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It's still pretty hard to find fiber in the bay for decent prices. I have 1gb symmetric in SF, but that's pretty uncommon. The 10gb sonic is only in some neighb

It's still pretty hard to find fiber in the bay for decent prices. I have 1gb symmetric in SF, but that's pretty uncommon. The 10gb sonic is only in some neighborhoods. I lived in Palo Alto for a long time and the options there were awful. 1gb down 35mbps up Comcast was the best option and it was well over $100/mo - there may have been a 2gb option for $300/mo and a 2yr commitment.

rconti 2y ago
Yep, my in-laws in Menlo Park had insanely slow SBC DSL with high packet loss. SBC actually just discontinued the service rather than do anything useful. I once paid that ridiculous $149/mo for the 1gig Comcast service until I got tired of the bill that I was really only paying for bragging rights, and went back to 250Mbps.
- ghaff 2y ago
  I honestly don't understand what the big deal is with the higher speed tiers. I forget what my house theoretically gets but, in practice, it's less than 100 down from Comcast and that's perfectly fine for what I use it for. I'm a bit under $100/mo and wouldn't pay to upgrade.
  - rconti 2y ago
    Yeah- I just spent so much time complaining about not being able to get fiber in the heart of the bay area that when the 1gig cable service came, I felt like it was time to put my money where my mouth was. Then the novelty wore off, and I downgraded. IIRC, the 250meg service still had "sufficient" upload.
  - lotsofpulp 2y ago
    That is how Comcast slices their meager upload capacity, but it looks better for them to advertise their bigger bullshit burst bandwidth numbers than advertise a pathetic upgrade of 5Mbps upload, which probably just means they downgrade someone else’s upload.
    - pkaye 2y ago
      Comcast is now starting to support higher upload speeds. They upgraded their equipment in our area (Fremont, CA) and now I'm able to get 200 mbps uploads. But you do have use a newer cable modem which support higher upload speeds. I'm using Arris S34 because I can also eventually upgrade to 2gbps downloads.
  - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
    it's mostly an artifact of shitty ISPs like Xfinity that haven't figured out that in 2025 non-symmetric download and upload is really dumb. I have 300mbps currently because if I dropped to 100, my upload would go from 30 to 5, and it's nice to be able to upload a file at higher than dial up speeds
    - vel0city 2y ago
      > non-symmetric download and upload is really dumb. IIRC all their asymmetric internet packages are based on their coax deployments. It's not a dumb tradeoff in the coax space even though I don't like their choices of how much in each direction they usually do. There are only so many useful channels they can deploy in a given physical network. They could offer more upload bandwidth at the expense of download bandwidth but generally speaking most customers don't upload much and value download bandwidth over upload.
      - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
        I know that's the theory, I just don't think it's true. Video calls anc gaming are some of the higher bandwidth consumers and are symmetrical bandwidth.
        vel0city 2y ago
        Gaming often uses extremely little amounts of bandwidth for a match, often less than a megabit or two. Video calls, sure, but still most platforms are still averaging a handful of megabits. Most people don't have high quality webcams at home, so really moving to 10Mbit+ uploads isn't really going to do much for them. Meanwhile people will likely stream HD video for hours and hours on their TVs, averaging 15+Mbit. They'll stream music which is like a basic online game but only a single direction. They'll download 100GB game downloads, scroll social media, etc. Do you think the average user uploads more media or downloads more media to social media? I'd agree something like 20Mbit is probably too low for even an average US household, but in the end I'd say most consumers are still going to care more about download speed than upload speed. Just look around here in the comments and notice lots of people talk about how a fast connection is great because of large game downloads and what not; few people are justifying fast connections to home users because of sending data. I use a lot of my upload data, but I'm definitely not a normal household. I hop on my VPN and stream data from my SDRs remotely, which will use hundreds of megabits. I host media streaming servers. I do remote gaming from my gaming PC to my handheld sometimes. I have some other applications I connect to while out. But I'm definitely not normal. And yet I still on average have 5-10x down than up usage.
