[conspire] ISP

[Daniel Gimpelevich]

On Mon, 2011-06-20 at 08:49 -0700, Tony Godshall wrote:
> Not my bottom line.  Mine would be that if you're close to a CO you
> get a better $$ deal with Sonic and if you are farther away and don't
> care about voice line, RawBW may the better deal.

If one looks at the numbers, that's not very different.

> Of course AT&T and Comcast will give you more bandwidth for less
> money for a limited time, and that has a double meaning: (1) they
> price is only good for a limited time and (2) if they can use their
> market power to drive out the independents they can then charge
> whatever they want.

Comcast is well-known for this practice. AT&T is more insidious,
however.

> Daniel, I think your heart is in the right place but you keep
> making these generalizations that are just a bit too much.
> You seem to be looking for a simplistic rule that just doesn't
> exist.

More a "guideline" than a rule, really.

> No, AT&T is not actually out of the picture at all- they still
> handle the wire.  If I could, I'd factor that out too but I can't

Still, that is the same among different ADSL2+ providers.

> get line of sight to Marin (unwired) or a particular piece of
> Potrero (monkeybrains).  I wonder if SFLAN could be revived.

There have been various proposals for SFLAN-like projects which fell
apart for one reason or another. What I'd like to see is a grass-roots
community-based _wired_ ISP.

> Regardless, I'm not sure why we're still discussing this- I just
> wanted to drop some fresh details should someone be looking
> for an ISP in the future... and I certainly have no dog in this
> fight- I'd recommend either one- both Sonic or RawBW are
> *great* ISPs.

The most recent addition was for no reason other than to take it back to
the list; I didn't really have anything else to add at that point. I
don't see this as a fight, but it's still well past time to move on, as
was clear to me 2 posts ago.