Fiber, Finally

It finally looks like we're going to get decent Internet in the neighborhood.

No thanks to any commercial enterprise -- though a business will be involved, eventually -- but through the civic application of (gasp) SOCIALISM, as the city of Ammon brings its fiber optic network to the neighborhood.

Behold, we're part of a scattered local improvement district in the city that should have us knee deep in fiber before the year is out.

They've already started installing fiber on John Adams, but that was before all the snow fell, so I'm not sure how much they'll be able to do until spring.

But I don't care. I'm just tired of the crappy Internet options we have.

There are three options in the neighborhood -- or at least we've tried three; one may no longer be an option. These businesses get bought out and change names so often it's just hard to keep up.

There was Cable One -- now called Sparklight. It is true what they say about cable Internet: When everyone's using it, it slows down. Way down.

Then there's CenturyLink, which we've used the most and found to be the most reliable. That's a relative term best defined by Clay Shirky, who noted that we put up with poor service because that's about all we expect from our ISPs. I have to give them credit -- even with their creaky old network, they've been almost able to keep up with demand here, with four to five in the house almost always on a device or streaming something. But we still get service hiccups.

I don't even remember the name of the third provider. We still have their microwave antenna on the roof. Maybe one of these days I'll take it down.

But there's fiber. Out at the RWMC -- out in the middle of the freaking Arco desert -- I had a fiber connection. Lightning fast. I miss it. And to think we'll shortly have that option in the big, bad city is something to think about.

Cost? With the LID, right now with the number of people who've signed up, they're estimating we'll have to pay about $2,500 to get a hookup. Then there are fees every month to the city and a fiber-capable ISP. But the combined fees add up to not much more than what we're paying for our current Internet service. And I don't see any of the private businesses making any kind of investment in infrastructure to make better Internet, so I don't even mind the $2,500 hookup fee.

I'm sure there's someone complaining that the city is taking business away from private business. Well, when private business makes the kind of investment the city is willing to make, maybe that argument will hold weight. But I don't see any of the current ISPs going around and getting people to commit to better service and asking them to invest in the infrastructure; they're just going to have us limp along with el cruddo Internet because, hey, what else are we going to do?

Anyway, looking forward to it.