I hate Comcast with a passion and have always fantasized about living in a progressive municipality that provides fiber to the home. However, a few years ago I bought a home and it’s only been over the last 6 months or so I’ve realized how horribly corrupt and mismanaged small city governments can be. We’re being sucked dry by our mayor who hired her cousin as city manager for an exorbitant compensation package. They had no problem spending millions on extravgently updating the city offices but have come to residents with their hands out begging for money through special assessments to fix our roads, storm water drains, and water mains that are unusable for firefighting (and the city does not have a tanker truck).<p>My point is simply that I’m not sure a purely municipal broadband is the panacea we all hope for. In some cases it may be better to stick with the devil you know vs the horribly slow, beaurctatic devil you don’t.<p>I hope that over time we find a municipal model that works well and serves residents with cutting edge broadband. Until then I’ll continue to attempt to vote these clowns out.
I feel like people are being shortsighted about municipal fiber. It’s not a one time and you forget it thing. Verizon has upgraded the FiOS network several times since 2005.<p>We have some towns on the eastern shore of MD that did municipal cable, back when that was the state of the art. Those systems are lagging far behind Comcast now because nobody wants to raise rates to generate cash for upgrades.<p>Municipal fiber is a solution to a problem created by the municipalities. The municipalities suppress competition by using their authority over TV regulation to impose build-out requirements. You can’t enter as a competitor without building out to a whole city. No MVPs or niche products.<p>There's also more free-market ways to accomplish the same thing. Stockholm, for example, has quasi-municipal dark fiber. The network was built by a company created by the city for that purpose. While the city owns the company, the city does not run the company, fund it, or control its business strategy (prices, deployment). The company built the fiber network using private capital, charging customers up-front for a hookup, and expanding the network over more than a decade based on demand and revenue potential (<i>e.g.</i> businesses first), rather than politics.
Good! By allowing individual municipalities to manage their own Internet infrastructure, we can help keep the Internet from becoming effectively owned by the likes of Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon.
1300 residents? How many individual premises? That is a rather small scan gpon project. Hope they hire someone with a clue and experience to build and run it, there is not a lot of Venn diagram overlap between municipal managers and network engineers.<p>I do hope they realize that if they want to do everything themselves, they'll still need transport links to the nearest major IX point, and IP transit upstreams. I don't know of many small towns, sub 5000 population, that have successfully become their own "real" ISP (ARIN AS, their own IP space, presence at an ix with a bgp speaking router, all of the typical ISP back-end operational support software). In addition to all of the costs of being a wholly facilities based ISP at layer 1 in the OSI model.<p>Another way to do it is for the town to simply build dark fiber, and rent it to interested ISPs. Or to build a layer 2 gpon transport network and do nothing at L3, and no individual customer service, and let different ISPs compete for business with the town running the gpon OLTs only.
I despise Comcast like everyone here but I'm not sure I would be so happy about municipal internet service unless there was some way to make it not suck. I'm speaking from experience, I used to live in San Bruno that has San Bruno Cable and it's one of the worst customer support experiences I've ever had in my life. I'm currently living in the East Bay, I have Comcast and while I had my share of issues with them both service and experience has been better. Is it even possible to have good internet service in this country?
When the company offerings can be beaten with local government offerings you know something is bad. Wondering why US has such terrible internet options.
Me, I'm rooting for 5G broadband. Verizon started the rollout already, T-Mobile can't be far behind. If AT&T joins the fray Comcast will get the bill for all the negative goodwill they were snowplowing on their way to profits.<p><a href="https://www.verizonwireless.com/5g/home/" rel="nofollow">https://www.verizonwireless.com/5g/home/</a><p><a href="https://www.fiercewireless.com/5g/new-t-mobile-s-plans-for-home-fixed-wireless-internet-services-begin-to-take-shape" rel="nofollow">https://www.fiercewireless.com/5g/new-t-mobile-s-plans-for-h...</a>
Hey, local news on HN! I'm glad to see Whip City Fiber is spreading so far up north. They started in Westfield (40k people), and then moved to building out local towns that are basically similar kind of "hilltowns" places that have been neglected by Comcast et al for years.<p>Westfield Gas and Electric has been Westfield's municipal power company for as long as I can remember, and I've heard few complaints about their management. This is not their first time providing Internet service, as they used to run a dialup ISP back in the day.<p>The concern about future upgrades is kind of ridiculous in context - the Verizon infrastructure here is still at the bare minimum, with no hope of ever being upgraded. I have no doubt that when the gigabit infrastructure is finally looking outdated and slow, Verizon will be sitting there offering the same "high speed" 3Mbit. That is, if they haven't convinced the feds to allow them to sell the copper for scrap.<p>The service itself is a lone single mode fiber, with a GPON terminal. Installation planning was done by a WG&E employee who even showed up in a bucket truck. Installation was in two parts - one entire contractor to direct bury a flexible conduit with the length of fiber, and a second contractor to complete installation on both sides of the burial. My speed tests show basically full gigabit up/down.<p>(Also, comments by new accounts start off dead now?! I made a throwaway because I'd rather not state my explicit location as part of my main profile)
A few things I don't get (genuinely, I wish someone would explain to me):<p>1. Why would the town pay Comcast for Comcast to wire up the town, when Comcast would then turn around and charge residents? It seems like if Comcast wants to provide customers, they should make the investment, no?<p>2. If Verizon DSL is in town, how is there a monopoly? Would Comcast wiring the town prevent another provider from also wiring the town (in whole or in part)?
Over a decade ago I worked on software sold to Cable companies. So I had set up a small cable transmission center, and I had followed with interest the cities providing cable. In short, they were doing a great job providing lots of channels at a tiny fraction of the cost - and often free internet too. And some even funded multiple government programs with high end packages at half the cost of Comcast.<p>So I approached my town and offered to travel the US (on my dime) and interview those who had set up cable, to write a report so that my town could use best practices (including how to fight off the cable companies as they try to elect different officials - a standard strategy.) But my town was completely uninterested. It turned out that Comcast had paid money to fund a city department, and that same group made cable related decisions. So they didn't want to rock the boat that was paying them good salaries (to people with absolutely no skills beyond knowing somebody who got them the job.)
This is a tangent but Charlemont is a nice little town situated at the foot of an Applachian mountain along the very scenic route 2. It's well worth driving up and over the mountain (through Florida... the town) into North Adams if you're ever in the area.
>><i>About 160 residents voted, with 56 percent rejecting the Comcast offer, according to news reports.</i><p>If it's done it needs to be done by, say, million+ cities. Where is this small town going to the money to pay each time someone complains or a cable is cut?
Whatever, there should better be competition. If one ISP (a big corporation or a municipality) does it a way you don't like and you can't switch to another one that's sad.