Karl Bode reports at TechDirt
Last month I noted how longtime domain registrar Tucows had decided to try and kick-start stagnant broadband competition by buying a small Virginia ISP by the name of Blue Ridge InternetWorks (BRI). Operating under the Ting brand name, the company said the goal was to bring a "shockingly human experience and fair, honest pricing" to a fixed-line residential broadband market all-too-often dominated by just one or two giant, apathetic players. Ting promised to offer 1 Gbps speeds at a sub-$100 price point, while at the same time promising to respect net neutrality.
Fast forward a month and Tucows/Ting have announced the company has struck another deal, this time to operate a municipal broadband network being built in Westminster, Maryland. Westminster began construction on the network last October with plans to serve roughly 9,000 homes and 500 businesses. I've confirmed with Ting that unlike many initiatives (including Google Fiber, who initially paid lip service to the idea then backtracked), this effort will be an open network, meaning additional ISPs will be able to come in and compete with Ting over the city owned-infrastructure.
[...]if the the United States broadband market is going to evolve beyond stale monopolies and duopolies, it's certainly not going to be a product of Congress or the incumbent ISPs politicians are beholden to — it's going to have to happen from the roots up, a handful of towns at a time. Regardless of the small scale of such efforts, as we've seen with Google Fiber, these builds at least open up a dialogue about the lack of competitive options, and inspire cities to demand more than the slow, over-priced, and badly supported services we've grown accustomed to.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday January 22 2015, @08:41AM
The thing is, Tucows is an order of magnitude (or two), smaller than Google, and their participation is pretty much a stunt. They can't afford it. Google can.
Never the less, there are enough of these Gigabyte to the household proposals, from Google, Ting, even Century Link, and even some local public utility districts, that big cable is worried. Comcast doubled their bandwidth on some plans at the end of the year. They see the train coming.
We may actually see a huge leap in bandwidth nation wide in the next 5 or 10 years, because this thing is starting to play out like the end of long distance charges, the end of cell phone minute billing, etc. Artificial scarcity can only be maintained for so long, and then competition breaks through revealing the extent of the rip-off that had existed for decades.
We may also see the local loop fall under the control of public government. But there is a lot of history to undo.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday January 22 2015, @08:51AM
You seem to miss the fact that the first broadband connections they provide will give them extra income which they then can invest into more broadband connections. If they do it right, that means exponential growth until they have a considerable part of the market.
It is a common mistake to underestimate exponential growth.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday January 22 2015, @06:53PM
I'm a student of history, with a degree in economics. I don't miss those facts, I simply dismiss them.
There are too many yachts to fund to assume this is going to be done on a wide scale by a small company.
Bandwidth is a problem with the local loop, But its a bigger problem paying your upstream for all the bandwidth you can casually consume with gigabit connections.
Tucows is planning to to partner in with a carefully selected existing cable/fiber plant provider. Google is building one and trenching in new infrastructure. Its a big difference.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22 2015, @09:29AM
Little podunk burgs should be easy to handle.
Refer to Reagan or Thatcher:
Pick a tiny a target like Grenada or The Falklands.
Those are much easier "wars" to fight and you get credit for being a "War Leader" with minimal risk.
-- gewg_
(Score: 3, Informative) by iwoloschin on Thursday January 22 2015, @12:34PM
They may not have the capital, but that's why they're starting off by buying (or operating?) existing networks. Don't expect Ting to come to your town if your town doesn't have a fiber network already in place...yet.
Ting (the mobile provider) operates as a MVNO on Sprint's network, but I believe as soon as next month you might be able to get Ting service on T-Mobile's network as well. I'm a very happy Ting customer, their pricing scheme is very fair, they've been extremely helpful in understanding the product offerings, and are always happy to take feedback. While they're not a traditional ISP, they're the first ISP-like company I've ever dealt with that I actually like! I'd love it if Ting (the fiber ISP) came to my city and shook things up, but to my knowledge my city doesn't have any significant amounts of dark fiber, so it seems unlikely in the near future.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22 2015, @04:27PM
> The thing is, Tucows is an order of magnitude (or two), smaller than Google, and their participation is pretty much a stunt.
Google's fibre projects are stunts too. How many years has it been and still there is only one city up and running and even there they don't have full coverage of the entire city.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday January 22 2015, @08:46PM
Google's fibre projects are stunts too. How many years has it been and still there is only one city up and running and even there they don't have full coverage of the entire city.
