Comcast, CenturyLink fail to derail Utah community-owned gigabit fiber network

I think a lot of people are going to be surprised in the near future (once the network rolls out to residents) just how cheap fast internet can be. And many people don't realize just how awful Comcast's uplink speeds are (1 Gb down won't save your Zoom calls if you only have <=20 Mbps up). Bountiful is in for a big quality-of-life improvement for internet users (which is basically everyone).

Municipal fiber is not special due to the ISP being municipal government. It is special because it is a path for a community to force a second option into existence.

Lest anyone misunderstand this post: this is an observation in wholehearted support of the linked article. It is wonderful that a community is able to move forward with getting better internet service.

Additionally, I am not trying to brag. I am very lucky to have been able to relocate as I have, and that my locations have had multiple viable options. I recognize that most of the US does not have this flexibility. Again, I offer these observations as full throated support for communities pursuing municipal fiber.

Edit, summarizing: Competition works. In my experience, the dominant factor determining ISP quality is the presence of another ISP with a substitutable offering.

Our local electric co-op (White River Valley Electric Cooperative) is currently laying fiber optic lines to all the homes and businesses they serve now and will be offering real high speed internet (gb both up/down) next year for $30 a month to all their customers first, and then those who are not that live in the area.

When we moved here in the 90s and bought our home we really didn't think about who was providing our electricity, but we've learned since there is a huge difference.

Just this week we had a vicious storm that blew power poles down and 1000s were without power. Our power was back on in around 36 hours, others nearby were down for 3+ days.

Those who live outside the co-op are paying more than twice as much for power depending on the time of day and load on the grid.

We have a flat rate that's lower than their lowest rates.

https://www.whiteriver.org/fiber/

In Switzerland fiber needs to be accessible to all providers which results in many places having fiber run by the local power providers and the large state owned telephone company. This is what allows providers to offer 25gbit synchronous for under 70 USD per month.

However this did not stop the large state owned communication provider to attempt to kill competition by no longer running p2p (1 or 4 fibers directly from a home to the local exchange bulding) fibers but p2mp (1 fiber to a splitter in the street with a backbone to the exchange) which requires active splitters (the environmental impact of this was completely ignored). This automatically limits any other provider from offering a faster service than the phone company.

Even after a court case and then an injunction they spent millions to expand this network thinking they can somehow perswaid the courts and use people complaining that they can't have fiber because of an injunction (they told customers on the phone that fiber is available but can't be connected due to a court case). In the end they however back peddled and it appears they will loose the case now.

Thanks to the small provider that took this to the courts (init7) it appears we will keep a network open for competition and future proof.

There are fines pending but those are a 2 edges sword. The tax payer effectively pays it since the majority stake belongs to the tax payer. So a large fine is bad and a small fine is bad because it's not a deterrent. The executives that caused the mess's are already mostly gone (hence the back peddling) but the correct action would be to claw back their pay and bonus or something like that so the next "hot shots" don't try such shit again.

Fun bit of information: Utopia (Utah's fiber+wireless broadband network) is 100% Ethernet. Which leads to some really interesting circumstances. During a period there was construction somewhere upstream of me, my internet got cut a couple of times. It would always fairly quickly come back, but sometimes my IP would change, as would my promised speeds. Investigating why it was slow once, I discovered that I had a Comcast IP address. Called up the support and asked what was going on, and we eventually tracked it down: Someone had bridged a Comcast business network and Utopia connected network somewhere, and when my router couldn't get DHCP from the ISP, it grabbed one from this Comcast network, and happily sent my traffic through their network. Got that fixed pretty quickly.

The details vary over time and space but the essence is always the same. Somebody will influence the decision making bodies to make decisions that are suboptimal for the many and advantageous for a few. It may blatant corruption or more involved and nuanced "capture". There is no real difference for the societal calculus.

A well functioning society is not an utopic place where nobody tries to take advantage of the commons. It is rather an immune system where signals, feedback loops and deterrent mechanisms instantly neutralize any parasitic attempt.

