7 ms·

EPB launches America’s first community-wide 25 gig internet service

317 points by Scottopherson 4y ago

LoganDark 4y ago
Ohh I'm so jealous of this. I'm stuck with 15Mbps for ~$200/mo because of the monopoly here. Really hope I'll be able to get something better in the future. Hopefully this will put some pressure on other ISPs to get their stuff together :(
Youden 4y ago
So weird hearing about how amazing this speed is for a convention center when I have 25Gbps at home and mainly just use it to download movies and anime from Usenet.
- tannedNerd 4y ago
  Good for you? The majority of the world is on a fraction of that, much less the US. It just became easy to get 2 Gbps in some parts of the USA while others you max out at 25 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up. This is very much good news to everyone else.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- dmonitor 4y ago
  Where on earth and why
  - Youden 4y ago
    As another commenter said, Switzerland. There's no change to the monthly price, just some one-off charges so I decided what the heck.
  - vineyardmike 4y ago
    Literally this announcement is saying where. It’s not just the convention center, it’s the whole service region, the convention center is just first.
  - jagrsw 4y ago
    Probably Switzerland - init7 has it in its offer: https://www.init7.net/en/internet/fiber7/ https://www.init7.net/en/internet/fiber7/ The price is the same as for 1Gbps and 10Gbps (~60USD/month) - though the initial setup price differs: ~300USD for 25Gb/s vs <100USD for 1Gbps The actual speed within network is indeed 25Gb/s to some fellow users running speedtest.net servers. Inside Switzerland it's maybe ~15Gb/s to some well connected servers in the area of Zurich, and ~10Gb/s across EU. Tested with speedtest.net and iperf.
    - Youden 4y ago
      I think in the EU the limit is sometimes not Init7 but the Speedtest.net servers. I ran a test to many of them and did get above 10Gbps but only to eu-25g.ookla.tierservers.com, which clearly has a 25Gbps NIC. A bunch of other Speedtest.net servers were located in Amsterdam and took a very similar route via Cogent but none of the others broke the 10Gbps barrier. It is for sure often Init7 though. Those peering relationships it built up have become a bit of a weakness because they're usually limited to a 10Gbps port.
- Dracophoenix 4y ago
  What router do you use?
  - Youden 4y ago
    I only have one device with access to the full 25Gbps and that's a computer with a 25Gbps NIC that's acting as the gateway for everything else. Aside from that I have a Mikrotik CRS305-1G-4S+IN to distribute 10Gbps to a few other devices. I'd love for everything to be 25Gbps but the hardware is just too expensive.
ajg36 4y ago
Has anyone tried this service in real life and tested the actual bandwidth?
runako 4y ago
No wonder Comcast has been very active in lobbying to prevent other utilities from providing Internet[1]. 1 - https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-comcast-fcc-high-speed-internet-gigabit https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-comcas...
- mindslight 4y ago
  The problem with municipal Internet is the town will build it out once, and then never upgrade the technology while it slowly becomes obsolete </s>. Seriously though, municipal fiber is fantastic. I've been an observer to friends having conversations about Internet provider woes, while I just sit there shaking my head. I've only got 1Gb but I rarely care about the bandwidth, consistent <15ms ping to close data centers, there's no data quotas, no yearly fuckery where they dick you around with the price and you have to wait on hold to threaten to cancel and commit to a longer term, and I haven't noticed any downtime in years. It just works.
  - yborg 4y ago
    The OP story is literally the municipal provider delivering 25x faster service over 12 years. The "never upgrade the technology" provider is usually going to be monopoly Comcast, because they know your other option is a can and string.
    - mindslight 4y ago
      Sarcasm. It's a useful skill that fosters self awareness and builds your memetic defenses. And I even included a free tag to help train your detector.
      - drBonkers 4y ago
        Do you have any books or resources on how sarcasm affects self awareness and memetic defenses?
        4y ago
efficax 4y ago
wild, i don’t have any devices that can max that out even over ethernet
hoistbypetard 4y ago
The way the site is reacting to this hug, I'd expect it'd be better off hosted from a beefy laptop on a 25 Gig residential connection.
btrautsc 4y ago
the most amazing part about EPB is they have absolutely phenomenal customer service. it really is surprising.
bandwidth 4y ago
Okay so all we need now is a few IoT toasters to send 25G of DDoS traffic right?
r00fus 4y ago
Wow this reads like an announcement from a different timeline (like the one that was promised when fiber was promoted in the early 2000s). 25Gb/s symmetric? In the middle of Tennessee? Meanwhile I have traffic-shaped Comcast and no fiber in sight in Silicon Valley.
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  > Meanwhile I have traffic-shaped Comcast and no fiber in sight in Silicon Valley. Isn't the SF bay area more of a geography issue than an incumbent monopoly issue? I'm sure its a mixture of both, but also a geography issue.
  - KerrAvon 4y ago
    No, what would geography have to do with it? Fiber can be run on poles or underground throughout the Bay Area — it’s an incumbent monopoly issue.
  - hedora 4y ago
    It's a five minute bike ride on flat land from Google HQ (mostly along utility right of way) to housing with < 6mbit DSL. Drive 10-20 miles, and you'll be in areas where AT&T decided to sell the lines to a bankrupt telco. Looking at the lines in those areas is entertaining. The telephone poles were installed by some ancient secret society named "GTE", and now have 20 degree bows. When lines loosen up and block traffic, the usually just tie them up on to some nearby tree branch. If you look really carefully, you'll occasionally see fiber points of presence dangling precariously from this mess of caution tape and guy-wire. It's not all bad news: I know of communities outside of telco right of way that managed to tap into one of those. Last time I heard they were debating between 1 gig symmetric to each home or paying a couple hundred bucks (one time) per house to get something comparable to what you'd expect in Tennessee. It's definitely a problem with incumbent monopolies.
    - inferiorhuman 4y ago
      Drive 10-20 miles, and you'll be in areas where AT&T decided to sell the lines to a bankrupt telco. Looking at the lines in those areas is entertaining. The telephone poles were installed by some ancient secret society named "GTE", and now have 20 degree bows. When lines loosen up and block traffic, the usually just tie them up on to some nearby tree branch. The way I remember it GTE did not go bankrupt and instead became part of Verizon. Most of the Bay Area was PacBell (landline) territory, but there were a few pockets here and there where GTE had a monopoly. For wireless it was a different story with AT&T / CellularOne getting Side A and GTE / Verizon getting Side B with PacBell being relegated to the PCS band. In fact I just took a quick peek at their Wikipedia page. GTE went bankrupt in 1933 and recovered. They were not part of the Bell system until 2000 when they were acquired by Bell Atlantic as part of the creation of Verizon. Monopolies suck but GTE (and Verizon) were almost always better about building out higher speed DSL and fiber than PacBell/SBC/AT&T ever were.
prophesi 4y ago
Meanwhile I'm in the heart of a city and stuck with unreliable, overpriced, and low speed cable/dsl from Spectrum because I'm pretty sure my landlord is taking part of their payola scheme. I used to live in Chattanooga which makes me extra bitter about it.
