When we moved to SF a few months ago, Sonic wasn't available in our building so we had to get AT&T. I'm paying almost double what Sonic charges for basically the same service.

In both cases, where buildings had exclusivity agreements or had the fiber providers lay the fiber themselves, residents are worse off. Buildings should be running their own fiber and letting residents hook up to whoever they want.

Same thing with residential house internet; cities should own the last mile infrastructure (sure, pay providers to dig it and run it if you have to).

Especially since we're migrating off of copper and onto fiber; this is the chance to get it right for the next few decades!

(1) https://medium.com/@MarkFarrellSF/supervisor-farrell-to-intr...

(2) https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/07/12/america...

(3) https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190401/08232241919/telec...

I'm in Toronto, thank goodness this is becoming more common, not less. I was recently condo hunting and I noticed most new buildings had Beanfield or their competitor, FibreStream. The building we ended up with has the latter, so we're getting 500Mbps symmetric/no cap.

Yay for not having to annually fight with Bell for a "promotional" rate anymore!

I suppose maybe the cable networks are more optimized for average user behaviour (far more download than upload), but maybe there's also a fundamental limitation with the cable infrastructure that prevents faster uploads, perhaps to do with cable's legacy delivering television broadcasts? Whereas with fibre, almost everything I've seen available comes with symmetric speeds by default.

DOCSIS 3.0 (I think that's the latest) allocates a particular ratio of download vs upload frequencies, so even when speeds increase the asymmetry is still the same. I heard the next version of DOCSIS might change that though. Ideally there'd be enough fiber to not require DOCSIS anyway, but I don't have my hopes up for that.

Hopefully with a lot more WFH arrangements people start demanding symmetric connections. But

Anything more than that, especially in gigabit range is just gimmicks, IMO.

However, there was a technical issue I had some months ago with a faulty Arris modem provisioning file that disabled upstream bonding across most of their models. It took an email to the CEO to sort it out (after a Reddit and DSLReports post on the matter).

Previously I had been on a 50/10 tier and when the new business class tiers were released they blamed my trusted old SB6121s for being too old, so I bought 2 newer ones in the SB series and had same issues. After writing the CEO and CC'ing all the techs I spoke to and including links to the threads they gave me a direct engineering contact that confirmed the issue. For the trouble they credited me out 2 months of service.

I can get up to 1gbit connection for 15 EUR, 100mbit for 7 EUR because of competitive market

We usually only have one or two competing provider per building, but their prices are still low(same as yours).

This is an opportunity for wireless. I've lived in buildings with exclusive internet agreements. I was able to bypass those in some cities back when WiMax was still available. I got double the speed for half the price when I was living in an AT&T building, and the same speed for half the price when I was in a Qwest building.

I'm not a fan of the new breed of satellite internet startups, but if they put fear into the wired/fibered carriers, then at least some good will come out of them.

The dystopian future is here.

What cost that company $200,000 in 1998 and took up an entire rack now can be bought for about $2,000 from Ubiquiti and mounted in a few U in a rack. They even have the software available to run your own ISP!

Builders get big providers to pay for communications wiring, in some cases including that of their competitors, for the privilege of exclusive advertising rights. Those same big providers need to provide (some level of) service to all the people in their geography.

Between influences like these and regulation, the big providers have to shoulder significant costs which they pass on to their consumers. The upstarts don't have these costs and can offer much better pricing.

The regulators and politicians can then step in and gain voter favor by going after these big, "bad" providers by enabling new entrants into the market with must better cost structures (e.g. regional service only) or even just outright subsidizing them, ultimately seeming to go after a problem that they actually created.

Whether this public/private capitalist mess is more cost effective than a public entity is unclear, but it does succeed in shifting accountability away from the government.

In the end the citizens pay for it all, just inequitably. Perhaps it is a capitalist victory that a price sensitive consumer can invest the time to find a better deal and opt out of subsidizing rural communities.

So the expenses around lobbying, wining and dining a few politicians etc. are totally worth it.

Disclosure: I work for sonic, and this is my personal understanding of the strategy, which may have other nuances.

I'd love it if the fiber in the building was public so I could just pay 1/2 what I pay AT&T for Sonic instead.

Basically, the companies which received the contracts were required to not act as ISPs, instead to wholesale access to their fibre network to any ISP interested. Maximum rates and minimum level of service are set by the Commerce Commission (the govt), though the fibre holders are free to reduce prices or improve services, which they are (we now can get gigabit internet nationwide for less than 100NZD - an excellent price considering there's no competition for the last mile itself).

This is true for our old copper network too. It was built by Telecom, the old govt monopoly, in the 20th century. In 2009(?) the copper network was spun off into its own company, Chorus, and Chorus was bound by the same wholesale and non-ISP regulations.

As a result of these enlightened regulations, NZ now has a super-competitive ISP market. ISPs are super cheap to set up - you basically just need to provide the core network and lease the last mile and backbone.

I'd advise anyone campaigning for better ISP regulations in any other country to look at the NZ example. The free market may work better for extremely high density cities, but these regs are great for any markets where there is only demand for one last-mile network.

