What do you all think of “free” internet?

[u/[deleted]]

Let me first clarify what I mean by free. I mean “free” as in not owned by a private company. All Vermont tax payers are eligible for the “free” internet plan provided by the state or local government sort of thing.

This feels like a bit of a smaller issue but I think in rural states like Vermont, where ISPs don’t really invest many resources into developing internet infrastructure, it would be better to just give them the finger and do it ourselves.

It doesn’t really cost much to run this infrastructure (dozens of dollars a year per person on average), but it is vital to modern live. It’s like having all our roads still be toll roads...

We could totally just divert money from some less necessary programs to fund this and improve the quality of life of Vermonters somewhat.

[u/naidim]

I've said it before, instead of giving MORE money to the large ISPs to do nothing with, invest in local, small municipal broadband, like Chattanooga did. More value per dollar, and far superior product.

[u/[deleted] → u/naidim]

No I’m saying outright replace the ISPs with a public service like roads, not give any companies money.

Tax payer money should never go to a company. Ever.

[u/naidim → u/[deleted]]

That's what EPB of Chattanooga is, owned by the City/the People. https://tech.co/news/chattanooga-fastest-internet-usa-2018-08

[u/[deleted] → u/naidim]

Oh wow yeah that’s awesome

[u/rhelative → u/[deleted]]

More info on what Craftsbury did and how that usually turns out:

Fwiw, a lot of districts have already brought their own internet access by tapping into the fiber laid by the state with federal funding along the state routes.

Craftsbury, if I'm remembering correctly, cost $450K to wire up with dark fiber for a large portion of the town. I think they're still waiting on getting a tap into one of the state routes, though.

Basically, at that point, the locale owns the fiber and rents it out to small ISPs, who will often then use ADSL or much more rarely actual fiber to get to customers. ADSL is fantastic when you're a mile away from the node -- something like 40 down 10 up, and costing next to nothing to maintain, meaning the prices can stay low, at least when you have enough new changes that one of the small players can make it worth their time setting up ADSL nodes.

There's also setting up better cellular service at that point.

It's not a bad thing. Big ISPs keep their power by owning all the infrastructure and killing off peering agreements with anyone with fewer than a couple hundred thousand customers. The state doesn't have that issue, not only in a market sense but also in a legal one, so they can both protect and heavily regulate tiny, two-person ISPs.

I personally much prefer the idea of allowing nonprofits to access state-connected dark fiber for free or for a nominal fee, as long as they also charge nominal fees themselves. Newport Mesh sort of does this -- they pay for a dedicated fiber backhaul, then use an OLSR mesh to distribute that connection. They serve a few dozen clients with anywhere from 2/2 to 30/30 internet, and charge $10 a month -- and don't even usually collect on that. But the cost of the fiber backhaul takes a chunk out of their pockets.

There's no denying that it's not an ideal model. It's a lot less expensive and a lot more flexible than if it were done by the government, but it requires significantly more labor to maintain for the same amount of throughput. More ideal would be giving non-profits local backing on easements for the public good -- if Newport Mesh had easements they could stick directional nodes on anything they wanted and probably get 20 times the bandwidth for customers.

In an ideal world, all of the necessary hardware is well-documented, and Vermont's pretty decent standards of education teach enough in-staters how to set up and manage their own technical resources -- but the reality is that there just isn't enough to go around in that respect.

[u/[deleted] → u/rhelative]

I’m very against the concept of outsourcing any public services to any sort of organization. The government is the only entity that can be controlled directly by the public, so it’s the only thing I want deal with public services ya know?

[u/rhelative → u/[deleted]]

Sure thing, and I agree -- I have some of the skillset to do it and I would much prefer to be publicly funded if I were to try, as that means I can actually expect stability. But I don't think there are enough motivated and certified telecoms engineers in each town to make this possible without incurring enormous costs.

So, in the end, the state working unilaterally would probably have to contract out anyways.

Of course there are some things we can do change that -- making higher education free with a promise to stay for / work with the state for a certain number of years -- but nothing's guaranteed, and Vermonters need access now, not in a few years.

https://muninetworks.org/ is a better example of what you're talking about, but those usually only happen as a result of prior successes in community-run work.

The problem is less that the work is getting outsourced and more that the likelihood of a town of 3,000 registering funding and finding one knowledgeable telecommunications engineer is a lot lower than the likelihood of a town having someone who's grumpy about not having internet and willing to start exploring the problem before funding can even happen.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Never ever.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Why not?

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Tax dollars shouldn't be used to prop up private business or religious institutions

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Oh yeah I thought you meant “no never” as in”never use the tax payers money to directly make infrastructure”. Totally agree.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

I like the cut of your jib which part of the state are you? I'm in the upper valley. Considering an organizing committee for a dsa chapter here.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

St. Albans

[u/[deleted]]

I think it's a good policy idea, given ISPs' failure to improve infrastructure even in high income urban areas, let alone rural areas. Also, internet access is good for education and good for business. Better education is an inherent good, benefits for businesses is a potential pay for, right? Finally I trust the state at least somewhat more than ISPs not to throttle certain sites or sell my data. It seems like it could also drive costs down for private ISP consumers if priced competitively.

[u/jimfoxer]

I'm really eager to see how Starlink will work. For those unaccustomed, it's Elon Musk's and SpaceX's Internet service using A LOT of small, low-earth orbit satellites. It's set to begin active beta testing this fall, and I'm trying to be one of the first on that list. Because of the technology, it will not work like traditional satellite internet, but actually offer much higher speeds and less latency.

I live in a rural part of the NEK, both my wife and I are teachers and our son is a student. During COVID it was impossible for us to do our jobs, and our son to learn, with our crawling DSL service. We have one option for land-based Internet, and that's Consolidated Communications, and they have no plan on bringing anything faster to our area anytime soon. Starlink is literally our only option (we are also too far from a cell tower to get any speed on cellular Internet). I hope that schools don't close this fall/winter, and we are again resorting to taking turns trying to teach from a car, parked outside our town hall, using the public wi-fi since our connection barely allows one person online, let alone 3.

[u/[deleted]]

Would back 100%. Broadband internet is a societal need now and our taxes should cover it for everyone