[PLUG-TALK] broadband alternatives in the 'burbs

[Keith Lofstrom]

I live between Beaverton and Portland.  We bought our house
partly because of Verizon FIOS close to Portland (CenturyLink
territory starts at our eastern back fence).  The asset transfer
from Verizon to Frontier was a disaster.  I seek alternatives.

The only alternative here appears to be Comcast/Xfinity and
local DSL providers ... if the copper wiring still exists.

While DSL is slow, backhaul through Frontier is slower;
Ookla speed test (to specially selected servers, probably
with high QOS flags set) is still 15 Mbps, but actual
performance to most sites is 100 kbps or less.   Even
worse on Netflix Neutrality Nights.  Phone service (via
the same fiber) is becoming worse than useless;  90% of
our calls are illegal phone spam (sometimes 20 per day,
6am to 10pm) and Frontier will do nothing to block ANY
of the spam.  They do not offer "Simultaneous Ring" so
we can use one of the third party phone spam blocker
services.  Grump, grump, grump.

But Comcast may be worse.  Comcast Business has been great
(though expensive!) for my wife's downtown office;  I
don't know how good their suburban residential offerings
are.  If we switch, we will also switch to a VOIP provider
like Ooma, and put a UPS and standby generator on the
network terminal and phone/power wiring.  Grid power will
get pretty dicey over the next decade...

------

Community-owned-fiber advocates take note:

Frontier's revenue is negative, their market cap (stock
price times shares) is $1B, and their annual debt service
is 1.5 times their market cap.  You could sell your $$$$$
Portland homes and move to lower-priced Gresham homes,
combining your profits to leverage a buyout of Frontier's
Gresham (or all of Oregon!) assets.  I bet their creditors
would rather have a large stake in a geek-run community
network than a small share of a bankruptcy sale.  From
Gresham, you could expand westwards towards Portland,
helping the marginally served in East Portland first.  
Perhaps the Oregon PUC might influence PERS to invest. 

High-risers in the core already have many alternatives,
which I learned about while searching for suburban 
options.  While the east county option is not the "city-
centric" community network some envision, the reality
is that northwest and core-east highrises already have
third-party gigabit internet.  Without the wealthy core,
a de-novo city-wide network will struggle financially.

Keith

-- 
Keith Lofstrom          keithl at keithl.com