tangent4ronpaul
Banned
- Joined
- May 11, 2007
- Messages
- 21,101
Google Fiber isn't the only gigabit option, but you may still be out of luck.
http://arstechnica.com/business/201...er-home-internet-move-to-one-of-these-cities/
[Please answer the survey at the end. I'm thinking about 2015-2016 infrastructure rollout]
Google Fiber has made gigabit Internet speeds seem tantalizingly within reach of so many Americans… unfortunately, it's just not available to most of us.
But Internet service providers in various cities are promising gigabit fiber to the home with increasing frequency. Just this week, regional mobile ISP C Spire announced a competition to select a Mississippi community for gigabit service. Last week, an ISP in Chattanooga, Tennessee dropped its gigabit prices to $70 a month.
So just where do you have to live to get gigabit speeds? Let's take a look at (mostly US) cities and regions that provide gigabit service to residents or have it in the works. Note that gigabit service isn't necessarily available to all or even most of the homes in these cities. If we missed any, let us know.
Kansas City: As you no doubt know by now, Google Fiber is available in parts of Kansas City in Kansas and Missouri for $70 a month. Google plans to bring the service to Austin, Texas, and Provo, Utah as well. While not all gigabit services provide symmetrical service (a gigabit for both download and upload speed), Google Fiber does.
Vancouver, British Columbia: This is one of the luckiest cities around, with two gigabit Internet ISPs. Shaw is selling gigabit service to small parts of Vancouver for $115 per month, while a newcomer called OneGigabit is wiring up some apartment and condo buildings and charging each customer $45 to $65.
Springfield, Vermont: With a lot of government assistance, VTel recently started deploying gigabit Internet and phone service to as many as 17,500 customers in its rural service area. The price is the best part: customers only have to pay $35 a month for the cheapest package that includes gigabit. VTel officially places a monthly bandwidth cap of 2.5TB on customers, but it says it generally lets them go well over that without penalty.
Mississippi (city to be decided): Residents here will have to wait a while, but C Spire just announced that it will roll a gigabit service out to at least one community in Mississippi. C Spire is taking applications now and says it will begin service "as early as possible in 2014." C Spire isn't saying how many residents will be eligible, but it promises to "deploy in the largest number of homes possible."
Chattanooga, Tennessee: EPB, a local Internet service provider, just lowered its prices for gigabit service from $300 a month to only $70, the Washington Post reports. 2,500 "elite users" will get their gigabits by early October, while 39,000 will be sitting pretty at 100Mbps.
Seattle: Gigabit Squared, an economic development corporation, aims to bring gigabit bandwidth to 100,000 Seattle residents and businesses. $80 per month is the price, with the first 14 neighborhoods coming online in early 2014. Also in Seattle, CondoInternet already provides gigabit service to condos and apartment buildings for $120 a month.
Chicago: Another project spearheaded by Gigabit Squared would bring the service to 4,825 residents, businesses, schools, and health care organizations in a first phase targeting Chicago's South Side neighborhoods. No firm timeline is set, but the project announcement in October 2012 said, "gigabit broadband access will be potentially available to as many as 210,000 residents who live in over 79,000 households as well as the 10,000 commercial businesses in the area."
Sebastapol, California: As we reported last year, Sonic.net brought gigabit fiber for $69.95 per month to this small town in Sonoma County. Sonic.net also has plans for San Francisco.
Burlington, Vermont: Burlington Telecom charges $149.99 per month, with a one-year commitment, for symmetrical gigabit service.
Lafayette, Louisiana.: The community-owned LUS Fiber advertises a residential service providing a gigabit in each direction, but at $999.95 per month it's priced more like a business service. 100Mbps costs $199.95.
Cedar Falls, Iowa: A gigabit here (with 500Mbps up) is pricey at $267.50 per month. The 120Mbps/60Mbps tier drops the price down to $137.50.
Tullahoma, Tennessee: For $299.95 a month, LightTube will give you a gigabit in both directions.
Bristol, Virginia.: BVU offers gigabit speeds in Bristol and numerous small towns in the area. $319.95 provides a gigabit down and uploads of 50Mbps. A 250Mbps/30Mbps service costs $256.95.
Wilson, North Carolina: GreenLight Community Broadband provides a gigabit up and down for $149.95, and boasts, "No modem needed! Our technician will install Ethernet cable right to your computer."
Morristown, Tennessee: The Morristown Utility Systems website only names a price for speeds up to 20Mbps up and 10Mbps down ($74.95). Residents can call the organization to ask about gigabit prices.
Clarksville, Tennessee: The Clarksville Department of Electricity offers a gig for $349.95 a month.
East Lansing, Michigan: A building management company upgraded broadband at one apartment complex to gigabit speed this past July and promised to make it available to 2,100 residents over the next year and a half.
Orono, Maine: GWI is promising to bring symmetrical gigabit service to residents in Orono and Old Town for $139.95 a month, in partnership with the University of Maine.
Omaha: CenturyLink has promised to connect 48,000 Omaha homes and businesses to a gigabit network by October of this year.
Minneapolis: Parts of this city get a gigabit up and down from US Internet for $114.95 a month.
Melrose, Minnesota: Every resident of this city of 4,000 is getting the option to buy gigabit connectivity for $300 a month from a provider named Arvig.
Chelan County, Washington: The county's Public Utility District built a fiber optic network to most residents allowing speeds up to a gigabit. Residents can buy the service through local ISPs.
Issaquah Highlands, Wash.: Residents here can get a gigabit down and 100Mbps up for $199.90 per month.
Olds, Alberta: This Canadian city with 8,500 residents gets gigabit service for $57 a month, courtesy of O-Net.
Utah: Seven ISPs in Utah cities offer gigabit service on the Utopia network, with prices starting at $64.95 per month.
Shelby, N.C.: RST promises gigabit Internet, but details of how much it costs and how to acquire the service are scarce on its website.
Monroe County, Ind.: Smithville Communications charges $393.60 per month for 1Gbps down and 200Mbps up.
San Francisco Bay Area: Paxio's gigabit service for Mountain View, Oakland, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, and other Bay Area places costs $138.50 per month.
Portland metro area, Ore.: Fibersphere offers gigabit as an option to 2,400 residents for $70 a month, and plans to deploy fiber to the home to a majority of Portland residents within two years.
