Your ISP's Worst Nightmare... - Comments Page 2

Our city runs a cable/internet/phone and I am very pleased with the service. The cost is not to bad 57 for basic cable and 38 for upgraded internet. We don't have ant trouble streaming on a couple of tablets and tv's. I am very pleased with the service. Thanks Bob for such timely information.

I live in a City of about 200000 residents. You would think that in a community of that size that all would access to several ways to get the internet, yet that is not so. Most of the City can get DSl from a phone company. Most of the City can get Cable Internet from one of 2 or 3 Cable Companies that operate in the City, but in the portion of the City where I live, I have two options, neither of them acceptable to me. The cable company has not and probably will not wire my neighborhood, and the local phone company offers 768 kbps max.

So the two options I have are Satellite Internet and RF internet. Satellite Internet is not a viable option because they limit bandwidth. Anything more than 20 GB per month becomes very costly. I have 6 computers and use that much per month simply updating them. RF or Radio Frequency internet, where I have an antenna on my roof pointed at a transmitter on a water tower (about 1/4 mile away) allows me unlimited broadband, but is fairly slow. Maximum speed is listed at 3 MBps, but I rarely ever see that speed, as the internet is shared by about 300 homes. Trying to go online when there is a lot of use by others in my area can be very frustrating. And trying to watch a stream on TV can become impossible.

So I would welcome my City adding fast internet service. The only problem I would foresee is that the City, San Bernardino, CA, has declared Bankruptcy because of the City Council's wild spending on other things. I very much doubt there is much of a chance here for a Citywide, City owned Internet Service.

I live in the suburbs of Philadelphia and I would bet the farm that this will not happen here in the near future. Comcast up until the past few years had a monopoly on broadband and even with Fios in some of the market it stills has the majority of users. Our local government here is lazy. Anything for money and Comcast has lots of it.

On another note however I am getting 150-180 Mb/sec on average for $57.00 per month. Not bad for "American" Internet standards.

We have a cooperative providing telecommunication services to 16 communities in our area. With fiber to the home (FTTH) one becomes a member by having phone service. Digital TV and Internet are available with speeds sufficient to allow streaming video for a variety of sources and options. Performance and support are excellent. I base these observations on professional experience I have had working for the last 17 years with a large number and variety of different ISPs. The beauty of the cooperative model is that the members are the owners and basically service and govern themselves. Dividends have been paid out annually to all members based on usage which lower member costs.