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> Downspeed hardly matters. It's been plenty for decades. Until the power company ran fiber earlier this year, the only wired option here was 3Mbps DSL from A
by rascul 4y ago
> Downspeed hardly matters. It's been plenty for decades.
Until the power company ran fiber earlier this year, the only wired option here was 3Mbps DSL from AT&T. AT&T buried fiber all over the area (including in front of my house) years ago, but it sits there unused.
- xahrepap 4y agoSame where I am. Most of the city has competition because it’s most new developments out here and a few fiber companies were able to get in the ground early. My neighborhood is older so we only have Comcast. But Comcast buried fiber here to “future proof” ages ago, they just haven’t lit it up. And they’re the only company who got their hardware in the ground. So I’m stuck on their cable. As it turns out the service here is good, so I shouldn’t complain. But it’s still frustrating that they are just sitting on fiber and not using it. And also that there’s no competition where I am. If I ever move, then I’ll know better and pick a house with fiber already. :/
- lechatpito1 4y agoAnd no need to be in the countryside to experience this. I am living in Manhattan, Upper West Side, one of the most affluent neighborhood in the richest city of the country. It is Spectrum cable or nothing. There seem to be fiber around, but it did not make it to my street (lined with small buildings so maybe not interesting enough?). Meanwhile in France where we have spent some time this year, you get fiber in the most rural and isolated areas... Go figure.
- rayiner 4y agoBeing in an “affluent neighborhood” isn’t really the gating factor though. Many of those places aren’t development friendly at all. Meanwhile my red county has farms wired up with fiber.
- dubswithus 4y agoMy parents live 4 miles from the nearest city in a rural area. Someone paid for a fiber line and my parents got a free install because it crossed the property. Before this they were using a microwave antenna and getting 10 megabit.
- radicaldreamer 4y agoThese days, fixed wireless mmwave antennas can do 300-1Gbps symmetrical for about $100 per antenna.
- ed25519FUUU 4y agoWhat services are providing at those prices?
- radicaldreamer 4y agoMonkeybrains in SF provides up to 1Gbps symmetrical at $35/month. The antenna cost is about $100 and labor/installation is $150 ($250/total).
- kube-system 4y agoNobody, they’re talking about the antenna(/radio) itself.
- walrus01 4y agoand people wonder why folks in not-very-far-out suburbs are buying and using starlink or other options, if all they have is ultra long loop length copper DSL and no DOCSIS3 available and no GPON or active ethernet fiber based service. i've seen starlink terminals in places they have absolutely no logical need to be if the local terrestrial incumbent phone company and cable companies with rights to the ROW (right-of-way) would get off their asses
- ev1 4y agolmao one of my mates has a starlink terminal in the outskirts of los angeles just to get work done because spectrum's gigabit plan is like 1.2MB/s upstream most of the time and in the subkilobytes during peak times it's comical how bad this is edit: how we found out about this was also amusing: he sent a group snapchat of the arrival and setup in backyard and we were all "did you move or go traveling?" "no, spectrum is godawful"