robmccoll 4y ago
I don't think I have enough aggregate online disk bandwidth at home to store things are that speed, much less do I have it networked to do so. Wow.
ejb999 4y ago
I don't really see the point - impressed that they offered it, but how many people truly need it? I have 1G symmetric FTTH internet, the bottleneck is still the services I want to access at the other end - really makes no difference how much faster the pipe is, if the service you are using can't keep up. Will some people benefit?? sure - a handful of power users doing massive uploads and downloads for commercial purposes... but the typical Netflix watcher or telecommuter really isn't going to benefit at all from from anything faster than about 100MBs up/down right now. Like I said, I have 1G fiber connection, you know how long it takes me to watch a two hour Netflix movie at 1G speed? Two hours. You know how long that would take me on a 50Mbs connection? 2 hours. You know how long that would take me on a 25Gb connection? 2 hours. That said, if I could buy a 25 Gb connection at a reasonable price I would.
- exq 4y ago
  20 years ago you'd have said the same thing about dsl to broadband, and if everyone had that same mentality, Netflix would still be mailing dvds and not offering 4k streaming. Innovation is good.
  - laurencerowe 4y ago
    I think the difference is that 20 years Gbit ethernet was becoming standard issue on desktops while even 10Gbit ethernet is still pretty rare outside of the data centre and switch uplinks today. 25Gbit internet will be great for schools, libraries, and offices with multiple users but it's going to be a while before it becomes relevant for individual homes.
    - bitbckt 4y ago
      10/40Gb hasn't been the standard in data centers in a number of years. My house is entirely 10Gb (save for wireless), in part because older enterprise gear at those speeds is so cheap. 25/50 and 100/400 have supplanted 10/40 in the data center, and 800Gb is here now.
    - KennyBlanken 4y ago
elfatizer 4y ago
When we bought a house, the best one ended up being literally a couple miles outside of EPB's service area and I had to switch to Comcast. I see their billboard every time I drive home, just to rub salt in the wound.
- mikestew 4y ago
  You have different parameters than I, because "the best one" has 25Gbps to the home, and not Comcast for an internet provider. :-) I know what you're saying, though. I suppose it's possible to have higher priorities than bandwidth. Personally, I'd still have to give serious thought to how much I want $FEATURE if it means having to do business with Comcast (or Comcast aside, give up 25Gbps). Backyard for the kids? They can go play in the park. :-)
  - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
    And here I am looking at properties that even Starlink would have trouble providing service to...
    - vlan0 4y ago
      Running away to the mountains to escape it all? Need company?
      - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
        No, the point is to escape company! :)
- Xeoncross 4y ago
  I love how so many companies offer work-from-home now as you can literally work from anywhere in the world as long as it's only in a major city with a high bandwidth connection.
  - refurb 4y ago
midnitewarrior 4y ago
Why? I work a tech job and I 50gb connection is more than I need, it's more than most need.
- yborg 4y ago
  Cool, so you can downgrade to a 25gb connection like EPB and save some money.
  - midnitewarrior 4y ago
    Whoops 50mb not gb!
mmaunder 4y ago
Cool, but try to get 25Gbps on your mac. It's tough. We have our own 10 gig symmetrical fiber backbone connection and wanted 25Gbps on a mac in our film production facility. Thunderbolt maxes out at 40Gbps so you're already close to the max data transfer rate for a peripheral. We had to use ATTO's hardware which is bulky, a pain to configure on a macbook (you need to bond two interfaces) and honestly most of the time it's just easier to stay on Wifi and deal with 400Mbps throughput. Not sure about windows, but USB-C maxes out at 10 Gbps IIRC, so I'd love to hear what folks in that realm are doing.
- Forgeties79 4y ago
  Yeah frankly I just hardline for 1Gbps and anything over like…I don’t know, 1TB? I just ship a drive. Anything beyond 1 or 2 requires too much effort to make work for me. It helps that I’m an in-house video producer at a tech company and not working at a post house/on major sets anymore haha
  - p1necone 4y ago
    How big do you think the carrier pigeon needs to be for an HDD? Carrier Albatross? Can they even be trained?
  - nippoo 4y ago
    The main current use case for this isn't people syncing their Dropboxes very fast, it's businesses and groups of users who can now all reliably each get gigabit+ speeds rather rather than slowing down when multiple people share a connection...
    - Forgeties79 4y ago
      Sure, but I’m talking about my use case/the use case for most freelancers. We are shipping drives and transmitting footage constantly. Hell fiber enabled me able to start charging people to send it quickly because it was cheaper than buying and shipping a drive (usually $80-$100). I just started going “I’ll have it to you in a few hours for $35” and call it a day.
dweekly 4y ago
I think things like this are great because they will finally start to create pressure to commodify >1gbps networking in the home. The industry has some work to do here. I've been on Sonic 10G for almost a year now and LOVE it, but it's definitely been a sore spot to get things set up to expect those kinds of speeds - prosumer 10G switches are vastly more expensive per-port, wired consumer devices don't typically support 10GbaseT/SFP+, 2.5G/5G switches aren't broadly available and commodified (e.g. UniFi has limited offerings here) and WiFi6E is still mid-rollout (almost no client devices currently in market yet) meaning that clients can't reasonably expect >1gbps of goodput, even with a good link from a modern device to a modern AP. Then there's flakiness: when things get hot in my garage, my 10G switch just stops working. My Thunderbolt-to-10GbaseT adapter for my MacBook runs very hot. Lots of sharp edges here. The more consumers are buying 10G equipment for their 10G home links, the faster prices will come down and reliability will come up - not just for 10G but also for 2.5G/5G equipment. Hats off to EPB for paving the way for 25G and keeping vendors diligent in mapping out the next generation of their equipment.
- TylerE 4y ago
  I wonder how much of a push this will really be? For the vast majority of people even vanilla gigabit is of limited benefit... that's on the edge of what a consumer SSD is writing at.
  - DannyBee 4y ago
    you are off by an a factor of 3-5 :). The random consumer ssd reads/writes as 300-600megabytes/second, easily. That's 3-5gbps, not 1gbps. A reasonable 7200rpm spinning disk can easily saturate 1gbps. Most home grade nas RAID arrays can saturate 10gbps. (obviously not 2 spinning disk mirror ones :P)
  - mikeyouse 4y ago
    Right - the popular sentiment on my smallish town Facebook group is people dropping their 300mbps cable since Spectrum is an awful company to deal with in favor of cell-based (T-mobile or Verizon) home service. 90%+ of people in most areas don't need internet any faster than Netflix requires, and nobody is running ethernet so WiFi speeds are going to be the limiting factor in internet speed for most everyone else.
digdugdirk 4y ago
Chattanooga Tennessee, for those curious but not curious enough to read the article. I'm intrigued by the city's push for this community co-op high speed internet - does anyone here have any experience with how the city has changed before/after the "gig-city" push? And did pandemic work from home change/accelerate things at all?
