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> 95% of the US only having access to wired broadband via coaxial cable is more than just an inconvenience to switching ISPs. This 95% figure is clearly dising

• lotsofpulp 3y ago
  That broadband map is garbage, I frequently see regions where it says there is fiber, but in reality there is none. Maybe it is some other very high percentage and not 95%, but I have spent a lot of time searching for houses and looking up specific addresses on fiber ISP websites, and they pretty much only exist in 2 cases. One is if the housing development is ~2010 or newer, and they installed fiber in the underground utilities during initial build. The other is super old neighborhoods with overheard wires that maybe get wired up. Otherwise, any area with underground utilities built before 2010 is very, very unlikely to have fiber to the home.
  • secabeen 3y ago
    Interesting; that map is pretty good for my area when you zoom all the way in. I can see that it would be very hard to bring fiber to places with underground utilities that don't already have it.
    • metaphor 3y ago
      Indeed, I've found it to be quite accurate in my city when zoomed in enough to where the hex grid transitions to green/red dots on individual properties. In my neighborhood and adjacent communities within a roughly 5-mile radius, utilities are all underground, but the pattern that emerges in these parts when attempting to predict whether a community will have fiber to the home or not appears to be some combination of existing easements/city right-of-way, relative community affluence, and housing density. For example, AT&T brought fiber to my neighborhood likely because they could easily bury it along the city's right-of-way where not even HOA radicals can stop them. The more affordable townhome community to the immediate west didn't get the same infra though, despite there being comparable townhome communities less than a mile away surrounding a regional park that did. Similarly, the expensive homes within a gated golf country club to the immediate north of us doesn't get fiber despite the affluence living in that community, but the deed restricted community outside the gates to the immediate west which shares the same name did, while the mixed single- and multi-family community to the south of that community didn't. The homes in this area are anywhere between mid-80s to late-90s construction.