Now that's what I call FAST!

Are you sure that speed is legal??

Governor Locke and the Democrats killed the ability of Washington Public Utility Districts to provide direct fiber service to their taxpayers owners. According to the Chelan County PUD representative I talked to the law limits fiber speed. Basically, in Chelan County the PUD cannot offer fiber faster than the cable company (that is owned by the third richest man in the world). So they are required to cap our fiber speed at 7 megs per second since Charter Cable modems cannot go faster than that.

I had a friend in Douglas County that while they were testing their fiber network his speed was 100,000 KBPS.

I still madder than hell that Charter and Verizon could buy the Governor and the Democrats in the state legislator so cheaply.



I am so mad!!!

WOW, that is FAST. Where are you getting that?

If I could get half that with my aircard, I would be TRULY impressed

Leave it to politicians to put this country into the dark ages of communications....We are already falling behind much of the world in data communications.

I'm at my house in Ephrata WA. Amazing how these podunk little towns have this technology.

What's really cool about this speed is Google maps, satellite view. Almost Zero wait time for reloading maps.

quote:

WOW, that is FAST. Where are you getting that?

If I could get half that with my aircard, I would be TRULY impressed

Leave it to politicians to put this country into the dark ages of communications....We are already falling behind much of the world in data communications.

In eastern Washington. Back in the last century the residents of eastern Washington asked the utility companies to extend service in eastern Washington. They said later.

So the communities bought out the utility companies, built their own dams on the Columbia River and provided service. Current power rates vary from 1.85 cents per kilowatt hour to 2.1 cents.

Fast forward to 1990. The commmunities asked the cable and phone companies to provide high speed internet service. They said later.

Since the Public Utility Districts already had the fiber optic lines laid for management of the dams they said we could do it.

That's when the politicians got paid off. So now the utility provides fiber to the outside wall of my house, but I must contract with another company to run it inside my house. Needless to say for most folks around here, the large western Washington cable and telecommunications companies do not get that business.

There is a lot of high tech stuff going on outside the urban cores. For example, in Umatilla County, Oregon you can get free wireless internet across the entire county.

One of the great things about the internet is that it leveled the playing field between big business and local businesses.

The limits of fibre are yet to be discovered. When I worked as a Communications Technician we wanted to lay underwater fibre cable from the mainland of Canada to the Queen Charlotte Islands, a distance of some 240 miles. At the time, cable manufactures told us that a signal on fibre had to be regenerated every 100 miles in order to control the error rate. We tried it anyway and it is still working to this day! I believe there are longer runs in existence elsewhere.