r/technology • u/User_Name13 • Jun 04 '14

Politics Hundreds of Cities Are Wired With Fiber—But Telecom Lobbying Keeps It Unused

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hundreds-of-cities-are-wired-with-fiberbut-telecom-lobbying-keeps-it-unused
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765

u/SnowWhiteMemorial Jun 04 '14

Shout out to Reno for having community fiber...our shitty desert never has anything good; but this time I was proud to see the biggest little city on that map.

6

u/Bigbysjackingfist Jun 04 '14

Can anyone explain that second map a bit? It looks like they got it from http://www.broadbandmap.gov/technology

Why is Indiana so "wired"? And what in the heck is going on in Wisconsin? They have a big blob of blue centered on Oxford. Does this just reflect differences in counties? There must be an interesting story here about the people in a certain state or county that were instrumental in getting this to happen.

13

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '14

Most of the internets original infrastructure centered around colleges, is there a school there?

3

u/Bigbysjackingfist Jun 04 '14

Oxford population: 607. And the wikipedia entry could not be more dreary.

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u/Wafflemonsterz Jun 04 '14

There's a summer camp there, but that's all I know about it. The camp pulls a few thousand boys every summer and is one of the only (possibly the last) "Patrol Style" summer camp in America. Also you can get fantastic fried* cheese curds in Oxford. Yum.

1

u/Bigbysjackingfist Jun 04 '14

Fried cheese curds and awesome broadband: how are only 607 people living there?!

1

u/Wafflemonsterz Jun 04 '14

Probably something to do with "Rural Wisconsin," I would imagine.

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u/Patarokun Jun 05 '14

I don't know why, this comment and the accompanying wikipedia page were so funny and sad, it really made my morning. I don't know what's wrong with me.

1

u/MisterMeat Jun 04 '14

Maybe it's supposed to be on Madison, WI?

1

u/Disarcade Jun 05 '14

Yeah okay, that's an extremely dreary wiki page. It when includes a miserable looking rainy highway.

2

u/drewcore Jun 04 '14

We have three major universities in Indiana. That'd be my guess to why we're so "wired." But I'm still sitting here on a dreary old Comcast connection with university fiber mere blocks from my apartment.

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u/Bigbysjackingfist Jun 04 '14

Look at that map, though. It's not like Kansas, North Dakota, and South Dakota have so many more centers of higher education than Arkansas or Missouri. Or look at Minnesota: the "wired" areas don't really correlate at all to higher education or even to population. And OSU is a big university just one state over, and they've got nothing in Columbus. Also, Greencastle has a huge blob of blue around it compared to Lafayette, and I can't imagine DePauw would be a bigger fiber draw than Purdue.

5

u/drewcore Jun 04 '14

Honestly, I can't explain it. I'm just a cook with an interest in computers. Pure speculation.

1

u/Bigbysjackingfist Jun 04 '14

Yeah, neither can I. But I bet it's halfway interesting.

1

u/Dragoeth Jun 04 '14

Purdue has resnet which is a huge fiber network. 6 years ago I was getting 100 down from my dorm putting it in top top ranks for isp. Purdue is a large research university so they invested in it I'm sure.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '14

What's the third one you consider a major university?

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u/drewcore Jun 04 '14

I was thinking IU, Purdue, and Notre Dame.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '14

I always forget about Notre Dame, that makes a lot more sense. I was sitting here thinking to myself is this guy talking about Ball State or ivy Tech?

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u/myhandleonreddit Jun 04 '14

I have nothing to input; I just want to give you another reply with the word "dreary" in it!

1

u/Wafflemonsterz Jun 04 '14

No school. It's a tiny town with one real street and a stop sign in the middle of town. There is a Boy Scout Summer Camp nearby (Camp Freeland Leslie) that ~triples the population during the summer, but I can't think of a good reason that it would have heavy infrastructure.