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I don't entirely grok how the Bay can be the IT capital of the world and also have such poor fiber penetration. I've experienced commercial fiber first-hand in

I don't entirely grok how the Bay can be the IT capital of the world and also have such poor fiber penetration. I've experienced commercial fiber first-hand in downtown SF, but that was never an option for residential use. Only Comcast, Spectrum and a couple of smaller mom-and-pop ISPs mostly focusing on WLAN.

tomcam 6y ago
Not a Bay Area resident, but I like to buy houses in older residential areas because I like big yards and roomy interiors. Since the advent of WiFi it has been my experience that they seem to be about 10 years behind new neighborhoods. My understanding is that it's vastly easier to build new infrastructure to large developments than to bring it to older, less-dense areas.
jwineinger 6y ago
I recently got a quote to hook up to CenturyLink business fiber for a church in a suburb of Minneapolis (on an industrial road). I believe the distance was around 700 feet to their termination point. With a 5 year contract, it was going to be at least $700/month. They told me the cost was due to getting all the permits needed and then doing the actual run of fiber (digging). Oh, and it would take 3 months to get done. They also told me I could bring that cost down if I recruited other businesses between the church and the termination point.
- toomuchtodo 6y ago
  Better price then I would’ve expected for such a run and contract term.
  - snuxoll 6y ago
    Yeah - that’s actually not a bad deal given the high costs to do the build. CenturyLink charges well over $500/mo for a 1Gbps Fiber+ connection without doing any buildout.
dillonmckay 6y ago
I was talking to a coworker earlier today (who is starting a community WISP), and it seems most of the effort/time for an ISP is about real estate negotiations, not technology.
kortilla 6y ago
The bay is the IT capital but it’s probably a close contender for the NIMBY capital as well. Most of the South Bay is a low density sprawling suburbia where nearly all of the homeowners are focused 100% on property value and block any development that’s not more commercial (which brings in more jobs boosting housing).
01100011 6y ago
Have you seen the infrastructure of the Bay Area? It's ancient. I've had more power outages in 18 months of living here than I did in 20 years of living in San Diego(in a 70's tract. SD also has lots of old infrastructure.). The bay area needs to be torn down and rebuilt, but the NIMBYs won't even let adequate housing be built so the chances of that happening are about zero.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  Funny that you say that — I have a neighbor complaining about preserving old telephone poles, because she feels the new ones are too high, and the color stands out.
rayiner 6y ago
Why does the Bay have such bad housing and transit? Fiber deployment is, first and foremost, a municipal issue. Municipal governments have almost total control over the process. Some cities make it easier to build it than others: https://broadbandnow.com/research/fiber-friendly-cities https://broadbandnow.com/research/fiber-friendly-cities. I’ve got two fiber lines to my house a few miles outside Annapolis. Verizon, which covers the vast majority of the population of Maryland, plus Comcast. I had fiber at both of my precious addresses (DC and Baltimore). My parents had fiber since 2005 back in their Virginia house, and now in their Maryland house. (They don’t even have public sewer and water.) Whatever the big picture national issues are, there is no reason the Bay Area should be lagging even compared to the rest of the US. Rich suburbs of tightly packed single family homes are prime fiber territory. Those are the very first places Verizon wired up with FiOS 15 years ago.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  Isn’t most Virginia governance at the county level? I live in NY, and each town or city gets to negotiate franchise agreements that always favor the telcos. You have to wield a big stick with these companies, who divide and conquer. In my cities case, in exchange for some bullshit (public access tv and filming equipment for the high school) gave Spectrum an exclusive contract for TV. So Verizon brought FIOS to every town around us, and we’re stuck in the internet ghetto.
kziemio 6y ago
Because cable has improved enough that no consumers really needs fiber to their homes. You can get 300-1000 Mbps cable internet now in most places and it is far more than anyone really needs. Upload bandwidth is the main limitation of cable internet but that's not a major factor for most people. If cable internet was still stuck at 25 Mbps or similar, the pressure for fiber internet would be a lot stronger. But cable internet got good. The backwards and scandalous aspect of modern American internet is that the ISPs managed to roll out 1 TB data caps without being blocked by lawmakers.
- katbyte 6y ago
  cable here (vancouver canada) is still limited to ~25 up. Not sure if that's a tech limitation or an ISP choice thou.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- tonyb 6y ago
  This is spot on - A large majority of residential internet customers would see no difference between a 50/5 plan and a 300/30 plan. I done a significant amount of consulting in the ISP would and every time we would do mass speed increases there would be virtually no increase in aggregate traffic levels. As long as people could go to a speed test and get their subscribed speed they were happy. An HD Netflix stream takes the same amount of bandwidth no matter what your max speed is. Most consumers aren't willing to pay the monthly cost that ISPs would be need to charge to make overbuilding fiber economically feasible. DSL providers overbuild with fiber because they can't compete with cable and the rising cost of maintenance of a copper plant. Some cable providers will do new builds with FTTH or overbuild when upgrading the existing plant is cost prohibitive. But overbuilding a working coax plant almost never makes since. Spending millions of dollars to offer higher speeds at the same price just doesn't make business sense.
  - mrep 6y ago
    Maybe it's a regional thing, but the comcast cable internet my parents have is absolute shit. They just upgraded from 300 to 600 and that did basically nothing (still get about 25 mbps most of the time and it occasionally now goes to 50 mbps in speed tests) and our video conferencing calls stutter all the god damn time which literally never happened back in my apartment that had fiber.

