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Comment by flutas | Hacker News Reader

> providing perspective as a user of city-supplied fiber internet:

Yup, I live in another city that has a setup like this (Conway, AR of all places). Ours even goes a little further than EPB though.

Electricity, Water, Sewer, Trash, Cable, Phone, Internet (already fiber for recent builds, upgrading all to it currently) all through one company that's owned by the city...it's amazing.

One bill a month, and my bill is ~300/mo for all services including 1Gb/s fiber. Plus the other aspects of it. Tech support is someone sitting downtown, power outages are fixed in record time... just so much is right with the model.

https://conwaycorp.com/

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>One bill a month, and my bill is ~300/mo for all services including 1Gb/s fiber.

Send some of that to the Tulsa area, please! Here, it's the land of Cox Cable, reliable, but $$$.

I hate Cox with the passion of a thousand burning suns, but fuck me if there's actually a competitor.

When AT&T first started offering fiber I called them to ask about where was at because I was moving and wanted to factor it into my move. I was told they had an agreement with Cox not to reveal that information. You either happened to be in the right spot or you didn't.

To this day you still cannot call them and get that information.

fuck Cox.

Same opinion historically, but in the last 3 years they've done a lot of upgrading around where I am and actually seem to be doing a better job.

We'll see how long that lasts. But at the moment they are being good.

Sound "dreamy..." our Scenic City still pays American Water for their monthly extortions =D

I wish we could get a setup like that going where I live, but sadly I live in the flyover states and this would NEVER play with our voter base, they'd be screaming socialism at the top of their lungs until they turned blue in the face.

At least we got fiber, finally. It isn't state-run but it is a local telecom, the price is reasonable, the service is incredible and the uptime is great. I still get letters occasionally from Spectrum begging me to come back and their PROMOTIONAL PRICE is $10 more per month than my 600 parallel, for slower service. Absolutely brain-dead, I'm not entirely sure the marketing people for cable companies are still living in our reality. Why would you even bother sending these out? Who in their right mind is going to pay more money for worse service to possibly the single greatest and most widely known avatar for corporate avarice, the cable company?

I don't know a single person in my area who still has cable internet if fiber is available to them. Spectrum must be hemorrhaging customers.

Edit: and if it isn't obvious, yeah I'm a cord cutter too, though tbh there was never a cord in my life to cut. I haven't had cable since I moved out of my parents house, and if not for semi-frequent hotel stays for work, I'd not be exposed to television at all. And said minimal exposure lets me verify that I'm missing absolutely nothing by not having the idiot box in my home. I cannot comprehend people who pay up to the range of hundreds of dollars a month to have a firehose of ads and mediocre bullshit pointed at their faces as a recreational activity. Not gonna yuck someones yum, you like what you like, but it ain't for me and I truly cannot understand why anyone wants it at all, certainly not enough to spend that kind of money on it.

> I live in the flyover states and this would NEVER play with our voter base

GP said they live in Arkansas.

Oh yeah, look at that. Damn. I wonder how they pulled that off. Any time anything like that is suggested around here the culture warriors come in red faced and screaming.

>the culture warriors come in red faced and screaming.

I enjoy reminding these typically-babyboomers that Medicaid Part D (subsidized prescriptions) is "about as socialist as it gets" — they get low-priced medications, after largely having paid [relatively] nothing in to this "entitlement." Why have they paid almost nothing in to Part D? Because Part D is relatively new, thus passing the costs of medicine on to younger generations/taxpayers.

I highly recommend, for better understanding your neighbors (of any age), that you read "A Generation of Sociopaths" — chocked full of statistics to help everybody see why we commoners need "socialism," or whatever they want to call it... BECAUSE IT MAKES LIVING BEARABLE, LESS EXPENSIVE, AND GD you cannot make up their lifetimes of hypocrasies.

I'm about 2/3 the way through it actually! It's a good read.

That said, what do they say when you point this stuff out? I've been attending local city meetings for a bit now, and when confronted with this stuff, they don't change their minds, they just double and triple down, get even angrier, and screech even louder about MUH FREEDOM.

I don't even get angry, I'm just like, explaining how society works (pooling of resources so people can get what they need) and they absolutely melt the fuck down! It's crazy!

>what do they say when you point this stuff out?

My best local friend is twice my age (late-30's VS late-70's); former landlord, he married a rich girl from The Mountain, and is himself a blue-collar-raised Veteran [drafted, no less]; he is essentially the only "receptive" elderly person I've met, his wife vitriolic at the idea/concept of providing any of the same benefits as her own generation (The Silent Generation) received.

I will just quote Her, instead of trying to generalize:

"Nobody wants to be 'the last one' at the party — then you have to clean up all the mess!" —80's, female member of local Patriarchy™.

Also her: "What should we last few members of my generation do, then; just DIE?!?" Me: "Well, you could start by not complaining about the minimal taxes you pay on ownership of hundreds of acres of undeveloped land. Or, stop cashing your social security checks, which you clearly do not need." Her: "but I EARNED that."