Gig.U: This isn't a single region, but a consortium of more than 30 research universities attempting to accelerate nationwide deployment of gigabit Internet. Gig.U is helping provide gigabit networks to residents near universities, including in a small part of Gainesville, Fla.
Hat tip to High Speed Geek for its comprehensive list of gigabit communities published in July. In compiling this article, we drew from High Speed Geek, a map of publicly funded networks maintained by Muninetworks.org, previous Ars articles, and some Googling.
Where else can you get gigabit to the home? Let us know what we missed.
Gig.U lets you get Gigabit connections if you live near one of their partner Universities:
http://www.gig-u.org/
Arizona State University
Case Western Reserve University
Colorado State University
This is annoying to me, because my college, Colorado State University, in Fort Collins, CO is a so called member of this group, and have been for quite some time. Yet our only options around here are Comcast and Century Link. With a handful of local isps offering slow/expensive wireless as well.
Duke University
Florida State University
Howard University
Indiana University
Michigan State University
North Carolina State University
Penn State University
University of Alaska – Fairbanks
University of Arizona
University of Chicago
University of Connecticut
University of Florida
University of Hawaii
University of Illinois
University of Kentucky
University of Louisville
University of Maine
University of Michigan
University of Nebraska – Lincoln
University of New Mexico
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of Oklahoma
University of South Florida
University of Virginia
University of Washington
Virginia Tech
Wake Forest University
Washington State University
West Virginia University
Google Fiber is or will be available in these places:
https://fiber.google.com/support/
Kansas City
Austin, TX
Provo, UT
https://support.google.com/fiber/answer/2675225
100Mbps = 100baseTx = Fast Ethernet
1000Mbps or 1Gb = 1000baseTx = Gigabit Ethernet or GigE (required to get the full Google Fiber Internet experience)
More from the comments section of the article:
It'd be kinda funny to suddenly have a thousand or so submissions to various city councils for broadband rollouts. <== Lets push for local rollouts of MeSH Nets too!
For a company like Google they get better results in small to medium sized communities with large suburban sprawls because the local governments are easier to work with, and they don't have to work around as much ancient infrastructure. The other advantage they have is that they can approach the local government with the argument, "You don't have a large of high tech industry (i.e. big, taxable revenue) here, if you help us expedite the gigabit spread it will kickstart your local tech industry."
Wow, the pricing is all over the map from $80 in Seattle to $350 in Tennessee. <== Please answer the survey!!!!
Didn't Austin, TX get added as Google's next target (and AT&T said they would offer the same there)?
Austin rollout to start next summer. ATT may deliver 1Gbit on paper but probably not 1Gbit per user in a hood, will likely be shared. ATT uses GPON, maybe 2-10Gbit shared in hood. Google uses a GPON/acive ethernet hybrid that delivers near 1Gbit per user no matter load in rest of hood.
You can get gigabit fiber from RST Fiber in Shelby, NC. They are doing commercial and residential installs in Shelby right now, and have started doing commercial installs in Charlotte. They will be doing residential installs in Charlotte starting in Q1 2014.
No, they are doing single family homes as well. I have been corresponding with one of their product managers since I first learned of their service. She told me she has it in her home, and gave me the details on what service will be offered in Charlotte (I specifically asked her about having service installed in my home). I'm not sure how much a gig line will be, but she told me that a 50/50 line will run $60/mo, TV will be $20/mo, and phone will be $30/mo. There is a one time install fee of $200. Currently I'm paying TWC $80 something per month for a 15/1 line and basic cable (i.e. locals only). I'd be more than happy to pay $80 for a 50/50 line and TV.
http://rstfiber.com/solutions/business-residential/
You missed the town of Olds, Alberta. Population 8,500. Gigabit internet (up and down) from $57/month. (see CBC report)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/s...-massive-1-000-mbps-broadband-boost-1.1382428
I can't speak for other cities, but here in Chattanooga, Tn there was no cost for equipment or installation. They offered to run coax or cat5e/6 to wherever needed as well.
The equipment is a multiplexer about the size of a large shoebox/small printer and was in my case mounted to the outside of the house next to the power meter, which was upgraded as well. The multiplexer was where the fiber tied into the coax for TV service, cat5e/6, and phone service (although I opted away from that.)
From the tests I've seen, Chattanooga typically only gets 100Mbps, maybe up to 400 if lucky. Not bad but it appears to be shared with hood so could get worse as more users add in a hood. Google is designed to be near 1Gbit for every user in a hood.
Chattanooga, Tennessee: EPB, a local Internet service provider, just lowered its prices for gigabit service from $300 a month to only $70, the Washington Post reports.
A quick FYI: EPB isn't just "a local Internet service provider". It's a not-for-profit ISP (and electrical utility) company owned by the city of Chattanooga.
You need to confirm which actually deliver 1Gbit. Many are shared across a hood and may only get 100Mbps evenings if that. Google is true near 1Gbit no matter the load in the rest of hood (they use a hybrid GPON/active ethernet architecture). Need to show speedtests for each Gbit provider at 8PM.
Well some of those small cities aren't being served by big telecos but are doing it themselves. Wilson NC for example created "Greenlight" which provides fiber-to-home internet, phone, and television. They are alone in this though because ISPs were successful in lobbying for an anti-municipal broadband bill. That's why, in NC at least, a city of 49k has residential gigabit fiber internet available while the cities in the Research Triangle region do not (that's a region that encompasses 1.75 million people, several large universities including Duke, and dozens of high tech companies including Cisco and IBM.) Absent strong competition from the private sector and with the public sector forbidden from providing that competition in the market's stead, they have no reason to improve their service.
I have gigabit fiber at my house in Murray, Utah. Not through Google, but UTOPIA and XMission. $70/mo.
I'm buying a new home in Centerville. UTOPIA was a big reason for picking Centerville over some of the other nearby towns.
In parts of Issaquah, Washington (an eastern suburb of Seattle), they built a "neighborhood" fiber network that serves a moderately large residential area (which is still growing). They offer 1Gbit-down/100mbit-up for $199/mo., and 100mbit-down/20mbit-up for $55/mo.: https://www.highlandsfibernetwork.com/internet
I live in Issaquah. The speed is super nice and reliable.
