SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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 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.