[LA Dude]

I was a lifelong SoCalif resident and I sold all my property and moved to Springfield Vt. Moved from the Hollywood Hills to Springfield is quite a change for both good and bad.

The bad... it gets cold and heating your house in winter can be expensive. Also property taxes are high percentage wise compared to Calif. Nothing exciting if you are a hardcore foodie. Also not too close to an international airport. But I fly out of Lebanon to Boston Logan which is about 45 minutes away. Takes about the same time to get to Lebanon Airport as it does to get to LAX from Hollywood. And Lebanon has free 2 week parking vs insane prices for LAX parking.

The Good... The people are so much nicer here. real estate prices are so much less... I sold my Hollywood house for $850k and bought a house I like much better for $62.5k. Real estate is so much cheaper here in Springfield and if you are an investor, there's tons of amazing deals if you have cash. Springfield has the nations fastest internet... 1Gbit/sec download AND upload speed! They even offer 10Gbit speed though I am not in need of that kind of speed. Cheap labor force, cops are cool if you are a law abiding citizen. Being from L.A. I'm still not used to drivers stopping when a pedestrian just looks like they want to cross the road. In LA, Boston or most big cities, you have to be very careful or they will run you down... While there's no bargain food stores in Springfield, there's a lot of farm stands and farmers market produce and plenty of local fresh eggs. Hell, I'm raising my own chickens too!

If Silicone Valley companies discovered Springfields awesome internet, they should move here fast. Cheap labor, housing, commercial space...

[cgregor]

Hey, LA Dude! You're exactly the type I'm hoping comes to Springfield. I ran for Select Board here; one of my platform's planks was to have the townspeople vote $100,000 (the previous year they had voted that amount to raze four houses, basically creating four $25,000 cellar holes) to set up an economic missionary boutique in Silicon Valley-- "Purely Vermont," a self-funding operation that would peddle the Vermont brand to people who wanted to move their shop to a place that has: 1) No forest fires (well, okay, Vermont did lose 52 acres in a forest fire about fifteen years ago); 2) No traffic jams; 3) No alternate watering days; 4) No droughts; 5) Rivers, brooks, lakes and ponds; 6) A municipal government you can introduce yourself to personally in about fifteen minutes; 7) As you pointed out, great real estate bargains in great neighborhoods; 8) A need for fresh blood on lots of town committees for those who like to participate; 8) Lots of laid-back people with fascinating backgrounds. I'm the guy who almost got strangled by his scarf at the Hearthside when you were meeting there with Carol.

[Sporin]

Who handles that internet in Springfield? Wish we could get that kind of speed in Windsor (just up the road) but Cable seems to be the most stable still as all the DSL is just using the same old, crappy lines as dial up used to.

[OhBeeHave]

Originally Posted by cgregor

Hey, LA Dude! You're exactly the type I'm hoping comes to Springfield. I ran for Select Board here; one of my platform's planks was to have the townspeople vote $100,000 (the previous year they had voted that amount to raze four houses, basically creating four $25,000 cellar holes) to set up an economic missionary boutique in Silicon Valley-- "Purely Vermont," a self-funding operation that would peddle the Vermont brand to people who wanted to move their shop to a place that has: 1) No forest fires (well, okay, Vermont did lose 52 acres in a forest fire about fifteen years ago); 2) No traffic jams; 3) No alternate watering days; 4) No droughts; 5) Rivers, brooks, lakes and ponds; 6) A municipal government you can introduce yourself to personally in about fifteen minutes; 7) As you pointed out, great real estate bargains in great neighborhoods; 8) A need for fresh blood on lots of town committees for those who like to participate; 8) Lots of laid-back people with fascinating backgrounds. I'm the guy who almost got strangled by his scarf at the Hearthside when you were meeting there with Carol.

Very ambitious, but sounds awesome.

[GeoffD]

You can do your bargain grocery shopping in Claremont, NH at the Market Basket chain. They are the low cost chain in eastern Mass and southern NH.

VTel is a great little rural phone company. They milk the rural telephone subsidies to death and provide excellent service at the expense of all the people in the higher density parts of the country paying for it out of their phone bill. Everybody in the Comcast footprint is going to have DOCSIS 3.1 gigabit downstream data rates in a couple of years. It won't be gigabit upstream but it will be plenty zippy for most users. 4K video usually streams at 20 megabit/sec so it will be a pretty long time before gigabit data rates are all that useful.

[OhBeeHave]

Originally Posted by GeoffD

You can do your bargain grocery shopping in Claremont, NH at the Market Basket chain. They are the low cost chain in eastern Mass and southern NH.

VTel is a great little rural phone company. They milk the rural telephone subsidies to death and provide excellent service at the expense of all the people in the higher density parts of the country paying for it out of their phone bill. Everybody in the Comcast footprint is going to have DOCSIS 3.1 gigabit downstream data rates in a couple of years. It won't be gigabit upstream but it will be plenty zippy for most users. 4K video usually streams at 20 megabit/sec so it will be a pretty long time before gigabit data rates are all that useful.

About 3 years ago I received a doorhanger from VTel about their new services. Seeing as my place is up and off the beaten path, it took almost two years for VTel to make it to me, but once they did -- Holy Cow! VTel's internet is ridiculously fast. No one believes me until they come to visit.

[Sporin]

Vtel is great if they are running new fiber into your neighborhood. If they are just using the old, existing phone lines 9as they do in my neighborhood) they flat-out stink.

Cable is still the fastest, most stable to my house but I'm looking forward to new, super fast broadband at some point in the future.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Originally Posted by Sporin

Vtel is great if they are running new fiber into your neighborhood. If they are just using the old, existing phone lines 9as they do in my neighborhood) they flat-out stink.

Cable is still the fastest, most stable to my house but I'm looking forward to new, super fast broadband at some point in the future.

VTel is FTTH and thus don't use telephone lines.

[Sporin]

Originally Posted by RJARRRPCGP

VTel is FTTH and thus don't use telephone lines.

I may be getting my names mixed up but the "DSL" in my neighborhood is offered by Fairpoint currently and it stinks and they definitely haven't run a new wire into my neighborhood in the 15 years I've been here.

When I briefly had DSL (then sold by Verizon) many years ago it for sure came over the phone lines.

My main point is that I wish I had a choice from Cable internet in my neighborhood, Comcast charges a mint.

[squarpeg]

Regarding forest fires, I overheard park rangers call Vermont the asbestos state. I asked what that meant and they said Vermont doesn't burn. Claiming Vermont is just shy of being a rain forest. It is not called the GREEN mountains because it is dry.