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I'm in a combo CenturyLink / Comcast market, and it's AMAZING what competition between even just those two firms does to my offerings. Switched from Comcast's $90/mo gigabit with a 1 TB data cap and only 90 Mb/s upload to CenturyLink's $60/mo symmetric gigabit with no data cap. I have a contract-less "lifetime price guarantee", they did free install (which included running a fiber line from the pole to my house with a cherrypicker), and threw in a free fiber endpoint box (I don't know what it's really called) and a modem/router that's actually pretty good.

I get 980 Mb/s up/down with a 1ms ping in speed tests. Games are amazing, downloads are amazing, hosting files to myself is amazing...all it takes is a little competition.

I wonder why we are stuck with these options (in the town referenced in the post): 1gbps Comcast and 40mbps CenturyLink.

Colorado has laws that give monopolies on the infrastructure to whoever owns it. But in order to get around anti-trust laws (or for some other cynical reason), so in your case, there is really only one provider, but they share their infrastructure with their competition and throttle them to nothing. So your options are "whatever comcast offers" and "whatever comcast decides CenturyLink can offer"

I don't understand. Comcast has their own infrastructure: a bunch of coax in the ground. Century Link (previously known as: QWest, USWest, and Ma Bell) has their own: Cat-3 coppter in the ground.

DSL/Telephone copper line has physical limits to the bandwidth it can provide. It can't do anything close to gigabit and plummets very quickly with distance from the telco box.

Lots and lots and lots of regional lobbying.

"threw in a free fiber endpoint box (I don't know what it's really called)"

PON ONU. Memorable, it isn't.

> free fiber endpoint box (I don't know what it's really called)

That would be an Optical Network Terminal, or ONT

If you have no contract, what's to stop CenturyLink from reneging on the lifetime price guarantee?

nothing but competition

Make sure you do your speedtest to a server beyond CenturyLink.

My speeds were about that to the CenturyLink data center, but anything outside that was slower than Comcast 150 Mbps.

Which leads me to believe they don't have a fat enough pipe to the internet in my area.

Which was too bad, because the $60/mo price was a deal

CenturyLink has been acting in what appears to be good faith within Denver city limits in the past few (~4) years or so. They've been offering gigabit fiber service in select parts of the city for around $60-70/month for at least that amount of time.

While I agree with the general sentiment about large providers needing to do more for less and faster, it seems that CL is being a good corporate citizen in Denver at least.

Personal Anecdote: I signed up for gigabit fiber at a previous residence and experienced consistent 850+ Mbps synchronously, often exceeding 900Mbps. Then upon purchasing a home in another part of the city I cancelled this newly-installed (< 1 year) fiber service with no charges.

Fast-forward to last week when I see CL contractors installing fiber in my alley. I'm now signed up for an install of this same gigabit fiber service for $70/month with no data caps, blocked ports, or other random charges (excluding tax) or restrictions. It's quite a good deal compared to other offerings here. A friend in another neighborhood is also set to receive his service soon, so it appears they're investing quite heavily in their fiber-to-the-home rollouts.

Denver has it but it's not expecting to are outside the metro area. I had an installer tell me that fiber would never come to my neighborhood despite it only being a 10 year old development in a fast growing city (Castle Rock, south of Denver).

The availability area for CenturyLink gigabit in Denver is tiny [1] and hasn't grown much over the last few years as far as I can tell.

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1iOdQ6O5Nv9AkqN29de...

I had a gigabit fiber-to-the-home connection in an area inside of Denver city limits (more than 3 years ago by the way) that is not shown on your linked map, so your data source for this is not accurate.

That is CenturyLink's map, not mine. Click "See Map":

https://www.centurylink.com/fiber/plans-and-pricing/denver-c...

Oh I see. That's actually a map of where they are currently _expanding into_, not where they offer service. A much larger part of the city is covered than what that map is showing.

The parent comment is a better reflection of the state of CL's fiber rollout than you might think. I recently did the exercise of trying to figure out what homes did and didn't have fiber from them all around Denver.

In Fort Collins, CenturyLink only offers 80 MB down. Fiber from CL in Northern Colorado isn't even on the table.

I was among the first in Boulder CO to have gigabit internet installed circa 2014. Don’t think it ever moved further north than us.

> CenturyLink has been acting in what appears to be good faith within Denver city limits ... offering gigabit fiber service ... for around $60-70/month

This is good, but I see higher/lower prices as a symptom, not the problem itself. My beef with Comcast and its ilk is not that their price is too high, but that they aggressively lobby to kill any viable alternatives, such as city fiber (which allows them to keep prices high and bundle "required hardware" rentals, but throw in short term incentives to appear cheaper than they are). My 2c.

This isn't true for Century Link.

