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posted by mrpg on Saturday February 24 2018, @06:23PM   Printer-friendly
from the yes-carrier dept.

San Francisco: Building Community Broadband to Protect Net Neutrality and Online Privacy

Like many cities around the country, San Francisco is considering an investment in community broadband infrastructure: high-speed fiber that would make Internet access cheaper and better for city residents. Community broadband can help alleviate a number of issues with Internet access that we see all over America today. Many Americans have no choice of provider for high-speed Internet, Congress eliminated user privacy protections in 2017, and the FCC decided to roll back net neutrality protections in December.

This week, San Francisco published the recommendations of a group of experts, including EFF's Kit Walsh, regarding how to protect the privacy and speech of those using community broadband.

This week, the Blue Ribbon Panel on Municipal Fiber released its third report, which tackles competition, security, privacy, net neutrality, and more. It recommends San Francisco's community broadband require net neutrality and privacy protections. Any ISP looking to use the city's infrastructure would have to adhere to certain standards. The model of community broadband that EFF favors is sometimes called "dark fiber" or "open access." In this model, the government invests in fiber infrastructure, then opens it up for private companies to compete as your ISP. This means the big incumbent ISPs can no longer block new competitors from offering you Internet service. San Francisco is pursuing the "open access" option, and is quite far along in its process.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday February 24 2018, @06:30PM (6 children)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday February 24 2018, @06:30PM (#643106) Homepage

    Where is the affordable housing? Why are Facebook employees sleeping out of their cars, why are entire families having to live in rented garages and basements?

    ISP competition doesn't matter at all if you can afford 5000 a month for a studio apartment, because in that case even relatively expensive internet fees are of little consequence. And while this is a good idea, the rest of the U.S. considers "San Francisco" a pejorative phrase and is disgusted by anything associated with it.

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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @06:34PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @06:34PM (#643109)

    You forgot to mention you are a gay faggot.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @06:51PM (3 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @06:51PM (#643115)

    Gee I wonder why people dislike San Francisco.

    Oh right!! Because it is known as a very gay friendly town, and a large minority in the US is homophobic and bigoted. I lived there for a short bit and every person over 50 I met in different areas had to make a wisecrack about gay people and SF. Pretty sad, but hey the bigots are dying off and we'll probably have a civil war that gets the confederacy to finally secede and build a wall to keep the liberals out. I would be OK with that.

    • (Score: 3, Touché) by Ethanol-fueled on Saturday February 24 2018, @07:07PM (2 children)

      by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Saturday February 24 2018, @07:07PM (#643122) Homepage

      I don't hate San Francisco, just the people in it. As a libertarian, I have no problems with the 'Mo's having naked parades down the streets and jacking up in broad daylight. What I do have a problem with is the amount of control over tech and culture the area holds, and worst of all, they're every bit as intolerant, oppressive, hypocritical, and preachy as the worst Baptist windbag televangelists.

      Liberals stopped being "the good guys" at least a decade ago. There is plenty of tech work throughout California, and skilled people who are able to move choose to live in San Francisco because they choose to live in a self-reinforcing circle-jerk and lack the self-control to contain their sex-lives indoors. Even the most ardent liberals should be horrified at the amount of censorship going on at Facebook, Google, Twitter, and others.

      The only hope now is for viable alternatives to the above services to emerge.

  • (Score: 2, Informative) by DrkShadow on Sunday February 25 2018, @01:33AM

    by DrkShadow (1404) on Sunday February 25 2018, @01:33AM (#643260)

    [That's Great But...] Where is the affordable housing?

    This is discussion of the city creating a fiber network to allow companies to compete as ISP's. Taken to what you're suggesting, the city would own all of the properties, all of the buildings, and farm out management to outside service organizations.

    Do you understand what you're saying? Separately, are you just entirely socialist? If the last item, then just come out and say it, but it's not particularly relevant to this discussion. Do you want to be charged service charges by random company XYZ for providing you with renter services?

    What are you even trying to say?