[GRLUG] NOT LINUX - LUS

[Michael Mol]

On Thu, Feb 17, 2011 at 1:14 PM, Bob Kline <bob.kline at gmail.com> wrote:
> http://blog.lafayetteprofiber.com/2009/06/nifty-new-intranet-speed-test.html
> Note the graphs.  The LUSFiber system
> delivers rock hard performance despite its
> modest prices -  $58 a month for 50 Mbps
> full duplex.  100 Mbps available, also full
> duplex.
> Verizon and AT&T sued to try to stop the
> project.  Now, a precedent has been set,
> and the bigger damage might be all the
> attention LUSFiber is getting.  It's now the
> reference point for what's possible.
> And what's possible is a whole lot cheaper
> than the big players are suggesting. Comcast
> just came out with a 100 Mbps down, 10 Mbps
> up service tier, and it's over $400 a month.
> Hardly full duplex, and definitely not cheap.
> Yes, T1 lines were over $1,000 a month not
> so many years ago.  But technology has moved
> on, and LUSFiber shows just how much.
> For reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LUSFiber
>   -- Bob

How many people have paid for that system, versus how many people get
service? In other words, who's subsidizing it so who else can use it
cheaply?

WP page says LUSFiber is municipally owned. Normally, things which are
funded by government entities can be explicitly regulated by those
entities, and have those regulations backed by their police force. If
I have no reasonable alternative for a given service level than
LUSFiber, that puts me at the mercy of their regulations. What if they
decided they wanted a network-backed morality system like
Australia?[1]

It also says that LUSFiber is a subsidiary of a local utility company.
Can you say "municipally-granted monopoly"? You can blame *that* for
why Comcast is so large; Comcast is built on a coax infrastructure
built by dozens of cable companies which had municipally-granted
monopolies in their local area.

The combination of municipally-granted monopolies and utility
companies reminds me of a recent story in West Michigan where a guy
was {fined|evicted|home condemned} (I don't recall which) because he
wasn't attached to municipal utilities in his area. It wasn't that his
home was unsanitary, unsafe, or polluting nearby areas, he just wasn't
attached to the grid, law required that he be attached to the grid,
and so he got in trouble.

Also, do you know why T1 lines are so expensive? They're regulated.
You get a kickass SLA to go along with that 1.544Mb/s connection, and
someone will be woken in the middle of the night to repair it for you
if it goes down. *That* costs. Even if he wasn't unionized, the guy
you woke at 2AM because your T1 went down wouldn't charge unskilled
labor rates.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Australia

-- 
:wq

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