Unfortunately they set up all their equipment such that you get to see all your neighbors' computers. I guess it's a feature?
So note: apparently people rolling this out are still learning how to configure their network equipment, heh.
I'm just happy that FIOS became available in my area (installed at my home about a week ago). While not gigabit, Verizon does offer a 500 megabit service at my location (I have like 30/85 right now), although it costs like $300 a month for that.
Everywhere Paxio services has gigabit fiber internet. There are several places in California, such as my development in Sunnyvale, CA. BTW, Paxio rocks! (All their options are symmetrical rates too!)
BTW, don't bother trying to sign up, if it's available to you, you'd already know. Their service is built-in by a builder when a development is constructed.
http://paxio.com/residential/internet/
From Paxio's web site:
"PAXIO’s network circles the San Francisco Bay Area with fiber beachheads and services delivered in Brentwood, Emeryville, Mountain View, Oakland, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, and Sunnyvale."
Does anyone know if there is a website out there for tracking fiber availability as the article does?
Do you want it as a cool interactive map?
http://www.broadbandmap.gov/technology
WARNING! According to this map, I have fiber to the end user available across the street, but not on my side of it. Any way to find out which company offers coverage at a specific location?
Go to the root http://www.broadbandmap.gov and put in the address 'across the street.' Should then list who's providing the service.
(I once rented a room in a house and my major question was "Is this place in the county?". They said yes, and they were not lying. It is in the county if you are the phone company, looking at collecting property tax, the post office, etc. However, if you happened to be the cable company, who didn't provide high speed cable internet access to the city, but did to the county, the county ended in the middle of my stret, so I would have had to live across the street to get it. If you are on a boarder, or near one call and ASK! Everyone draws their county/city lines differently around here, including the sanitation department and places that deliver food).
In the search bar at the top of this page, enter your zip code or address (or your neighbor's address):
http://www.broadbandmap.gov/internet-service-providers/
It will say "unable to find 'unspecified" when you first follow the link, just close that and enter your zip. It will list providers in your zip code by speed. Unfortunately the database it uses for that has to do with advertised plans and availability. If the company does not publish this information, its subscribers may be included in the coverage map but it might not show up in the search (RST did not when I entered Shelby, NC for example.) If that's the case then... you might want to just break down and ask your neighbors.
Also it looks like the availability by address info hasn't been updated since last December though the coverage maps for technology/connection types are more up to date. For example if you compare what the ISP map of Kansas city shows for Google fiber to what the overall fiber map for it shows you'll see the the latter is far more up to date. Ah well, at least you know that there's probably a provider in your area.
WARNING2: According to the broadbandmap I can get 1gbps+ speeds from Earthlink. According to Earthlink I can get dialup.
Edit: It looks like just about all of RI says it gets 1gbps, when in reality I don't think anywhere in the state does.
DO NOT TRUST THE MAP!
I have CondoInternet in Seattle. It isn't widely available. As the name suggests it's per condo or apartment building. All of the new construction in South Lake Union will have access to it, as it's targeted to high tech employees (namely Amazon).
It's 60/mo for (actual, measured) 100mbit up and down with no caps. For me gigabit is overkill. Amazing service and I hope it keeps expanding.
One cool thing about it is there is no modem. There are simply Ethernet jacks in the apartment walls, like in office buildings. Very convenient.
Smithville Communications offers FTTH up to 1000/200mbps to a few rural areas around (but not in) Bloomington, Indiana. Their gigabit service is priced "at a premium," at $393.60/mo with included phone service (whether you want it or not).
http://smithville.net/fiber/maps
Gigabit Internet connections aren't so much about "how fast can I download from WebsiteX?" so much as it's about "how fast can I download from WebsitesA through WebsitesZ simultaneously?" and "how many devices can I have online at once?". And, it opens up a whole new class of uses:
- direct NFS shares to friends across town
- "LAN" gaming across town
- central file storage for friends'n family with "LAN" access speeds
- video conferencing without worrying about bandwidth
- etc
Gigabit Internet connections allow you to push the boundaries of your "LAN" into WAN-sized areas.
Stop thinking in terms of "my one PC connecting to one website" and start thinking in terms of "my LAN connecting to multiple systems at once"
Longmont, CO is in the process of converting the old city utility fiber lines into residential/commercial internet service. It is currently available to those areas directly adjacent to the main fiber line or willing to pay for the install costs. However, there is also a $45 million dollar bond issue on the ballot this year to expand available service areas. We will see if Comcast drops another $250k on trying to defeat this ballot issue like they did last time around. As far as costs go, the city is saying $50/ month for 1 gig residential service.
It is offered it in Orlando http://www.daistechnologies.com/ Only 1 neighborhood for right now though.
Fairfield Iowa has fiber to the home service provided by LISCO. I can't find pricing for 1 GB service, but they claim to offer it on their site. I don't know if their service is symmetrical or not.
I see $71 a month pricing for 100MB residential internet + phone service. Their transfer caps are insane though. ***20 GB a month!*** You can add $115 a month to get that up to an amazing 300GB a month...
I've spoken with one of their senior network engineers. He seemed to actually believe 20GB a month is reasonable…
Danville VA has muni fiber.
http://www.ndanville.com/
More interesting will be whether jobs follow fiber. Will companies leave overcrowded, high-cost-of-living areas and move to places with a better quality of life, once better Internet access is available?
Ars missed my area from this list, which is large swathes of the county Grant in Washington State. It's maintained by our Public Utility District and they host maps that show availability in the various cities in the county: http://www.grantpud.org/customer-service/fiber-optic-network
They're also continuing to expand the fiber network, it's pretty common to see the PUD running fiber in my city.
We have tons of ISPs of various price ranges offering fiber here, some as cheap as $45 a month.
Here's a speedtest I took at night from my ISP earlier this month: http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/2949554625
The Lake County, Minnesota government is running fiber to all residents, even in rural backwoods at no installation cost. Their monthly plans only go up to 100/100 but, hey, fiber to your cabin in the middle of the woods!
http://www.lakeconnections.com/faqs/
The electric co-op in neighboring Cook County (MN) is doing something similar.
http://www.aecimn.com/broadband-project/
CANADA: The large East Coast telcos/ISPs (primarily Bell and Rogers) are horrible, no two ways about it. The smaller and/or independent telcos/ISPs (TekSavvy, something in the Maritimes, something in Quebec) are decent, even good. The fun part is watching TekSavvy provide better service than Bell, using Bell's own infrastructure.
