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A Community-Run ISP Is the Highest Rated Broadband Company In America (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A new survey by Consumer Reports once again highlights how consumers are responding positively to [community-run broadband networks]. The organization surveyed 176,000 Consumer Reports readers on their experience with their pay TV and broadband providers, and found that the lion's share of Americans remain completely disgusted with most large, incumbent operators. The full ratings are paywalled but available here to those with a Consumer Reports subscription. All the usual suspects including Comcast, Charter (Spectrum), AT&T, Verizon, and Optimum once again fell toward the bottom of the barrel in terms of overall satisfaction, reliability, and value, largely mirroring similar studies from the American Customer Satisfaction Index.
One of the lone bright spots for broadband providers was Chattanooga's EPB, a city-owned and utility operated broadband provider we profiled several years back as an example of community broadband done well. The outfit, which Comcast attempted unsuccessfully to sue into oblivion, was the only ISP included in the study that received positive ratings for value. "EPB was the top internet service provider in our telecom ratings two times in the past three years," Christopher Raymond, electronics editor at Consumer Reports told Motherboard. "Consumer Reports members have given it high marks for not only reliability and speed, but also overall value -- and that's a rare distinction in an arena dominated by the major cable companies," he said.
One of the lone bright spots for broadband providers was Chattanooga's EPB, a city-owned and utility operated broadband provider we profiled several years back as an example of community broadband done well. The outfit, which Comcast attempted unsuccessfully to sue into oblivion, was the only ISP included in the study that received positive ratings for value. "EPB was the top internet service provider in our telecom ratings two times in the past three years," Christopher Raymond, electronics editor at Consumer Reports told Motherboard. "Consumer Reports members have given it high marks for not only reliability and speed, but also overall value -- and that's a rare distinction in an arena dominated by the major cable companies," he said.
Can't have communities in charge of stuff. That's communism, that is. And the community making people who use the community's resources pay their part of it is violence, I tell ya. Violence. How dare communities not provide things for free(loaders)?
Those who do not learn from commit history are doomed to regress it.
after I finish cornholing your mothers
A LOCALLY run, COMMUNITY based ISP, where those that run it, LIVE in the community, are ACCOUNTABLE to the community, actually runs it correctly? Shiver-me-timbers! Wish more cities would do this and kick out the mega-corp-don't-care ISP's.
America is a continent. Do you mean the US?
Are you aware that you are paying half their bill for them? If you want to do more of that, you can pay half my bills.
It cost $300 million to build EPB's fiber network.
Of that, $111 million, almost half, came from taxpayers outside of Chattanooga - people who can't get the service, but are required to pay for it.
$160 million, over half, was paid by EPB's electricity customers who can't or won't get the internet service.
Only $29 million, less than 10%, was paid for by internet customers recieving the service.
Chattanooga EPB and their fanbois are making a big deal about the fact that they are now paying for their own administrative costs, the ongoing costs of emailing out monthly bills and such, along with the occasional maintenance of the still rather new network than you and I paid to build. "EPB Internet is now self-supporting!", they crow. Well yeah it damn well better be aftee taxpayers already paid for the vast majority of the expense, building the fiber network.
Donald Drumpf (teehee, I said "Drumpf" insted of "Trump" because I am an edgelord), I fucking DEMAND that you destroy this communist institution, right the fuck now!
This is like how China is attempting to ruin the USA's economy by using communist tactics to undermine our democracy.
This is unacceptable. You are a servant of the people. You must obey me.
If you do not, I will eat 40 pounds of fried chicken in one sitting, and someone will have to call for an amber lamps when I have a hart attack. When they check my wrisk for a pulse, they will find no hart beats. I will be dead. Because of you, Drumpf. (I did it again! *giggle*)
Socialism always fails. Venezuela Venezuela Venezuela #MAGA
I bet nobody at EBP is getting paid millions of dollars a year, maybe that's why the big companies cant seem to deliver a decent product at a fair price.
