Nightfall
My Goal Is To Deny Yours
Premium,MVM
join:2001-08-03
Grand Rapids, MI
 ·Site5.com
 ·AT&T Midwest
 ·Comcast
| Sounds great!
Small somewhat related story...
Back when I had ISDN to the internet, I was looking all over for a ISDN provider that was reasonable. I found a "company" here in town that gave me dual channel ISDN for $25 a month. That was for unlimited! I was skeptical at first, but after I saw how good the service was, I stayed with them till I got cable modem access.
This company was a mom and pop ISP that had all of its customers via word of mouth. They had a couple T1 links to the internet and had a strong userbase.
This idea of users providing broadband sounds great for those areas that lack the access. As a user who has been through the @home transition and watching it slowly die, I know that this kind of broadband doesn't have the cashflow that the big boys have. That said, I would like to see these movements gather strength and broadband use spread. I just don't want to see these providers come up and die in a year.
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Nightfall - »www.nightfall.net |
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rds24a
Teach Your Children
Premium
join:2000-12-13
Springboro, OH
clubs:
·RoadRunner Cable
| Already kicked out TimeWarner...
Add Lebanon, Ohio (»www.ci.lebanon.oh.us)
to the list. They've subbed out to a local ISP to
provide access via their community cable TV (they
kicked TimeWarner out of town a while ago) and
soon-to-be local telephone system.
Cable TV ~$38/month for full digital tier, Broadband
cable Internet ~$28.95.
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»www.brittanyrescue.org |
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andreo
join:2001-03-30
Des Moines, IA
| The way things should be!
I've always thought that this is the way things should be anyway. With the ok cost of equipment I could have a connection to a neighbor or two. Those neighbors could have the same and then it would look like the old commercial for that hair shampoo. "I connected to two friends, and then they connected to two friends, and so on and so on..." It would cut out the middle man and the only thing that would pose a problem would be connecting to a backbone at places. throw in a low fee for renting the connection to a backbone and your up and running.
Andre |
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nc1165
join:2001-04-10
Delray Beach, FL
| Sure, it looks good on paper
but so does Marxism and Homeowners Associations (which are synonymous). What happens when somebody wants to park their boat in the driveway, the internet equivalent of running a server that takes up a little bandwidth than the next guy? Hmmmmmmm? The Lawn Nazis will be on you like a Christmas sweater and you'll do and say anything to get either one off your back.
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If my enemy cuts me, I will drown him in my own blood. |
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cidhigh42
join:2001-02-26
Ashford, CT | What's so bad about Marxism? It's just scientific socialism... |
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dnoyeB
Ferrous Phallus
join:2000-10-09
Southfield, MI
| reply to Nightfall
Re: Sounds great!
This time I have to agree with you. ISDN is the beauty of the internet. It works just like it was designed too. Nowadays there is an ISDN "network" which means if you join 1 ISDN service, you can get service all across america. They share the phone lines. So 90% of companies in my area that sell ISDN use the same ISDN phone numbers and modems and networks. I pay same for ISDN as I do for dialup ~$13/month. and as you said $25 dual channel if my wife will hang up the dang phone...
Thats how DSL was supposed to be...We shall see.
I loved ISDN. All the rest are getting on my nerves. I would love to pay for cable by the bit. I would use ISDN all the time, and use cable to download RPMs and software patches, game demos, etc.
I still have ISDN telephone because you get 2 phones with it and its cheaper than 2 phones without ISDN!
Privitization. Why? Its so obviously an evil thing. It simply makes some family rich. And only those who are already rich can afford to make a bid on the privatized service. This does not serve the people. Anyone hear the excellent report today on Amtrak privitization being proposed?
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dnoyeB
"Then said I, Wisdom [is] better than strength: nevertheless the poor
man's wisdom [is] despised, and his words are not heard. " Ecclesiastes
9:16
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nc1165
join:2001-04-10
Delray Beach, FL
| reply to cidhigh42
Re: Sure, it looks good on paper
said by cidhigh42:
What's so bad about Marxism? It's just scientific socialism...
It's a great theory that discounts the penchant for human greed and selfish ambition. The human factor was not properly accounted for.
