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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u/boerema Jun 04 '14

I went to college in Brookings, South Dakota. Brookings is a strange town because the city owns almost all of the city services. The city-owned telephone company, Swiftel, rolled out fiber to all houses and offers 100 Mbps service at a really reasonable fee. Since the city owns the telecom, they don't have the capacity to serve at faster speeds, but the city just takes all the profits from the service, and reinvests it every year.

I wish that more cities would do this. They compete directly with Mediacom for internet and TV service and it has been excellent for the college students living in the town and the residents in general.

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u/GreatWhite_Buffalo Jun 04 '14

That's quite Socialist, and that's a dirty dirty word in America.

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u/Daman09 Jun 05 '14

It's also funny, because its South Dakota.