Google Fiber was actually ranked second. I'm not surprised by that at all. Their customer service has been fantastic, as has the internet and TV. The two times I've had an issue, they had metrics to show exactly what was wrong from their end and their support rep understood the problem and could interact directly with the engineers.
On the other hand, Comcast required more than 3 calls to bury the outside cable line after it was replaced (it was supposed to be buried automatically with a second crew after the tech left, but he didn't file the right paperwork), and when I called customer service, one representative told me he was going to "reset my modem to resolve the issue". Yeah, apparently resetting modems can bury cable lines underground now, folks...
-=Lothsahn=-
Anyone who says local run government internet is better then a cable company and a local government exclusive franchise agreement. Is not seeing that there is little difference in competition.
I live in Texas. I paid for the Chattanooga fiber network.
Do they want me to also pay for running fiber to rural areas of Tennessee? I'm not interested in paying for that. If people in those areas want fiber, they can pay the cost instead of forcing me to pay for their internet service.
The huge gap between what we get here in Australia, to what Chattanooga has rolled out, is amazing.
Chattanooga is offering 1Gbps for $70/mo (I don't see a data cap!) or you can go nuts and get 10Gbp for $300/mo.
Here in Australia, if your area is lucky enough to have workable "high-speed" broadband, it'll cost you $70AUD/mo for 50Mbps (asymm) and that's likely to have a data cap, possibly metered in both directions. A 100Mbps connection will be around $100AUD/mo and depending on the technology behind it, your real throughput may be much less.
America is a continent. Do you mean the US?
Since we're being pedantic, America is two continents.
The word "community" does not mean what you think it means. Only 'community-gutted' ISPs exist.
Well, imagine that. Apparently when you are beholden to your customers rather than your shareholders, your customers think you do a better job at it.
How dare socialism work: Someone please think of the capitalists!
I am in the EPB's service area, and I have their 1 Gbps service. It's almost never down. That's a major improvement over my last provider (Comcast). There's really nothing more to say than that. 100% customer satisfaction here.
I am disappointed that it took our local power company to do this. AT&T and Comcast had the rights-of-way and the technical know-how to roll out fibre and make a profit doing so (the EPB is making a profit, after all). They are constantly being subsidized by state governments and the Feds to roll out more service or improve existing service, so it's not like they were lacking for funds to do exactly what the EPB did years ago.
What the EPB did right was call in some IT professionals, show them the rights-of-way available (electrical poles, basically), and let them go to work. The fibre initiative came as a part of their plan to convert to a "smart grid" so they can handle billing and outage tracking automatically. Their response times to power outages has improved dramatically since moving to a smart grid. It just made sense to piggy back fibre-to-the-home on top of their smart grid.
Regardless, EPB knew that they would have to make a profit to make the operation successful, so they brought in business people and did it the capitalist way. They're in it for a profit, and it really isn't run as a community project or some kind of communal property. They don't really answer to anyone except for paying customers. There's no public vote on how they operate within the service area. They're constantly being sued to keep them from spreading to other communities.
Sadly, neither Comcast nor AT&T have rolled out 1 Gbps bidirectional service in this area that is cost-competitive with the EPB. They could do it today, easily. They could probably undercut them. But they won't.
Not really.
I don't like morons. Easy way to not have morons is to help pay for other people's schools.
I don't like rotting food. Best way to avoid it is to help pay for other people's infrastructure.
The ongoing costs are negligible per person, per consumer. The initial cost is the only significant quantity and even that, diluted over 340 million people over several years, isn't much.
Actually, it's effectively more people than that, as the Feds get taxes other than income but you're treating all tax as income.
The amount I pay Comcast (who, incidentally, deliver less than a tenth of what I pay for and who have illegal non-compete agreements with other ISPs) in a month is probably more than I've contributed to Chattanooga's Internet since it's inception.
How much would I, personally, have if I'd kept Chattanooga ignorant and isolated? Not much. Not nearly as much as I've gained from them strengthening their economy and thus not only placing less of a drain on society but actually giving back.
Gaining more this way is equivalent to losing the other way. Why would I want to lose, if it's a choice?