The deal was struct, Tony was suddenly the "wonderkid" that could do no wrong and Fox News made sure the whole world heard his name. He was promptly elected by retired country morons who've never heard of the Internet but watched Fox on the telly every evening.

Tony licked Rupert's boots like a good little boy and did his best to kill the NBN: https://delimiter.com.au/2012/07/06/australia-doesnt-need-th...

Thankfully his power didn't last long, but his short stint nonetheless had lasting damage: https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2019/01/10/rupert-m...

We can now (as of just a few weeks ago!) get gigabit on the Australian NBN, except that instead of NZD 100 it costs AUD 150 monthly. You also have to be one of the lucky 19% to be on the FTTH network that was built before Tony stopped its construction: https://thenewdaily.com.au/finance/property/2019/01/28/what-...

Fuck Rupert Murdoch. Seriously. He is one of the most evil, vile, hateful, greedy, self-centered cunts alive on this planet.

Subsidised. Private funding covered much of the cost.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&...

To ensure that the prices are fairly calculated, we have a public authority which checks that the prices are correct.

What happened was that the ILECs all managed to come up with the same excuses: sorry, no lines available in that office. And, mysteriously, working CLEC lines would stop working, and it would be blamed on a "bad cable", but there wouldn't be a spare cable to switch to... and the ILEC had just installed a customer.

Regulation needs to be enforced.

I had the local ILEC repair my home POTS line so many times, I finally gave up and switched to VOIP. Now a year of service costs me less than a month used to...

In 2003 and 2005[1] the market was deregulated and all the tiny independent ISP's went under as they were unable to throw wires up on the poles nor able to use the incumbents.

[1] https://transition.fcc.gov/meetings/080505/sharing.pdf?mod=a...

OFCOM sets the price Openreach is allowed to charge for FTTC or LLU access and that’s that. Hence we have tens of ISPs available in most areas that compete on cost and customer service.

And wireless providers are now competing pretty effectively with consumer-grade fibre. (I'm happy getting 400 Mbit and streaming 1080p Stadia lag-free on Vodafone 5G for £30 a month - who even needs fibre!)

My city is placing a similar proposal on the ballot this November (https://connectkaysville.com/).

Often localities are hindered by their state governments thanks to lobbying from the incumbents. I would prefer to see more local governments actively rolling their own telecom infrastructure to inter-city/state endpoints (should they choose to). From a security standpoint I feel that most locations should have two options at the least.

I'd also like to see any civil funding start and end at the local municipalities. The feds don't do well managing these things as noted in TFA.

I recall hearing something about a former apartment complex mentioning how costly (letting an additional provider) in was for them; but I never did learn the details of _what_ was costly about that. Having said data out in the bright sunlight of public records would make planning a beneficial change to the status quo much easier.

Communication must be transported through some medium. That could be air, copper, fiber, etc. For the sake of this discussion, let's focus on fiber.

To connect everybody with fiber, the utility has to bury fiber under property it doesn't own. (Or it could run it arial over property it doesn't own.) For the little section that runs from the street through my property to the network interface device attached to my house, I am more than happy to give the utility permission to trench and bury fiber. But they own the fiber and are responsible for its maintenance.

If there is ever any maintenance issue with that small portion buried in my yard, they don't have an easement to dig it up and service it. They need my permission. Because it is directly affecting my internet connection, I'm usually happy to grant permission. But when it runs under my driveway, I don't want them digging up my driveway. We work together to find some option that isn't too expensive, but doesn't involve the destruction of my driveway.

Let's say I want to switch providers. The new provider can't just reuse the fiber in my yard because it doesn't belong to them, nor to me. So each potential provider has to bury their own across my yard without disturbing the others.

Because this seems suboptimal to me and because I take the long view, I have my network interface device moved to the curb, and I own the fiber in my yard. But now the burden is on me to have the right kind of fiber and the right type of fiber connects and to fix any issues.

Now let's say that my neighbor's connection also runs through my yard. Neither my neighbor nor the utility want to be beholden to me for maintenance. They will want an easement that gives them the right to do whatever it takes to fix the fiber in my yard. But if my neighbor ever wants to switch providers, the new provider will need another easement.

Generally most of the property across which the fiber is installed is publicly owned. Each utility has their own easements through that property. Aside from the obvious duplication of infrastructure with its associated price inflation, there is another problem. There is only a limited space for easements. If there are multiple water utilities and multiple power utilities and multiple gas utilities and multiple telecom utilities, the easement corridor gets pretty crowded and could conceivably even be exhausted. How do you decide which private company gets a free easement and which doesn't. Should we start charging for the easements?

Also, it stands to reason that if there are 25 utility easements under main street, there is a much higher probability on any given day that one of them will dig up main street for maintenance than if there were only 5 utility easements.

So in the end, I think all private utilities should have equal access to easements on public land. You can do that by auctioning those easements every set interval. Kind of like we do with spectrum. But I'm not very satisfied with how that has worked in the past. It is impossible for any little guy to get a foot over that hurdle. The only acceptable alternative I have encountered is to deny easements to them all.

