Groups funded by the Koch brothers are campaigning against municipal broadband

Re:Groups funded by the Koch brothers are campaigning agains... by cjrp on Monday December 18, 2017 @08:23AM (#15951406)

Part of the problem is that you can't have "real" competition, e.g. two train companies can't operate competing franchises on the same line, at the same time. I get terrible service and pay high fares on my Southern Railways route, but I can't opt to use a different carrier without moving house. But if my broadband provider decides to raise their prices by 5% next year, I can move to a different provider with a single phone call and a few minutes of downtime.

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Re:Groups funded by the Koch brothers are campaigning agains... by Larrikin on Monday December 18, 2017 @08:28AM (#15951434)

Most people in the country can not realistically switch internet providers. Even when you have a choice you're often limited to two.

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Re:Groups funded by the Koch brothers are campaigning agains... by misnome on Monday December 18, 2017 @10:48AM (#15952386)

lhopki01's point is that we suspect you are talking about USA in your post, where the GP was talking about the UK, which has a much healthier market for high-speed internet.

To be fair this might not be obvious, if you missed the context of the thread and unless you are familiar with "Southern Railways".

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Re:Groups funded by the Koch brothers are campaigning agains... by lhopki01 on Monday December 18, 2017 @08:46AM (#15951528)

Which country? If you have a phone line to your house you can pick between more than 2.

Under what circumstances do most people only have a choice of two.

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Re:Groups funded by the Koch brothers are campaigning agains... by Larrikin on Monday December 18, 2017 @08:49AM (#15951543)

Switching to DSL is not a realistic option when most of the country has broadband.

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Re:Groups funded by the Koch brothers are campaigning agains... by zeveb on Monday December 18, 2017 @10:44AM (#15952342)

> Switching to DSL is not a realistic option when most of the country has broadband.

DSL is broadband. I've been using DSL for over 17 years (and, while away from home, using combinations of cable & satellite), and I watch plenty of TV & listen to plenty of music on it. It really does work great for me.

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Re:Groups funded by the Koch brothers are campaigning agains... by Dylan16807 on Monday December 18, 2017 @12:41PM (#15953484)

Depends on the wire length and quality. A whole lot of DSL connections can't even handle a single 1080p stream, or good quality 720p.

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Re:Groups funded by the Koch brothers are campaigning agains... by lhopki01 on Monday December 18, 2017 @10:11AM (#15952130)

Again which country are you talking about? The majority of UK broadband is ADSL2+. There is cable in some areas but not all. In all areas with phone lines there are multiple providers giving around 20Mb/s. They all use the same phone lines because of local loop unbundling. In areas with fibre to the cabinet there are again multiple providers all using the same fibre. The only service in the UK that doesn't have local loop unbundling is cable.

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Re:Groups funded by the Koch brothers are campaigning agains... by arethuza on Monday December 18, 2017 @10:49AM (#15952400)

"In all areas with phone lines there are multiple providers giving around 20Mb/s."

I don't know about the rest of the UK but I don't think that is the case in Scotland - once you are any distance from a city or town the speeds can drop dramatically and that's not even in the Highlands or Islands. Certainly when we were looking at houses about a year ago there were quite upmarket new houses in Perthshire that had no broadband at all.

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