The large West Coast telcos/ISPs are a different story. Telus (DSL) is mostly crap. They top out at 15-ish Mbps at high prices; unless you are lucky enough to live in a new building in Vancouver that has Optik fibre run to it. They're also scrambling to run FTTN everywhere they can, but it's mostly to support Optik TV and not increase DSL speeds.
Shaw, though, is amazing. They've really turned things around the past 5 years or so. They moved to DOCSIS 2.0 fairly quickly (25/7 Mbps) and moved to DOCSIS 3.0 even quicker (250/15 Mbps). And prices are under $200 CDN for the uber-fast speed, with unlimited download. The most economical plan I've found so far is $60 CDN for 50/3 Mbps with 400 or 600 GB cap. But, they don't charge you through the roof for overages ... they just bump you into the next plan for that month and reset things next month.
And, they're running fibre all around the Metro Vancouver area.
Friend of mine had Telus fibre for a couple months, had nothing but complaints. Switched to Shaw fibre for awhile, loved it. Moved into the 'burbs and switched to their 100 Mbps plan, and hasn't noticed a difference (or hit any limits yet).
And, supposedly, whoever is in Saskatchewan is supposed to be even better than Shaw (they've made their ISPs/telcos a provincial utility or something along those lines).
ya so I live in Vancouver, only a tiny tiny tiny tiny percentage of the city is able to get Gigabyte, I would definitely reword the article.
Wasn't Sonic.net doing Gigabit somewhere in California?
It is little known, but before their buildout in Kansas, Google set up a small 1Gbit network in a Stanford neighborhood.
http://www.ipaloalto.com/pdf/Stanford_Report_102110.pdf
Here's a couple more planned 1Gb offerings:
Forethought.net in Denver, Colorado:
http://bbpmag.com/wordpress2/2013/08/forethought-net-provides-gigabit-speeds-to-denver-metro-area/
Leverett Broadband Committee in Leverett, Massachusetts
http://bbpmag.com/wordpress2/2013/0...-calix-to-enable-mas-first-gigabit-community/
CityLink Telecommunications in Albuquerque, NM:
http://bbpmag.com/wordpress2/2013/05/albuquerque-to-get-trufiber-gigabit-internet-service/
And here are a lot of spreadsheets of broadband growth by country:
http://www.oecd.org/internet/broadband/oecdbroadbandportal.htm
(The US is way down the list on most of the charts).
In select neighborhoods in the greater Rochester, NY area there's Greenlight, which offers 100MB for $50/month and gigabit for $250/month, both with a $100 install fee which is waived if you sign a two year contract. Sadly not available in my neighborhood yet, but theoretically in the next one over, so I have some hope that they'll make their way over eventually.
http://greenlightnets.com/
Salt Lake City is decidedly NOT a UTOPIA city and should not be included in the list. UTOPIA's gig offerings are available in Brigham City, Centerville, Layton, Lindon, Midvale, Murray, Orem, Payson, Tremonton, and West Valley City.
OK, I have done some grouping in the list and I *MIGHT* come back and re-organize it by state, don't hold your breath...
THE SURVEY:
As I mentioned at the top, I'm thinking of infrastructure rollout for 2015-2016. Prices are widely divided, from $70/mo - $400/mo. What you get for that varies widely too. The highest speed consumer systems are rolling out in suburbia and rural areas. In urban areas, you generally can't get more than 100 Kbps. As a grassroots, we need to get the biggest IT bang for our buck. That means best buys on equipment (think E-Bay), our bandwidth, power and, well, someplace cost effective for the equipment to live. Ideally this would be with someone tech friendly or at least someone willing to server sit and deal with the occasional call to the tune of: "Hay, could you reboot 'GoldBug' and 'RPsAbacus'? They seem to have crashed. Either that or did your kitten gnaw through the cat6 cable - again...?"
It looks feasible to put a site up in the 2-4K range, including all bills for an entire campaign cycle (2 years). That's well within the reach of a chipin. We are not talking serving up video's all day or running RPF's or DP, but most things short of that are feasable.
Survey questions:
1) Is your area listed above?
2) If not, but you know you can get Gbps speeds, please tell us about it.
3) Do you live near an area that can get these speeds and know a RP supporter that lives in that area. "Hay, stop laughing! - I really do want a gigabit connection and a couple of electrical circuits hooked up to the old outhouse. I already installed a window mount A/C from the flea market in there..."
If you answered "NO" to all three questions, above, you can stop taking this survey now.
4) How much is it a month?
5) Do you have to sign a contract? For how long?
6) At end of contract, what do prices become?
7) Do they charge for instillation? How much?
8) Do they provide for free?, one time charge?, make you buy? or rent you per month network equipment? - How much? "The fee's!, The fee's!"
9) What does electricity cost you per Watt? Please include all municipal, city, state, fed, etc taxes. These prices vary widely and can totally tip a cost analysis.
10) is there a d/u ratio that is not 1:1? ISP's often give you better DL bandwidth (first number) vs UL bandwidth (second number). This isn't good if you are running a server. It can be good if you get a nice price point and are doing "other things"...
11) Does the ISP allow you to run a server? If you are buying big bandwidth, the answer is generally yes.
12) Does the ISP have a bandwidth limit? The F'd up legal/corpocracy/lobbyist system in this country has made this popular. Basically what happens is you hit a bandwidth limit and at that point you either get cut off entirely, your transfer speeds get throttled down significantly or you get charged through the nose for every additional GB of data goes through your system(s). This is NOT GOOD for servers!
13) If your ISP has a cut off limit, what is it?
14) If your ISP throttles bandwidth, from what to to what, and at what threshold?
15) if they go with the charge through the nose model, at what threshold? And what do they charge per GB past that?
16) Do they have redundant pipes to the Internet?
17) Do they have redundant, backup/failover equipment?
18) Other? - ask it here...
