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On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 12:14 PM, John Abreau <abreauj at gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 12:07 PM, Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org> wrote: > > > I live in Newton where we have Vz (FIOS), Comcast, and RCN. In general my > > Comcast service has been excellent with any outage not their fault. > > > The difference is that you live in a town where there is actually some > competition in the broadband market, so the companies *have* to provide > good service in order to retain customers. > > Most towns give a monopoly to one broadband provider, who then has > no incentive to give adequate service. > > > > -- > John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix > OLD GnuPG KeyID: D5C7B5D9 / Email: abreauj at gmail.com > OLD GnuPG FP: 72 FB 39 4F 3C 3B D6 5B E0 C8 5A 6E F1 2C BE 99 > 2011 PGP KeyID: 32A492D8 / Email: abreauj at gmail.com > 2011 PGP FP: 7834 AEC2 EFA3 565C A4B6 9BA4 0ACB AD85 32A4 92D8 > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > Discuss at blu.org > http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss > I was talking with a friend who is the LAN/WAN manager for a town here in MA and he was involved in the negotiations with Comcast and Verizon for that town. Previously Comcast had an exclusive multi-year(think it was 10 or 20 years) agreement and the town received a payment for each resident that had Comcast service. When FIOS came out, the town went back to Comcast and told them if they didn't want to allow Verizon in then they would pull their rights and only allow Verizon. I guess Comcast agreed so they now have both. Unfortunately, not all the towns are doing this. In Quincy where I live, I've heard two different stories. I've heard that they don't have the balls to try a renegotiation, and I've heard that the payment they get from Comcast is quite substantial and they're happy getting the money from Comcast and if they renegotiated the amount per subscriber could be significantly less. But as one person had mentioned, where there are no other alternatives you can always sign up for Clear.com. Since I need to be on 24x7 and can't have Comcast being down when I need to be online, I've got a Clear.com wireless account for backup. $55/month for unlimited wireless service. Not the fastest service (although Netflix and Hulu do work fine), but it's great for when Comcast is down or when I'm on the go and need WIFI service. Matthew Shields Owner BeanTown Host - Web Hosting, Domain Names, Dedicated Servers, Colocation, Managed Services www.beantownhost.com www.sysadminvalley.com www.jeeprally.com Like us on Facebook <http://www.facebook.com/beantownhost> Follow us on Twitter <https://twitter.com/#!/beantownhost>
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