It’s Time to Start Demanding Gigabit Web Where you live
1Gbps fiber for $70—in America? Yup.
We are falling so far behind Europe and Asia in technology that it’s disgusting. What’s wrong with America? It’s not the loss of tradition or values; instead it’s a myopic vision of the past and an entrenched lobby of corporations trying to keep their claws tightly wrapped around the the technology funnel. Better things are possible here. We could have high speed internet nearly ubiquitously. We could have smart power grids, we could have coast to coast high speed rail, we could have solar and windfarms along that path to fuel the trains and intertie the networks and power grids together.
It’s time for congress to get off their ass and demonstrate that they think that there is a future, it’s time for them to create the enabling legislation and rights of way.
American ISPs have convinced us that Internet access is expensive—getting speeds of 100Mbps will set most people back by more than $100 a month, assuming the service is even available. Where I live in Chicago, Comcast’s 105Mbps service goes for a whopping $199.95 (“premium installation” and cable modem not included). Which is why it was so refreshing to see the scrappy California ISP Sonic.net this week roll out its new 1Gbps, fiber-to-the-home service… for $69.99 a month.
Sonic.net has been around since 1994, selling DSL service in California, but it has recently expanded into fiber; the company has even secured the contract to manage Google’s own 1Gbps fiber network that will connect 800 faculty homes at Stanford University.
Sonic.net’s new approach to broadband involves stringing its own fiber lines to homes and offering bargain-basement pricing; indeed, the new 1Gbps offering is the same price as the company’s earlier bonded 40Mbps DSL offering (in which two phones lines each provide 20Mbps of bandwidth to a home). The price even includes home phone service.