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posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday September 02 2014, @05:29AM   Printer-friendly
from the trust-us dept.

The "Center for Public Integrity" has collected some examples of the robocalls, direct-mail brochures and newspapers ads that are being used by telcos and lobby groups to encourage people to vote against municipal broadband initiatives in their area.

They emphasise the "government takeover of telecommunications" and "risking taxpayers money" aspects of these proposed municipal networks. I didn't see any mention of the far greater risk, which is that these networks might work out exactly as intended and therefore take revenue away from the companies who are sponsoring these "no" campaigns. But then again, the examples posted are not the complete brochures, so I can't say for certain this wasn't mentioned.

Does anyone have real life experience with municipal broadband that they can share? Should we be thanking these companies for spending their hard-earned money warning us of the dangers?

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  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @06:23AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @06:23AM (#88387)

    The Porn! is not available on municipal broadband. because the taxpayers don't want their children to see porn, before they're old enough to get paying jobs.

    • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @08:18AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @08:18AM (#88407)

      Does anyone have real life experience with municipal broadband that they can share?

      Yes. Municipal broadband in Chicago is censored. No porn, and the last time I tried to visit a perfectly normal site with "naked" in the title, that was censored too.

      There isn't much municipal broadband in Chicago because the city is large. There's free public Wi-Fi in the downtown area and at public libraries.

      But see here, SoylentNews is censored too. On-topic discussion about censorship of municipal broadband is modded down.

      • (Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday September 02 2014, @01:31PM

        by c0lo (156) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday September 02 2014, @01:31PM (#88483) Journal
        But see here, SoylentNews is censored too. On-topic discussion about censorship of municipal broadband is modded down.

        Bah, as long as porn is not censored, there's still a chance.

        --
        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by evilviper on Tuesday September 02 2014, @07:28AM

    by evilviper (1760) on Tuesday September 02 2014, @07:28AM (#88395) Homepage Journal

    Fiber to the home is not some magic, infinite-bandwidth pipe that'll be great, forever. That mistake seems to be at the heart of those who think municipal data networks are magically perfect, with no down-sides...

    Figure that whatever network wiring you install, will have to be replaced in its entirety or at least massively upgraded roughly once every DECADE. Consider if municipal networks had been in-vogue a few decades earlier:

    In the 70s, municipal networks might have simply been phone lines.

    In the 80s, people would have wanted the area wired with coax cable for TV, in ADDITION to those phone lines.

    In the 90s, people would have wanted those phone-lines cleaned-up, with upgrades to support their use with high-speed dial-up and ISDN.

    In the 2000s, people would have wanted their coax cable infrastructure ripped-out and replaced with fiber behind the scenes, to give them MORE TV channels, and higher-speed cable internet.

    Also in the 2000s, people wanted to replace their phone lines with cellular, and with poor coverage of early providers, no doubt they would have wanted their muni to somehow invest in that, too.

    In the 2010s, people would be insisting on LTE cellular upgrades, and WiFi hotspots installed all over the area. And that's in-addition to wanting fiber optics to their home for even higher speeds than those cable modems can provide...

    In the 2020s, people will no longer be willing to share the capacity of a fiber-optic cable with 64 of their neighbors, and will demand their provider remove all those optical splitters (see: FIOS) and give them dedicated circuits to the central office, so they can get very, very high-speed data connections. At the same time, they'll want ever-faster wireless/cellular internet service as well.

    In the 2030s, people will be chafing under the bandwidth limitations of old-fashioned fiber optic cables, and either want the whole area completely rewired with higher-bandwidth fiber optics, or some entirely new technology.

    In addition to that, you've got routine maintenance, as well as possibly lots of emergency repairs. And those huge expenses are all assuming it's a very well-run and efficient agency. A little bit of cruft in the organization, and municipal fiber can easily be a HUGE money-pit.

    And frankly, you can get all the same advantages, just by controlling existing telcoms as monopolies, and carefully regulating them, as was done with the Bell System in the old days. Telcos might dislike municipal broadband, but they absolutely HATE the idea of regulations being imposed on them.

    --
    Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @08:21AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @08:21AM (#88409)

      No way! What's next, roads need repaving too? Why can't everything always last forever like they did in the good old times of the Roman Empire, praise Caesar!

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Tuesday September 02 2014, @01:25PM

        by Thexalon (636) on Tuesday September 02 2014, @01:25PM (#88481)

        All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, public order, the fresh water system, fire prevention, and public health, what has the municipal government ever done for us?

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 3, Informative) by isostatic on Tuesday September 02 2014, @09:11AM

      by isostatic (365) on Tuesday September 02 2014, @09:11AM (#88423) Journal

      equipment at the ends of fibre will need replacing, but the actual strand of fibre can support hundreds of gigabits/sec today.

