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1   curious2   2018 Dec 11, 5:47pm  

MegaForce says
care to chime in?


Fiber has advantages over any radio technology including 5G. Houses and businesses can have dropout areas where radio signals become unreliable. Also, radio has inherent security issues, because radio can always be intercepted and eventually decrypted. (Some would say the Internet has that risk no matter what, but radio makes local interception easier.)
2   Evan F.   2018 Dec 11, 6:49pm  

Also, I would imagine fiber has a massive advantage in terms of long term viability and bandwidth headroom. Let's say 5g eventually reaches something like 2 Gbps, which is really generous, afaik. Any fiber cable will handle many times that bandwidth, as long as you have the supporting hardware, which will be cheap relative to the process of laying all that cable initially. So fiber is likely much more future proof.
3   NuttBoxer   2018 Dec 12, 8:22am  

Wow, I thought the ISP mafia didn't allow this.
4   Shaman   2018 Dec 12, 8:42am  

I pay for spectrum internet only. It’s still a pretty decent deal value wise, considering it’s enough bandwidth for everyone in the house to run some kind of streaming device all month for $70.
5   NuttBoxer   2018 Dec 12, 11:38am  

Quigley says
I pay for spectrum internet only. It’s still a pretty decent deal value wise, considering it’s enough bandwidth for everyone in the house to run some kind of streaming device all month for $70.


Geez, that much? I've never paid over $40, and I run a bittorrent client.
6   Hircus   2018 Dec 12, 11:48am  

I'm really hoping maybe 5g or 6g gives true, reliable, fast internet wirelessly to the home. It will finally unthrone our corporate internet vampire overlords and bring some competition. All those cell phone towers are already in place, just waiting to be used for it.

I bet comcast is furiously trying to pass laws that will help them protect their moat against this future threat.
7   Evan F.   2018 Dec 12, 11:48am  

I've got Spectrum too. Kind of the only option in my neighborhood. $70/month for 300Mbps. It's pretty fast/reliable, but yeah, annoyingly pricey.
8   Evan F.   2018 Dec 12, 5:13pm  

MegaForce says
True. But that is also assuming 5G is the end all, be all. Whereas in fact there will be 6G, 7G, 8G, etc. going forward.


Sure, there's always going to be something faster/better in the pipeline. But if they laid 100Gb fiber now, odds are they'd have headroom for at least a couple decades and then some. 4g started rolling out in 2010. 5g will be here roughly a decade later. Who knows how fast 6g infrastructure will be, and when it will arrive, but even if it's an order of magnitude faster than 5g it still wouldn't keep up with 100Gb fiber.
9   Patrick   2018 Dec 12, 5:40pm  

NuttBoxer says
Quigley says
I pay for spectrum internet only. It’s still a pretty decent deal value wise, considering it’s enough bandwidth for everyone in the house to run some kind of streaming device all month for $70.


Geez, that much? I've never paid over $40, and I run a bittorrent client.


Lol, the Japanese would pay about $11/month for 40mbps.

We are fucked mostly because:

1. US politics is much more corrupt. Comcast lobbies to prevent competition because competition would lower prices.
2. We have too much diversity, leading directly to corruption. Diversity divides people so that they cannot effectively unify against corruption. Diversity makes people not care about each other, or the country.

Number one is, predictably, Japan, where the average broadband speed is 60mbps and they pay $0.27 per 1mbps. We, in comparison, average 4.8mbps and pay $3.33 per 1mbps, putting us at #15.


https://gizmodo.com/5390014/internet-speeds-and-costs-around-the-world-shown-visually
10   RWSGFY   2018 Dec 12, 7:25pm  

Patrick says
Lol, the Japanese would pay about $11/month for 40mbps.


Love price comparisons of random goods/services between two very different countries. How much a SWE @ your level is paid in Japan?
11   RWSGFY   2018 Dec 12, 7:25pm  

Paying $29 for this:

12   RWSGFY   2018 Dec 12, 7:55pm  

We have municipal entity delivering water in my East Bay town. It sucks when compared with private water provider I had when we lived on the Peninsula. No autopay, stupid "convenience fee" for paying with CC, idiotic two-month billing, draconian fees for being even one day late with payment (which happened once because of the stuff mentioned above).... Whoever equates anything "municipal" with "good" needs their heads checked.
13   Strategist   2018 Dec 12, 8:06pm  

APOCALYPSEFUCKisShostikovitch says
SKULL! FUCK! COMCAST!


Skull fuck all of them. Every major player of internet, cell phones, and data. They are all crooks, every one of them.
14   NuttBoxer   2018 Dec 13, 10:56am  

DASKAA says
Whoever equates anything "municipal" with "good" needs their heads checked.


Valid point, but when private is basically a monopoly, quality of service goes waayyy down.
15   RWSGFY   2018 Dec 13, 11:02am  

NuttBoxer says
DASKAA says
Whoever equates anything "municipal" with "good" needs their heads checked.


Valid point, but when private is basically a monopoly, quality of service goes waayyy down.


And when municipal is a monopoly it's going to be better why?
16   NuttBoxer   2018 Dec 13, 11:03am  

DASKAA says
And when municipal is a monopoly it's going to be better why?




In this case municipal is the underdog competing to provide the service. There was a vote, and at that level, I do believe the vote was meaningful, so the citizens had a choice. Not the best choice, but better than Comcast and lump it.
17   RWSGFY   2018 Dec 13, 11:08am  

NuttBoxer says
DASKAA says
And when municipal is a monopoly it's going to be better why?




In this case municipal is the underdog competing to provide the service. There was a vote, and at that level, I do believe the vote was meaningful, so the citizens had a choice. Not the best choice, but better than Comcast and lump it.


So it boils down to competition. If the municipal service will be competing with Comcast there is hope it will be better. But if Comcast pulls out it will deteriorate to something even worse. Because nothing municipal is ever better than private (in my experience).

PS. I don't think Comcast is that bad. I just don't play their games. All I do is I sign up for basic Internet with a promotional rate for a year, ride it out, disconnect, sign up another member of the household for another year of promotional rate, rinse, repeat... The service itself has been pretty reliable through ~20 years and 4 different locations. I own the modem so I don't rent any of their equipment.
18   NuttBoxer   2018 Dec 13, 11:14am  

DASKAA says
So it boils down to competition. If the municipal service will be competing with Comcast there is hope it will be better. But if Comcast pulls out it will deteriorate to something even worse. Because nothing municipal is ever better than private (in my experience).


Agreed.

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