Not wanting to be the only incumbent major telecom not suing Nashville, Comcast decided to voice its displeasure with the city’s new One Touch Make Ready policy by filing suit. Ars Technica reports.
Earlier: Predictable: AT&T Sues Nashville, One Touch Make Ready approved by council, probably faces lawsuit
One Touch Make Ready passed the second reading tonight on a 32-7 voice vote. It’s still up for a third (and final) reading before it heads to the the Mayor’s desk. The bill, pushed by Google Fiber, would allow new companies move other companies’ data lines out of the way on telephone poles.
The marijuana decriminalization bill also passed its second reading tonight. The bill would reduce the penalty (at the discretion of the police officer) for getting caught with up to a half ounce of pot (which the police chief said is still a lot of joints for one person) to $50 or 10 hours of community service, down from a misdemeanor.
And finally, the inclusionary zoning bill passed its final vote tonight. The proposed law would require developers requesting special entitlements to also include a certain number of affordable housing units in their developments.
People across the city were reporting slow or non-existent Comcast service yesterday and today:
@PearlTimeline @comcast I was just told there was a major outage in Nashville & not given much detail other than it could be a while.
— Charlie Saunier (@CrazyCharlie615) June 16, 2016
On Reddit, pachetoke reported from near the airport,
When I got off work last night it was out at least from 4pm to 7pm. Not at home to check now. I chatted into comcast with my phone to do troubleshooting. I was able to squeeze out a small credit for loss of use, but it took almost an hour.
And fellow redditor flukester88 also had an outage:
Comcast customer here in Berry Hill, and our internet is bad this morning.
I missed the USA's second goal because of Comcast again, giving poor service! Can't wait for @googlefiber to get to Nashville 100%!
— Caleb G. Tannehill (@CasaDeTannehill) June 17, 2016
On the heels of yesterday’s Google Fiber rollout, today Comcast announced that it will bump up the Internet data cap from 300 GB to 1 TB (1000 GB) for its Nashville customers. (This is also happening for all the other cities where Comcast instituted the data cap.)
Google Fiber’s service does not currently have a data cap.
The change won’t affect many customers, Comcast says, as most customers use around 60 GB per month. Nashvillian Eric Snyder uses a little more than normal, it seems, so he’s pretty happy about the change:
Got my data-use warning while watching the Preds game last night. Can't compete w/ Google Fiber w/ cap in place. https://t.co/9Ntjzo1ITs
— Eric Snyder (@NSHBIZSnyder) April 28, 2016
With Google Fiber, we went from being in the dark (get it? optical communications?) about its status to a live network in a flash (see what I did there?). Today, the company suddenly announced that it’s brought at least four apartment or condo buildings in the vicinity of Music Row online, and residents of those buildings can now sign up for service and schedule an installation. Residents of certain other apartment or condo buildings can see if their building is slated for the go-live soon.
And they’ve announced prices as well: $50 monthly for 100 Mbps, or $70 each month for the heralded 1 Gbps speeds. They also offer a TV package and a home phone add-on.
For Nashvillians who just can’t wait to give really fast Internet a try, Google’s set up a trial space in The Gulch:
Hey, Nashville. Experience super fast Internet + TV at our new Fiber Space: 1108 Division St https://t.co/Bjs29wZFc2 pic.twitter.com/CwfVIjCaM2
— Google Fiber (@googlefiber) April 27, 2016
But those in other apartment buildings, single family homes, and businesses will just have to sit on their hands and wait patiently for the tight-lipped company to let them know when the service will be available to them. A hint: if you see crews burying a cable in your neighborhood, you might just be getting fiber service soon.
Comcast has been laying more fiber in downtown Nashville, recently slipping the optic lines in on lower Broadway and 8th Ave. They’ve also added more WiFi hotspots. The Nashville Post reports.
The chatter today is that Google Fiber will be offering its service free to residents of public housing projects that it connects to, including in Nashville. We’ve already known this for awhile, though, which is why it’s helpful that WPLN’s Emily Siner answered my question before I even asked it:
For context: Google Fiber already was going to provide free Internet to some public housing, but now it's clarifying — at gigabit-speeds.
— Emily Siner (@SinerSays) February 3, 2016
Head on over to the Google Fiber Blog for the full scoop.