Narrator: No, she did not. She inherited it from Daddy, over sixty years ago.

>Absolutely brain-dead, I'm not entirely sure the marketing people for cable companies are still living in our reality. Why would you even bother sending these out?

I actually submitted a ticket/request to Spectrum, with essentially the exact same question once. Surprisingly, they called me back and interviewed me about "What it would take to sign up for their service?"

When I described what I get from my local city fiber service, they acted like "price" and "reliability" and "decent customer service" were all impossible requests — as if EPB didn't exist. I'm not sure if feigned, or actual, ignorance was at play.

Regardless, I did not switch over, and they didn't lower their prices. Still get advertising, and am often left wondering "why do they even bother?!"

I do know a few elderly folks, despite also having EPBfiber (local city-supplied), maintain other services as "backup" or "for the email address they've always used from @comcast." No amount of reasoning will resolve this, so the cable internet lines still get maintained along city-provided-fiber routes.

> When I described what I get from my local city fiber service, they acted like "price" and "reliability" and "decent customer service" were all impossible requests — as if EPB didn't exist. I'm not sure if feigned, or actual, ignorance was at play.

I mean, I'm sure the calls are monitored and them openly acknowledging that their service sucks ass and is more expensive than their competitors would have them fired more or less immediately, but I am shocked they were ready to even send one of their reps your way knowing damn well they had no leg to stand on to actually make a sale. Like why even waste the time?

Idk man, these dinosaur companies are a trip and their internal machinations are endlessly fascinating. Corporate bureaucracy (at least when it isn't actively making my life worse) is always an interesting topic to discuss.

I felt SOOO bad for the sweet-sounding (sincere? I'll never actually know) woman interviewing me — like a lamb-to-slaughter, I think the corporate intention was to make me feel bad for "believing such nonsense ISP could actually exist."

My last semi-corporate gig, a performance review indicated "[ProllyInfamous] uses too much profanity." I responded verbally by informing them that "from now on I'll stop 'giving a shit,' and instead will start 'giving a hoot'." The owner's complaining wife was NOT thrilled. [I know "I AM fucking difficult"].

I'm pretty sure Spectrum corporate culture is incentivized by only one thing: SELL!

I canceled my service after several years due to a negative customer service experience, which I explained was the primary reason I was cancelling. Never was I asked about the incident... only more offers and promotions.

I called Spectrum before I canceled to specifically ask if they could get me faster internet without changing my TV package. They said no -- I was on a grandfathered plan from a prior company they had bought, and they would have to recreate the account to do anything. So I got Fios + YouTube TV instead. And when I called to cancel Spectrum, the guys says he wishes I had called before getting Fios.

It's very clear that the only time they care is when your actual money is on the line. Before that, everyone is shackled by whatever chains management puts on them.

This was also shortly after they sent me a new modem and told me to install it or risk losing connectivity within like a week. And then on my next bill is a charge for updating the modem...

I've lived in a place where a nice local company offered fiber. Up to 1gbps, symmetric and very reasonably priced lower tiers too (100-300mbps). They had a monopoly, and people loved to complain about issues that were... mostly their router. Though occasionally real issued happened too, of course.

A cable company moved in with introductory rates that were about what the previous rate was, but for higher dl speeds and much lower ul speeds. It was cable based. They added eyesore boxes all over the neighborhood.

Plenty of people building new houses bought cable, and some switched as well.

I've also lived in a neighborhood with ATT fiber, and have seen the same phenomenon. The cable company is much worse, but people will still choose them sometimes.

Why be competitive, when you'll get customers either way? :shrug

My experience: There are some people who are distrusting or hostile enough toward "socialism"/"politicians"/"the gov'ment" that they'll eagerly pay more for worse service.

Or, just think of how many people keep buying bottles of drinking water.

I think there's also an element of competence. Why choose 300/300 over 500(*)! They don't know the difference between fiber and cable, didn't read the fine print showing the low upload speeds on the "500". :facepalm

I do think that most of it is ignorance, but realistically upload speed is irrelevant for most people most of the time.

I think that was more true before automatically backed up photos became a thing. Even video chat can make it relevant, given how restricted some are.

If all they ever care about is sending a few emails and watching videos, possibly many at a time, then 500 down is better than 300 symmetric.

Not really. Either one will handle downloading those emails and videos just fine. Rarely will the service at the other end keep up anyway.

OTOH, when icloud (or Google Photos) is uploading full in the background with the crummy ISP provided router, they'll wonder why they aren't getting anywhere near 500 via their cable.

Point. And the muni service has ~no chance of out-glitzing the commercial ISP's slick marketing, celebrity endorsements, "Watch Star Wars for Free!*" offers, & such.

*Star Wars Holiday Special only

but sadly I live in the flyover states and this would NEVER play with our voter base

What do you think the states of Arkansas and Tennessee (two states mentioned with municipal Internet) are? Coastal socialist paradises?

TN state literally threw a fit and outlawed this as a result.

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