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San Francisco's City-Wide Fiber Internet Plan is Delayed, Future in Doubt (arstechnica.com)
San Francisco's plan to build a city-wide gigabit fiber Internet service won't go forward this year, as city officials decided they need to do more research before asking voters to approve a ballot initiative. From a report: The universal broadband project "has suffered a setback as outgoing Mayor Mark Farrell will not place a tax measure on the November ballot to fund the project before he leaves office in the coming weeks," the San Francisco Examiner reported Sunday. The deadline for Farrell to submit the ballot initiative passed yesterday. In January, the city issued a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) to find companies that are qualified to build the network. After examining the submissions, the city named three entities (Bay City Broadband Partners, FiberGateway, and Sonic Plenary SF Fiber) as "pre-qualified bidders."
...are you suggesting that we can't simply have everything we want when we want it, and just charge it on our credit card?
Next you're going to say stuff costs money and we have to pay for it.
-Styopa
You answered your own question when you said "Comcast."
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Europeans and their quaint ideas on remote. There are spots in the US have may have dozen people in the area of an European country.
The US is has the 3rd largest population, but is 50th in population density.
So that means a lot more long last mile connections. So in Europe you can have the bulk of your population in a urban center, this allow it to be economically feasible to give a connection to a more remote area because the population of the remote area is much smaller.
That isn't to say the US isn't at fault for being behind the times. We havn't had any leadership willing or able to shake up the big telecom companies and push them out for the greater good.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
I bet it's because the fibers weren't free range vegan fibers so some outrage culture activists threw a fit.
I think you'd be surprised at the ruralness of some places in Europe, that said country population density isn't particularly relevant when we're talking about wiring a city.
Lasers? Not in MY one square meter back yard!
Americans complain about population density, leadership or telecommunications companies... ha Australians have beer...
Are you taking about San Francisco?
Comcast is accessible to people who are willing and able to pay for the service, We as customers are paying more for infrastructure that isn't going to our homes, as they will wire a community with only 50% may want to pay for the service. The wires are there, but they just decline service.
Having a government ISP All people pay via taxes for internet, which is overall cheaper because everyone is paying, and more people would use it because they would have affordable access.
Even if you buy a cabin in the woods and need to pay taxes for internet that you may not personally use, it will provider internet for that local grocery store who will process your credit card payment for food, update their inventory, so when you go on your away from it all vacation, you are not hunting for a place that you can buy that one thing you are missing.
Internet today is a key infrastructure. Like our roads, electrical grid, plowing, police, fire protection... There is a benefit to you even if you are not actively using it.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Every demographic in the city needs equal access to new networks to replace the paper insulated wireline.
Internet will allow all communities to get educated and then have more people from different demographics around the city attend university.
The university system will then take on the same demographics of the educated and university ready city population.
Internet will make all the city smart so everyone can pass university entrance exams.
No internet was the one thing that was holding back entire generations in some parts of city from doing exam and book study.
In the past only wealthy people had internet and that is why they could study with the internet and then pass university entrance exams.
Once the internet is free the IQ will go up all over the city and every community will get into university
Internet all over the city and university for everyone.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It's probably much easier to just wire everything for really good internet so no one really has need to leave their home or apartment and step over, around, or through the aforementioned obstacles. Thankfully, in a few more decades global warming should have progressed to the point where the rising ocean tides will sweep clean the streets and it will be safe to venture outside again.
Would be appropriate.
Fiber internet to the parked RV and the tent?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I think that if an investigation is done on this, we'll find that it fell through because ATT lobbied against it, they're the only provider there, provide low speed at high cost.
That isn't to say the US isn't at fault for being behind the times. We havn't had any leadership willing or able to shake up the big telecom companies and push them out for the greater good.
I think the problem is that governments keep selling to a single bidder for the entire job and end up getting fucked time and time again, but I suppose it's always a new set of idiots in office making the same mistake so there's a little bit of an excuse.
The better idea in this case would be to identify as many companies as possible that could participate and give them each a smaller piece of the total work to be done, with some pieces of the work only being parceled out after a company has shown its ability to do a good job. The promise of future work for good performance (or the threat of no work for poor performance) will keep the companies from slacking and doing a crap job, and those who can't manage that don't get more work. Wiring fiber is something that would need to be done to the same code or standards regardless of who does it, so this isn't a case where you end up trying to integrate dozens of different solutions or smaller pieces that have little hope of fitting together.