  - kcb 2y ago
    Pretty nice to be able to download a modern game in a few minutes instead of a few hours.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - Retric 2y ago
      Sure, and that’s worth spending how much per month? I mean if I was forced to sit and stare at a download screen then sure it’d be worth it to me. However even at 2+Gigabit I’m not going to sit and stare about the download screen so it’s kind of meaningless how long it takes. I’ve got plenty of other stuff to do for a while.
      - happymellon 2y ago
        I pay £25 for 500Mbs, which I find reasonable.
        Retric 2y ago
        Which just barely takes God Of War Ragnarok under an hour, but DCS World is over 2 hours. And game keep growing…
        happymellon 2y ago
        Oh sorry. I meant a reasonable price. All these folks talking about >$100 for slower speeds is insane in 2025. I could get ~1Gbs for £35. I don't know what I would do if I was forced to go back to BT, so I can relate.
      - ghaff 2y ago
        Download/upload speed seems like a fairly weak argument for more bandwidth past a certain, fairly low, point. These days, it seems like it's more around a large household doing simultaneous 4K streaming where they're running into limits.
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    I semi-frequently run into situations that are bottlenecked on my internet speed, that I could of course just walk away from if it took too long but is nice to really have complete in seconds instead. I think the biggest one for me is downloading updates and software tools.
- anonymousiam 2y ago
  $149/mo for 1gbps doesn't seem too bad compared with the $699/mo I was paying for 8mbps DSL back in the 90's. At the time, it was still cheaper than a T1 (1.544mbps).
  - saagarjha 2y ago
    This is a joke, right? Please let this be a joke.
- reassembled 2y ago
  A couple of years ago I had my 6Mbps ATT DSL reduced down to less than 1Mbps, to the point of being absolutely useless. I had no forewarning or notice that my service had been compromised. Every attempt to obtain support from ATT was met with attempts to get me to switch to cellular internet. Fortunately I was able to get accepted into the StarLink early access around that time and managed to cancel the DSL. Even though ATT clearly did not want my business anymore, they still made sure I had to jump through countless hoops to finally disconnect and terminate billing. I had to sit on the phone for a couple of hours, being transferred between phone reps and managers until I finally got one person with the authority to shut my account down.
  - maartenh 2y ago
    Wow. In the EU, canceling subscriptions must be as easy as signing up for them by law. My personal longest issue with ISP's was when the software config once went wrong in their side, took me a month and allmost daily phone calls until I got to 4th line support that was an actual techie who fixed it in 10 minutes.
sunshowers 2y ago
Sonic covers large parts of Oakland too. Been really happy with their 10Gbps service, I have an Intel X520 SFP+ NIC in my PC and I get 7-8Gbps symmetrical if upstream isn't bandwidth-limited.
pkaye 2y ago
I'm in Fremont and I recently noticed they now have 2gbps for $105 in my area. Also they boosted the upload speed to 200-350mbps. I did have to upgrade my cable modem to get my faster upload speed but still I need a faster Wi-Fi router before I consider going to 2gbps.
sureshv 2y ago
Palo Alto has had AT&T fiber since 2019 depending on your location (but still not 100% coverage). I was lucky enough to be in an early coverage area but the price for 1GB symmetric has risen from $75/month to $115.

