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The city of Wilson, NC, just a little over 30 minutes from us, decided to build-out fiber to the home for the entire city calling it Greenlight. They were also stuck with the Time Warner Cable monopoly for their cable and broadband, but they got fed up with the ever increasing price and terrible internet access speeds and decided to do something about it. The city went to Embarq and TWC and asked to have things improved, but they were denied. So with a bond they ran fiber throughout the city allowing every home and company to gain access to the Co-Op for a much reduced cost compared to what Embarq or TWC were willing to provide. The bond will be paid by the subscribers in a few years and according to the website no taxes are involved. On top of it all, the minimum connection for internet is many many times faster then what you can actually get with TWC (not going by their fake "up-to" bullshit speed) and it is asymmetrical. The city's downtown also got free wireless and business can get gigabit network connections if they wish. The bottom tier for homes gives you 80 cable channels, unlimited US/Canada phone, and 10Mbps UP AND DOWN internet for $99. The next tier is closer to what I have now for cable tv with 215 channels for only $118 but gives nearly twice the HD channels as TWC along with the extra bandwidth and the same phone service. I wish our area would follow in Wilson's footsteps and create a little competition for TWC. I am so sick of coming home to internet access that is 100x slower then at work and that downgrades netflix after a few minutes to ultra-crap quality. We have a had a few HD channels added in the past year, but due to the "upgrade" to Switched Digital Video, half the time I get a nice blue screen saying that the HD channel is not available and to try again. I am sick of it. TWC and Embarq are trying to get laws passed to stop nc cities from doing this or even using stimulus money for broadband at all rather then lowering their inflated prices. Crazy. 12:47 PM | Comments [0]