> "People love to complain about the speed of their Internet access and with good reason."
I'm sorry, but no, in my experience, they don't. I can't think off hand of any non-tech person in my area complain about their Internet speed. People pay $42/mo here for 9/2Meg and because it will play Netflix and get them on Facebook, it's good enough. I'm not arguing against a fiber upgrade, I'd love to see it, but in the end, non-techy people don't seem to see much advantage. You're not going to build a community network unless the community is engaged. How other non American countries have done it I don't know, how you get that level of engagement in the most individualized culture in the world is beyond me. Sadly, I feel the only way this would really happen in most of urban America would be to beat the incumbents on price. Which sounds possible, but not by much, especially with the fact that if you don't offer bundled cable-vision, people then have to break their other provider's bundle and pay more for cable elsewhere so the difference is even less. I hate to be pessimistic about it (I think gig everywhere could have huge economic advantages), but this is a major hurdle. People often hate their providers, but it's often due to price or customer service, not speed.
It has been my experience that "non-tech people" do complain about their internet speed because the major ISPs actually don't provide good enough service for them to play Netflix and get on Facebook as consistently as they want.
More importantly, what "non-tech people" don't realize is what they will want in the future. In 2008, they didn't know they would want to stream Netflix over the internet. I don't think there's a big chicken and egg problem with faster internet; people will want faster internet when they start using services that the current infrastructure doesn't support well. It has happened before and it will keep happening.
I was really hoping to see someone have a different experience than me, so thank you ;). Not sure why the difference though, perhaps we have the speed around here but just not a decent price. I've heard more non-tech people complain about the data caps actually, especially families with children who watch kids shows on Netflix.
I'm sorry, but no, in my experience, they don't. I can't think off hand of any non-tech person in my area complain about their Internet speed. People pay $42/mo here for 9/2Meg and because it will play Netflix and get them on Facebook, it's good enough. I'm not arguing against a fiber upgrade, I'd love to see it, but in the end, non-techy people don't seem to see much advantage. You're not going to build a community network unless the community is engaged. How other non American countries have done it I don't know, how you get that level of engagement in the most individualized culture in the world is beyond me. Sadly, I feel the only way this would really happen in most of urban America would be to beat the incumbents on price. Which sounds possible, but not by much, especially with the fact that if you don't offer bundled cable-vision, people then have to break their other provider's bundle and pay more for cable elsewhere so the difference is even less. I hate to be pessimistic about it (I think gig everywhere could have huge economic advantages), but this is a major hurdle. People often hate their providers, but it's often due to price or customer service, not speed.