      • (Score: 4, Interesting) by iwoloschin on Tuesday September 02 2014, @10:33AM

        by iwoloschin (3863) on Tuesday September 02 2014, @10:33AM (#88439)

        Just use WDM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wavelength-division_multiplexing [wikipedia.org]

        I've seen a number of DWDM systems pushing 800GB/s over a single fiber, and that's with "old" 10G optics. 100G optics are starting to come down in price now, so if you've got the money, you can jump up to 8TB/s over a single fiber, right now, today. Sure, it'll require a rack or two full of gear, but the point is it's already happening. Baring a singularity, I highly doubt that the home user will require anything near 8TB/s in the next two decades. Of course, if there's a singularity then presumably we'd be all set with something newer and shiner anyways.

      • (Score: 2) by evilviper on Tuesday September 02 2014, @10:46AM

        by evilviper (1760) on Tuesday September 02 2014, @10:46AM (#88443) Homepage Journal

        but the actual strand of fibre can support hundreds of gigabits/sec today.

        It can support 100Gbps to a reasonable distance, but probably not much more beyond that. Baring a breakthrough in optical communications, that's about where the fiber is going to have to be ripped out, and replaced with new and improved fiber. Then we'll get into the optical version of the CAT-5, CAT-6, CAT-7 cabling upgrade cycle.

        But carriers are not going to start out by running dedicated fiber optic cables directly from the main office to your house, with plenty of extras for your future neighbors and such, so you'll be limited to a tiny fraction of that speed in the near future, and the carrier will probably need to replace much of the network they built out to get up to those speeds.

        And you'll be happy for a few years after they do, but then it'll time to rip it up and start over once again. Sure, 100Gbps sounds like a hell of a lot, now, but it won't sound remotely as astronomical in 20-30 years, when you're bitching about your old and slow telco that doesn't want to invest in upgrading their network.

        --
        Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @02:56PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 02 2014, @02:56PM (#88522)

      So why do I have phones lines from 1930s ?? Right, phones companies don't want to upgrade anything.

      I don't see what you are talking about.

      1970s - people may just have phones lines
      2000+ - people would like to have FIOS

      You upgrade the latest by changing end-equipment, not the cable itself. So I don't know what you are talking about. There is ONE upgrade. Copper twisted pair to fiber. Done. So why do I still have copper wires that were put in in 1930s around here? Why hasn't my utility that charged me over $10,000 for "services" over last 15 years has not upgrade this to fiber?

      • (Score: 2) by evilviper on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:59AM

        by evilviper (1760) on Wednesday September 03 2014, @12:59AM (#88718) Homepage Journal

        So why do I have phones lines from 1930s ??

        You don't... They got overhauled when they switched to touch-tone. They got overhauled when ISDN and/or 56K modems came along. They got overhauled when they added DSL capabilities.

        Just because you don't see the major changes at the plug, doesn't mean they aren't happening.

        Copper twisted pair to fiber. Done.

        Optical fiber, like copper, comes in several ever-increasing capacities. OM1, OM2, OM3, etc. If you'd gotten upgraded to fiber back when OM1 was high-tech, you'd be maxing out its speeds, and would demand a complete overhaul, which would require a complete network teardown all over again.

        Being angry and ignorant isn't a good combination.

        --
        Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
    • (Score: 4, Informative) by LoRdTAW on Tuesday September 02 2014, @07:14PM

      by LoRdTAW (3755) on Tuesday September 02 2014, @07:14PM (#88598) Journal

      A good technical read about fiber optics and limitations:
      http://www.newport.com/Fiber-Optic-Basics/978863/1033/content.aspx [newport.com]

      A more basic explanation including record speeds sent down a single fiber below it:
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-optic_communication#Bandwidth.E2.80.93distance_product [wikipedia.org]

      Using WDM it is possible to get terabit speeds with todays fiber media over tens of km. A test back in 2011 by NEC yielded 101Tbps at over 165km on a SINGLE fiber. That is incredibly impressive, 1 gigabit per customer for 101,000 customers on a single run. Or ~2.24 million streams of 4k TV @45Mbps. So I am quite sure we are good for another few decades for last mile fiber. As the tech improves we change the endpoint hardware until the fiber can no longer carry any more data and we have better replacements.

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by AudioGuy on Tuesday September 02 2014, @08:57PM

        by AudioGuy (24) on Tuesday September 02 2014, @08:57PM (#88640) Journal

        Another factor that bears mention is that fiber is typically installed in ducts, and 'micro ducts'. If you ever DO need to replace it, you will not need to dig up the ground again, which is the largest expense.

        • (Score: 5, Interesting) by compro01 on Tuesday September 02 2014, @10:53PM

          by compro01 (2515) on Tuesday September 02 2014, @10:53PM (#88685)

          For the fibre rollout here, they're hardly digging up anything. It's practically all being done with directional drilling. They seem to only be bothering with digging in new-build areas, where it's all dug up for everything else anyway.