Hacker News Reader

Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

The FCC says that I have seven possible ISPs at my home. Never mind that three of those are just different levels of service from AT&T. And one of those is Sonic that just resells AT&T for more money at lower speeds (not their fault, they have to ride on AT&Ts lines because AT&T won't let Sonic into their cabinets).

And two of those are wireless broadband providers who don't actually service my house (although they do service within a mile of me). So really I have two choices -- AT&T and Comcast. And I'm one of the lucky ones that has two choices. And even luckier that one of those is Gigabit.

So even for my house, with Gigabit service, the FCC report is still grossly overstated. I can't imagine how bad their data in rural areas is.

View on HN

Same for me in Manhattan: the FCC reports that I have 6 options, including Gigabit fiber.

In reality, I have two: Charter (a/k/a Spectrum, a/k/a TWC) at 200/20, and Verizon ADSL at 5/1. Confusingly, the 5/1 hookup is actually more expensive than 200/20.

And that ADSL doesn't even count as broadband anymore!

> So even for my house, with Gigabit service, the FCC report is still grossly overstated. I can't imagine how bad their data in rural areas is.

Is that corruption, incompetence or apathy?

Pretty sure the answer to all of those is yes.

I would go with corruption. I don’t see how it’s in anyone’s personal interest who works at the FCC to have reduced access to internet, and it’s super convenient for everyone, so there must be some side benefit to go out of their way to juice the numbers.

Regulatory capture. The FCC is the agency responsible for oversight of ISPs. They spend less in buying the politicians then implementing regulations.

In America corruption is not labeled "corruption" . It is labeled "lobbyism" . It is a legal mean to purchase your politicians. Now it happens to be the telecom industry that historically has been the biggest spenders across industries until Google came along. If you want to fix the sad state of the American political system this is very you should start. Make all contributions over, let say, 100 usd illegal and all contributions should go on public record. I believe it really would be that simple.

All contributions already are on the public record. Voters just don't take the time or interest to study it. Limiting the top amount is already in place in a number of states, and results in complicated legal bundling schemes where people host fundraisers where everyone in attendance signs a contribution card and is basically given the cash to turn back over signed under their name.

There isn't an easy answer.

Contributions are on public record

https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/lobby_contribs.php

I'm willing to bet that their reports are entirely based on annual reports submitted by the telecom industry. The FCC probably doesn't have the manpower to do the surveying on it's own (or the funding to create such a task force), so they just ask ISPs to tell them what services are offered and where on an annual basis.

Unfortunately, they probably also lacks the funding to provide an auditor for those reports, and I bet there's no regulation requiring the industry to have an FCC auditor for them.

In other words, Congress doesn't care how accurate the report actually is.

ATT took a formal complaint to the FCC to get DSL hooked up...DSL. Charter is shown in our rural area. I live 20 yards from a two lane paved "Highway"...literally it's name...in rural Georgia (~45 miles as the crow flies from downtown Atlanta). Comcast actually has the rights. A Verizon hotspot (excellent 4G speeds) off my phone is actually the fastest, most reliable download speed we have. I have a large state university 15 minutes from me.

...this is the state of broadband for semi-rural America.

[EDIT] Oh and the ATT easement stops next to my driveway. There is an old T1? (as thick as my wrist) of copper entirely unterminated next to my driveway as well.

Well as an additional datapoint, it lists my two broadband ISPs (AT&T Fiber, Charter Cable) correctly here in suburbia Cary, NC. It also lists three satellite providers which I have no idea if that’s correct or not.

These look ups mostly use Zip. A better test is to call and ask if you can get said Premium service at your street address and then see report back.

Pretty much anyone with a view of the sky can use the satellite providers. But they are terribly limited, expensive, and laggy.

Same in Daly City. It's a complete mindfuck that I live immediately south of what claims to be the technology capital of the world and yet my only two viable options are "pay through the nose for Comcast" or "pay for AT&T DSL or some reseller thereof" (even the wireless broadband providers don't serve Daly City, or only the northernmost parts of it if they do; nothing around Colma where I'm at).

I ended up going with Sonic.

I get excited every time I hear the name Sonic now. A month ago they announced expanding gigabit fiber into my neighborhood. I'm all pre-ordered and ready to go. Saw AT&T running the lines a few weeks back. Refreshing the ATT service checker to see when it goes live. Multiple times a day. Looks like, at least for Gigabit FTTH, Sonic is vastly cheaper, even riding on AT&T's lines, and no caps.

In fcc's defense that's how govt counting works formally. Whether or not they are doing anything informally is a different issue.

Sonic is more expensive for just internet? Or are you bundling with TV etc.?

Sonic is a fair bit more expensive for me, and I can only get DSL so I have terrible upload speeds.

Worth it. Calling support has been fast and pleasant, and I'd prefer to not give that money to comcast.

I had Sonic DSL & was happy. Had to ditch it when until I needed faster upload for work purposes.

Yeah - I get by with overnight uploads or coffee shops, but if I needed it regularly I'd have to jump ship :| It's enough to do video meetings or a single high quality movie stream, and that's really all I need for 99% of the time.

Faster would be nice occasionally, but adblock has a bigger impact on page load time than bandwidth at this point.

Yeah just bare internet is more with Sonic. I love Sonic (had them in the reddit office in SF) so I talked with the rep for a while. Eventually we figured out that for my house, they would literally just be renting a line from AT&T. So I'd be paying extra each month for access to Sonic's support instead of AT&T. I almost did it anyway, but then I found out that AT&T had faster options available to me that they won't let Sonic resell.

FYI, if you get service from a reseller on top of att, you’ll still have att level wait times for service outages since sonic will have to call att. In some areas your wait times will actually be longer because att deprioritizes support for resellers. It’s a mad world.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com