- marviel 4y ago
  Had to move away for work -- but in my experience, the city has successfully reinvented itself and is now one of the most desirable places to live in the south.
- ThunderSizzle 4y ago
  It started out to build a smart power grid, and I can say it did that pretty well. The network was able to automatically re-routr power to decrease outages substantially during storms without requiring crews to fix it. Most people I know converted pretty quickly to EPB from Comcast, but apartments and HOAs still make contracts for exclusive Comcast wiring, even brand new HOAs that are being built. My understanding is Comcast significantly improved in the Chattanooga area to compete, but I never went back and will never move to an area where I have to use Comcast again. The best part about EPB was that they will service any house within their service area - for no crazy cost. I think initial setup was sometimes either completely waived or less than $100, no matter the house. Also, the billing is nice - when they say $70 - it's $70 - no extra taxes or fees on top of that like most telecoms and utilities do. As for actual changes - the city failed to truly capitalize on having a gig network. We wasted millions of dollars on a city-wide wifi system that was never turned on, due to political reasons (thr decision maker saw poor performance and shut it down after $300 million was already wasted putting up routers across the city. The push I expected was smarter stoplights and traffic management, but that never happened. If anything it got worse.
  - sarchertech 4y ago
    EPB ran about 25 Ethernet drops throughout my new house for free.
  - 4y ago
vlan0 4y ago
This is just getting stupid. It's more marketing than anything else. It feels like the megahertz wars of the 90s. Your connection is SO MUCH more than just your local PHY rate. Let's start raising the bar. Show me you've optimized to reduce bufferbloat. Show me you care about RTT and not simply the cheapest pipe. I'm also not sure they have the capacity to deliver true 25Gb to for many folks simultaneously. https://www.peeringdb.com/net/7007 https://www.peeringdb.com/net/7007 https://bgp.he.net/AS26827#_asinfo https://bgp.he.net/AS26827#_asinfo
- nimish 4y ago
  If you are using so much bandwidth on a gigabit line that the buffers are actually used, I'd think you probably want a higher grade of service than home internet.
  - vlan0 4y ago
    I'm not sure I agree. Many devices can saturate a 1Gb pipe these days. Even if it's for a brief period of time, your latency sensitive applications will suffer. Everyone should be using AQM.
bob1029 4y ago
I've been shopping around for alternatives to Texas, and Chattanooga, TN just jumped to the top of my list. I definitely couldn't take direct advantage of 25 gigabit/s service myself. But, I do enjoy the idea of it attracting certain types of businesses & people to an area and creating opportunities that might not be possible elsewhere. Also, the fact that this sort of internet service is possible in an area gives me hope for the leadership.
aetherspawn 4y ago
Considering that 10G fiber gear is not very expensive at all (ie 28 port fiber switch - $1000) I’ve wondered what the hold-up is on 10Gbps SFP+ becoming a standard. In Australia we’re shamefully paying $1150 per month for our business symmetrical 10G SFP+ (shaped to 1/1G), but a 1G 1000/40 connection is only $100/mo.
- fomine3 4y ago
  FTTH network uses PON to reduce expensive 1:1 wiring for each home (but YMMV). Simple fiber switch can't be used for PON.
  - hocuspocus 4y ago
    Here in Europe it's mostly big ISPs that deploy PON. From what I understand it only makes sense with a large customer base. Small ISPs typically have P2P deployments and use standard switches.
- inferiorhuman 4y ago
  You still have to get transceivers for both ends of each and every connection which drives up the cost per port pretty dramatically. Edit: Scantly driving up the cost per port. Say what? You've just added $1,500 (28 ports * 2 per port * $27) to the cost of a 28 port switch… at the low end. Now I've no experience with fiber, but anecdotally I've come across a few complaints that the Ubiquiti stuff is picky about the transceivers you use. So if you go with a single manufacturer, Ubiquiti wants about $900 for their 28 port switch, but SFP+ transceivers start at $38. Their direct attach cables are cheaper but a 5m cable will still run you about $40. Compare that to *BaseT where I can grab a 3m Cat6 cable for under $10. For an ISP the cost difference probably matters much less as they will be making money off of each connection (and likely saving on cooling costs). For a home user (e.g. an EPB customer) that's still pricey. An ER-X w/ a single SFP port runs about $80, using that SFP port will cost you.
  - theideaofcoffee 4y ago
    Let's be generous and assume that we need far more reach than what is realistic in this scenario, take it at 10km between the subscriber demarc and the CO where these connections would presumably be terminated. A 10km LR optic is only $27 [0]. Amortize that over, say, three years and that's $0.75 per port, multiplied by two, so call it $1.50 per port/month over three years. Scantly driving up the cost per port. The physical fiber linking the two ends is more expensive (though you could depreciate and amortize over a longer period of time). The 25G optics are barely that much more, LR/10km for $59 a pop. [1] [0] https://www.fs.com/products/74670.html?attribute=4254&id=290339 https://www.fs.com/products/74670.html?attribute=4254&id=290... [1] https://www.fs.com/products/75297.html?attribute=740&id=341789 https://www.fs.com/products/75297.html?attribute=740&id=3417...
sarchertech 4y ago
I’ve had EPB for about 3 years now (since I moved to Chattanooga). It’s fantastic. Every once in a while someone will post in the local Facebook group asking which ISP they should go with. It turns into pages and pages of EPB!, EPB!, EPB! Mixed with comments about how much better it is than Comcast. Not only is the service better and cheaper, customer service is much much better.
- maxharris 4y ago
  Hello from the Southside!
mabbo 4y ago
I recently upgraded to 1.5gbps and realized a few things. The downsides: the Cat5e cables inside my condo walls can't handle more than 1.0gbps; my desktop's network port also maxes out at 1.0gbps; the wifi router in my home can't do more than 600mbps even if standing right next to it. But also, nothing I do needs this much bandwidth. I can download any steam game in the blink of an eye. I can watch streaming video at resolutions higher than my eyes can distinguish. Outside of a few high bandwidth edge cases, there's very little I need more than 100mbps for. If you offered me 25gbps internet right now I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between it and what I have! Someone tell me: what will I need that much bandwidth for?
- Gigachad 4y ago
  Steam games is the biggest benefit I saw. Modern games are in the tens to hundreds of GB now so gigabit internet is the difference between waiting 15 minutes and 1 hour.
- viscountchocula 4y ago
  Doing multiple of those things at once. You're watching a movie while one kid is downloading a game and another is watching something else? I'm saying it lets your whole family never have to interact with one another.
- throwaway892238 4y ago
  When your microwave, fridge, oven, tv, toaster, dish washer, dryer, tea kettle, and stand mixer are all playing you 4K advertisements for a new TV show or a new pair of Adidas, you will be glad you have 12gbps left to browse the web (which will by then require another 2gbps for all of the javascript, images, and 4K video ads needed to render a blog)
- ShakataGaNai 4y ago
