<story><title>NYC Mesh – community-owned network to replace your current internet connection</title><url>https://nycmesh.net/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fixthenet</author><text>Josh from the Community Broadband Project here. Would be happy to answer any questions about our mission and progress in LA. I&amp;#x27;m no regular, but we just got a bunch of traffic from Hacker News and I&amp;#x27;m here to spread the gospel.&lt;p&gt;NYC Mesh is doing very cool stuff--we wish them the best. We&amp;#x27;re in touch with a few other community ISPs who are growing organically in competition against big incumbent ISPs. It&amp;#x27;s inspiring.&lt;p&gt;Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, and Culver City are all constructing municipal fiber right now. In the case of at least WeHo and Culver, it&amp;#x27;s aimed primarily at businesses. Some residents may see fiber offered by the incumbents, but we did some math of those offerings and it was $133&amp;#x2F;mo for 1Gbps. It&amp;#x27;d be more helpful for the community if reasonable speeds were more affordable and available, than only some wealthy neighborhoods getting fiber.</text></item><item><author>joshuamcginnis</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a similar effort gaining traction in the Los Angeles area: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.communitybroadband.la&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.communitybroadband.la&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve also noticed that local municipalities are getting into the ISP business. Beverly Hills, for example, is currently deploying a city-owned&amp;#x2F;operated fiber-backed ISP:
&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.beverlyhills.org&amp;#x2F;fiber&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.beverlyhills.org&amp;#x2F;fiber&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Timmah</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t know if laying cable is one of your biggest challenges, but I assume it would be along with right-of-way.&lt;p&gt;What do you think about the idea of using the sewer system to lay either fiber or 10+gb copper? Before you think about how gross that is, consider the advancements in drone robotics. You would need to devise a cable-laying robot that could traverse the sewer via remote control. Mount fixtures to the top of the pipes and string the cables through, connecting neighborhoods.&lt;p&gt;This would require convincing the city to lease you the right-of-way and put up a bond to cover any repairs to damage caused by the cables. But it would solve both the bandwidth problem and the &amp;quot;those are &lt;i&gt;our&lt;/i&gt; telephone poles!&amp;quot; Problem. What do you think?</text></comment>
<story><title>NYC Mesh – community-owned network to replace your current internet connection</title><url>https://nycmesh.net/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>fixthenet</author><text>Josh from the Community Broadband Project here. Would be happy to answer any questions about our mission and progress in LA. I&amp;#x27;m no regular, but we just got a bunch of traffic from Hacker News and I&amp;#x27;m here to spread the gospel.&lt;p&gt;NYC Mesh is doing very cool stuff--we wish them the best. We&amp;#x27;re in touch with a few other community ISPs who are growing organically in competition against big incumbent ISPs. It&amp;#x27;s inspiring.&lt;p&gt;Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, and Culver City are all constructing municipal fiber right now. In the case of at least WeHo and Culver, it&amp;#x27;s aimed primarily at businesses. Some residents may see fiber offered by the incumbents, but we did some math of those offerings and it was $133&amp;#x2F;mo for 1Gbps. It&amp;#x27;d be more helpful for the community if reasonable speeds were more affordable and available, than only some wealthy neighborhoods getting fiber.</text></item><item><author>joshuamcginnis</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s a similar effort gaining traction in the Los Angeles area: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.communitybroadband.la&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.communitybroadband.la&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;ve also noticed that local municipalities are getting into the ISP business. Beverly Hills, for example, is currently deploying a city-owned&amp;#x2F;operated fiber-backed ISP:
&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.beverlyhills.org&amp;#x2F;fiber&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.beverlyhills.org&amp;#x2F;fiber&lt;/a&gt;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>debaserab2</author><text>You might be the totally wrong person to ask this and I apologize if this is a naive question.&lt;p&gt;Is there a way a lay person (non network-engineer) can somehow get involved with their community to help get this started? I&amp;#x27;d love to see something like this get started where I live (Minneapolis) and would be willing to help in any capacity I could.</text></comment>