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Comment by GordonS | Hacker News Reader

This is a little OT since the article is about the US, but I'd really like to see how feasible it would be to build a community ISP for the town I live in in the UK (Scotland).

FTTC has only recently reached my town, and availability is still patchy. Knowing BT, it will be another decade before the whole town has the option.

And upload speeds are still rubbish, and it's expensive too - the fastest deal BT will provide is 900/100 (although they only guarantee 450 down), and it's £60/m (~$83), and you have to take a 2 year contract, and the price rises by 3.9% a year during the contract!

There have been smaller, full-fibre ISPs popping up all over England, offering much better packages than BT as half the price.

Anyone have any information about getting started with something like this? If it makes a difference, it's for a small, rural town, population 10-15k.

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Do you mean FTTP not FTTC? 900/100 isn't bad for £60/month imo. Do you actually need 900 down? I used to have 1000/1000 from hyperoptic in London but switched down to 150/150 as virtually nothing on the internet supports or needs higher speeds once you get bored of running speedtests for the fun of it. The only thing that can use it is large xbox game downloads, but even at 150 most are done in 10-20 minutes, and over wifi you struggle to push more than that throw a couple walls anyway.

Other providers offer Openreach FTTH btw - not just BT.

I meant FTTP; I've been on FTTC for several years, 80/20, for £26/m. I realise there are others selling Openreach products, but prices are similar or higher, and still I don't see any products with a high upload speed.

I don't really need 900 down, but I've really like higher upload speeds. Regardless, I'd like me and others to have the option. Really, I'm just so sick of how slowly the UK's fibre rollout has been - glacial! It's really encouraging to see the various smaller English ISPs (like HyperOptic) building their own network and offering symmetric products at half the price of OpenReach, but I realise the economics are unlikely to make sense for small towns. I also realise that burying fibre without any existing ducting is going to be very expensive. Still, I'm interested to find out what would be involved, or if there are non-fibre options - not with the aim of profit, just providing more options for local people and businesses.

Well, the UKs priority has been getting FTTC to as many people as possible. Which has worked IMO. I would much prefer 99% FTTC coverage like the UK has with 20% FTTP in 2021, vs many other countries which have higher FTTP with ADSL everywhere else (I'm aware there are exceptions to that rule). 80/20 is more than usable these days, 10/1 ADSL isn't. You've got to remember that nearly 60% of people have VM so can get gigabit down (but pretty poor upload as you said).

The best alternative is 4G/5G btw. Can easily get 500mbit/sec up on 5G on vodafones £60 plan if you can get 5G from them.

> Do you actually need 900 down? I used to have 1000/1000 from hyperoptic in London but switched down to 150/150 as virtually nothing on the internet supports or needs higher speeds once you get bored of running speedtests for the fun of it.

I'd argue that symmetric links at 1000/1000 are actually incredibly important.

The lack of decent upload speeds has created the enormous centralization of services that we see today.

If most folks had gigabit (or more) upload capacity, decentralization would become a viable solution to the enormous centralization of content, data and services.

There are a variety of tools that allow folks to self-host their content and many more would appear if there was widespread implementation of symmetric (multi-)gigabit ISP connections.

If there were the ability to stream your puppy videos from your home internet connection to dozens of friends/family, what do you need Facebook, Instagram, etc. for?

That's why high-speed symmetric connections are important.

You can start your own community ISP if you can sign up enough neighbors.

However, it’ll take years to build out and they payback will be far longer than two years.

There’s even funding to be had, but it’s no small undertaking.

Hit me up by email if you want more information. Contact in profile.

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