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Comment by hapless | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that they refuse to build out fiber in areas where they are unlikely to sell a lot of high-dollar, high-margin TV packages.

In rural and low-income areas, Verizon wants to let the old copper infrastructure rot, but they are uninterested in building out a real replacement. Instead, they push low-margin customers to grossly inferior wireless services.

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4G LTE that works without a single wire in your home, with no truck rolls, and throughout the USA is hardly "grossly inferior". Not preferred by some, definitely...but not grossly inferior.

4G LTE isn't a valid choice for anyone who wants low-latency (online gamers, and it doesn't even have to be a "twitch" game), or anyone who balks at $205/month for 30gb (AT&T price)

Yes! Datacapped services are not a viable option. It'd be great to move to cell service as my phone gets faster download speeds than the fastest broadband available locally but I'd be capped at 10gb of data or be paying some outrageous amount for more and that's like 3-4 movies worth of space... ridiculous.

Not from Verizon's perspective, sure. But there are a lot of consumer shortcomings to LTE vs a wired connection: slower data rates, more latency, data caps, no net neutrality protection, blocked by trees and terrain, slowed by certain kinds of home construction, slowed by weather, and greater sensitivity to power outages.

LTE is great for when folks are out and about, but at home or work, even a halfway decent DSL line beats it. Fiber kills it across the board.

4g lte isn't in those areas either.

4G is datacapped and not net neutral.

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