Neighbors built 10Gbit fiber-optic network after attempted extortion by Comcast | Hacker News Reader

Neighbors built 10Gbit fiber-optic network after attempted extortion by Comcast

mercurynews.com

75 pointsnixass15 comments

As much as this is a win for community fiber, there are several things worth noting. This is a very spread out area with a extremely low population density. There are less than 9000 people in the whole town. Also this community has been fighting against high density housing for a long time by blocking construction of new housing and imposing restrictions on the kind of housing that can be build in the city. Although I believe that this is mostly to keep the property values high as currently the cheapest home in this city is going for around 3.5 million.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/California-citi...

Is $11,000 to extend the network “extortionate?” Skilled labor is hella expensive. An electrician just quoted me over $3,000 to run a new 30 amp circuit from my basement to my attic. And I’m not even in a high COL area. I am wondering how much these folks ultimately invested in the network.

I just had overhead electrical service replaced with 480V underground, 200 feet of trenching in the Midwest, $5k out the door. Licensed electrician and utility sign off. (Upgrades to support dual EV charging, 10kw solar, and electrifying the entire ~50 year old property).

Having had to coordinate service extensions by Comcast for a business in the near west Chicago suburbs about a decade ago, $11k isn’t bad (because skilled tradespeople at a subcontractor are going to be on a pole or running cable underground) but a neighborhood can do better if they’re willing to buy the fiber and do the labor themselves. Having done some directional boring for utility runs on a property in Maine, it’s straightforward.

Obligatory Jared Mauch reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24424910

Something similar in rural northern Britain: https://b4rn.org.uk/

https://b4rn.org.uk/community/volunteers/

It looks like hookups are $5-10k per house for the Los Altos Hills community fiber network: https://www.losaltoshills.ca.gov/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Item.... Monthly fee is $155/month to start, going down to $60/month when it hits 300+ users. The economics of that totally checks out. As I recall, the municipal fiber in Stockholm uses a similar model with large ip front per house hookup fee. Most US municipalities also use this model for water and sewer.

Less than you're probably thinking. Micro-trenching fiber is pretty damned inexpensive these days.

It is when you consider that the residents will be paying rents to Comcast for the foreseeable future on top of that.

Thats nuts. You need a friend with tools.

I love stuff like this. People sticking it to the man after being victims of abusive business tactics for years, if not decades.

Hardware costs are coming down, hopefully this will be more and more prevalent.

Paywalled, post a way back links pls

At least in Firefox if you hit the Reader mode button fast enough (you have a few seconds before the paywall rises) you at least get what I believe to be the full text.

Or install the "Bypass Paywalls" extension.

https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

(URL says Chrome but you'll find the Firefox extension there as well)

Do you really trust the author of that extension with god-mode access to the internals of your browser?

What about the buyer to whom they sell the extension because they're tired of maintaining it and they got a good offer?

And why are they able to make such good offers to buy extensions that have a large installed base?

Follow the money. And the data.

In Safari if you right-click on the URL bar and select "Site Settings" you can have it instantly activate reader mode for every page on the domain where it works. This works great for some big news sites.

Try this instead:

https://archive.ph/q6FG8

Reply on news.ycombinator.com