive it was. These people created their own internet to compete with satellite, dial-up, and cellular internet. They were able to do so with lower (or at least comparable) prices, faster speeds, and no data caps (or much higher ones).
This is how business should be done, allow people to go out and compete in the market. All too often though we see people that, instead of trying to do better in business, lobby the government for price controls, government should require that businesses need to offer services to people where there might not be a profit, etc. They see the force of the government, rather than the invisible hand of the free market, as the best means of bringing products and services to market.
Part of a free market is that businesses should be free to fail.
The problem is the competition can be unfair. If a big company wishes to kill a smaller company they can either buy them, or simply reduce prices until they are dead, then jack them back up, effectively bankrupting the people who did the hard work. They could then, if it was useful buy any infrastructure that was left for pennies on the dollar. A variation on the above it to value add things like free data from their partners video streaming company, and, well the little guy can't even begin to compete.
What I proposed previously was for the last mile (or whatever) to be intelligently managed by a co-op, possibly bidding out the work, and for people to be able to choose their providers from whatever the central offices had for all their various data services. Basically it is not practical for everyone to lay their own fiber, the same way it is not practical for everyone to lay their own electricity lines across a city.
It's not really laws blocking you but apathy
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Thought this story sounded familiar
https://tech.slashdot.org/stor...
For some reason we have the idea that farmers today are some dumb hicks. While modern farming is very advanced. They had self driving tractors for decades. They use big data to help analyze weather and crops. Robotic cow milking... I am a Tech worker and I don't have nearly as much technology to play with than what most farmers have.
Hey look at that web form I made on your phone see how much more sufficated and advanced we are over our rural neighbors. In many ways our city life in terms of technology skills are behind the farming life. Who needs advanced technology to survive and keep up. While in the cities we can still operating with faxing or just giving a letter to a carrier to send to the next office.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
When a residential user reads Slashdot over a gigabit connection, here's what happens:
1) The browser requests the 150KB web page.
2) At 1Gbps, that 150KB is transferred in 0.00015 seconds.
3) The user reads the page for 15 seconds.
4) GOTO 1 for next web page.
So it's 0.00015 seconds using the connection to fetch a page, 15 seconds looking at the page, 0.00015 loading, 15 seconds reading. You're actually using the connection only 0.001% of the time. During the 99.999% of the time that you're not loading a page, 10,000 of your neighbors are loading their pages. So you can pay a very small percentage of the cost to build and maintain the infrastructure, plus the cost of having you as a customer - costs to send an installer out initially, cost to print and mail your bill each month, etc.
On the other end, Slashdot has their server connected to a business class connection. It's usage pattern is much different:
You load the page (0.00015 seconds)
I load the page (0.00015 seconds)
APK loads the page (0.00015 seconds)
Beau HD loads the page (0.00015 seconds)
The usage is pretty much constant. The capacity isn't divided between 10,000 users, so the cost isn't divided between 10,000 users.
I buy both kinds of connections. At home, I browse Slashdot just like you do, using a high-speed connection for a fraction of a second to load the page. At my data center, I pay $65/Mbps and use it constantly, serving web pages to hundreds of thousands of people.
Neither type of connection is "good" or "bad", they are different types of service useful for different things.
Privatizing natural monopolies never works out cheaper then public. How do you have competition in laying pipes? Government gets the cheapest interest rates on loans and does not have to show a profit beyond a contingency fund and enough for future expansion.
Even when the privatized infrastructure doesn't result in cost hikes, there is still the problem of the people losing control of the future of their local infrastructure.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
"Natural monopoly" is a myth.
This often-asked question has a simple answer — by laying them side by side. The cost of the process is, actually, a small fraction of the overall cost of maintaining the infrastructure.
OMG, "people losing control"? Are you not afraid of losing control of your area's supermarkets? There is no argument for government controlling the water, gas, or electricity distribution, that would not also apply to distribution of food (and clothing), as well as, say, construction of homes. Should all of those be socialized too?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.