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Content tagged with "wilson"
North Carolina Considers Pro-Monopoly, Anti-Competition Broadband Bill
Stop the Cap! sounded the alarm that North Carolina is once again considering a bill to prevent competition by effectively banning communities from building their own networks.
The Communities United for Broadband Facebook page notes:
The cable industry will be pushing a bill to stop communities from investing in fiber optic infrastructure on April 21st at 9:30am in Raleigh before the Revenue Laws Committee in room 544 of the Legislative Office Building found at 46 W. Lane St, Raleigh, NC.This bill is being pushed by the private cable and telephone companies that are threatened by the publicly owned FTTH networks already in Wilson and Salisbury. North Carolina has a number of communities that have been inspired by the Gigabit promise of Google and are considering how they can build their own network if Google does not choose them. This bill will prevent communities from building the infrastructure they need to succeed in the future. I should note that Craig Settles is working with the Communities United for Broadband folks. They have a great slogan: Picking up Where Google Leaves Off.
Wilson Promotes Public Fiber Network in Economic Development Video
The city of Wilson created a video to woo businesses to town - in it, they briefly discuss the publicly owned FTTH network they built, noting it offers the fastest speeds in the state.
Wilson's Greenlight Keeps Time Warner Prices Low in Community
Catharine Rice gave a terrific presentation detailing the ways Time Warner has responded to the municipally-owned Greenlight fiber-to-the-home network: raising the rates on everyone around them and cutting great deals to Wilson residents. I saw the presentation on the Save NC Broadband blog which also has a link to her slides - make sure you follow along with the slides. She details how Time Warner has raised rates in towns around Wilson while lowering their prices and offering better broadband speeds in Wilson. Once again, we see that a community building their own network has a variety of benefits: a superior modern network that is community owned, lower prices on the last-generation network from the incumbent, and some investment from the incumbent. Now the question is whether Wilson's residents will be smart enough to support the publicly owned network in the face of Time Warner's low low prices - a recognizing that a few short years of low prices (for low quality) are not worth abandoning the publicly owned network and the benefits it has created in the community.
Cable pricing in the Raleigh-Durham-Cary NC Market from City of Wilson, NC on Vimeo.
Proactive Broadband Communities and NATOA Awards
Craig Settles recently wrote "Debunking Myths about Government-Run Broadband" to defend publicly owned networks (the title is unfortunate as many networks are publicly owned but not necessarily run directly by the government). Nonetheless, he tackles several false claims commonly levied against public networks and offers an entertaining rebuff to those rascally incumbents down in North Carolina that keep trying to buy legislation to protect themselves from competition:
Time Warner tried to get a bill passed in the state legislature this year to prevent cities from offering broadband service. They claimed community networks create an un-fair playing field. Personally, if I ran a bezillion dollar company and a small town of 48,000 with no prior technology business expertise built a network 10 times faster than my best offering, I’d be embarrassed to be associated with the bill. If incumbents want to level the playing field, maybe they should outsource their engineering operations to Wilson.He revealed an upcoming list of ten smart broadband communities that has since been published here. This is a mixture of communities that have taken action to improve broadband - a variety of models and community types. Without detracting from this list, I want to note that some networks are missing important context. For instance, Wilson NC, lists an unimpressive number of subscribers currently, but the network is still being built and many who want to subscribe are not yet able to subscribe. Additionally, it would be nice to see the prices offered for each speed tier -- many of these networks keep higher speed tiers much more affordable than do traditional carriers. That said, many kudos to Craig for putting this list out there (he will be putting similar lists up in the near future). While on the subject of impressive community networks, NATOA has announced its community broadband awards.
Virginia County Looks to Wilson for Muni Network Inspiration
Folks in the Isle of Wight County in Virginia are looking to Wilson, NC, (which runs its own FTTH network called Greenlight) for inspiration as Charter will not expand broadband access locally. Interestingly, industry-backed Connected Nation would not consider these people to be unserved because they could buy wireless broadband cards that offer slow speeds at expensive prices and are still often capped at a monthly transfer of 5 Gigabytes ... which is to say not really a broadband option.
Charter will not expand their cable networks because
Charter requires that an area have a density of at least 30 rooftops per square mile in order to offer service, which leaves large swaths of the county, especially southern and western areas, without access.Sounds like a good opportunity to investigate a publicly owned network.
Community Broadband - High Capacity, Low Cost
To celebrate the launching of MuniNetworks.org, we wanted to highlight some of the best broadband available in the United States.
If you were looking for the best citywide broadband networks available in the United States, you would almost definitely find publicly owned networks. We just collected some data on top-performing networks in the U.S.
Though Comcast and Verizon have received a lot of attention for their investments in higher capacity networks, they still do not compare to some of the best community full fiber-to-the-home networks.
In comparing some of the fastest publicly owned broadband networks to some of the fastest national private sector networks, we found that the publicly owned networks offer more value per dollar. Update: A few weeks after this was published, Verizon upped its speeds and prices for several of the tiers.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the data are the baseline speeds available in Wilson North Carolina and Lafayette Louisiana. Lafayette offers a symmetrical 10Mbps connection for $28.95/month whereas Wilson charges $34.95.
I can only imagine how these networks have made their businesses more competitive while cutting telecom budgets for the schools and cities. Imagine being a business in Lafayette with a 50Mbps symmetrical connection when your competition is renting a T-1 at 1.5Mbps for $500/month. 30x the speed at 1/10th the cost. That is a competitive advantage.
