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Comment by beerbajay | Hacker News Reader

In Sweden, when I moved into a new apartment I was able to get fiber broadband from one of EIGHT providers. This was because the fiber network was owned by a corporation created by the city. The result? For $65/mo I could get 500/100 Mbit/s connectivity. On Time-Warner in NYC, $65 only gets me "up to 300 Mbit/s".

In Sweden, I could get symmetric 1 Gbit for $93/mo; I don't even have that option in NYC. Installation? I just connected my computer, chose a plan via my web browser and had everything working within 20 minutes.

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Meanwhile, stateside, I have ONE internet service provider available in my building (Comcast). After talking with mgmt about allowing other ISPs, I was told that Comcast actually wired the building, so there will not be any other options. To no one's surprise, I'm being gouged for barely 5 Mbps down.

The downside would be that if your city did the wiring, you'd be paying for it through higher property taxes.

A counterargument might be that both the city and Comcast could both raise money through munipical or corporate bonds from investors, so local citizens might not need to pay any extra taxes as long as the city breaks even charging for its wiring.

I was thinking that the property/building owner could have just paid an independent contractor to wire the building when it was built (it's only 10 yrs old), much the same way various subcontractors are used for different jobs when building a house. That way, data streams could come in through the cable lines that run to the building or one of the new wireless options that are being offered in my city.

That was just my very basic thought about how this could feel less anti-consumer/monopolistic--I don't actually know how these types of things are usually done so feel free to let me know if you have more expertise!

It isn't enough to just wire the house, you have to install the fiber optic cables all the way to the central office or data center.

It's a good model, but unfortunately there have been few takers to date.

I'm specifically referencing wireless options such as Webpass--that service does not require cables all the way to the data center, right?

What building management told me is that Comcast actually owns the data pipes inside my apartment building, thus preventing Webpass (or any other ISP) from ever being an option. I'm looking to move soon, in part because of this situation.

> I'm specifically referencing wireless options such as Webpass--that service does not require cables all the way to the data center, right?

It still requires cables all the way to the data center. Webpass may use wireless for the last hop or a few hops, but sooner or later you need wireline infrastructure to backhaul all the traffic to the data center.

There are a few reasons for this:

- there are, if any, 10G wireless links

- wireless requires line of sight to work

- wireless is less reliable than fiber

> What building management told me is that Comcast actually owns the data pipes inside my apartment building, thus preventing Webpass (or any other ISP) from ever being an option.

Comcast may or may not own the inside wiring. Comcast obviously has no incentive to either disprove the claim or let anybody else use the cabling or install new cables, but probably neither has management either as they may be getting kickbacks from Comcast.

Here's a good article on what monkey business is going on behind the scenes:

https://backchannel.com/the-new-payola-deals-landlords-cut-w...

You are going to pay for it either way. Why not cut out the middle man and pay for it through taxes?

Once the take rate for the municipal network is high enough, paying for it with taxes is more efficient anyway.

As with roads, you get one regardless of if you have a car or not, no you pay for it via taxes.

A good model would be to pay for the fiber network via taxes and then you'd pay a monthly fee to your ISP of choice, if you want service.

This has the additional benefit of giving you connectivity anywhere within city limits, as the fiber network would be ubiquitous. Plug in anywhere, connect to any wifi, authenticate and you'd be online.

After reading so much about Comcast I vowed to avoid them when I finished school. At my first place I went with ATT, which sucked because of shockingly frequent outages. But at least it wasn't Comcast. Now I'm moving across the country, and I picked among nearly-identical apartment complexes by choosing the one that has a smaller company with cheaper rates and higher bandwidth over Comcast.

We'll see how long I can keep it up.

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