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Not every municipal broadband provider assures customers of a cap-free broadband experience. Some of the smaller providers serving the municipalities that cable passed by constructed their own networks decades ago to meet the cable television needs of their citizens. But because they lack the economy of scale, volume discounts the big boys get are simply not available to smaller independents. Often the result is a system compelled to charge higher prices, because its wholesale costs are greater. That’s the case in San Bruno, California — a city of 40,000 12 miles south of San Francisco.
San Bruno Municipal Cable TV has been the incumbent, municipally owned operator since its inception in 1971. In the late 1960s, local government officials asked residents whether they preferred a private or municipal operator. The majority wanted local government to provide the service, and so it did. San Bruno was an early adopter of cable television, building a system at least a decade before many other communities across the country saw their first cable television truck.
San Bruno is surrounded by Comcast, which has made a conscious decision to avoid San Bruno, despite the fact it could apply for a franchise, and one would likely be granted.
The company introduced broadband service to its customers in 1999 after completing a system rebuild. Historically, the company has always made usage limits a part of its acceptable use policy, and enforcement over the years has varied between throttling speeds once a limit was reached, to threats of overlimit fees as high as $10/GB. But most customers report those kinds of fees were never actually charged. The company sought to use the limits to scare people into compliance.
San Bruno, California
Today, San Bruno’s cable TV company has three tiers of broadband service defined by consumption levels – 50, 100, and 150GB per month. The company defends these policies by indicating their wholesale costs are higher to obtain Internet connectivity. San Bruno’s high speed provider has fewer than 5,000 broadband subscribers. Despite those higher costs, the company’s current “overlimit” fee is $0.25/GB, which is much lower than TWC’s proposed $1-2/GB overlimit fee.
So what do customers think? Online reviews are consistently negative about the quality of service, and we’ve received many complaints about the consumption-based tiering, particularly when nearby Comcast customers live under a simple “please don’t exceed 250GB with a residential account per month” policy. But San Bruno residents enjoy a respectable 12Mbps/512Kbps level of service for $32.95 a month, $10 less than Comcast subscribers pay, as long as they avoid exceeding 50GB of usage per month.
What everyone agrees on is the need for additional competition. Currently, AT&T offers 3Mbps DSL service in parts of San Bruno for around $40 a month. That’s hardly comparable in speed or cost. Comcast has refused to compete across San Bruno, so another cable provider is unlikely. Ultimately, the deployment of AT&T U-verse, if it happens, would be the closest equivalent competitor, because it can match and exceed the municipal cable provider’s speeds.
Another compelling question — why does San Bruno Municipal Cable, serving fewer than 5,000 broadband customers, find that charging just a quarter per gigabyte in overlimit fees recoups their expenses, while the far larger TWC proposes charging considerably more — $1-2/GB? Perhaps overlimit fees aren’t as much about cost recovery as they are about emotionally conditioning customers to ration their use out of fear of a shocking cable broadband bill with overlimit fees at the end of the month.
I am currently on San Bruno Cable… and I definitely do not get 12Mbps service… They claim I do.. but even using their own speed test utility: http://speedtest.snbr.cablerocket.net/
I get about 3 Mbps… and many many times even less than 1 Mbps.
On top of that.. sometimes in the middle of web browsing.. the connection cuts off…
I don’t have a choice on who I can use for internet. Even AT&T DSL is not available… I wonder why not!!!