  What will you need that much bandwidth for... in the future. Today? You don't need 25gig. Even if you're in a house with all the latest technology and a half dozen users, you probably won't ever saturate that line unless everyone REALLY tried. But tomorrow is a different story. Ethernet above 1gig is becoming more common in the consumer world. Not super popular, but its starting to take shape. Wifi 6E has a theoretical maximum of just shy of 10gig. Wifi 7 (not ratified) is looking to be around 40gig. With work from home and, in general, the world going more digital - there is a lot more pushing around of files. Do you have an iPhone or Android? Everytime your phone is on the wifi its backing up your photos/videos (and other stuff). That alone can slow down most peoples internet connections. Does your computer do backups? Also once your internet starts to hit about the 1gig mark, you can treat remote servers like we treat LAN today. Want to have a server but don't want to have it at home? That's ok when you've got 1+ gig internet. Of course, it'd be even nicer if that was even faster... in theory.
bscphil 4y ago
Meanwhile here in my large California city the best service I can get at my apartment is 100/10. That's because it's negotiated by the landlord with some kind of corporate rate (it's not shared, we still have our own modem). It actually drops to something like 80 down at peak hours.
cletus 4y ago
People may not realize just how many barriers are put in the way of this kind of thing happening and at every level of government you have skilled and experienced actors trying to make sure it doesn't happen. The obvious one is states pass laws to forbid municipal broadband. This should be illegal. I actually wonder if the Federal government could override this since this sort of thing usually falls within the purview of the FCC but I'm no lawyer. Comcat, AT&T and Verizon all lobby hard to make municipal broadband illegal, even when they won't connect homes they have a legal obligation to connect. But imagine it is legal and you've started an ISP. Your problems have just begun. How are you going to run cables (fiber or otherwise) to people's homes? Are you going to dig trenches? Well you need permits for that. You might dig up someone else's cables so existing providers get to delay that process. Or are you going to string those cables up on poles? Well, who owns the poles? It might be an existing ISP. There might be laws that allows you to string cables on those poles. Maybe there isn't. Maybe you have to pay an exorbitant amount for the privilege. Maybe Comcast is the only one legally allowed to do cable work and they'll charge you a fortune for it and take forever (and probably screw it up). Even if the utility poles are owned by the city or the county but that doesn't necessarily solve your problem either. You need permits to string up cables. You might have to file a permit application for each pole individually. Even when you get a permit, existing users may have to move their cables to make room. They may have 90 days to move it. If several need to move cables then may well take the maximum time in turn. Either through trenches or poles you eventually have cables. Where do you run them to? As in, are you running short cables to substations and then trunk lines back to an exchange? Or are you running long cables back to an exchange directly? Each has its problems. The long cables may make too thick bundles for poles or require more expensive trenching. The shorter cables may require a substation that the locals view as an eyesore. You'll need to acquire land for that and may face NIMBYist opposition. What I learned through exposure to this was that building an ISP is hyperlocal and the incumbents are way better at it. For example, there may be a lot of limestone in the soil that may make trenching slow, difficult and expensive. You may want to use poles instead but that might not be an option so you're stuck with disposing of a lot of limestone. Dicalimer: Xoogler and I worked on Google Fiber for a time.
- dqpb 4y ago
  > states pass laws to forbid municipal broadband What happens if the municipality goes ahead with it anyway? Does the state sue everybody? Seize the network by force? Cut the cables?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
alberth 4y ago
Do economical home routers exist that support these speeds? Seems silly to offer someone 25 Gbps fiber service if it doesn’t also include a >= 25 Gbps home router.
- 71a54xd 4y ago
  In short no, but ironically the last time I read about rural 10G fiber the one guy they interviewed was a radiologist who wanted to work from home lmao. In short, I don't think he was too worried about dropping $1k on a router etc. Granted, if I remember correctly I think the ISP actually loaned him some enterprise routing gear. hahaha found it... ironically it's a vice article [0] 0 - https://www.vice.com/en/article/gv5m77/10-gbps-fiber-internet-fastest-home-internet-in-the-united-states https://www.vice.com/en/article/gv5m77/10-gbps-fiber-interne...
gregors 4y ago
I live in another TN city rolling out municipal fiber. I live in a middle class area of town. I've been asking for 1G for years, but ATT keeps telling me "there's not enough need in that area of town". That changes as soon you move to the higher-end neighborhoods though. I guess people who live in the expensive zip codes are the only ones who need 1G. EPB will offer internet to ALL residents, not just the rich of the cities. Since the city has started the fiber rollout, all of a sudden it's now feasible for ATT to offer fiber. Go municipal internet!!!!!! https://www.kub.org/about/about-kub/kub-service-areas/century-ii/meter-modernization/broadband-services-public-forum https://www.kub.org/about/about-kub/kub-service-areas/centur...
71a54xd 4y ago
This is incredible, I'm full remote and tired of paying high rent in austin (even after leaving NYC) which makes me want to consider TN a bit more. However, what kind of networking (ideally prosumer) hardware do you need to truly leverage this kind of a connection. Switches are cheap, I already have a few 10G fiber switches, however routers are another story, especially ones that are actually capable of keeping up with a 10G or 25G connection. 2G Google Fiber has been an absolute game changer - from experience I can also say it's better than 2x bonded Verizon Fios fiber connections. By far, the coolest feature of G Fiber is the online portal to request a static IP. Really hope static IP capability is also an option with this 10G service!
- bitbckt 4y ago
  I usually buy used enterprise gear, and have been in a similar situation: switch ports are (relatively) cheap, anything that needs an actual CPU to do routing is spendy. I've gone to Mikrotik for routing 10Gb in the home now. Excuse the horrible part number: the CCR2004-16G-2S+PC has worked out great for me. They're a bit hard to find right now, but I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them over whatever Ubiquiti is trying to sell in the space. For multi-gig routing, the Mikrotik RB5009 has also been a great piece of hardware. 25Gb is really getting into a different class of hardware entirely. If I needed to route at that speed, I'd seriously consider a Supermicro + Opnsense build.
maxharris 4y ago
Anyone else live in Chattanooga? I'm an EPB customer :)
dqpb 4y ago
Is Chattanooga a nice place to live?
aldebran 4y ago
To the people saying 1G+ is overkill: Latency improves too! For me that was the biggest change I noticed. I’m sitting at 3ms! My friend send me a screenshot of 0.9ms.
hirvi74 4y ago
I used to have EPB some 6 years or so ago. They were by far the best ISP I have ever used. I was also privy to an organization that had access to their 10Gb connection. A public internet service has been on their radar for about a decade now, and I proud to see they managed to get it working.

