[peterjmag]

I'm pretty proud of my hometown for passing this measure! Longmont, a town 30 miles south of Fort Collins, passed something similar a couple years ago, and it sounds like it's been pretty successful so far[1], so I'm excited to see where this goes.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15570559#up_15573817

[nulagrithom]

Some counties in Washington state have a Public Utility District which runs the fiber, then sells it through local ISPs. Lots of areas have 1Gb connections available for below $100/mo.

What's more interesting to me is the effect on rural access. Plenty of lake-side cabins in the woods with fiber available. One ISP has taken to putting up poles with Ubiquiti airFiber antennas, creating a mesh network that extends beyond the already large fiber coverage. In Chelan and Douglas counties you can get a 35/2 connection nearly anywhere over this extended wireless network, even way up some lonesome canyon.

It's amazing what a little competition does to the ISP market...

[FLUX-YOU]

Do you happen to know where they hire people for working on this? Are they city or state employees, or are they using a bunch of contractors?

Edit: Hmm, looks like Fort Collins will use contractors for installs and hire 10 to 38 people over five years (p. 39 - Personnel Requirements): https://www.fcgov.com/broadband/pdf/7.27.17%20Broadband%20Bu...

However, this is excluding developers for things like customer portals. Maybe that will get contracted out as well.

Seems light to run an ISP, even for FC's size.

[peterjmag]

Good find! I was curious too, and that does seem pretty small. I wonder how many people NextLight employs and contracts out in Longmont?

[_greim_]

Yes, all us front-rangers are envious of you, Longmont :)

I'm guessing word-of-mouth helped defeat incumbents' efforts to kill this, as much as anything. It's almost become a standard conversation piece around here: "I'm from Longmont." "Oh, you have decent internet, then? Jealous!"

[thcipriani]

it has indeed been quite successful: http://beta.speedtest.net/result/6777148187

it's like that all the time now. Never been down for longer than 15 minutes and I've never been on hold trying to get assistance. All that for $50/mo :)