I've worked in both laying ISP infrastructure and operating it. It's not difficult or expensive, just tedious. You don't need constant upgrades, just better management and a willingness to not cut corners.
In other words, I know from experience in running infrastructure that most ISPs are defrauding their customers and lying to the politicians and courts about the need to do so.
How is rewarding that behaviour going to pay for my Internet?
What it will do to my Internet is increase restrictions and increase price whilst reducing service. Pay more, get less. No thanks.
I think the Chattanooga experiment should be not only legal in every town and city but encouraged with the stipulation that it's a minimum of 10 gigabits to the home actual rate and five nines reliable.
That way, there's no claim over competition as no ISP offers that. If it's that expensive to do, the taxes would be impossible. If it's not expensive, it's for the ISPs to explain to customers why they're better despite lying about what can be delivered.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
And let's see. $111 million divided by 340 million... 33 cents, on average.
The highest paid person in the US earns something like $23 million a year before bonuses, although I did hear of someone earning $54 million before bonuses.
Somehow, I doubt you paid even the 33 cents.
You probably lose more than that in a year from defective vending machines and misplaced change.
Instead, you could have invested it in a stronger America with (gasp) jobs and stuff.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Under LENINISM it would not exist. In communism it 100% definitely would. Catalan would have done it if pre-WW2 had ISPs. They were improving their GDP and health and education until facist spain invaded to stop the "commies".
So you want to do more of the same type of thing?
That's great, because I'd like to receive it gigabit internet paid for by someone else. You can pay for my fiber. I'll email you.
Why ME, why should you pay for MY gigabit? Well, why Chattanooga? Why should everyone in the entire country to forced to buy gigabit for a few people in Chattanooga? Is my family less deserving than the people in Chattanooga? My family includes two *black* *women*, so you also get to virtue signal about helping minorities.
My city have a city based network that most buildings are connected to. Most isp are connected to the same network so people can chose wich provider to use. I think that it is a good system that provids decent competition.
So since it is small, it should not matter?
No, since the cost is so small and the benefit is so large, it should be seen as a worthwhile venture.
Well said. We need more people thinking like this. It is just allowing competition, that is what america was founded on. Anyone who is against this believes in monopolies, it is against the American way.
We are already paying billions regularly to ISPs who do a terrible job. Why not create competition and more local american jobs with local ISPs.
This is a no brainer.
Traditional Republicans should be all over this. Instead I've seen more Republicans against this which is really frustrating. My political party has been letting me down for years, it is so embarrassing. This new class of idiot Republicans is killing me. I wish we could force them to go to another party and take ours back. Sorry for the tangent.
I'm pretty sure I just did. Stamping the word "municipal" on it doesn't make it okay for the Chattanooga ISP to force you to buy gigabit fiber for the selected areas of their city.
Before you disagree, you should be aware this post is a community post, and it's green, so disagree with it at your peril.
$100 million due to power outages, eh?
So that would be a reduction of six full working days at the average business in their service area.
EPB claims the hours of power outages have been cut in half, so it would need to average twelve 8-hour days of blackouts.
If each customer has been having twelve full days of blackouts every year, perhaps the people running EPB should have been fired. If the current average is six full days of outages for each customer every year, perhaps they should still be fired.
> but since many industries and companies received money
So you're thinking that if you do a LOT of $something_bad, that makes it good?
No, the $111 million number GP mentioned was over of the numbers I posted. GP simply said that taxpayer money has also been spent on other questionable things, and then then implied that this particular stupidness is "not relevant" because there have also been other bad things.
GP simply ignored the other $160 million taken from people who don't get the service.
> I have no problem paying 33 cents per city in America
There are 19,354 cities in the US (census.gov).
At 33 cents per person per city, that's $6,386.82 per person.
At 2.58 people per family, your family's bill is $16,478
I don't know about you, but I don't have an extra $16,478 that I want to spend on that. I have more important things to pay for, like my wife's surgeries. You really have $16,478 laying around that yoy have no better use for? You also see no problem with FORCING every other family in country to pay $16,478 to install (not maintain) fiber in the cities?