As funny as it may sound, "socialist" Europe frequently has better market competition in many areas than the U.S. does. When companies have to compete for business, it greatly favors the consumer. Some of this can be laid at the feet of population density, as for example cellular wireless carriers aren't rushing to erect towers in bumfuck Nebraska, but it ultimately doesn't matter what allows for greater competition to exist as long as it does.
Monopolists win !
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
What part of Europe are you talking about? In the US, there are large sections that aren't so much rural, they are almost vacant. The domains of desert rats and hermits.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
The thing about areas of low population density is that most people *are somewhere else*.
We're not (yet) talking about whether it's economically feasible to connect the person who is the absolute furthest from anyone else (and may have chosen to be there deliberately), but rather the people at 90th percentile or even the 99th percentile.
Also, I don't see why we should need political leadership to encourage companies to make money. What they need is corporate leadership that are actual capitalists.
Can't have competition in a Mercantalist society.
Capitalism requires full informed competition, and protection of the Public Good.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Yeah. San Francisco is amazingly rural. You'll often find entire stretches of sidewalk miles long with only one or two people living on them....
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I think you are wrong about this and California shows why. CA law doesn't allow exclusive deals between municipalities and ISPs. So why do CA residents have so few choices? I believe the answer is that wired Internet service is a natural monopoly.
We need to recognize that wired Internet is currently a natural monopoly and regulate it as such.
Technology may change its status as a natural monopoly, but the best placed companies (cellphone carriers) don't seem interested in doing anything about it (limited monthly bandwidth makes cellphone Internet impractical as a replacement for wired Internet).
The UK doesn't have this natural monopoly problem for Internet service, but the UK requires incumbents to allow competitors to user their last mile infrastructure. Remember when the USA had CLECs? Lobbying and obstruction by the ILECs killed that.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-p...
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
There actually are large parts of the Alps where there is basically no population. Ironically, there has been a lot of effort to make sure that there is basic cell service there, so that hikers who get lost (days from anything) can still be found in emergencies (which cost more than the cell infrastructure).
However, the U.S. (and even more so Canada) does still make Europe look very densely populated. A prime example is the state of Wyoming. It has about the same land area as the United Kingdom (253sq. km. vs. 242), but only 580k inhabitance vs. the U.K.'s 65.6 million. So roughly 100 times less.
Liar. You should check the immigration requirements.
Your countrymen are voting with their feet. Bet there are more here than Americans living in your nation.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
SF? Techno capital?
No. Just no. That's SanJose...Perhaps Berlin, if your talking about the _shitty_ music.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Our lesser population density is no excuse for not having the best infrastructure in the world in our most populous cities or even states. California's population density is double that of France, slightly greater than Germany's, and nearly equal to Europe's population density as a whole. No excuse.
Europeans and their quaint ideas on remote. There are spots in the US have may have dozen people in the area of an European country. The US is has the 3rd largest population, but is 50th in population density.
The 50th in what? Not population density, the US is 191st in the world with 33 people/km^2. I'll won't repeat the notation, but the EU would - if it were a country - have a density of 116 so on average it's true. Wiring up the UK (271) is like Conneticut (286), Germany (232) is like Maryland (238), Italy (201) is like Delaware (187), France (124) is like Florida (145), Spain (92) is like California (97), Greece (82) is like Virginia (81). Then there's a pretty big gap in western Europe, we don't have anything like Texas (40). But we do have Sweden (23) which is like Arizona (23) and Norway (16) that is like Maine (16) that here in Europe have pretty damn good Internet, though to be fair most people live along the coastline. If we were evenly distributed inland it'd be much harder.
But yeah if you're in Nevada (10), Nebraska (9), Idaho (7), New Mexico (6), South Dakota (4), North Dakota (4), Montana (2), Wyoming (2) or Alaska (0)... yeah, that's really out in the boonies. Though you'd really need get into the details like in Las Vegas you should definitively be able to get a decent Internet connection, how well you should be covered depends on how "lumpy" the population is, like there are places with broadband in Canada (4) even if the overall density suggests you don't. I mean where there's literally nobody you don't need to bring broadband, just to the places people live. But if you're the one farmer in the middle of a huge farm then of course it really is that rural.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
And that does not include Alaska that makes Wyoming look positively populated.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Why is SanFranciso or any other city wanting to tax their citizens to fund the fiber upgrades and other communication infrastructure upgrades? California is home to the wealthiest technology companies in the world. Tax them. Google could fund fiber upgrades for the entire state of California with their petty cash. Facebook, Twitter, Google, Apple, MS, Comcast, and every other billion dollar technology company should be required by law to fund the technological infrastructure they depend on to rake in their billions of dollars in profit. If they want to put that type of initiative on any ballot I am pretty sure it would pass by a spectacular margin. If the politicians resist then start looking at the campaign donors for those politicians causing the problem.