317 points by Scottopherson 4y ago

Ohh I'm so jealous of this. I'm stuck with 15Mbps for ~$200/mo because of the monopoly here. Really hope I'll be able to get something better in the future. Hopefully this will put some pressure on other ISPs to get their stuff together :(

Youden 4y ago

So weird hearing about how amazing this speed is for a convention center when I have 25Gbps at home and mainly just use it to download movies and anime from Usenet.

tannedNerd 4y ago
Good for you? The majority of the world is on a fraction of that, much less the US. It just became easy to get 2 Gbps in some parts of the USA while others you max out at 25 Mbps down and 2 Mbps up. This is very much good news to everyone else.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
dmonitor 4y ago
Where on earth and why
- Youden 4y ago
  As another commenter said, Switzerland. There's no change to the monthly price, just some one-off charges so I decided what the heck.
- vineyardmike 4y ago
  Literally this announcement is saying where. It’s not just the convention center, it’s the whole service region, the convention center is just first.
- jagrsw 4y ago
  Probably Switzerland - init7 has it in its offer: https://www.init7.net/en/internet/fiber7/ https://www.init7.net/en/internet/fiber7/ The price is the same as for 1Gbps and 10Gbps (~60USD/month) - though the initial setup price differs: ~300USD for 25Gb/s vs <100USD for 1Gbps The actual speed within network is indeed 25Gb/s to some fellow users running speedtest.net servers. Inside Switzerland it's maybe ~15Gb/s to some well connected servers in the area of Zurich, and ~10Gb/s across EU. Tested with speedtest.net and iperf.
  - Youden 4y ago
    I think in the EU the limit is sometimes not Init7 but the Speedtest.net servers. I ran a test to many of them and did get above 10Gbps but only to eu-25g.ookla.tierservers.com, which clearly has a 25Gbps NIC. A bunch of other Speedtest.net servers were located in Amsterdam and took a very similar route via Cogent but none of the others broke the 10Gbps barrier. It is for sure often Init7 though. Those peering relationships it built up have become a bit of a weakness because they're usually limited to a 10Gbps port.
Dracophoenix 4y ago
What router do you use?
- Youden 4y ago
  I only have one device with access to the full 25Gbps and that's a computer with a 25Gbps NIC that's acting as the gateway for everything else. Aside from that I have a Mikrotik CRS305-1G-4S+IN to distribute 10Gbps to a few other devices. I'd love for everything to be 25Gbps but the hardware is just too expensive.

ajg36 4y ago

Has anyone tried this service in real life and tested the actual bandwidth?

runako 4y ago

No wonder Comcast has been very active in lobbying to prevent other utilities from providing Internet[1]. 1 - https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-comcast-fcc-high-speed-internet-gigabit https://www.theverge.com/2015/5/1/8530403/chattanooga-comcas...

mindslight 4y ago
The problem with municipal Internet is the town will build it out once, and then never upgrade the technology while it slowly becomes obsolete </s>. Seriously though, municipal fiber is fantastic. I've been an observer to friends having conversations about Internet provider woes, while I just sit there shaking my head. I've only got 1Gb but I rarely care about the bandwidth, consistent <15ms ping to close data centers, there's no data quotas, no yearly fuckery where they dick you around with the price and you have to wait on hold to threaten to cancel and commit to a longer term, and I haven't noticed any downtime in years. It just works.
- yborg 4y ago
  The OP story is literally the municipal provider delivering 25x faster service over 12 years. The "never upgrade the technology" provider is usually going to be monopoly Comcast, because they know your other option is a can and string.
  - mindslight 4y ago
    Sarcasm. It's a useful skill that fosters self awareness and builds your memetic defenses. And I even included a free tag to help train your detector.
    - drBonkers 4y ago
      Do you have any books or resources on how sarcasm affects self awareness and memetic defenses?
      - 4y ago

efficax 4y ago

wild, i don’t have any devices that can max that out even over ethernet

hoistbypetard 4y ago

The way the site is reacting to this hug, I'd expect it'd be better off hosted from a beefy laptop on a 25 Gig residential connection.

btrautsc 4y ago

the most amazing part about EPB is they have absolutely phenomenal customer service. it really is surprising.

bandwidth 4y ago

Okay so all we need now is a few IoT toasters to send 25G of DDoS traffic right?

r00fus 4y ago

Wow this reads like an announcement from a different timeline (like the one that was promised when fiber was promoted in the early 2000s). 25Gb/s symmetric? In the middle of Tennessee? Meanwhile I have traffic-shaped Comcast and no fiber in sight in Silicon Valley.

yieldcrv 4y ago
> Meanwhile I have traffic-shaped Comcast and no fiber in sight in Silicon Valley. Isn't the SF bay area more of a geography issue than an incumbent monopoly issue? I'm sure its a mixture of both, but also a geography issue.
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  No, what would geography have to do with it? Fiber can be run on poles or underground throughout the Bay Area — it’s an incumbent monopoly issue.
- hedora 4y ago
  It's a five minute bike ride on flat land from Google HQ (mostly along utility right of way) to housing with < 6mbit DSL. Drive 10-20 miles, and you'll be in areas where AT&T decided to sell the lines to a bankrupt telco. Looking at the lines in those areas is entertaining. The telephone poles were installed by some ancient secret society named "GTE", and now have 20 degree bows. When lines loosen up and block traffic, the usually just tie them up on to some nearby tree branch. If you look really carefully, you'll occasionally see fiber points of presence dangling precariously from this mess of caution tape and guy-wire. It's not all bad news: I know of communities outside of telco right of way that managed to tap into one of those. Last time I heard they were debating between 1 gig symmetric to each home or paying a couple hundred bucks (one time) per house to get something comparable to what you'd expect in Tennessee. It's definitely a problem with incumbent monopolies.
  - inferiorhuman 4y ago
    Drive 10-20 miles, and you'll be in areas where AT&T decided to sell the lines to a bankrupt telco. Looking at the lines in those areas is entertaining. The telephone poles were installed by some ancient secret society named "GTE", and now have 20 degree bows. When lines loosen up and block traffic, the usually just tie them up on to some nearby tree branch. The way I remember it GTE did not go bankrupt and instead became part of Verizon. Most of the Bay Area was PacBell (landline) territory, but there were a few pockets here and there where GTE had a monopoly. For wireless it was a different story with AT&T / CellularOne getting Side A and GTE / Verizon getting Side B with PacBell being relegated to the PCS band. In fact I just took a quick peek at their Wikipedia page. GTE went bankrupt in 1933 and recovered. They were not part of the Bell system until 2000 when they were acquired by Bell Atlantic as part of the creation of Verizon. Monopolies suck but GTE (and Verizon) were almost always better about building out higher speed DSL and fiber than PacBell/SBC/AT&T ever were.

