Hacker News Reader

There's also the reality that the problem is peak bandwidth, not total bytes moved. It turns out... BitTorrent users use less bandwidth during peak and bandwidth caps discourage people from pulling down data they might not use in advance and instead grabbing it just in time during peak bandwidth periods.

View on HN

There's also the reality that there's miles and miles of taxpayer funded black fiber that they choose not to light up so that they can claim a bandwidth shortage.

Can you expand on this?

It's part of this whole thing which is a rabbit hole unto itself:

https://www.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/e...

tldr version: There were very large subsidies paid to expand broadband as well as the Universal Service Fund. The companies actually built out broadband lines to a lot of areas with minimal coverage and then didn't build the last mile because it was expensive and provided "separate but equal" services such as WiMax, UVerse, or other less equitable services.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com