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If my enemy cuts me, I will drown him in my own blood. |
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wjwallace3
join:2002-01-17
Mount Tabor, NJ | reply to nc1165
very true! also regarding the above post, you have just built yourself a network with hundreds of points of failure. Plus you have to feel sorry for the guy on the end who can only push 10kbps because everyone else is using all the bandwidth. |
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dnoyeB
Ferrous Phallus
join:2000-10-09
Southfield, MI
| reply to nc1165
What happens is the community finds out who you are. Declars that you are stealing from them. You get a bandwidth fine for abuse. Next offence you get fined and clamped.
Believe me, people will act when they can directly FEEL the impact of your negative behavior. |
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stevent$
Since 1965
Premium
join:2000-08-31
Mohrsville, PA
| reply to Nightfall
Re: Sounds great!
Yeah, it sounds OK.....until you have to live it. In Kutztown, PA, that's the way things are run and many of the residents don't like it because of the monopoly. The town has squashed all competition.
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darn that stevent! |
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dnoyeB
Ferrous Phallus
join:2000-10-09
Southfield, MI | reply to wjwallace3
Re: Sure, it looks good on paper
Why should you design such a poor fault intolerant network. Is that how it works today? Why should the same citizens that are technicians for @home and AT&T and other broadband companies suddenly become stoopid since they work for the city? |
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djdanska
Premium,MVM
join:2001-04-21
Glen Ellyn, IL
clubs:
 ·Sprint Mobile Broa..
·T-Mobile US
·A + Net
·Mediacom
·RCN CABLE
| reply to Nightfall
They Won't care
I don't think that they would care too much. Heck, they could even sell the existing system to the city cheap. Most of those towns where served by jones intercable. The system is in so bad shape, and needs major upgrades. One less thing they have to do.
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»www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/64···his.html |
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cidhigh42
join:2001-02-26
Ashford, CT
| reply to nc1165
Re: Sure, it looks good on paper
Marxism has never been really tried. System claiming to be Marxists have been established, but have never been followed through upon.
Before you compleatly discount Marxism, remember that it has never really been given a chance. Publicly owned Utilities are a great place to apply the Marxist / socialist ideology on a smaller scale.
With private owned utilities, we got enron. Let us see what the outcome of these community owned utilities is, and if it is better than that with enron, then let it be called a sucess for socialism / Marxism. |
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C0deZer0
Oc'D To Rhythm And Police
Premium
join:2001-10-03
Davenport, FL
 ·Verizon FIOS
|  reply to Nightfall
Re: Sounds great!
This certainly could be good, especially if done correctly, and they do take care of deploying it carefully. They would have to consider the kinds of bandwidth stresses that may happen at maximum bandwidth saturation per home, and gauge accordingly; this overselling of bandwidth only leads to trouble.
I myself have been quite satisfied with my DSL provider, as I've had no real problems with them, except for mainly the USB modem that they had sent me initially. However, going with their PCI version really fixed a lot of that, as well as going with a new OS  .
Being where I am, there's no way that OOL would probably come down here, but if they did, I would probably sign up, for they seem to be the singular example of providing really good cable-modem access to their customers, according to the many reviews about the ISP on here. Just wish that they could come down south!  OOL - IMHO - would probably be the only cable-modem ISP that I would really consider favoring over my current DSL service.
However, if the city started to provide the i-net access for a good price, I might switch. but only if they take great care of making sure that the speed is there, and that the latency is low. I do too many things that require low latency for me to put up with anything getting dialup pings at ANY time of day.
