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While it could be better, 70 million households is not 2x very few. I can only imagine you’re going off very outdated information. Of those 70 so million with

by epcoa 3y ago

While it could be better, 70 million households is not 2x very few. I can only imagine you’re going off very outdated information. Of those 70 so million with fiber available about 30 million actually use it.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
I do not believe 70M households have fiber available. I have searched many, many houses in many, many metros, and the ones with fiber are few and far between. The FCC map is not reliable at all. You only see that fiber is not available when you search the address on the ISP website and it returns with the option for DSL. Even in the region I live now, the FCC map says fiber available in most of the city, but in reality, it’s only the newer housing developments. 90% are older homes in developments from a couple decades ago, and they only have coaxial. The common factor in fiber availability is a housing development built after 2005 or even 2010, or built so long ago that the utilities are overhead and maybe they could string up fiber for a sufficiently low price. Any home in any development built 1970 to 2010 with underground utilities that did not already have fiber will most likely not have fiber. Also, any apartment building from before ~2010 will not have Ethernet wired to the apartment, only coaxial wires, and the apartment building owner is not going to wire it up for fiber, even if fiber is run to the building itself.
- epcoa 3y ago
  These numbers are from the FBA themselves, I don’t see how it is in their interests to lie that way (they have anticonsumer reasons for not doing so, this is not a defense). I’m more inclined that you’re experiencing sampling bias. Infrastructure is clustered - fiber or anything like that is not “few and far between”. More like large swaths have coverage within deserts. If you’re always looking two doors from the house in the desert, it too does not have water. I would personally never buy a house with comcast only and would likely not without fiber (I currently live in a Uverse/Shitcast ghetto which essentially leaves me with only one option). I sympathize with the shittiness of US broadband but I see no reason to stretch the facts, they suck regardless. And we do not represent the normal customer. In reality wireless options and even comcast are options to people if they compete on price, and fiber does have to compete with those in the real world.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    > These numbers are from the FBA themselves, I don’t see how it is in their interests to lie that way. I’m more inclined that you’re experiencing sampling bias. Infrastructure is clustered - fiber or anything like that is not “few and far between”. More like large swaths have coverage within deserts. If you’re always looking two doors from the house in the desert, it too does not have water. I don’t know why they would lie either, maybe they are using FCC maps since that is the best data they can afford. And given the low rates of new construction, I still doubt the figures, given the economics of a business installing fiber in older neighborhoods with underground utilities. I would love to be wrong though, as I also nix living in any place only served by coaxial internet. > In reality wireless options and even comcast are options to people if they compete on price, and fiber does have to compete with those in the real world. Yes, which is why installing fiber has to be a taxpayer funded effort by the government, because it will never make financial sense for a business to spend all that money to install the infrastructure and have Comcast just lower their prices to below the fiber business’s installation costs.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]

by epcoa 3y ago

lotsofpulp 3y ago

I do not believe 70M households have fiber available. I have searched many, many houses in many, many metros, and the ones with fiber are few and far between. The FCC map is not reliable at all. You only see that fiber is not available when you search the address on the ISP website and it returns with the option for DSL. Even in the region I live now, the FCC map says fiber available in most of the city, but in reality, it’s only the newer housing developments. 90% are older homes in developments from a couple decades ago, and they only have coaxial. The common factor in fiber availability is a housing development built after 2005 or even 2010, or built so long ago that the utilities are overhead and maybe they could string up fiber for a sufficiently low price. Any home in any development built 1970 to 2010 with underground utilities that did not already have fiber will most likely not have fiber. Also, any apartment building from before ~2010 will not have Ethernet wired to the apartment, only coaxial wires, and the apartment building owner is not going to wire it up for fiber, even if fiber is run to the building itself.

epcoa 3y ago
These numbers are from the FBA themselves, I don’t see how it is in their interests to lie that way (they have anticonsumer reasons for not doing so, this is not a defense). I’m more inclined that you’re experiencing sampling bias. Infrastructure is clustered - fiber or anything like that is not “few and far between”. More like large swaths have coverage within deserts. If you’re always looking two doors from the house in the desert, it too does not have water. I would personally never buy a house with comcast only and would likely not without fiber (I currently live in a Uverse/Shitcast ghetto which essentially leaves me with only one option). I sympathize with the shittiness of US broadband but I see no reason to stretch the facts, they suck regardless. And we do not represent the normal customer. In reality wireless options and even comcast are options to people if they compete on price, and fiber does have to compete with those in the real world.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  > These numbers are from the FBA themselves, I don’t see how it is in their interests to lie that way. I’m more inclined that you’re experiencing sampling bias. Infrastructure is clustered - fiber or anything like that is not “few and far between”. More like large swaths have coverage within deserts. If you’re always looking two doors from the house in the desert, it too does not have water. I don’t know why they would lie either, maybe they are using FCC maps since that is the best data they can afford. And given the low rates of new construction, I still doubt the figures, given the economics of a business installing fiber in older neighborhoods with underground utilities. I would love to be wrong though, as I also nix living in any place only served by coaxial internet. > In reality wireless options and even comcast are options to people if they compete on price, and fiber does have to compete with those in the real world. Yes, which is why installing fiber has to be a taxpayer funded effort by the government, because it will never make financial sense for a business to spend all that money to install the infrastructure and have Comcast just lower their prices to below the fiber business’s installation costs.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]