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0 pointsrayiner12y ago0 comments

It's amazing to me how many people here on HN complain on one hand about companies not wanting to make massive capital investments to build out faster internet service while simultaneously espousing regulating such services into low-margin dumb pipes.

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ericd12y ago

I think there's a simple solution - municipal fiber everywhere with companies allowed to lease access. Internet access looks like a utility and quacks like a utility, so it should be treated like one. The timeline for breaking even on the investment has been pretty reasonably short in the examples I've seen.

rayinerOP12y ago

The municipalities have no money to build, and more importantly, to maintain and continually upgrade, such networks. Heck, they can barely maintain utility systems that evolve far slower than internet connectivity: power and water. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/18/us/18water.html?_r=0. People outside of HN won't be anywhere near sufficiently eager to earmark sufficient public dollars to properly maintain such networks, not when pensions systems are underfunded and schools are putting teachers on furlough.

ericd12y ago

I don't know enough about fiber to have a very intelligent discussion about it, but from what I've heard, one of the nice things about fiber is that you can run increasing amounts of bandwidth through the same fiber once it's laid as the endpoints improve.

I would expect that the buildout could be funded by a municipal bond issue, with the repayment being handled via the revenue from the customer-facing companies that lease access to the infrastructure. I've heard of municipal networks like this being run profitably and being repaid in a reasonable timeframe (on the order of a decade or two), but unfortunately I don't know more than that.

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mhurron12y ago

Yep, it'll never happen.

Except where it did before the State stepped in to ensure Comcast/TWC didn't have competition.

But other than that it'll never happen.

foobarqux12y ago

Many other countries have built high speed consumer fiber networks, some of them heavily regulated. Something isn't working in the United States.

rayinerOP12y ago

The U.S. is ranked #8 in average broadband connection speed in Akamai's most recent State of the Internet. That puts it ahead of most of Europe: http://www.akamai.com/dl/documents/akamai_soti_q213.pdf?WT.m... (page 13). If you look at more densely populated coastal states, the U.S. looks even better. Yeah, South Korea has widespread fiber internet. More than half the country lives in the Seoul metro area. You can't compare.

foobarqux12y ago

Nation-wide averages tell a story that no one is interested in. Do you have data on densely populated coastal states? I want to compare speed and speed/Mbps to areas like Warsaw and Stockholm with high density cities in the US.

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ericd12y ago

rayinerOP12y ago

ericd12y ago

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mhurron12y ago

Yep, it'll never happen.

Except where it did before the State stepped in to ensure Comcast/TWC didn't have competition.

But other than that it'll never happen.

foobarqux12y ago

Many other countries have built high speed consumer fiber networks, some of them heavily regulated. Something isn't working in the United States.

rayinerOP12y ago

foobarqux12y ago

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