The primary issue faced by most US consumers is a lack of competition. The pie is very large and there is little opportunity for customers to protest poor service with their wallets. There’s just nowhere to run.
Community fiber is typically run by a local power utility, one with customer service infrastructure already built in.
Fiber is fast. Really fast. Chattanooga’s local power utility operates a fiber optic Internet service that currently offers a 1 Gigabit speed package (1,000 Mbps) for just $69.99/month. For most of us that would be a 50x speed increase or better. Many fiber services are also symmetrical, offering the same upload speed as download speed.
Cable companies will no doubt fight this tooth and nail. I’d imagine just the threat of an emerging local alternative will force a change in Big Cable’s heinous customer service policies.
We have fiber in our city; buried and dark… and likely never to be connected to anything.
Yes community fiber is a way to go.but few communities will do it. Which is a pity
Which has lead this practical solution to be illegal in my state of North Carolina. Thanks to Time Warner lobbying (i.e. writing the bill) for the law.
why?
I wish. But that’s unlikely to happen here in New Jersey.
That’s happened lots of places, though usually at the local level. City and County government routinely reject any attempt to create a cable alternative because they don’t want to cross the open-handed incumbent. For all the crap we hear about TW/Comcast/[insert big-name subscription provider here]/ and their desire to provide a great customer experience, the fact is that getting and then maintaining a monopoly is FAR easier and cheaper in the long-run.
“Comcast effectively reneged on its part of the deal, but for complicated reasons the District was still stuck with the ‘non-compete’ obligation.”
Classic! Hell, now it seems that you don’t even have to PAY to maintain the monopoly, just write a good enough contract, and you can keep it FOR FREE!
Actually, few communities can. “Twenty States Have Laws That Ban or Hinder Community Fiber.” Plus, even if they wanted to cross TW, Comcast, et al, that’s a lot of mon…er, inertia to overcome.
There is a downside to it. Being community owned, it’s not always maintained and upgraded like it should be as it’s treated more like a utility. I lived in a city that had community fiber but only offered 15 Mbps for $45. That was a steal of deal when it was first put in place (10+ years ago) but nothing has really changed since. It’s never been upgraded to symmetrical and likely won’t as more and more people switch to DSL/Cable alternatives that are faster, if more expensive. I know I had to. 🙁
My local DSL provides less than half that bandwidth—at most—for roughly that price. Verizon neither maintains nor upgrades local infrastructure, because they know they don’t have to.
And I’m damned if I want to get on Comcast’s trick-pricing treadmill. I’d love to have 15 Mbps on a community-run service.
We’ve had it since the late nineties here in Umeå, Sweden. Works really well as far as I know. Lived in two apartments and one house and never paid more than $35/month. Was 10 Mbit/s in 1998 and moved to 100 Mbit/s for most users around 10 years ago or more.