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Comment by nosuchthing | Hacker News Reader

LA has had notoriously bad ISP coverage. Most houses in the area only have a choice between one cable provider or going DSL.

Nice to hear AT&T is planning to roll out gigabit fiber in LA as well. http://arstechnica.com/business/2015/12/att-bringing-gigabit...

For some reason Verizon Fios has avoided LA proper but laid out Fiber along the outskirts and in Ventura County years ago.

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> For some reason Verizon Fios has avoided LA proper but laid out Fiber along the outskirts and in Ventura County years ago.

Not sure what you mean. I have Fios and I live in Los Angeles proper. The whole city doesn't have Fios, but parts of it certainly do.

Verizon at one point had grand plans of expanding FiOS through all of LA and eventually down through OC/San Diego (which was good news for me as a San Diego person), but about 5 years back they stopped expansion of covered areas.

They essentially killed FiOS off, but kept servicing customers in areas they already built out in.

So if you're in LA and you have FiOS, lucky you, but those who don't have it never will because they aren't building out at all anymore.

There is virtually no Verizon wireline presence (i.e. ex-GTE territory) in San Diego County, SD never had any chance of getting FiOS. See the map: ftp://ftp.cpuc.ca.gov/Telco/ILEC%20Territories%20in%20CA%202008.pdf I'm surprised how small Verizon's territory is even in OC, some of the beach cities but nothing else.

PacBell had grand plans to install fiber optics in SD ~20 years ago, I even remember our front lawn in Mira Mesa getting torn up. Naturally, they never lit it up. See http://newnetworks.com/californiabroadband.html

This was me for a long time in DTLA, my only choice was AT&T for $50 a month for 8/1. Now I have Time Warner and I pay $55 for 200/20. Much happier.

TWC coverage is not bad - my addresses in LA each have had 300Mbps available for $65/mo. Speed tests clock in around 330Mbps down.

TWC coverage here in Rochester, NY is $84/month for 50Mbps.

I'd guess you only get 6x the speed for less money in LA in places where fiber is a viable competitor.

I have gigabit fiber at my house in Rochester for $100/month via the new upstart ISP, Greenlight (actually their lower 500Mbps tier for $75/mo). They're expanding slowly, but they are expanding.

I'm drooling over Greenlight. Thus far they seem to be prioritizing high-density areas like apartment complexes, though. Down in Pittsford it's not looking hopeful for a few years at least.

As a recent LA transplant from SF, I found it ironic that TWC offers such a fast, affordable internet service, yet SF - arguably the modern global hub of tech - struggles with slow, expensive internet, almost throughout.

As a tech worker, this is easily one of the better LA v. SF advantages.

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