The US just needs to use the Chinese playbook when it comes to bending the multi-billion dollar corporations to their will. US companies wanting access to the Chinese markets are required to take on a Chinese partner if they intend to build a presence inside of China. This allows China unfettered access to any IP the corporation uses in their products and services. China isn't stealing IP the corporations are handing their IP over freely all for a chance to sell their products and services in the Chinese market.
Having a government ISP All people pay via taxes for internet, which is overall cheaper because everyone is paying, and more people would use it because they would have affordable access.
Hilarious. Nearly half the country doesn't even pay any income tax. Large percentages have their utilities (like power and water) subsidized or entirely paid for by other people. Your notion of "everybody paying" isn't even on the same planet as the reality of the situation.
And that rural grocery store? A slow, laggy satellite internet service is just find for the very low bandwidth needed to run a few transactions at the register. That's already available, and will be even cheaper as some newer low-orbit swarm solutions start to kick in. Nobody is going to drag fiber down every farm road and up every mountain gravel road for universal service. It would cost a hundred thousand dollars to serve some single farm houses.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The same is true of Wyoming.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Comcast is accessible to people who are willing and able to pay for the service,
No. It isn't. Cable coverage is garbage. I've lived in a little neighborhood where one street has it and a nearly-parallel street you can literally hit with a rock and which has just as many homes doesn't, and on a loop road where both ends of the loop have coverage but the middle doesn't.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Look at how Starbucks and Amazon reacted when progressive Seattle attempted to levy a head tax on each employee of large companies to fund homeless housing plans. The big techs are exactly the same, they have been actively creating strategies to avoid taxation for decades and they won't willingly to participate in a tax to fibre-wire SF.
Have a Day!
Hilarious. Nearly half the country doesn't even pay any income tax. Large percentages have their utilities (like power and water) subsidized or entirely paid for by other people. Your notion of "everybody paying" isn't even on the same planet as the reality of the situation.
yup, spot on. The half of the nation that pays the income tax is even smaller in terms of absolute dollars because the tech titan robber barons hold nearly all the wealth in tax advantaged offshore accounts, so the burden falls on the ever shrinking middle class bums
Have a Day!
You are going to run a fiber network 300 miles into a desert to serve 100 people? Because there are plenty of examples like that.
I don't think you grasp how big the country is, because you are from Western Europe, which is just a bit bigger than the state of Texas, depending on where you draw the line at "western". You can drive on a single interstate highway (I-10) for 890 or so miles/1400 Km without leaving the state of Texas, and about 800 miles/1300 Km on Interstate 5 all within the state of California. It's 1400 Km from Berlin to Madrid - and that is a common one-day driving distance in the USA. And I have to do that *3 straight days* to get from California to Indiana, and have done it something like 20 times.
There are places along major highways with no significant population centers, or even a gas station, for 100 miles. Around California, it is not unheard of to do a 200 mile round trip just to go to dinner.
This is why many Europeans fail to grasp why the solutions that work there, do not work here.
In the (European) country where I live, for about $15/month you can get a cellular data package with 100GB of data per month. Download/upload speeds are routinely over 1MB/second. Nowadays, I don't even have a wired internet connection at home anymore, I just use this instead. And it's actually more reliable in my experience than wired internet was.
I think San Francisco should contract with the cell phone companies to roll this out over the entire city (i.e. put up some more cell towers). It would probably be a lot cheaper than wired internet. Why waste money on a technology which is becoming obsolete?
Given we're talking about San Francisco what really matters is the ubanisation rate, something which puts USA on par with the average of Europe.
What's your excuse now?
It's like those idiot politicians in Australia saying "wows me Australia is such a big country" in response to someone 2km out of the centre of a city with a population of 2.2million people not having access to anything faster than ADSL2 with a significant cable loss.