
Comcast, beware: New city-run broadband offers 1Gbps for $60 a month - koolba
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/08/comcast-beware-new-city-run-broadband-offers-1gbps-for-60-a-month/
======
pascalxus
Great going Fort Collins Municipal broadband! way to put the smack down on
Comcast. I'm cheering for you, and every other broadband provider that kicks
the snot out Comcast and At&t.

------
wildtomato
Why does Comcast continue to fight fiber installations when 5G is on the
horizon and likely to draw consumers away to the other big providers (AT&T,
Verizon, and others)? To me, that seems like the bigger battle for Comcast.

Secondly, does anyone think it wise to bond $145m as the city did with
wireless advances on the horizon? Especially when so far only a couple dozen
homes have been connected?

I suppose Comcast can and will fight on multiple fronts, so going after
municipal services isn’t mutually exclusive to 5G, but both seem like a losing
battle for ‘ye olde Comcast. I just wonder if in 10 years we’ll hear a story
about how Comcast “saved” a city $150m by lobbying against a fiber project and
prevailing but all the residents ultimately left Comcast for a wireless
provider.

------
Havoc
Rest of world laughs in old gigabit.

Always found it amazing how the US is so far ahead on tech yet is so terrible
at actual internet penetration.

My building hit that price/speed level maybe 3-4? Places with actual fast
internet like S Korea probably much sooner.

~~~
toomuchtodo
If you read the article, Fort Collins had to issue $143 million in bonds to
finance the system. The US is enormous, and the cost to deliver fiber to
everyone will be high (versus Europe or South Korea).

Arguably, as a muni utility, you don’t care about turning a profit versus
Comcast and other for profit enterprises. And you have local governance over
the infra and how it’s operated through local government. But it still takes a
lot of effort; effort that can be distributed across the country, but effort
that needs to be expended nevertheless.

~~~
VorticesRcool
The United States bay be big, but it still has double the population density
of New Zealand and yet New Zealand has high avaliability of cheap gigabit
fibre.

~~~
skinnymuch
Does every single place and person in NZ have super fast internet? NZ and
Australia both have a huge portion of their populations in their major cities
or around them. It is not at all the same as comparing to the US’s population
density.

~~~
rasz
How about the densest place in continental US? NY Manhattan, 1st Avenue -
choice is Verizon DSL or Spectrum Business Cable.

"New York Votes to Kick Spectrum Cable Out of the State"
[https://fortune.com/2018/07/29/spectrum-communications-
kicke...](https://fortune.com/2018/07/29/spectrum-communications-kicked-out-
new-york/)

"New York City sues Verizon for not completing citywide fiber network"
[https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/14/nyc-sues-
verizon/](https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/14/nyc-sues-verizon/)