If you are one of the lucky ones that live in a high bandwidth community, please take the time to fill this out. It could save us a TON of money! If you only initially qualify, please put up a post and update it. //BUMP the thread re: post ##
-t
http://arstechnica.com/business/201...er-home-internet-move-to-one-of-these-cities/
[Please answer the survey at the end. I'm thinking about 2015-2016 infrastructure rollout]
Google Fiber has made gigabit Internet speeds seem tantalizingly within reach of so many Americans… unfortunately, it's just not available to most of us.
But Internet service providers in various cities are promising gigabit fiber to the home with increasing frequency. Just this week, regional mobile ISP C Spire announced a competition to select a Mississippi community for gigabit service. Last week, an ISP in Chattanooga, Tennessee dropped its gigabit prices to $70 a month.
So just where do you have to live to get gigabit speeds? Let's take a look at (mostly US) cities and regions that provide gigabit service to residents or have it in the works. Note that gigabit service isn't necessarily available to all or even most of the homes in these cities. If we missed any, let us know.
Kansas City: As you no doubt know by now, Google Fiber is available in parts of Kansas City in Kansas and Missouri for $70 a month. Google plans to bring the service to Austin, Texas, and Provo, Utah as well. While not all gigabit services provide symmetrical service (a gigabit for both download and upload speed), Google Fiber does.
Vancouver, British Columbia: This is one of the luckiest cities around, with two gigabit Internet ISPs. Shaw is selling gigabit service to small parts of Vancouver for $115 per month, while a newcomer called OneGigabit is wiring up some apartment and condo buildings and charging each customer $45 to $65.
Springfield, Vermont: With a lot of government assistance, VTel recently started deploying gigabit Internet and phone service to as many as 17,500 customers in its rural service area. The price is the best part: customers only have to pay $35 a month for the cheapest package that includes gigabit. VTel officially places a monthly bandwidth cap of 2.5TB on customers, but it says it generally lets them go well over that without penalty.
Mississippi (city to be decided): Residents here will have to wait a while, but C Spire just announced that it will roll a gigabit service out to at least one community in Mississippi. C Spire is taking applications now and says it will begin service "as early as possible in 2014." C Spire isn't saying how many residents will be eligible, but it promises to "deploy in the largest number of homes possible."
Chattanooga, Tennessee: EPB, a local Internet service provider, just lowered its prices for gigabit service from $300 a month to only $70, the Washington Post reports. 2,500 "elite users" will get their gigabits by early October, while 39,000 will be sitting pretty at 100Mbps.
Seattle: Gigabit Squared, an economic development corporation, aims to bring gigabit bandwidth to 100,000 Seattle residents and businesses. $80 per month is the price, with the first 14 neighborhoods coming online in early 2014. Also in Seattle, CondoInternet already provides gigabit service to condos and apartment buildings for $120 a month.
Chicago: Another project spearheaded by Gigabit Squared would bring the service to 4,825 residents, businesses, schools, and health care organizations in a first phase targeting Chicago's South Side neighborhoods. No firm timeline is set, but the project announcement in October 2012 said, "gigabit broadband access will be potentially available to as many as 210,000 residents who live in over 79,000 households as well as the 10,000 commercial businesses in the area."
Sebastapol, California: As we reported last year, Sonic.net brought gigabit fiber for $69.95 per month to this small town in Sonoma County. Sonic.net also has plans for San Francisco.
Burlington, Vermont: Burlington Telecom charges $149.99 per month, with a one-year commitment, for symmetrical gigabit service.
Lafayette, Louisiana.: The community-owned LUS Fiber advertises a residential service providing a gigabit in each direction, but at $999.95 per month it's priced more like a business service. 100Mbps costs $199.95.
Cedar Falls, Iowa: A gigabit here (with 500Mbps up) is pricey at $267.50 per month. The 120Mbps/60Mbps tier drops the price down to $137.50.
Tullahoma, Tennessee: For $299.95 a month, LightTube will give you a gigabit in both directions.
Bristol, Virginia.: BVU offers gigabit speeds in Bristol and numerous small towns in the area. $319.95 provides a gigabit down and uploads of 50Mbps. A 250Mbps/30Mbps service costs $256.95.
Wilson, North Carolina: GreenLight Community Broadband provides a gigabit up and down for $149.95, and boasts, "No modem needed! Our technician will install Ethernet cable right to your computer."
Morristown, Tennessee: The Morristown Utility Systems website only names a price for speeds up to 20Mbps up and 10Mbps down ($74.95). Residents can call the organization to ask about gigabit prices.
Clarksville, Tennessee: The Clarksville Department of Electricity offers a gig for $349.95 a month.
East Lansing, Michigan: A building management company upgraded broadband at one apartment complex to gigabit speed this past July and promised to make it available to 2,100 residents over the next year and a half.
Orono, Maine: GWI is promising to bring symmetrical gigabit service to residents in Orono and Old Town for $139.95 a month, in partnership with the University of Maine.
Omaha: CenturyLink has promised to connect 48,000 Omaha homes and businesses to a gigabit network by October of this year.
Minneapolis: Parts of this city get a gigabit up and down from US Internet for $114.95 a month.
Melrose, Minnesota: Every resident of this city of 4,000 is getting the option to buy gigabit connectivity for $300 a month from a provider named Arvig.
Chelan County, Washington: The county's Public Utility District built a fiber optic network to most residents allowing speeds up to a gigabit. Residents can buy the service through local ISPs.
Issaquah Highlands, Wash.: Residents here can get a gigabit down and 100Mbps up for $199.90 per month.
Olds, Alberta: This Canadian city with 8,500 residents gets gigabit service for $57 a month, courtesy of O-Net.
Utah: Seven ISPs in Utah cities offer gigabit service on the Utopia network, with prices starting at $64.95 per month.
Shelby, N.C.: RST promises gigabit Internet, but details of how much it costs and how to acquire the service are scarce on its website.
Monroe County, Ind.: Smithville Communications charges $393.60 per month for 1Gbps down and 200Mbps up.
San Francisco Bay Area: Paxio's gigabit service for Mountain View, Oakland, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, and other Bay Area places costs $138.50 per month.
Portland metro area, Ore.: Fibersphere offers gigabit as an option to 2,400 residents for $70 a month, and plans to deploy fiber to the home to a majority of Portland residents within two years.
