MacMusic  |  PcMusic  |  440 Software  |  440 Forums  |  440TV  |  Zicos
internet
Search

Neighbors Build Their Own Lightning-fast Fiber-optic Network

Sunday November 27, 2022. 04:15 AM , from Slashdot
Somewhere in Silicon Valley is a man 'standing up to internet giants Comcast and AT&T,' reports the Mercury News. (Alternate URL here.)

'Comcast told him it would cost $17,000 to speed up his internet. He rallied 41 South Bay neighbors to build their own lightning-fast fiber-optic network instead '

Tech-rich but internet-poor, residents of the Silicon Valley neighborhood were fed up with sluggish broadband speeds of less than 25 Megabits-per-second (Mbps) download and 3 Mbps upload — the federal definition of a home unserved by adequate internet. Frustrated by the take-it-or-leave-it attitude of internet providers, they created their own solution — and now this tony enclave has one of the fastest residential speeds in the nation.

Scott Vanderlip, a software engineer, said Comcast gave him a $17,000 estimate to connect his home to the faster internet service at a neighbor's home. 'You got to be kidding me — I can see it on the pole from my driveway,' Vanderlip said, remembering his reaction to Comcast's quote.

So the self-described 'town rebel' jumped at the chance to partner with a startup internet service provider called Next Level Networks. If Vanderlip could rally a few neighbors willing to invest a couple thousand dollars, Next Level would get them very fast internet. That was in 2017. Now, Vanderlip is president of the Los Altos Hills Community Fiber Association, which provides super-fast speeds — up to 10 Gigabits-per-second upload and download — to its over 40 association members, letting them transfer huge files and load webpages in the click of a computer mouse, Vanderlip said.

That's 125 times faster than the median download speed in Santa Clara County.

It helped that his home 'also happened to sit near a local school with a spare fiber optic internet connection,' the article points out.

But a startup internet service provider called Next Level Networks also handled 'the infrastructure procurement, contracts, logistics and retail — essentially providing the residents a turnkey fiber optic internet service — while Vanderlip and two of his neighbors, who joined with an investment of $5,000 each, bought the fiber optic infrastructure, crowdsourced new members and mapped out an initial fiber route to their houses.'
Thanks to Slashdot reader k6mfw for sharing the story!

Read more of this story at Slashdot.
https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/11/27/0313205/neighbors-build-their-own-lightning-fast-fiber-opti...
News copyright owned by their original publishers | Copyright © 2004 - 2024 Zicos / 440Network
Current Date
Mar, Thu 28 - 21:44 CET