prophesi 4y ago

Meanwhile I'm in the heart of a city and stuck with unreliable, overpriced, and low speed cable/dsl from Spectrum because I'm pretty sure my landlord is taking part of their payola scheme. I used to live in Chattanooga which makes me extra bitter about it.

robmccoll 4y ago

I don't think I have enough aggregate online disk bandwidth at home to store things are that speed, much less do I have it networked to do so. Wow.

ejb999 4y ago

I don't really see the point - impressed that they offered it, but how many people truly need it? I have 1G symmetric FTTH internet, the bottleneck is still the services I want to access at the other end - really makes no difference how much faster the pipe is, if the service you are using can't keep up. Will some people benefit?? sure - a handful of power users doing massive uploads and downloads for commercial purposes... but the typical Netflix watcher or telecommuter really isn't going to benefit at all from from anything faster than about 100MBs up/down right now. Like I said, I have 1G fiber connection, you know how long it takes me to watch a two hour Netflix movie at 1G speed? Two hours. You know how long that would take me on a 50Mbs connection? 2 hours. You know how long that would take me on a 25Gb connection? 2 hours. That said, if I could buy a 25 Gb connection at a reasonable price I would.

exq 4y ago
20 years ago you'd have said the same thing about dsl to broadband, and if everyone had that same mentality, Netflix would still be mailing dvds and not offering 4k streaming. Innovation is good.
- laurencerowe 4y ago
  I think the difference is that 20 years Gbit ethernet was becoming standard issue on desktops while even 10Gbit ethernet is still pretty rare outside of the data centre and switch uplinks today. 25Gbit internet will be great for schools, libraries, and offices with multiple users but it's going to be a while before it becomes relevant for individual homes.
  - bitbckt 4y ago
    10/40Gb hasn't been the standard in data centers in a number of years. My house is entirely 10Gb (save for wireless), in part because older enterprise gear at those speeds is so cheap. 25/50 and 100/400 have supplanted 10/40 in the data center, and 800Gb is here now.
  - KennyBlanken 4y ago

elfatizer 4y ago

When we bought a house, the best one ended up being literally a couple miles outside of EPB's service area and I had to switch to Comcast. I see their billboard every time I drive home, just to rub salt in the wound.

mikestew 4y ago
You have different parameters than I, because "the best one" has 25Gbps to the home, and not Comcast for an internet provider. :-) I know what you're saying, though. I suppose it's possible to have higher priorities than bandwidth. Personally, I'd still have to give serious thought to how much I want $FEATURE if it means having to do business with Comcast (or Comcast aside, give up 25Gbps). Backyard for the kids? They can go play in the park. :-)
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
  And here I am looking at properties that even Starlink would have trouble providing service to...
  - vlan0 4y ago
    Running away to the mountains to escape it all? Need company?
    - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 4y ago
      No, the point is to escape company! :)
Xeoncross 4y ago
I love how so many companies offer work-from-home now as you can literally work from anywhere in the world as long as it's only in a major city with a high bandwidth connection.
- refurb 4y ago

midnitewarrior 4y ago

Why? I work a tech job and I 50gb connection is more than I need, it's more than most need.

yborg 4y ago
Cool, so you can downgrade to a 25gb connection like EPB and save some money.
- midnitewarrior 4y ago
  Whoops 50mb not gb!

mmaunder 4y ago

Cool, but try to get 25Gbps on your mac. It's tough. We have our own 10 gig symmetrical fiber backbone connection and wanted 25Gbps on a mac in our film production facility. Thunderbolt maxes out at 40Gbps so you're already close to the max data transfer rate for a peripheral. We had to use ATTO's hardware which is bulky, a pain to configure on a macbook (you need to bond two interfaces) and honestly most of the time it's just easier to stay on Wifi and deal with 400Mbps throughput. Not sure about windows, but USB-C maxes out at 10 Gbps IIRC, so I'd love to hear what folks in that realm are doing.

Forgeties79 4y ago
Yeah frankly I just hardline for 1Gbps and anything over like…I don’t know, 1TB? I just ship a drive. Anything beyond 1 or 2 requires too much effort to make work for me. It helps that I’m an in-house video producer at a tech company and not working at a post house/on major sets anymore haha
- p1necone 4y ago
  How big do you think the carrier pigeon needs to be for an HDD? Carrier Albatross? Can they even be trained?
- nippoo 4y ago
  The main current use case for this isn't people syncing their Dropboxes very fast, it's businesses and groups of users who can now all reliably each get gigabit+ speeds rather rather than slowing down when multiple people share a connection...
  - Forgeties79 4y ago
    Sure, but I’m talking about my use case/the use case for most freelancers. We are shipping drives and transmitting footage constantly. Hell fiber enabled me able to start charging people to send it quickly because it was cheaper than buying and shipping a drive (usually $80-$100). I just started going “I’ll have it to you in a few hours for $35” and call it a day.

dweekly 4y ago

I think things like this are great because they will finally start to create pressure to commodify >1gbps networking in the home. The industry has some work to do here. I've been on Sonic 10G for almost a year now and LOVE it, but it's definitely been a sore spot to get things set up to expect those kinds of speeds - prosumer 10G switches are vastly more expensive per-port, wired consumer devices don't typically support 10GbaseT/SFP+, 2.5G/5G switches aren't broadly available and commodified (e.g. UniFi has limited offerings here) and WiFi6E is still mid-rollout (almost no client devices currently in market yet) meaning that clients can't reasonably expect >1gbps of goodput, even with a good link from a modern device to a modern AP. Then there's flakiness: when things get hot in my garage, my 10G switch just stops working. My Thunderbolt-to-10GbaseT adapter for my MacBook runs very hot. Lots of sharp edges here. The more consumers are buying 10G equipment for their 10G home links, the faster prices will come down and reliability will come up - not just for 10G but also for 2.5G/5G equipment. Hats off to EPB for paving the way for 25G and keeping vendors diligent in mapping out the next generation of their equipment.