Gig.U: This isn't a single region, but a consortium of more than 30 research universities attempting to accelerate nationwide deployment of gigabit Internet. Gig.U is helping provide gigabit networks to residents near universities, including in a small part of Gainesville, Fla.
Hat tip to High Speed Geek for its comprehensive list of gigabit communities published in July. In compiling this article, we drew from High Speed Geek, a map of publicly funded networks maintained by Muninetworks.org, previous Ars articles, and some Googling.
Where else can you get gigabit to the home? Let us know what we missed.
Gig.U lets you get Gigabit connections if you live near one of their partner Universities:
http://www.gig-u.org/
Arizona State University
Case Western Reserve University
Colorado State University
This is annoying to me, because my college, Colorado State University, in Fort Collins, CO is a so called member of this group, and have been for quite some time. Yet our only options around here are Comcast and Century Link. With a handful of local isps offering slow/expensive wireless as well.
Duke University
Florida State University
Howard University
Indiana University
Michigan State University
North Carolina State University
Penn State University
University of Alaska – Fairbanks
University of Arizona
University of Chicago
University of Connecticut
University of Florida
University of Hawaii
University of Illinois
University of Kentucky
University of Louisville
University of Maine
University of Michigan
University of Nebraska – Lincoln
University of New Mexico
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
University of Oklahoma
University of South Florida
University of Virginia
University of Washington
Virginia Tech
Wake Forest University
Washington State University
West Virginia University
Google Fiber is or will be available in these places:
https://fiber.google.com/support/
Kansas City
Austin, TX
Provo, UT
https://support.google.com/fiber/answer/2675225
100Mbps = 100baseTx = Fast Ethernet
1000Mbps or 1Gb = 1000baseTx = Gigabit Ethernet or GigE (required to get the full Google Fiber Internet experience)
More from the comments section of the article:
It'd be kinda funny to suddenly have a thousand or so submissions to various city councils for broadband rollouts. <== Lets push for local rollouts of MeSH Nets too!
For a company like Google they get better results in small to medium sized communities with large suburban sprawls because the local governments are easier to work with, and they don't have to work around as much ancient infrastructure. The other advantage they have is that they can approach the local government with the argument, "You don't have a large of high tech industry (i.e. big, taxable revenue) here, if you help us expedite the gigabit spread it will kickstart your local tech industry."
Wow, the pricing is all over the map from $80 in Seattle to $350 in Tennessee. <== Please answer the survey!!!!
Didn't Austin, TX get added as Google's next target (and AT&T said they would offer the same there)?
Austin rollout to start next summer. ATT may deliver 1Gbit on paper but probably not 1Gbit per user in a hood, will likely be shared. ATT uses GPON, maybe 2-10Gbit shared in hood. Google uses a GPON/acive ethernet hybrid that delivers near 1Gbit per user no matter load in rest of hood.
You can get gigabit fiber from RST Fiber in Shelby, NC. They are doing commercial and residential installs in Shelby right now, and have started doing commercial installs in Charlotte. They will be doing residential installs in Charlotte starting in Q1 2014.
No, they are doing single family homes as well. I have been corresponding with one of their product managers since I first learned of their service. She told me she has it in her home, and gave me the details on what service will be offered in Charlotte (I specifically asked her about having service installed in my home). I'm not sure how much a gig line will be, but she told me that a 50/50 line will run $60/mo, TV will be $20/mo, and phone will be $30/mo. There is a one time install fee of $200. Currently I'm paying TWC $80 something per month for a 15/1 line and basic cable (i.e. locals only). I'd be more than happy to pay $80 for a 50/50 line and TV.
http://rstfiber.com/solutions/business-residential/
You missed the town of Olds, Alberta. Population 8,500. Gigabit internet (up and down) from $57/month. (see CBC report)
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/s...-massive-1-000-mbps-broadband-boost-1.1382428
I can't speak for other cities, but here in Chattanooga, Tn there was no cost for equipment or installation. They offered to run coax or cat5e/6 to wherever needed as well.
The equipment is a multiplexer about the size of a large shoebox/small printer and was in my case mounted to the outside of the house next to the power meter, which was upgraded as well. The multiplexer was where the fiber tied into the coax for TV service, cat5e/6, and phone service (although I opted away from that.)
From the tests I've seen, Chattanooga typically only gets 100Mbps, maybe up to 400 if lucky. Not bad but it appears to be shared with hood so could get worse as more users add in a hood. Google is designed to be near 1Gbit for every user in a hood.
Chattanooga, Tennessee: EPB, a local Internet service provider, just lowered its prices for gigabit service from $300 a month to only $70, the Washington Post reports.
A quick FYI: EPB isn't just "a local Internet service provider". It's a not-for-profit ISP (and electrical utility) company owned by the city of Chattanooga.
You need to confirm which actually deliver 1Gbit. Many are shared across a hood and may only get 100Mbps evenings if that. Google is true near 1Gbit no matter the load in the rest of hood (they use a hybrid GPON/active ethernet architecture). Need to show speedtests for each Gbit provider at 8PM.
Well some of those small cities aren't being served by big telecos but are doing it themselves. Wilson NC for example created "Greenlight" which provides fiber-to-home internet, phone, and television. They are alone in this though because ISPs were successful in lobbying for an anti-municipal broadband bill. That's why, in NC at least, a city of 49k has residential gigabit fiber internet available while the cities in the Research Triangle region do not (that's a region that encompasses 1.75 million people, several large universities including Duke, and dozens of high tech companies including Cisco and IBM.) Absent strong competition from the private sector and with the public sector forbidden from providing that competition in the market's stead, they have no reason to improve their service.
I have gigabit fiber at my house in Murray, Utah. Not through Google, but UTOPIA and XMission. $70/mo.
I'm buying a new home in Centerville. UTOPIA was a big reason for picking Centerville over some of the other nearby towns.
In parts of Issaquah, Washington (an eastern suburb of Seattle), they built a "neighborhood" fiber network that serves a moderately large residential area (which is still growing). They offer 1Gbit-down/100mbit-up for $199/mo., and 100mbit-down/20mbit-up for $55/mo.: https://www.highlandsfibernetwork.com/internet
I live in Issaquah. The speed is super nice and reliable.
Unfortunately they set up all their equipment such that you get to see all your neighbors' computers. I guess it's a feature?
