This is just a failure of capitalism. The most profitable areas aren't the ones that have the richest people. Otherwise, NW Austin/etc would be swimming in adva

This is just a failure of capitalism. The most profitable areas aren't the ones that have the richest people. Otherwise, NW Austin/etc would be swimming in advanced tech because it is fairly dense, and the residents are some of the richest in the state. Which is why its hard to argue that poor people are being discriminated against. No, the NW of Austin doesn't have good internet service because there isn't any competition, and the incumbents are extremely happy to do absolutely nothing and reap $120+ monthly payments for providing service on 15-year-old modulation schemes on cables that are 40 years old. Timewarner/spectrum/charter could roll out high split on docsis 3.1 (released 2013), but then they would have to invest in the network by fixing the pieces of the network that haven't died of old age over the past 10+ years. Or ATT could run fiber, but why when they have 30% market penetration using DSL technologies that are less than 10Mbit down/1Mbit up and old folks like my neighbor will happily continue to pay them $50 a month for it, and when the cable dies they swap it for a 4G modem. So it's a duoploy where ATT gets the customers that are shopping on absolute price, and Spectrum gets the ones that aren't happy with 100Mbit/sec or data caps. Sub $50 or 100Mbits you get ATT. More than that, you get Specturm. Those of us that want more than 20Mbits up, are SOL, and everyone is getting ripped off because $60/month is what some people are paying for symmetric 1Gbit. So, those people who live 40 miles W in little towns population 600-2000 can get fiber in town, or those areas with Google fiber can get it an/ord ATT and the rest of us are lining the pockets of some billionares.