In Utah, if Comcast has upgraded to DOCSIS 3 in that area, they'll be charging $140/month for a 50/10 connection when those in the UTOPIA footprint have access to a 100/100 connection for $147.
At least some communities across the U.S. are still competitive with the rest of the world when it comes to Mbps at affordable prices. There is still hope.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the data are the baseline speeds available in Wilson North Carolina and Lafayette Louisiana. Lafayette offers a symmetrical 10Mbps connection for $28.95/month whereas Wilson charges $34.95.
I can only imagine how these networks have made their businesses more competitive while cutting telecom budgets for the schools and cities. Imagine being a business in Lafayette with a 50Mbps symmetrical connection when your competition is renting a T-1 at 1.5Mbps for $500/month. 30x the speed at 1/10th the cost. That is a competitive advantage.
In Utah, if Comcast has upgraded to DOCSIS 3 in that area, they'll be charging $140/month for a 50/10 connection when those in the UTOPIA footprint have access to a 100/100 connection for $147.
At least some communities across the U.S. are still competitive with the rest of the world when it comes to Mbps at affordable prices. There is still hope.Services Comparison
Community broadband networks offer some the highest capacity connections at the lowest costs. Many of these communities, before building their networks, were dependent on 1.5 Mbps connections that cost hundreds of dollars, or less reliable DSL and cable networks. The community broadband networks below are full FTTH networks, so the advertised speeds are the experienced speeds -- unlike typical cable advertised speeds, which users pay for but rarely experience due to congestion on the shared connection. In comparing some of the fastest publicly owned broadband networks to some of the fastest national private sector networks, we found that the publicly owned networks offer more value per dollar. Update: A few weeks after this was published, Verizon upped its speeds and prices for several of the tiers.
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The data we used is below. We thought about comparing also Qwest's "Fiber-Optic Fast" speeds, but their fastest upload speeds are below 1 Mbps, which makes them too pokey for the above networks.
Community Broadband Networks: The Best of the Best
Note: Speeds are expressed as Mbps Down/Up. Each network has distinct offering for each tier.
| Tier 1 | Tier 2 | Tier 3 | Tier 4 | |||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| City | State | Speed | Price | Speed | Price | Speed | Price | Speed | Price | Notes |
| Lafayette | Louisiana | 10/10 | $28.95 | 30/30 | $44.95 | 50/50 | $57.95 | - | - | All connections come with 100Mbps connections to others on the local network. |
| Wilson | North Carolina | 10/10 | $34.95 | 20/20 | $54.95 | 40/40 | $99.95 | 60/60 | $199.95 | There is also a 100/100 tier for $299.95. These prices come from the bundled options. There is one unbundled option - 20/20 for $59.95 |
| UTOPIA | Utah | 15/15 | $39.95 | 30/30 | $49.95 | 50/50 | $59.95 | 100/100 | $147 | This is an open access network, 100/100 is not offered by all service providers |
| Tullahoma | Tennessee | 10/1 | $37.95 | 5/3 | $49.95 | 20/5 | $59.95 | 50/15 | $149.95 | There is also a 100/30 tier for $299.95 |
| Loma Linda | California | 5/5 | $29.95 | 10/10 | $49.95 | 15/15 | $99.95 | - | - | |
| Compare to the best from the private sector: | ||||||||||
| Comcast | DOCSIS 3 in MN | 1/.384 | $39.95 | 12/2 | $59.95 | 16/2 | $69.95 | 22/5 | 79.95 | A higher tier of 50/10 is available for $139.95/month. These are unbundled prices, bundling generally saves $15/month. Speeds are "up to" depending on neighborhood congestion. Comcast marketing makes it difficult to understand what speeds you are paying for. |
| Verizon | FiOS | 10/2 | $49.99 | 20/5 | $59.95 | 20/20 | $69.95 | 50/20 | $144.95 | These are unbundled prices - bundling with phone reduces monthly price by $5. FiOS is not available throughout Verizon footprint. |
The table reflects real rates, not short-term introductory rates. Do not be fooled into thinking that community broadband networks are able to offer the best deal because they are use taxpayer dollars. Very few community networks have ever used taxpayer money. Most networks are built using revenue bonds - which means that private investors fund the network, and are typically repaid over a period of twenty years using revenues generated by the services. Some cities choose to "back" the bonds with taxes -- which means that if the network does not generate sufficient revenue, the city will make up the difference with public money. Other cities choose not to back the bonds; this is a choice made by each community and impacts the interest rate on the bonds. In most cases, community networks have been safe investments that have not missed debt payments because the communities had an urgent need for broadband. In many cases, they have so many people wanting to take service, they have long lists for the installers. The idea that these networks frequently fail is an utter myth. However, not all community broadband networks offer the blazing speeds at great prices displayed above -- some were built five years ago, when those speeds were sufficient. Others do not feel the need to push the envelope, the community is content with what they have. However, they are able to meet higher demands if a citizen requires it. So even if a community network advertises its highest tier as being an 8/1, it is likely able to offer an even faster connection to those who need it. This is one of the many benefits of community broadband - the network is accountable to the community. The community broadband networks being built today almost always offer the fastest speeds currently available - as seen above with two ongoing builds, Lafayette and Wilson.