Ironically, a well connected digital society is technically fully equipped to create such immune systems. All it takes the right frame of mind.

They could have been out in front with FTTH, but instead decided to just sit on their existing copper infrastructure. Which, at least in my town, seems to just be rotting away; seems like everywhere I go I see one of their boxes that's broken open with the innards spilling out and exposed directly to the weather.

This is the same company that refused to deploy DSLAMs anywhere but in the CO, because if they put them in neighborhoods it would allow CLECs to also deploy them around towns, and USWest didn't want to deploy full coverage, so they worried about CLECs deploying to neighborhoods that USWest didn't. So if you weren't within 18K feet of a CO, you were screwed for DSL service.

Mostly what I spent time ripping on him for was not being able to disable SecurityEdge (DNS hijacking) and outages (~7 multi-hour ones this year). His only answer was "if you want an SLA you need to get fiber" which is 100% BS.

The second there is an alternate (other than AT&T) I will jump to them. Too bad Sonic doesn't have fiber in my office area, but I hope they will at some point.

Comcast is my 2nd most hated company. First is AT&T.

My, and my family's experience with private internet companies has been horrendous, for years. My parent's only internet option, up until a few weeks ago, was $65 6mbit dsl. They are maybe half a mile from a fiber connection serving the local school, but they refuse to expand it. ATT did not want their business. When they complained about the poor quality of the internet, they were told repeatedly that the only reason their street had any service what so ever was that they were 'grandfathered' from the days of dail up.

As for me. I live in one of the largest metropolitan areas in the south east. I have heavy rail passenger transport to the city center not even a mile from my house, yet comcast is really the only option I have for internet. They know I don't have options, and their prices, offerings, and customer service reflect this.

TLDR: I'll basically be using this map to determine where I move next https://communitynets.org/content/community-network-map

Seriously, fuck that company.

Plus some serious fraud as well: cable customers and taxpayers paid into various universal service funds for decades without actually providing the rural access we all paid for repeatedly. The FCC of course is being very gentle [1], not wanting to hurt any corporate feelings, and we shell out more billions to help them out [2] in case they didn't steal enough the first few decades.

So this is just infuriating when communities want to provide their own broadband -- because cable will not ever -- and the same fraudsters jump in their way.

1. https://www.fcc.gov/rbap

2. https://www.cnet.com/news/politics/fcc-approves-20-4m-rural-...

In Canada the situation was so bad you simply had zero choice as to which provider you would get, it was whoever supplied your cable connection, unless you wanted dial up.

Unbelievable that even today these companies are trying to gauge their customers and would deny them options to do this themselves. It's the bloody internet, not something they had a hand in creating.

Isn't it funny though, that when we're against something we call it "government", but when we're in favor of something we call it "community" :)

With all the data prioritization that these companies have set up, does that mean this network will fall apart if a lot of people in the neighborhood start watching Netflix, for example.

Mainly just curious. I am supportive of this effort and hope we continue to build out more providers.

It just now occurred to me broadband advocates might be able to copy the renewable energy advocates. Like passing laws to prevent energy companies from lobbying against their own rate payers.

Cable companies are regulated too, right?

The fight by large telcos against municipal broadband is the perfect representation of capitalism vs socialism.

Municipal broadband is a fundamentally socialist idea. The people of a town, city, county or whatever essentially own the means of production, being the Internet connectivity in this case.

Comcat, AT&T, Spectrum, etc perfectly exemplify capitalism: these companies exist solely to extract as much value from the end-consumers as possible while doing the least possible, all for higher profits for shareholders. it is pure rent-seeking and using the political process and the courts to create and maintain monopolies to keep those profits as high as possible.

All of this is entirely obvious within the context of the labor theory of value [1] and dialectical materialism [2].

The last mile should be muncipally owned, operated and maintained and Internet access should be a basic utility like water and electricity.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labor_theory_of_value

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism