Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
The Institute For Local Self Reliance (disclosure: I have done writing and research for them) has released an updated interactive map of every community-owned and operated broadband network in the U.S.
All told, there’s now 400 community-owned broadband networks serving more than 700 U.S. towns and cities nationwide, and the pace of growth shows no sign of slowing down.
Some of these networks are directly owned by a municipality. Some are freshly-built cooperatives. Some are extensions of the existing city-owned electrical utility. All of them are an organic, popular, grass-roots community-driven reaction to telecom market failure and expensive, patchy access.
[...] Data routinely notes that community-owned broadband networks provide faster, cheaper, better service than their larger private-sector counterparts. Staffed by locals, they’re also more directly accountable and responsive to the needs of locals. They’re also just hugely popular across the partisan spectrum; routinely winning awards for service.
[...] That’s not to suggest community-owned broadband networks are some mystical panacea; they require smart leadership, strategic planning, and intelligent financing. But if done well, they not only drive significant fiber improvements directly to local markets, they incentivize lumbering regional private sector monopolies — long pampered by federal government corruption and muted competition — to actually try.
Widespread frustration with substandard U.S. broadband drove a big boost in such networks during COVID lockdowns. Since January 1, 2021, more than 47 new networks have come online, with dozens in the planning or pre-construction phases. Many are seeing a big financial boost thanks to 2021 COVID relief (ARPA) and infrastructure bill (IIJA) legislation funding (the latter of which hasn’t even arrived yet).
In response to this popular grass roots movement, giant ISPs have worked tirelessly to outlaw such efforts, regardless of voter intent. 16 states still have protectionist state laws, usually ghost written by giant telecom monopolies, prohibiting the construction or expansion of community broadband. House Republicans went so far as to try and ban all community broadband during a pandemic.
Lumbering regional monopolies like Comcast, AT&T, and Charter could have responded to this movement by lowering prices and improving service. Instead in many cases they found it cheaper to lobby politicians, sue fledgling networks, or create fake “consumer groups” tasked with spreading lies about the perils of community-owned broadband networks among local communities.
But based on the growth rate of such networks, these efforts have backfired, and locally-owned and operated broadband networks appear to be more popular than ever.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pTamok on Tuesday October 08, @06:08AM (10 children)
Pretty much, yes.
I used to work in the telecommunications industry, and it was a frequent source of frustration that I had to deal with whichever company held the monopoly for a particular region, or indeed, for a particular business park. It was a huge waste of money to have multiple companies lay fibre to the same place - the result being that unless the expected payback was huge, most places were served by a single company - with associated monopoly pricing ( as high as did not completely choke off demand ).
There are some problems with shared infrastructure: it becomes more difficult to buy diversity; data security on shared infrastructure is more complicated (but not impossible to solve); and fault-finding becomes more complicated. None of the problems are impossible to solve, but current incentives are to make them seem as difficult as possible so people preserve the (infrastructure+service) monopoly.
In some countries, provision of gas and electricity is split between the infrastructure provider and whoever supplies the actual gas, or power. The model works there. There's no fundamental reason Internet service could not be the same. Suppliers will complain about who controls the 'last mile'. A counter argument is to see how the split of telephone (and subsequently Internet) service in the UK works between OpenReach (infrastructure) and the former monopoly supplier (British Telecom (BT) (telephone/Internet service) - but OpenReach was split from BT, and varius commercial rules were put in place that effectively preserved BT's monopoly - other suppliers generally preferred to build their own infrastructure rather than buy services from OpenReach.
It makes a lot of sense for infrastructure (a natural monopoly) to be separated from the service provision over the infrastructure. Obviously, toll-roads exist, and vertically integrated railway companies (where the infrastructure supplier also runs railway services), and similar in gas and electricity industries, so monopoly models work: but the common infrastructure providing the foundation for competing services also works. Which is better is a matter for passionate debate.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Tuesday October 08, @06:48AM (8 children)
There's also the matter of size and distance, both of which are big issues in the U.S. (being about as large as all of Europe, and with a lot more backside-of-nowhere). Who's going to serve Wide Spot, Wyoming? Really, you'd think that's where municipal would shine.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by pTamok on Tuesday October 08, @03:51PM (7 children)
I have a concept of a plan for that.
Yes, there are locations that are uneconomic to serve.
But they require service.
So auction off the planned infrastructure build to the entity that requires the lowest subsidy to build out*. The subtle bit is that you give that entity a service monopoly for a limited time, after which the infrastructure is opened up to all providers. They are not allowed to charge different prices to people in different locations in the served area, so if you live in Wide Spot, next to the CO, or 20 miles outside, you pay the same amount for, say, Gigabit fibre service.
*The build out has to cover all locations that were previously served by copper phone wires, and new sites pay a flat fee for connection within a certain distance of existing infrastructure (whether copper or fibre). Build-outs must start with locations that are furthest from the planned COs - you can't serve the area local to the COs and then stop. No site to be turned up until all other locations further from the COs are turned up. If your business fails, a new auction is held to continue the build, using the already built out infrastructure as a base.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday October 08, @04:54PM (6 children)
That's an interesting concept, and sounds tolerably workable. Be some bugs to work out, but hey. It's a start.
The snag I run into is actually that CenturyLink must serve me, at the same price, but can give me shit service because I'm a mile out of town, and they're not required to maintain 50 year old equipment. My DSL has degraded from 5Mbps stable to 3 (officially) to at best 2.5 on a good day when the squirrel is really pumping it. But hey, I pay the same as they do in town for 100Mbps!
So... equal charge for equal service, perhaps.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by pTamok on Tuesday October 08, @09:04PM (5 children)
That's why it is meant to be a fibre roll-out. Fibre tends not to degrade gracefully - it either works or it doesn't*. Gigabit-capable fibre is cheap - it's the terminations that cost. Commercial off-the-shelf kit can easily drive Gigabit down 50km of fibre without repeaters - but you probably want to keep the driving laser-diodes away from public access. The kit does have safety interlocks to stop people looking at the laser to see if it is on, but interlocks can fail, and people can do stupid things.
*There's a technical term for it, but simply put, the transition between 100% service and 0% service is very steep, so you are not likely to spend long in the transition region. If it is due to gradual signal loss in the fibre as it ages, it is easily solved (for a while) by increasing the transmit power. When you can't turn it up any more, you have to replace the fibre. It's not like ADSL with a collection of frequencies that vary in signal-to-noise ratio according to temperature, air pressure, humidity, cross-talk, and whether you look at the wires funny.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Tuesday October 08, @09:35PM (4 children)
There's fiber right across the road from me, but might as well be on Mars... for 13 potential customers (maybe half that, realistically) they're not gonna get the permits to cross the four-lane highway and the railroad track and the natural gas pipeline, even tho they could do it at the existing RR crossing.
Anyway, very interesting, and sounds like it would be a lot less net maintenance than copper. But first you gotta get it there.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 1) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday October 09, @12:44AM (1 child)
Maybe organize a smallish ISP to set up, pulling service from the fiber, and providing service via DSL? Yeah, DSL sucks for the reasons you've already pointed out, but if you're that close to the server, service should be decent.
Alternatively - fiber can be strung on existing electric power line poles. That's how the electric company did ours. The only permits needed involve the electric company, natural gas and railroad companies can both pound sand.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Wednesday October 09, @01:41AM
The fiber is owned by CenturyLink, who have become all about not providing service. (Have already talked to them about it, back when they actually had humans with clues, and you could get to one with less that four hours hold time).
And... I'm about to jump ship now that fixed wireless has gotten decent enough, and it's a lot faster for the same money. And they have a .local office I can march into at need....
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2, Informative) by pTamok on Wednesday October 09, @07:46AM (1 child)
Ah yes, crossing major roads is ... difficult. The traditional way is very expensive and disruptive, as you have to dig a ditch across the road, put the fibre in (in conduit) below the lowest level of the foundation of the road (they are surprisingly deep) and reinstate the road to the standard it was before (which is impossible - there's always a weak-point at the joints). It's also very disruptive of the traffic, so if the road is at all busy, getting a permit for diversions can take months/years. You can tell I used to work in the industry.
The non-traditional way is horizontal drilling. You can get steerable drill-bits/moles - but they only work in certain soil/ground conditions (done it once going under a river to build a diverse route to a data-centre). Worst case is to sink two vertical shafts and drill/blast your way from one to the other. Not cheap.
If there is a bridge or someone else's conduit nearby that you can share, that's usually better, even if you have to go some way away from the direct route. You pay to rent that bit of someone-else's property.
The railway track has similar problems.
If there is a crossing, then there is likely conduit that could be shared/reused. If the ISP can be bothered. If the profit they can make from you is too small (e.g. if it doesn't cover the costs), it won't happen. I guess you live on the wrong side of the tracks.
If you can get line-of-sight, a short microwave link acting as a bridge across the road, railway, and gas pipeline could work. You might need a high mast/towers, which likely would building permits. If you are lucky, you can use IR-laser, as you likely do not need a radio-frequency permit for that; or use a licence-free radio band (with associated possibility of interference) - actual telecomms microwave requires permits and frequency-planning.
Of course, you need somewhere to connect to: a wayleave on a neighbours property. In theory, you could share their fibre connection, but ISPs usually have contracts that prevent you from re-selling or sharing their services.
I have a fibre connection, but with a maliciously incompetent ISP - I would dearly love to be able to choose a different Internet Service Provider that delivers service over the same infrastructure - all that is really needed is putting a port into a differant VLAN on a switch somewhere. But that is too easy - so I suffer catastrophically poor service.
I am very sympathetic to your situation.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Wednesday October 09, @08:35AM
Yep, yep, yep, and that's the pile of apparently insurmountable problems with reaching that fiber across the highway. And given how high the roadbed is, even at the RR crossing (which is built up about 10 feet, and the highway slopes to an overpass) for transmitter-and-dish you'd need a serious tower (assuming Montana weather didn't largely nix the transmission).
My sister's place has fiber to the mailboxes, but for some unknown reason not to the lots. (A bunch of rural 10 acre lots in a hilly clump.) Would need to be trenched long way around to each lot and that quickly gets ridiculous. Of course no one thought to do it when they put in the buried power and natural gas lines, tho the fiber was there years before the development!
I'd cheerfully host a tower on my pasture hill if someone wanted to do it.....
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 08, @07:07PM
You mean like in the United States [coned.com]?
Here (in the US) where I live, I have more choices for energy supply than I do for broadband Internet. However, all of that energy (regardless of provider) is delivered by Consolidated Edison and I'm charged for both energy usage and energy delivery.