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Everything AOL touches just plain sucks. End of Story! |
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2farfromCO7
join:2000-10-14
Farmington, MI
| reply to stevent$
So, it was already a monopoly. At least this monopoly will be held accountable for their actions. What accountability does your privitized cable monopoly have??? None. If your socialized cable monopoly screws up, they get voted out of office and are unemployed. That's accountability and responsibility. EVERY TRUE REPUBLICAN SHOULD BE IN FAVOR OF SOCIALIZING ALL MONOPOLIES BECAUSE THAT WOULD ACHIEVE THEIR GOALS OF ACCOUNTABILITY AND RESPONSIBILITY. I'm sick of people just blindly bashing all government run businesses without examining it intellectually. It's very easy to just dismiss it as being commie. |
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bhan261
join:2001-02-12
New York, NY | reply to nc1165
Re: Sure, it looks good on paper
Agreed! There are some things in life that are better left to private industry (and the profit motive.) Hell...my city government can't even pick up the garbage properly! Why would I want to entrust them with my telephone and internet service. |
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2farfromCO7
join:2000-10-14
Farmington, MI
| reply to rds24a
Re: Already kicked out TimeWarner...
Your digital teir is the same price as our analog. GOD DO I HATE ALL REPUBLICAN PRIVITIZATION PIGS!!! CABLE AND TELECOM SHOULD'VE BEEN SOCIALIZED FROM THE START. How we all got duped into buying this right wing deregulation trash just pisses me off to no end. NOBODY CAN POSSIBLY RUN INFRASTRUCTURE MORE EFFICIENTLY THAN THE GOVERNMENT. THAT IS AN ABSOLUTE FACT!!! |
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ATLJ
Go Braves
Premium
join:1999-12-24
Atlanta, GA
clubs:
·Comcast Formerly ..
|  Don't know about this...
This idea sounds good at first but instead of doing this first try and get some SLA's in place with the current providers. This is the way all real companies work relating to providing services. If the backbone I have setup for my company goes down we have SLA's in place that say it will be fixed within x amount of time and we get a dollar amount per minute that it is down credited to our account unless of course it is our fault.
The cities could work something like this out with the cable companies.
Say ATT has x amount of avg time to answer each tech support call and x amount of time to fix a user who is down and they have to install a new account within 10 days ect...if they don't meet certain goals they give the users in that area a credit on their account. If they don't come close to providing the service in the SLA's they have to give people X more back plus paying additional fines to a educational technology fund or something like that.
I think something like this will create better service than what some of these towns are trying to do.
These towns will end up with the same problems or worse because they will not have the capital to provide the connectivity as someone like TW or ATT has and then what do you do when they fail?? Complain to the government? That will do allot of good when they are streaming out to the parking lot at exactly 5:00 pm and you have a problem at 9:30 pm.
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"If the facts don't fit the theory, change the facts."
- Albert Einstein |
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Rob Froelich
join:2000-03-26
Saint Charles, IL
clubs:
·Comcast
| reply to dnoyeB
Re: Sure, it looks good on paper
You've got the right idea Dnoye. If someone is going to run a web server maybe they should pay for what they use if they are using a lot of a scarce resource. If I decide to run a quake server or something like that sustaining a lot of bandwidth to the public Internet perhaps I should pay for that too. If you are building a network today though without some of the legacy issues and bottlenecks that the incumbent telcos and cable companies are dealing with and can invest in building something with an eye to the future (where everyone has a LOT more bandwidth) a couple people sucking up a little more bandwidth shouldn't be a big deal, nor should it be very expensive for you the provider. A big upside that I see of this kind of public net access is a great potential to develop a really kick butt local network infrastructure. I mean I'd love it if i could dial up a website to make reservations at local restaurants or order flowers from the florist down the street, or maybe order chinese food without having to overcome a language barrier. Etropolis tried to do a lot of this stuff, but never really could get off the ground because nobody wanted to invest any money in a local network infrastructure. Of course not all municipalities can do this, but then not all municipal governments are created equal. How many other governments could create a local electric utility and save their residents 30% compared to prevailing private sector rates in the state.
I'm not one that usually advocates government involvement in areas best left to the private sector, but I make an exception if government infrastructure exists that can decrease the cost of an essential public services while increasing the quality. Anyone that can't see the good in that has been worshipping at the temple of unregulated market forces just a bit too long.
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Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!! |
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cidhigh42
join:2001-02-26
Ashford, CT
| reply to bhan261
"Agreed! There are some things in life that are better left to private industry (and the profit motive.) Hell...my city government can't even pick up the garbage properly! Why would I want to entrust them with my telephone and internet service."
Why? Because of ENRON! |
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