So note: apparently people rolling this out are still learning how to configure their network equipment, heh.
I'm just happy that FIOS became available in my area (installed at my home about a week ago). While not gigabit, Verizon does offer a 500 megabit service at my location (I have like 30/85 right now), although it costs like $300 a month for that.
Everywhere Paxio services has gigabit fiber internet. There are several places in California, such as my development in Sunnyvale, CA. BTW, Paxio rocks! (All their options are symmetrical rates too!)
BTW, don't bother trying to sign up, if it's available to you, you'd already know. Their service is built-in by a builder when a development is constructed.
http://paxio.com/residential/internet/
From Paxio's web site:
"PAXIO’s network circles the San Francisco Bay Area with fiber beachheads and services delivered in Brentwood, Emeryville, Mountain View, Oakland, Palo Alto, San Jose, Santa Clara, and Sunnyvale."
Does anyone know if there is a website out there for tracking fiber availability as the article does?
Do you want it as a cool interactive map?
http://www.broadbandmap.gov/technology
WARNING! According to this map, I have fiber to the end user available across the street, but not on my side of it. Any way to find out which company offers coverage at a specific location?
Go to the root http://www.broadbandmap.gov and put in the address 'across the street.' Should then list who's providing the service.
(I once rented a room in a house and my major question was "Is this place in the county?". They said yes, and they were not lying. It is in the county if you are the phone company, looking at collecting property tax, the post office, etc. However, if you happened to be the cable company, who didn't provide high speed cable internet access to the city, but did to the county, the county ended in the middle of my stret, so I would have had to live across the street to get it. If you are on a boarder, or near one call and ASK! Everyone draws their county/city lines differently around here, including the sanitation department and places that deliver food).
In the search bar at the top of this page, enter your zip code or address (or your neighbor's address):
http://www.broadbandmap.gov/internet-service-providers/
It will say "unable to find 'unspecified" when you first follow the link, just close that and enter your zip. It will list providers in your zip code by speed. Unfortunately the database it uses for that has to do with advertised plans and availability. If the company does not publish this information, its subscribers may be included in the coverage map but it might not show up in the search (RST did not when I entered Shelby, NC for example.) If that's the case then... you might want to just break down and ask your neighbors.
Also it looks like the availability by address info hasn't been updated since last December though the coverage maps for technology/connection types are more up to date. For example if you compare what the ISP map of Kansas city shows for Google fiber to what the overall fiber map for it shows you'll see the the latter is far more up to date. Ah well, at least you know that there's probably a provider in your area.
WARNING2: According to the broadbandmap I can get 1gbps+ speeds from Earthlink. According to Earthlink I can get dialup.
Edit: It looks like just about all of RI says it gets 1gbps, when in reality I don't think anywhere in the state does.
DO NOT TRUST THE MAP!
I have CondoInternet in Seattle. It isn't widely available. As the name suggests it's per condo or apartment building. All of the new construction in South Lake Union will have access to it, as it's targeted to high tech employees (namely Amazon).
It's 60/mo for (actual, measured) 100mbit up and down with no caps. For me gigabit is overkill. Amazing service and I hope it keeps expanding.
One cool thing about it is there is no modem. There are simply Ethernet jacks in the apartment walls, like in office buildings. Very convenient.
Smithville Communications offers FTTH up to 1000/200mbps to a few rural areas around (but not in) Bloomington, Indiana. Their gigabit service is priced "at a premium," at $393.60/mo with included phone service (whether you want it or not).
http://smithville.net/fiber/maps
Gigabit Internet connections aren't so much about "how fast can I download from WebsiteX?" so much as it's about "how fast can I download from WebsitesA through WebsitesZ simultaneously?" and "how many devices can I have online at once?". And, it opens up a whole new class of uses:
- direct NFS shares to friends across town
- "LAN" gaming across town
- central file storage for friends'n family with "LAN" access speeds
- video conferencing without worrying about bandwidth
- etc
Gigabit Internet connections allow you to push the boundaries of your "LAN" into WAN-sized areas.
Stop thinking in terms of "my one PC connecting to one website" and start thinking in terms of "my LAN connecting to multiple systems at once"
Longmont, CO is in the process of converting the old city utility fiber lines into residential/commercial internet service. It is currently available to those areas directly adjacent to the main fiber line or willing to pay for the install costs. However, there is also a $45 million dollar bond issue on the ballot this year to expand available service areas. We will see if Comcast drops another $250k on trying to defeat this ballot issue like they did last time around. As far as costs go, the city is saying $50/ month for 1 gig residential service.
It is offered it in Orlando http://www.daistechnologies.com/ Only 1 neighborhood for right now though.
Fairfield Iowa has fiber to the home service provided by LISCO. I can't find pricing for 1 GB service, but they claim to offer it on their site. I don't know if their service is symmetrical or not.
I see $71 a month pricing for 100MB residential internet + phone service. Their transfer caps are insane though. ***20 GB a month!*** You can add $115 a month to get that up to an amazing 300GB a month...
I've spoken with one of their senior network engineers. He seemed to actually believe 20GB a month is reasonable…
Danville VA has muni fiber.
http://www.ndanville.com/
More interesting will be whether jobs follow fiber. Will companies leave overcrowded, high-cost-of-living areas and move to places with a better quality of life, once better Internet access is available?
Ars missed my area from this list, which is large swathes of the county Grant in Washington State. It's maintained by our Public Utility District and they host maps that show availability in the various cities in the county: http://www.grantpud.org/customer-service/fiber-optic-network
They're also continuing to expand the fiber network, it's pretty common to see the PUD running fiber in my city.
We have tons of ISPs of various price ranges offering fiber here, some as cheap as $45 a month.
Here's a speedtest I took at night from my ISP earlier this month: http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/2949554625
The Lake County, Minnesota government is running fiber to all residents, even in rural backwoods at no installation cost. Their monthly plans only go up to 100/100 but, hey, fiber to your cabin in the middle of the woods!
http://www.lakeconnections.com/faqs/
The electric co-op in neighboring Cook County (MN) is doing something similar.
http://www.aecimn.com/broadband-project/
CANADA: The large East Coast telcos/ISPs (primarily Bell and Rogers) are horrible, no two ways about it. The smaller and/or independent telcos/ISPs (TekSavvy, something in the Maritimes, something in Quebec) are decent, even good. The fun part is watching TekSavvy provide better service than Bell, using Bell's own infrastructure.