rconti 2y ago

Yep, my in-laws in Menlo Park had insanely slow SBC DSL with high packet loss. SBC actually just discontinued the service rather than do anything useful. I once paid that ridiculous $149/mo for the 1gig Comcast service until I got tired of the bill that I was really only paying for bragging rights, and went back to 250Mbps.

ghaff 2y ago
I honestly don't understand what the big deal is with the higher speed tiers. I forget what my house theoretically gets but, in practice, it's less than 100 down from Comcast and that's perfectly fine for what I use it for. I'm a bit under $100/mo and wouldn't pay to upgrade.
- rconti 2y ago
  Yeah- I just spent so much time complaining about not being able to get fiber in the heart of the bay area that when the 1gig cable service came, I felt like it was time to put my money where my mouth was. Then the novelty wore off, and I downgraded. IIRC, the 250meg service still had "sufficient" upload.
- lotsofpulp 2y ago
  That is how Comcast slices their meager upload capacity, but it looks better for them to advertise their bigger bullshit burst bandwidth numbers than advertise a pathetic upgrade of 5Mbps upload, which probably just means they downgrade someone else’s upload.
  - pkaye 2y ago
    Comcast is now starting to support higher upload speeds. They upgraded their equipment in our area (Fremont, CA) and now I'm able to get 200 mbps uploads. But you do have use a newer cable modem which support higher upload speeds. I'm using Arris S34 because I can also eventually upgrade to 2gbps downloads.
- adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
  it's mostly an artifact of shitty ISPs like Xfinity that haven't figured out that in 2025 non-symmetric download and upload is really dumb. I have 300mbps currently because if I dropped to 100, my upload would go from 30 to 5, and it's nice to be able to upload a file at higher than dial up speeds
  - vel0city 2y ago
    > non-symmetric download and upload is really dumb. IIRC all their asymmetric internet packages are based on their coax deployments. It's not a dumb tradeoff in the coax space even though I don't like their choices of how much in each direction they usually do. There are only so many useful channels they can deploy in a given physical network. They could offer more upload bandwidth at the expense of download bandwidth but generally speaking most customers don't upload much and value download bandwidth over upload.
    - adgjlsfhk1 2y ago
      I know that's the theory, I just don't think it's true. Video calls anc gaming are some of the higher bandwidth consumers and are symmetrical bandwidth.
      - vel0city 2y ago
        Gaming often uses extremely little amounts of bandwidth for a match, often less than a megabit or two. Video calls, sure, but still most platforms are still averaging a handful of megabits. Most people don't have high quality webcams at home, so really moving to 10Mbit+ uploads isn't really going to do much for them. Meanwhile people will likely stream HD video for hours and hours on their TVs, averaging 15+Mbit. They'll stream music which is like a basic online game but only a single direction. They'll download 100GB game downloads, scroll social media, etc. Do you think the average user uploads more media or downloads more media to social media? I'd agree something like 20Mbit is probably too low for even an average US household, but in the end I'd say most consumers are still going to care more about download speed than upload speed. Just look around here in the comments and notice lots of people talk about how a fast connection is great because of large game downloads and what not; few people are justifying fast connections to home users because of sending data. I use a lot of my upload data, but I'm definitely not a normal household. I hop on my VPN and stream data from my SDRs remotely, which will use hundreds of megabits. I host media streaming servers. I do remote gaming from my gaming PC to my handheld sometimes. I have some other applications I connect to while out. But I'm definitely not normal. And yet I still on average have 5-10x down than up usage.
- kcb 2y ago
  Pretty nice to be able to download a modern game in a few minutes instead of a few hours.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - Retric 2y ago
    Sure, and that’s worth spending how much per month? I mean if I was forced to sit and stare at a download screen then sure it’d be worth it to me. However even at 2+Gigabit I’m not going to sit and stare about the download screen so it’s kind of meaningless how long it takes. I’ve got plenty of other stuff to do for a while.
    - happymellon 2y ago
      I pay £25 for 500Mbs, which I find reasonable.
      - Retric 2y ago
        Which just barely takes God Of War Ragnarok under an hour, but DCS World is over 2 hours. And game keep growing…
        happymellon 2y ago
        Oh sorry. I meant a reasonable price. All these folks talking about >$100 for slower speeds is insane in 2025. I could get ~1Gbs for £35. I don't know what I would do if I was forced to go back to BT, so I can relate.
    - ghaff 2y ago
      Download/upload speed seems like a fairly weak argument for more bandwidth past a certain, fairly low, point. These days, it seems like it's more around a large household doing simultaneous 4K streaming where they're running into limits.
- saagarjha 2y ago
  I semi-frequently run into situations that are bottlenecked on my internet speed, that I could of course just walk away from if it took too long but is nice to really have complete in seconds instead. I think the biggest one for me is downloading updates and software tools.
anonymousiam 2y ago
$149/mo for 1gbps doesn't seem too bad compared with the $699/mo I was paying for 8mbps DSL back in the 90's. At the time, it was still cheaper than a T1 (1.544mbps).
- saagarjha 2y ago
  This is a joke, right? Please let this be a joke.
reassembled 2y ago
A couple of years ago I had my 6Mbps ATT DSL reduced down to less than 1Mbps, to the point of being absolutely useless. I had no forewarning or notice that my service had been compromised. Every attempt to obtain support from ATT was met with attempts to get me to switch to cellular internet. Fortunately I was able to get accepted into the StarLink early access around that time and managed to cancel the DSL. Even though ATT clearly did not want my business anymore, they still made sure I had to jump through countless hoops to finally disconnect and terminate billing. I had to sit on the phone for a couple of hours, being transferred between phone reps and managers until I finally got one person with the authority to shut my account down.
- maartenh 2y ago
  Wow. In the EU, canceling subscriptions must be as easy as signing up for them by law. My personal longest issue with ISP's was when the software config once went wrong in their side, took me a month and allmost daily phone calls until I got to 4th line support that was an actual techie who fixed it in 10 minutes.

sunshowers 2y ago

Sonic covers large parts of Oakland too. Been really happy with their 10Gbps service, I have an Intel X520 SFP+ NIC in my PC and I get 7-8Gbps symmetrical if upstream isn't bandwidth-limited.

pkaye 2y ago

I'm in Fremont and I recently noticed they now have 2gbps for $105 in my area. Also they boosted the upload speed to 200-350mbps. I did have to upgrade my cable modem to get my faster upload speed but still I need a faster Wi-Fi router before I consider going to 2gbps.

sureshv 2y ago

Palo Alto has had AT&T fiber since 2019 depending on your location (but still not 100% coverage). I was lucky enough to be in an early coverage area but the price for 1GB symmetric has risen from $75/month to $115.