Small Massachusetts town decides to spend $1.4m building its own fiber, rather than paying Comcast $500K for shitty broadband

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Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/12/11/smartest-people-in-america.html

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Ah, I see customer service record in the con column. Who knew that would ever actually effect them?

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Any bets on how long it’ll take before Comcast sues the town to try to block this plan?

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Comcast - Consumerist’s Worst Company in America award winner 2010 and 2014.

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That seems to be their knee-jerk reaction whenever a town decides not to ‘acquiesce to their request’ to provide shitty service in exchange for everyone’s first born.

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The go to move is to lobby a state’s legislature to get this kind of effort banned for the whole state. No point in squashing one uprising when you can end all future ones as well.

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Damn. Charlemont is a wee bit too far for commuting to Chelmsford. Well maybe this will inspire other MA towns if it goes well.

I like to think Comcast would have trouble convincing the Massachusetts legislature to side with them but I’ve been horribly disappointed before.

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Good for them; Comcast sucks.

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I would jump on this in a heartbeat if offered in my town. But it might not be as appealing for people like my in-laws who are more interested in the cheapest broadband, not the best deal. It was strange to see that this municipal rollout is being sold as a single tier that might not be ideal for everyone.

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State Governor to vote in a “No Government Broadband” bill in 3 … 2… 1…

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How far away is the courthouse?

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I’m trying to parse how “really fast” wouldn’t be ideal for every user. Besides, Crapcast was charging us about $80, as part of a shitty bundle, for download speeds 1/10 as fast (ie- barely useable for streaming 1080p).

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Certainly at scale, there’s the argument of aggregate use being an issue, but that’s largely disappeared for smaller installations now that 100Gbps fibre transceivers and switches aren’t insanely priced.

Add to the fact that a lot of that traffic is going to the same places, which benefits peering and local caching, and frankly, it’s getting harder and harder for ISPs to argue “If everyone has fast pipes, it will be slow for everyone” anymore.

Kudos to the city for the wise move. Now get some good tech-ops folks in there to keep it fast!

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You must visit Massachusetts some day.

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Time and again I read these kind of stories from the USA and I wonder you call it the land of the free. It looks more like the land of the crushed by big-money corporate interests.

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Describes the State of Texas^ relation to its very own capital quite well.

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I grew up there and got out quickly as I really can’t stand snow. I know there are already laws in place in various cities that prevent municipal broadband over there.

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Because 10/2 is about $30 (or less) here. $10 sometimes for students. Some people are happy with that. Having to pay an extra $50 or more for bandwidth they don’t want isn’t a great deal.

But I’m paying $100 for 70/20. Saving money and boosting bandwidth is a no brainer for me.

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sounds like that town was already connected. pun intended
I would love to spend year just travelling to small places where I hear about great stuff like this. makes me think of the town in whales where the towns people made a decision to dig their own ditches for fiber optic, while having pints in the pub ,and then followed through.

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I like the combo:

Pro: Nationally recognized brand
Con: Customer service record

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