The large West Coast telcos/ISPs are a different story. Telus (DSL) is mostly crap. They top out at 15-ish Mbps at high prices; unless you are lucky enough to live in a new building in Vancouver that has Optik fibre run to it. They're also scrambling to run FTTN everywhere they can, but it's mostly to support Optik TV and not increase DSL speeds.
Shaw, though, is amazing. They've really turned things around the past 5 years or so. They moved to DOCSIS 2.0 fairly quickly (25/7 Mbps) and moved to DOCSIS 3.0 even quicker (250/15 Mbps). And prices are under $200 CDN for the uber-fast speed, with unlimited download. The most economical plan I've found so far is $60 CDN for 50/3 Mbps with 400 or 600 GB cap. But, they don't charge you through the roof for overages ... they just bump you into the next plan for that month and reset things next month.
And, they're running fibre all around the Metro Vancouver area.
Friend of mine had Telus fibre for a couple months, had nothing but complaints. Switched to Shaw fibre for awhile, loved it. Moved into the 'burbs and switched to their 100 Mbps plan, and hasn't noticed a difference (or hit any limits yet).
And, supposedly, whoever is in Saskatchewan is supposed to be even better than Shaw (they've made their ISPs/telcos a provincial utility or something along those lines).
ya so I live in Vancouver, only a tiny tiny tiny tiny percentage of the city is able to get Gigabyte, I would definitely reword the article.
Wasn't Sonic.net doing Gigabit somewhere in California?
It is little known, but before their buildout in Kansas, Google set up a small 1Gbit network in a Stanford neighborhood.
http://www.ipaloalto.com/pdf/Stanford_Report_102110.pdf
Here's a couple more planned 1Gb offerings:
Forethought.net in Denver, Colorado:
http://bbpmag.com/wordpress2/2013/08/forethought-net-provides-gigabit-speeds-to-denver-metro-area/
Leverett Broadband Committee in Leverett, Massachusetts
http://bbpmag.com/wordpress2/2013/0...-calix-to-enable-mas-first-gigabit-community/
CityLink Telecommunications in Albuquerque, NM:
http://bbpmag.com/wordpress2/2013/05/albuquerque-to-get-trufiber-gigabit-internet-service/
And here are a lot of spreadsheets of broadband growth by country:
http://www.oecd.org/internet/broadband/oecdbroadbandportal.htm
(The US is way down the list on most of the charts).
In select neighborhoods in the greater Rochester, NY area there's Greenlight, which offers 100MB for $50/month and gigabit for $250/month, both with a $100 install fee which is waived if you sign a two year contract. Sadly not available in my neighborhood yet, but theoretically in the next one over, so I have some hope that they'll make their way over eventually.
http://greenlightnets.com/
Salt Lake City is decidedly NOT a UTOPIA city and should not be included in the list. UTOPIA's gig offerings are available in Brigham City, Centerville, Layton, Lindon, Midvale, Murray, Orem, Payson, Tremonton, and West Valley City.
OK, I have done some grouping in the list and I *MIGHT* come back and re-organize it by state, don't hold your breath...
THE SURVEY:
As I mentioned at the top, I'm thinking of infrastructure rollout for 2015-2016. Prices are widely divided, from $70/mo - $400/mo. What you get for that varies widely too. The highest speed consumer systems are rolling out in suburbia and rural areas. In urban areas, you generally can't get more than 100 Kbps. As a grassroots, we need to get the biggest IT bang for our buck. That means best buys on equipment (think E-Bay), our bandwidth, power and, well, someplace cost effective for the equipment to live. Ideally this would be with someone tech friendly or at least someone willing to server sit and deal with the occasional call to the tune of: "Hay, could you reboot 'GoldBug' and 'RPsAbacus'? They seem to have crashed. Either that or did your kitten gnaw through the cat6 cable - again...?"
It looks feasible to put a site up in the 2-4K range, including all bills for an entire campaign cycle (2 years). That's well within the reach of a chipin. We are not talking serving up video's all day or running RPF's or DP, but most things short of that are feasable.
Survey questions:
1) Is your area listed above?
2) If not, but you know you can get Gbps speeds, please tell us about it.
3) Do you live near an area that can get these speeds and know a RP supporter that lives in that area. "Hay, stop laughing! - I really do want a gigabit connection and a couple of electrical circuits hooked up to the old outhouse. I already installed a window mount A/C from the flea market in there..."
If you answered "NO" to all three questions, above, you can stop taking this survey now.
4) How much is it a month?
5) Do you have to sign a contract? For how long?
6) At end of contract, what do prices become?
7) Do they charge for instillation? How much?
8) Do they provide for free?, one time charge?, make you buy? or rent you per month network equipment? - How much? "The fee's!, The fee's!"
9) What does electricity cost you per Watt? Please include all municipal, city, state, fed, etc taxes. These prices vary widely and can totally tip a cost analysis.
10) is there a d/u ratio that is not 1:1? ISP's often give you better DL bandwidth (first number) vs UL bandwidth (second number). This isn't good if you are running a server. It can be good if you get a nice price point and are doing "other things"...
11) Does the ISP allow you to run a server? If you are buying big bandwidth, the answer is generally yes.
12) Does the ISP have a bandwidth limit? The F'd up legal/corpocracy/lobbyist system in this country has made this popular. Basically what happens is you hit a bandwidth limit and at that point you either get cut off entirely, your transfer speeds get throttled down significantly or you get charged through the nose for every additional GB of data goes through your system(s). This is NOT GOOD for servers!
13) If your ISP has a cut off limit, what is it?
14) If your ISP throttles bandwidth, from what to to what, and at what threshold?
15) if they go with the charge through the nose model, at what threshold? And what do they charge per GB past that?
16) Do they have redundant pipes to the Internet?
17) Do they have redundant, backup/failover equipment?
18) Other? - ask it here...
If you are one of the lucky ones that live in a high bandwidth community, please take the time to fill this out. It could save us a TON of money! If you only initially qualify, please put up a post and update it. //BUMP the thread re: post ##
-t
