Residents of 21 cities in Utah have access to some of the fastest, most competitively priced broadband in the US, at speeds up to 10gb/s and prices as low as $75/month. It's uncapped, and the connections are symmetrical: perfect for uploading *and* downloading. And it's all thanks to the government.
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/2
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2019/10/why-fiber-vastly-superior-cable-and-5g
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Why Fiber is Vastly Superior to Cable and 5G
Electronic Frontier FoundationCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/3
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/4
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/5
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/6
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/7
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us
Contrast this with places where the private sector has the only say over who gets broadband, at what speed, and at what price. America is *full* of broadband deserts - deserts that strand our poorest people. Even in the hearts of our largest densest cities, whole neighborhoods can't get *any* broadband.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/8
https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/10/flicc/#digital-divide
These places are not set up for success under the best of circumstances, and during the lockdowns, they suffered terribly. You think your kid found it hard to go to Zoom school?
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/9
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/02/elem-s02.html
ISPs *loathe* competition. They divide up the country into exclusive territories like the Pope dividing up the "new world" and do not trouble one another by trying to sell to customers outside of "their" turf.
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Elementary school students forced to use Taco Bell parking lot for internet in Salinas, California
World Socialist Web SiteCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/10
1. The company booked one million customers who had no alternative as an asset, because they would pay more for slower broadband, and Frontier could save a fortune by skipping maintenance, and charging these customers for broadband even through multi-day outages; and
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/11
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/12
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/04/frontiers-bankruptcy-reveals-cynical-choice-deny-profitable-fiber-millions
ISPs maintain the weirdest position: that a) only the private sector can deliver broadband effectively, but b) to do so, they'll need massive, unsupervised, no-strings-attached government handouts.
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Frontier’s Bankruptcy Reveals Why Big ISPs Choose to Deny Fiber to So Much of America
Electronic Frontier FoundationCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/13
https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/27/all-broadband-politics-are-local/
Now, this is obviously untrue, and people keep figuring out that publicly provisioned broadband is the only way for America to get the same standard of broadband connectivity that our cousins in other high-income nations enjoy.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/14
https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/19/culture-war-bullshit-stole-your-broadband/
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/15
ALEC didn't target red states exclusively because they had pliable, bribable conservative lawmakers. Red states trend rural, and rural places are the most likely sites for public fiber.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/16
Just about the only places in America where people *like* their internet service are the 450+ small towns where the local government provides fiber.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/17
https://communitynets.org/content/community-network-map
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Community Network Map | Welcome to Community Networks
communitynets.orgCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/18
Which brings me back to Utah, a red state with a GOP governor and legislature, a national leader in passing unconstitutional, unhinged, unworkable legislation as part of an elaborate culture war kabuki:
https://www.npr.org/2023/03/24/1165975112/utah-passes-an-age-verification-law-for-anyone-using-social-media
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/19
https://www.utopiafiber.com/faqs/
UTOPIA pursues a hybrid model: they run "open access" fiber and then let anyone offer service over it. This can deliver the best of both worlds: publicly provisioned, blazing-fast fiber to your home, but with service provided by your choice of competing carriers.
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FAQs - UTOPIA FIBER
UTOPIA FiberCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/20
As @KarlBode writes for @techdirt, Utahns in UTOPIA regions have their choice of *18* carriers, and competition has driven down prices and increased speeds. Want uncapped 1gb fiber? That's $75/month. Want *10gb* fiber? That's $150:
https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/15/utah-locals-are-getting-cheap-10-gbps-fiber-thanks-to-local-governments/
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Utah Locals Are Getting Cheap 10 Gbps Fiber Thanks To Local Governments
TechdirtCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/21
https://www.deseret.com/2005/7/22/19903471/utopia-responds-to-qwest-lawsuit/
UTOPIA has been profitable and self-sustaining for over 15 years and shows no sign of slowing. But 17 states *still* ban any attempt at this.
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UTOPIA responds to Qwest lawsuit
Deseret NewsCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/22
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/23
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/24
But wireless services are *orders of magnitude* slower than fiber. With satellite service, you share your bandwidth with an entire region or even a state. If there's only a couple of users in your satellite's footprint, you might get great service, but when your carrier adds a thousand more customers, your connection is sliced into a thousand pieces.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/25
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/26
Every wireless device in a region shares the same electromagnetic spectrum, and we are only issued one such spectrum per universe. Each strand of fiber, by contrast, has its *own* little pocket universe, containing a subset of that spectrum.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/27
https://spacenews.com/starlink-vs-the-astronomers/
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Starlink vs. the astronomers - SpaceNews
Jeff Foust (SpaceNews)Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/28
https://pluralistic.net/2021/06/27/immortan-altice/#broadband-is-a-human-right
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/29
*This* is why corporate shills and pro-monopolists prefer satellite to municipal fiber. Sure, it's orders of magnitude slower than fiber. Sure, it costs subscribers far more. Sure, it's less reliable. But boy oh *boy* is it profitable.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/30
Yeah, I'm talking about Starlink. Of course I am. Elon Musk basically claims that his business genius can triumph over physics itself.
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/31
https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/32
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Cory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/33
https://www.authorsalliance.org/2024/03/15/authors-alliance-10th-anniversary-event-authorship-in-an-age-of-monopoly-and-moral-panics/
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Authors Alliance 10th Anniversary Event: Authorship in an Age of Monopoly and Moral Panics
Authors AllianceCory Doctorow
•Ostrzeżenie o treści: Long thread/eof
4028mdk09 (modified)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rote_LED_Fiberglasleuchte.JPG
CC BY-SA 3.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en
eof/
File:Rote LED Fiberglasleuchte.JPG - Wikimedia Commons
commons.wikimedia.orgLosfromcp
•Jeff Miller (orange hatband)
•Cory Doctorowudostępnił to.
Dark Sage Torunka :verified:
•Steven Zekowski
•Your post caught me just as an unplanned xfinity outage started in my neighborhood in Minnesota. There was a planned outage on Monday “to upgrade our service”, and shortly after this current one started, I got an email about a planned outage on Saturday. But nothing about today. It’s as if the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing. And there is no alternative here. What’s a word that starts with “X” that means monopoly?
makemake
•something my european mind cannot comprehend....
young man yells at the cloud
•young man yells at the cloud
•🇺🇲 💰💰💰💰💰💰
here you go, use this money to build infrastructure that will provide rural America high-speed internet connectivity.
🥸🥸🥸(isps) okay!
(two hours later)
🥸🥸🥸💰💰💰💰 one yacht please
😃 here u go 🛥️
(two hours later)
🥸🥸🥸🛥️ yay I love free money
Jose Sabater
•I guess that the low price comes from the fierce competition between the 4 providers developing their own fibre infrastructure and from the strong regulation to encourage competition and avoid monopolies, but I do not really know.
Cory Doctorowudostępnił to.
Antonio Páez 🇲🇽🇨🇦
•toa5t
•