TylerE 4y ago
I wonder how much of a push this will really be? For the vast majority of people even vanilla gigabit is of limited benefit... that's on the edge of what a consumer SSD is writing at.
- DannyBee 4y ago
  you are off by an a factor of 3-5 :). The random consumer ssd reads/writes as 300-600megabytes/second, easily. That's 3-5gbps, not 1gbps. A reasonable 7200rpm spinning disk can easily saturate 1gbps. Most home grade nas RAID arrays can saturate 10gbps. (obviously not 2 spinning disk mirror ones :P)
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  Right - the popular sentiment on my smallish town Facebook group is people dropping their 300mbps cable since Spectrum is an awful company to deal with in favor of cell-based (T-mobile or Verizon) home service. 90%+ of people in most areas don't need internet any faster than Netflix requires, and nobody is running ethernet so WiFi speeds are going to be the limiting factor in internet speed for most everyone else.

digdugdirk 4y ago

Chattanooga Tennessee, for those curious but not curious enough to read the article. I'm intrigued by the city's push for this community co-op high speed internet - does anyone here have any experience with how the city has changed before/after the "gig-city" push? And did pandemic work from home change/accelerate things at all?

marviel 4y ago
Had to move away for work -- but in my experience, the city has successfully reinvented itself and is now one of the most desirable places to live in the south.
ThunderSizzle 4y ago
It started out to build a smart power grid, and I can say it did that pretty well. The network was able to automatically re-routr power to decrease outages substantially during storms without requiring crews to fix it. Most people I know converted pretty quickly to EPB from Comcast, but apartments and HOAs still make contracts for exclusive Comcast wiring, even brand new HOAs that are being built. My understanding is Comcast significantly improved in the Chattanooga area to compete, but I never went back and will never move to an area where I have to use Comcast again. The best part about EPB was that they will service any house within their service area - for no crazy cost. I think initial setup was sometimes either completely waived or less than $100, no matter the house. Also, the billing is nice - when they say $70 - it's $70 - no extra taxes or fees on top of that like most telecoms and utilities do. As for actual changes - the city failed to truly capitalize on having a gig network. We wasted millions of dollars on a city-wide wifi system that was never turned on, due to political reasons (thr decision maker saw poor performance and shut it down after $300 million was already wasted putting up routers across the city. The push I expected was smarter stoplights and traffic management, but that never happened. If anything it got worse.
- sarchertech 4y ago
  EPB ran about 25 Ethernet drops throughout my new house for free.
- 4y ago

vlan0 4y ago

This is just getting stupid. It's more marketing than anything else. It feels like the megahertz wars of the 90s. Your connection is SO MUCH more than just your local PHY rate. Let's start raising the bar. Show me you've optimized to reduce bufferbloat. Show me you care about RTT and not simply the cheapest pipe. I'm also not sure they have the capacity to deliver true 25Gb to for many folks simultaneously. https://www.peeringdb.com/net/7007 https://www.peeringdb.com/net/7007 https://bgp.he.net/AS26827#_asinfo https://bgp.he.net/AS26827#_asinfo

nimish 4y ago
If you are using so much bandwidth on a gigabit line that the buffers are actually used, I'd think you probably want a higher grade of service than home internet.
- vlan0 4y ago
  I'm not sure I agree. Many devices can saturate a 1Gb pipe these days. Even if it's for a brief period of time, your latency sensitive applications will suffer. Everyone should be using AQM.

bob1029 4y ago

I've been shopping around for alternatives to Texas, and Chattanooga, TN just jumped to the top of my list. I definitely couldn't take direct advantage of 25 gigabit/s service myself. But, I do enjoy the idea of it attracting certain types of businesses & people to an area and creating opportunities that might not be possible elsewhere. Also, the fact that this sort of internet service is possible in an area gives me hope for the leadership.

aetherspawn 4y ago

Considering that 10G fiber gear is not very expensive at all (ie 28 port fiber switch - $1000) I’ve wondered what the hold-up is on 10Gbps SFP+ becoming a standard. In Australia we’re shamefully paying $1150 per month for our business symmetrical 10G SFP+ (shaped to 1/1G), but a 1G 1000/40 connection is only $100/mo.

fomine3 4y ago
FTTH network uses PON to reduce expensive 1:1 wiring for each home (but YMMV). Simple fiber switch can't be used for PON.
- hocuspocus 4y ago
  Here in Europe it's mostly big ISPs that deploy PON. From what I understand it only makes sense with a large customer base. Small ISPs typically have P2P deployments and use standard switches.
inferiorhuman 4y ago
You still have to get transceivers for both ends of each and every connection which drives up the cost per port pretty dramatically. Edit: Scantly driving up the cost per port. Say what? You've just added $1,500 (28 ports * 2 per port * $27) to the cost of a 28 port switch… at the low end. Now I've no experience with fiber, but anecdotally I've come across a few complaints that the Ubiquiti stuff is picky about the transceivers you use. So if you go with a single manufacturer, Ubiquiti wants about $900 for their 28 port switch, but SFP+ transceivers start at $38. Their direct attach cables are cheaper but a 5m cable will still run you about $40. Compare that to *BaseT where I can grab a 3m Cat6 cable for under $10. For an ISP the cost difference probably matters much less as they will be making money off of each connection (and likely saving on cooling costs). For a home user (e.g. an EPB customer) that's still pricey. An ER-X w/ a single SFP port runs about $80, using that SFP port will cost you.
- theideaofcoffee 4y ago
  Let's be generous and assume that we need far more reach than what is realistic in this scenario, take it at 10km between the subscriber demarc and the CO where these connections would presumably be terminated. A 10km LR optic is only $27 [0]. Amortize that over, say, three years and that's $0.75 per port, multiplied by two, so call it $1.50 per port/month over three years. Scantly driving up the cost per port. The physical fiber linking the two ends is more expensive (though you could depreciate and amortize over a longer period of time). The 25G optics are barely that much more, LR/10km for $59 a pop. [1] [0] https://www.fs.com/products/74670.html?attribute=4254&id=290339 https://www.fs.com/products/74670.html?attribute=4254&id=290... [1] https://www.fs.com/products/75297.html?attribute=740&id=341789 https://www.fs.com/products/75297.html?attribute=740&id=3417...

sarchertech 4y ago

I’ve had EPB for about 3 years now (since I moved to Chattanooga). It’s fantastic. Every once in a while someone will post in the local Facebook group asking which ISP they should go with. It turns into pages and pages of EPB!, EPB!, EPB! Mixed with comments about how much better it is than Comcast. Not only is the service better and cheaper, customer service is much much better.

maxharris 4y ago
Hello from the Southside!

mabbo 4y ago

I recently upgraded to 1.5gbps and realized a few things. The downsides: the Cat5e cables inside my condo walls can't handle more than 1.0gbps; my desktop's network port also maxes out at 1.0gbps; the wifi router in my home can't do more than 600mbps even if standing right next to it. But also, nothing I do needs this much bandwidth. I can download any steam game in the blink of an eye. I can watch streaming video at resolutions higher than my eyes can distinguish. Outside of a few high bandwidth edge cases, there's very little I need more than 100mbps for. If you offered me 25gbps internet right now I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between it and what I have! Someone tell me: what will I need that much bandwidth for?