The map shows three cities under way. https://fiber.google.com/ourcities/ [google.com]
As for not in every corner of these cities, that seems to be a bit of a case of moving the goal posts.
They never said that was even in the plan.
And its not a standard to which we hold ANY wired/fiber broadband provider.
Google picks and chooses sites that are regulation friendly. If big cable has your City's government in their back pocket, Google is going to route around you. Fix your city.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 23 2015, @02:56AM
> The map shows three cities under way.
Yes, under way. There are lots of fiber to the press release deployments out there.
And its not a standard to which we hold ANY wired/fiber broadband provider.
Every single household within the chattanooga metro area has gigabit access.
The only ones that don't are cases where the apartment complex signed an exclusive deal with comcast.
> Google picks and chooses sites that are regulation friendly.
Who cares why? The point is that by your very own metric - deployment - they are a drop in the bucket, orders of magnitude smaller than verizon, att, comcast, charter, etc.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Friday January 23 2015, @05:24AM
Who cares if they are smaller. Google is just getting started?
Point is they have the pockets to do so and to start FROM SCRATCH while Verizon has built up their infrastructure over decades.
Google has twice the market cap and 10 times the cash on hand compared to Verizon. Networks aren't even their main line of business
but they already provide more households with gigabit broadband than Verizon.
This pipsqueak Tucows has neither. They have zero infrastructure to fall back on. No cash to build one.
So the partner up with somebody that has a cableplant and offer to pay the difference between the connection fees collected and the upstream bandwidth costs. They are doing this for pennies.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Friday January 23 2015, @09:07AM
If big cable has your City's government in their back pocket, Google is going to route around you. Fix your city.
Exactly. This is a municipal/state government issue. The same (or similar) lobbyists that are hanging around the FCC and the halls of Congress are in most municipal buildings and statehouses as well, greasing palms and proposing legislation to limit competition and keep local governments from (gasp!) implementing FTTH for their residents.
It's a threat to their usurious business model and they aren't having any of it.
If you have a HOA or other neighborhood group, go yell at your city/town councils or state representatives en masse. As an old boss of mine used to say, "when the pain to change is less than the pain to stay the same, people change." Make your elected "representatives" feel the pain. If that's even possible any more. Sigh.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Thursday January 22 2015, @01:57PM
"it's certainly not going to be a product of Congress"
I've come to realize that calling members of Congress "leaders" is wrong. They don't lead. They merely scramble to keep up with public opinion. Occasionally, they try to manipulate us, with limited success. In their spare moments, when they're out of the glare of public scrutiny, they cut backroom deals for money.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday January 22 2015, @06:55PM
Congress wasn't intended to lead. They are there to do our bidding.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 23 2015, @06:22AM
Leaders have a nasty habit of leading people where they don't want to go.
Wars. Budgetary blackholes etc.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 22 2015, @04:55PM
> 1 Gbps speeds at a sub-$100 price point, while at the same time promising to respect net neutrality
CenturyLink (one of the large telcos) is starting to offer a similar product in some of their territories.
(Score: 2) by bziman on Thursday January 22 2015, @09:41PM
And I would give anything for Tucows to provide fiber with a similar model of fair pricing and awesome customer service.
Shameless self promotion: If you use my Ting referral link [ting.com] to sign up, I get a discount on my mobile service and so do you.
(Score: 2) by arashi no garou on Friday January 23 2015, @02:20AM
I'm not going to spam my Ting referral here, but I'm also a huge fan. I'm part of the beta test team for the upcoming GSM service from them on T-Mobile's network, and I'm really looking forward to the huge amount of freedom it will add to the service. There are only a handful of CDMA Sprint devices that can be activated on Ting right now, but come February any unlocked GSM and pretty much any T-Mobile phone can come to the network. They have hands-down the best customer service in the industry, and if they can bring that level of service to bear on the broadband level, it will be a thing of beauty.
I really hope they can pull it off, and I definitely hope they bring it to my area in the next year or two. Comcast can take their 300GB data cap and shove it as far as I'm concerned; between Netflix and Steam, we approach that limit every month and have to be careful about not going over. It makes absolutely no sense to have up to 50Mbps speed and not be able to actually use it due to a cap. I know car/computer analogies suck, but it's seriously like putting a half gallon gas tank on a sports car.