With Minnesota repeal, number of states restricting public broadband falls to 16.

  • Flying Squid
    link
    11223 days ago

    We do not have municipal broadband here (we live outside city limits anyway), but we have the next best thing- a local ISP started up and promised to lay fiber in any neighborhood in the county where 40% of the residents agreed to sign up for their service. Everyone said, “fuck Spectrum” in our neighborhood and lots of other neighborhoods and signed up and now they’re doing great.

    The part that pissed me off was that once they started putting the signs in our neighborhood offering this, Spectrum tripled the neighborhood’s broadband speed. Meaning they could have done that any time, but didn’t.

    And now the locally-owned ISP is laying fiber down rural roads.

    • @dohpaz42
      link
      English
      4123 days ago

      Yeah, Fuck Spectrum is right up there with ACAB and other popular creeds. But good on your ISP for being true to their word. It really is for the best anyway. Everybody wins; except Spectrum. Fuck Spectrum.

    • partial_accumen
      link
      2323 days ago

      The part that pissed me off was that once they started putting the signs in our neighborhood offering this, Spectrum tripled the neighborhood’s broadband speed. Meaning they could have done that any time, but didn’t.

      Spectrum did this when Frontier fiber came in. Spectrum 100Mbs at $80/month became 300Mbs at $80/month overnight. Frontier fiber was still faster and cheaper with 500Mbs for $50/month.

      • Flying Squid
        link
        623 days ago

        Yep, the local ISP is still faster and cheaper here too. Anyone outside that minimum 40% who decided to stay with Spectrum is an idiot, but I haven’t seen a single Spectrum van in the neighborhood since it happened, so I have a feeling it was closer to 100% than 40%.

      • @[email protected]
        link
        fedilink
        English
        023 days ago

        One of the benefits to getting StarLink is that I never have to be a pawn in those kind of games anymore. Not that I recommend it for most people but if you’re mobile or living in the sticks it’s pretty great. I’ve hit 400Mb per second at times.

    • @[email protected]
      link
      fedilink
      1123 days ago

      This happened in my parents city about 15 years ago.

      .5gbps - $45/mo
      1g- $60
      2g - $80
      5g - $110

      It’s amazing.