We still need transmission lines and those will still need easements on public property. One obvious solution is to have those lines be publicly owned. Just like I took ownership of that hypothetical fiber running through my yard.

In the case of fiber, you could run 144 x 144 fiber in very nearly the same space it takes one utility to run 144 fiber. So you could conceivably rent out fiber to utilities. But that doesn't work as well for water utilities. With telecom, we can mingle data on the same fiber. That doesn't work so great for water. It is probably practical to have a different solution for water or gas than for telecom. Power may require a solution of its own.

Through this line of reasoning I have come to believe that public ownership of transmission lines across public property is the best arrangement for telecom. Any provider that wants to buy up private property or buy up easements across private property is still free to do so.

NYC Mesh puts a fiber connected node with a laser receiver on a tall building. You install a laser receiver on top of your building. Anyone with line of sight to the node now has fast, affordable internet access. They don't have to deal with mega telecoms anymore.

[0] https://www.nycmesh.net/

If you already have line of sight I don't see a reason this couldn't be replaced with a 60ghz 802.11ad link, which should give you 4.6 gigabits.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11ad

If you have line of sight though and a fixed point to point link the range is much greater, since there's nothing in the way and an dish antenna gives you huge gain.

https://store.ui.com/collections/unifi-network-routing-switc...

"Ideal for high-throughput connectivity with a range of up to 500 m".

For reference, that approximately two blocks in NYC.

Anyway, I looked up the Ubiquiti LiteBeam AC Gen2 since I wasn't familiar with it, and I think OP might have the wrong impression. It's a LiteBeam, not a LightBeam. The LiteBeam is just bog standard 5 GHz 802.11ac with a high gain antenna. That explains the data rates.

Given that, there seems to be no disadvantage to using the 60 GHz solution if you're close enough to the next building where it's still faster (probably close to 2 miles). It's only ~$200 more, which spread out over a building is basically nothing.

MikroTik makes some 60Ghz point to point gigabit radios that can supposedly go for 2km.

Finally, many commercial providers of E-band devices (licensed 70-80Ghz spectrum) sell gigabit capable radios that can go a couple of miles.

Any of those seem like good options for an urban building in need of better internet service.

Wireless internet makes for a very poor product to sell, because the service is unreliable, and often has problems exactly when people want it most (during inclement weather). Also, customers often have a problem dissassociating problems that should be expected with the service from problems with the service provider. It's probably not very gratifying to provide what is often the only option people have for high speed internet to have some subset of them that don't understand the reality, or are just too upset to care, disparage your name online. It also probably doesn't lead to securing additional contracts easily, and as soon as other connectivity does become available, your customers will leave at the earliest opportunity (there's not a lot of friction to signing up somewhere else when the service is currently down).

(No affiliation with NYC folks, just a WISP guy handing out the basics)

It cannot be understated how badly the more rural parts of the country are being screwed by big telecom right now.

LOL. My mom lives in an older house in a formerly-rural area where she's now surrounded by suburb-style new development. She wanted cable internet, and it cost her about $8000 and endless hours of haranguing Cox and chasing down service vans just to get a hook up. Literally she would see a Cox van at a construction site and stop and ask the person, because no one would talk to her on the phone. She eventually found one guy who gave her his business card and cell number, and knew a few people in the construction department who would help. The woman who took her credit card number over the phone to charge for the service told her she knew absolutely nothing about the process, and could make no guarantees about when it would happen. My mom was so desperate, she gave her her credit card number anyway. It took nearly a year to run maybe 100 yards of cable down her driveway from the street to her house, but she finally does have broadband now.

I’m going to guess that 80% of the US can’t get that.

The actual bandwidth used by a 300M customer and a 1000M customer is usually the same. The provider's upstream contracts would not change much if they put every one of their customers on 1000M.

But their pricing is regulated. The arm and a leg they charge for 1000M service is largely a function of that regulation, even though it hardly affects their costs otherwise. You might think that if the infrastructure costs are the same for 1M or 1000M and that the infrastructure costs are 90% of all costs, 1M and 1000M could be priced within 25% of each other. It might seem that a price jump from $100/50M to $1000/1000M is unreasonable. But the U.S. government right now is handing out $billions to rural providers to build out fiber, then requiring them to charge ridiculously high prices.

Correct. I have a gig/gig symmetrical connection and a family of four information-devouring people. In the last 30 days we used 1 TB of data... which is to say, an average of just over 3Mb/s. We probably peaked at about 600Mb/s a few times.

This is asymmetric with no disclaimer on their advertising page from an entrenched local monopoly in the north east (a small one)

It’s a weird situation. Windstream lies to the federal government and says they offer broadband to my area, when they don’t offer any service at all. The only actual provider (South Slope), which offers fiber elsewhere, is therefore shut out of the usual federal programs to finance upgrades to the completely antiquated and over-provisioned DSL lines. I’m 3 miles line of sight from their headquarters.

My parents live in the near Chicago suburbs, have 1 choice for high speed Internet, and pay $80/month for 100Mbps down and 6Mbps up.

So, rural internet options are actually better than urban in some areas.