tomcam 6y ago

Not a Bay Area resident, but I like to buy houses in older residential areas because I like big yards and roomy interiors. Since the advent of WiFi it has been my experience that they seem to be about 10 years behind new neighborhoods. My understanding is that it's vastly easier to build new infrastructure to large developments than to bring it to older, less-dense areas.

jwineinger 6y ago

I recently got a quote to hook up to CenturyLink business fiber for a church in a suburb of Minneapolis (on an industrial road). I believe the distance was around 700 feet to their termination point. With a 5 year contract, it was going to be at least $700/month. They told me the cost was due to getting all the permits needed and then doing the actual run of fiber (digging). Oh, and it would take 3 months to get done. They also told me I could bring that cost down if I recruited other businesses between the church and the termination point.

toomuchtodo 6y ago
Better price then I would’ve expected for such a run and contract term.
- snuxoll 6y ago
  Yeah - that’s actually not a bad deal given the high costs to do the build. CenturyLink charges well over $500/mo for a 1Gbps Fiber+ connection without doing any buildout.

dillonmckay 6y ago

I was talking to a coworker earlier today (who is starting a community WISP), and it seems most of the effort/time for an ISP is about real estate negotiations, not technology.

kortilla 6y ago

The bay is the IT capital but it’s probably a close contender for the NIMBY capital as well. Most of the South Bay is a low density sprawling suburbia where nearly all of the homeowners are focused 100% on property value and block any development that’s not more commercial (which brings in more jobs boosting housing).

01100011 6y ago

Have you seen the infrastructure of the Bay Area? It's ancient. I've had more power outages in 18 months of living here than I did in 20 years of living in San Diego(in a 70's tract. SD also has lots of old infrastructure.). The bay area needs to be torn down and rebuilt, but the NIMBYs won't even let adequate housing be built so the chances of that happening are about zero.

Spooky23 6y ago
Funny that you say that — I have a neighbor complaining about preserving old telephone poles, because she feels the new ones are too high, and the color stands out.

rayiner 6y ago

Why does the Bay have such bad housing and transit? Fiber deployment is, first and foremost, a municipal issue. Municipal governments have almost total control over the process. Some cities make it easier to build it than others: https://broadbandnow.com/research/fiber-friendly-cities https://broadbandnow.com/research/fiber-friendly-cities. I’ve got two fiber lines to my house a few miles outside Annapolis. Verizon, which covers the vast majority of the population of Maryland, plus Comcast. I had fiber at both of my precious addresses (DC and Baltimore). My parents had fiber since 2005 back in their Virginia house, and now in their Maryland house. (They don’t even have public sewer and water.) Whatever the big picture national issues are, there is no reason the Bay Area should be lagging even compared to the rest of the US. Rich suburbs of tightly packed single family homes are prime fiber territory. Those are the very first places Verizon wired up with FiOS 15 years ago.

Spooky23 6y ago
Isn’t most Virginia governance at the county level? I live in NY, and each town or city gets to negotiate franchise agreements that always favor the telcos. You have to wield a big stick with these companies, who divide and conquer. In my cities case, in exchange for some bullshit (public access tv and filming equipment for the high school) gave Spectrum an exclusive contract for TV. So Verizon brought FIOS to every town around us, and we’re stuck in the internet ghetto.

kziemio 6y ago

Because cable has improved enough that no consumers really needs fiber to their homes. You can get 300-1000 Mbps cable internet now in most places and it is far more than anyone really needs. Upload bandwidth is the main limitation of cable internet but that's not a major factor for most people. If cable internet was still stuck at 25 Mbps or similar, the pressure for fiber internet would be a lot stronger. But cable internet got good. The backwards and scandalous aspect of modern American internet is that the ISPs managed to roll out 1 TB data caps without being blocked by lawmakers.

katbyte 6y ago
cable here (vancouver canada) is still limited to ~25 up. Not sure if that's a tech limitation or an ISP choice thou.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
tonyb 6y ago
This is spot on - A large majority of residential internet customers would see no difference between a 50/5 plan and a 300/30 plan. I done a significant amount of consulting in the ISP would and every time we would do mass speed increases there would be virtually no increase in aggregate traffic levels. As long as people could go to a speed test and get their subscribed speed they were happy. An HD Netflix stream takes the same amount of bandwidth no matter what your max speed is. Most consumers aren't willing to pay the monthly cost that ISPs would be need to charge to make overbuilding fiber economically feasible. DSL providers overbuild with fiber because they can't compete with cable and the rising cost of maintenance of a copper plant. Some cable providers will do new builds with FTTH or overbuild when upgrading the existing plant is cost prohibitive. But overbuilding a working coax plant almost never makes since. Spending millions of dollars to offer higher speeds at the same price just doesn't make business sense.
- mrep 6y ago
  Maybe it's a regional thing, but the comcast cable internet my parents have is absolute shit. They just upgraded from 300 to 600 and that did basically nothing (still get about 25 mbps most of the time and it occasionally now goes to 50 mbps in speed tests) and our video conferencing calls stutter all the god damn time which literally never happened back in my apartment that had fiber.