Gigachad 4y ago
Steam games is the biggest benefit I saw. Modern games are in the tens to hundreds of GB now so gigabit internet is the difference between waiting 15 minutes and 1 hour.
viscountchocula 4y ago
Doing multiple of those things at once. You're watching a movie while one kid is downloading a game and another is watching something else? I'm saying it lets your whole family never have to interact with one another.
throwaway892238 4y ago
When your microwave, fridge, oven, tv, toaster, dish washer, dryer, tea kettle, and stand mixer are all playing you 4K advertisements for a new TV show or a new pair of Adidas, you will be glad you have 12gbps left to browse the web (which will by then require another 2gbps for all of the javascript, images, and 4K video ads needed to render a blog)
ShakataGaNai 4y ago
What will you need that much bandwidth for... in the future. Today? You don't need 25gig. Even if you're in a house with all the latest technology and a half dozen users, you probably won't ever saturate that line unless everyone REALLY tried. But tomorrow is a different story. Ethernet above 1gig is becoming more common in the consumer world. Not super popular, but its starting to take shape. Wifi 6E has a theoretical maximum of just shy of 10gig. Wifi 7 (not ratified) is looking to be around 40gig. With work from home and, in general, the world going more digital - there is a lot more pushing around of files. Do you have an iPhone or Android? Everytime your phone is on the wifi its backing up your photos/videos (and other stuff). That alone can slow down most peoples internet connections. Does your computer do backups? Also once your internet starts to hit about the 1gig mark, you can treat remote servers like we treat LAN today. Want to have a server but don't want to have it at home? That's ok when you've got 1+ gig internet. Of course, it'd be even nicer if that was even faster... in theory.

bscphil 4y ago

Meanwhile here in my large California city the best service I can get at my apartment is 100/10. That's because it's negotiated by the landlord with some kind of corporate rate (it's not shared, we still have our own modem). It actually drops to something like 80 down at peak hours.

cletus 4y ago

People may not realize just how many barriers are put in the way of this kind of thing happening and at every level of government you have skilled and experienced actors trying to make sure it doesn't happen. The obvious one is states pass laws to forbid municipal broadband. This should be illegal. I actually wonder if the Federal government could override this since this sort of thing usually falls within the purview of the FCC but I'm no lawyer. Comcat, AT&T and Verizon all lobby hard to make municipal broadband illegal, even when they won't connect homes they have a legal obligation to connect. But imagine it is legal and you've started an ISP. Your problems have just begun. How are you going to run cables (fiber or otherwise) to people's homes? Are you going to dig trenches? Well you need permits for that. You might dig up someone else's cables so existing providers get to delay that process. Or are you going to string those cables up on poles? Well, who owns the poles? It might be an existing ISP. There might be laws that allows you to string cables on those poles. Maybe there isn't. Maybe you have to pay an exorbitant amount for the privilege. Maybe Comcast is the only one legally allowed to do cable work and they'll charge you a fortune for it and take forever (and probably screw it up). Even if the utility poles are owned by the city or the county but that doesn't necessarily solve your problem either. You need permits to string up cables. You might have to file a permit application for each pole individually. Even when you get a permit, existing users may have to move their cables to make room. They may have 90 days to move it. If several need to move cables then may well take the maximum time in turn. Either through trenches or poles you eventually have cables. Where do you run them to? As in, are you running short cables to substations and then trunk lines back to an exchange? Or are you running long cables back to an exchange directly? Each has its problems. The long cables may make too thick bundles for poles or require more expensive trenching. The shorter cables may require a substation that the locals view as an eyesore. You'll need to acquire land for that and may face NIMBYist opposition. What I learned through exposure to this was that building an ISP is hyperlocal and the incumbents are way better at it. For example, there may be a lot of limestone in the soil that may make trenching slow, difficult and expensive. You may want to use poles instead but that might not be an option so you're stuck with disposing of a lot of limestone. Dicalimer: Xoogler and I worked on Google Fiber for a time.

dqpb 4y ago
> states pass laws to forbid municipal broadband What happens if the municipality goes ahead with it anyway? Does the state sue everybody? Seize the network by force? Cut the cables?

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

alberth 4y ago

Do economical home routers exist that support these speeds? Seems silly to offer someone 25 Gbps fiber service if it doesn’t also include a >= 25 Gbps home router.

71a54xd 4y ago
In short no, but ironically the last time I read about rural 10G fiber the one guy they interviewed was a radiologist who wanted to work from home lmao. In short, I don't think he was too worried about dropping $1k on a router etc. Granted, if I remember correctly I think the ISP actually loaned him some enterprise routing gear. hahaha found it... ironically it's a vice article [0] 0 - https://www.vice.com/en/article/gv5m77/10-gbps-fiber-internet-fastest-home-internet-in-the-united-states https://www.vice.com/en/article/gv5m77/10-gbps-fiber-interne...

gregors 4y ago

I live in another TN city rolling out municipal fiber. I live in a middle class area of town. I've been asking for 1G for years, but ATT keeps telling me "there's not enough need in that area of town". That changes as soon you move to the higher-end neighborhoods though. I guess people who live in the expensive zip codes are the only ones who need 1G. EPB will offer internet to ALL residents, not just the rich of the cities. Since the city has started the fiber rollout, all of a sudden it's now feasible for ATT to offer fiber. Go municipal internet!!!!!! https://www.kub.org/about/about-kub/kub-service-areas/century-ii/meter-modernization/broadband-services-public-forum https://www.kub.org/about/about-kub/kub-service-areas/centur...

71a54xd 4y ago

This is incredible, I'm full remote and tired of paying high rent in austin (even after leaving NYC) which makes me want to consider TN a bit more. However, what kind of networking (ideally prosumer) hardware do you need to truly leverage this kind of a connection. Switches are cheap, I already have a few 10G fiber switches, however routers are another story, especially ones that are actually capable of keeping up with a 10G or 25G connection. 2G Google Fiber has been an absolute game changer - from experience I can also say it's better than 2x bonded Verizon Fios fiber connections. By far, the coolest feature of G Fiber is the online portal to request a static IP. Really hope static IP capability is also an option with this 10G service!

bitbckt 4y ago
I usually buy used enterprise gear, and have been in a similar situation: switch ports are (relatively) cheap, anything that needs an actual CPU to do routing is spendy. I've gone to Mikrotik for routing 10Gb in the home now. Excuse the horrible part number: the CCR2004-16G-2S+PC has worked out great for me. They're a bit hard to find right now, but I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them over whatever Ubiquiti is trying to sell in the space. For multi-gig routing, the Mikrotik RB5009 has also been a great piece of hardware. 25Gb is really getting into a different class of hardware entirely. If I needed to route at that speed, I'd seriously consider a Supermicro + Opnsense build.

maxharris 4y ago

Anyone else live in Chattanooga? I'm an EPB customer :)

dqpb 4y ago

Is Chattanooga a nice place to live?

aldebran 4y ago

To the people saying 1G+ is overkill: Latency improves too! For me that was the biggest change I noticed. I’m sitting at 3ms! My friend send me a screenshot of 0.9ms.

hirvi74 4y ago

I used to have EPB some 6 years or so ago. They were by far the best ISP I have ever used. I was also privy to an organization that had access to their 10Gb connection. A public internet service has been on their radar for about a decade now, and I proud to see they managed to get it working.