Lots of people in Seattle, and a growing number of other cities, have Century Link gigabit fiber to their residence. I pay less than $70 a month for this.

Comcast is losing marketshare fast in Seattle because of this.

https://www.centurylink.com/fiber/img/Gigabit-Launch-Map-res...

I don't understand, what are you referring to that isn't true?

I guess he's opposing the statement that they're doing as little as possible to upgrade their service.

When you've been beaten by a stick for years that first carrot can taste pretty good.

But are there competing gigabit internet in Seattle? Obviously they will stay competitive, that's beside the point.

It's like how Comcast happened to bring cheap gigabit internet to every city Google Fiber entered... The fact that it takes a local competitor to get these big companies to bring cheap gigabit is exactly the problem. Your anecdotal evidence about a city full of competition doesn't really prove anything.

There are far more options in Seattle than ever before (and possibly than any other city in the US). WaveG, CenturyLink, CascadeLink, WebPass (Google Fiber), Comcast

That doesn't appear accurate. If you happen to live in a building (condo/apt) that is supported by one of the other gigabit companies you list then you are good to go. But that is a very very small part of the population.

Otherwise Seattle has only 2 options for physically connected internet: Centurylink and Comcast. And they are priced accordingly.

Hmm. I wouldn't call that a very very small part. It's not pervasive. But it's still better than the competition in most cities.

Yup and there are large swaths of Seattle where Century Link doesn’t have competitive speeds to Comcast. Cities should have even more competition for service providers than rural areas.

Yes! I live in Seattle and whenever I try their checker it tells me "Great! You qualify for up to 12Mbps" for $45/mo. I'm not a fan of Comcast, but that Century Link offer is a poor joke in comparison.

And this is despite living less than three blocks from a Century Link building crammed full of machines (I can hear the hum from the sidewalk when I go by). I don't get it.

It's the cost of the last mile, and the difficulty and expense of running those wires.

Or just apathy by incumbent providers, why do better when doing worse still gets you paid.

Here in Salt Lake City, Comcast is not competitive with Google Fiber at all. It's about 2.5x more expensive ($170 vs $70 if I'm not mistaken), and comes with a 1TB/month data cap, making it completely useless.

That's fine though, as long as they're not actively campaigning and lobbying to keep entities from entering the field in the first place.

No it isn't fine - the fact that the monopoly is developed enough to suppress competition is already a bad thing - these guys need to be broken up hard.

When they additionally lobby to stop locals from fixing the problem - that's them rubbing salt in the wounds and I'm glad they're doing it, it's getting less technical folk to wake up to the BS.

I think I did a poor job communicating what I meant.

I agree with you, the current status quo is abhorrent.

Were there to be competition, some providers offering poor deals is fine. That isn't the case though. Thank you for articulating.

Do we know that they aren't lobbying? I'm not familiar with CenturyLink for Comcast absolutely is all over the US.

Century Link expanded its fiber network in Seattle when it seemed likely Google Fiber would come, but in the last 4 years while it has been clear it wouldn't, it seems like CenturyLink has stopped expanding their network.

My block is surrounded by blocks that all have gigabit fiber, but my block never got hooked up. Every year I ask, every year they have no comment.

If you can set up line of sight to an acquantance's home on a block with gigabit, you can spend a few hundred and connect up an Ubiquiti point-to-point connection.

I did that recently with their Litebeam AC. I have always found Ubiquiti's products to be technically great (superb reliability at a reasonable price, configuration is fairly straightforward although may take some googling). Unfortunately their product range is insanely confusing: even with some familiarity using their products and knowing the exact product exists, I always struggle to find the model I need.

I just set up a 40 acre property with WiFI coverage throughout using all Ubiquiti gear. Even put up some solar powered APs. Finding the right products wasn’t too bad, though it leaves some to be desired.

Their forums are pretty good and there’s tons of information on there for any conceivable project.

I’m very happy with all the gear, especially the Rocket 5AC Prism Gen2 with a 60 degree sector antenna. Holy cow those are powerful!

Yeah, well look just a couple of miles outside of the core city, and you'll find loads of people who still can't get anything faster than 1.5Mbps DSL. Hell, I live in the city, and CenturyLink only offers 12Mbps DSL to me. I know people who live in denser, core residential areas than me (Ballard, Queen Anne, etc) and can't even get over 25Mbps from CenturyLink.

There's a comment above that suggests that Comcast owns the physical layer and, as such, is allowed to limit CenturyLink's access on its infrastructure (though there is a contrasting reply to it). I've always wondered why CenturyLink's advertised speeds were so much slower.

This isn't true for Century Link.

It's best not to make broad generalizations when it comes to ISP's.

A single ISP may provide high speed and low rate in one city, then provide low speed at high rates in another. Your experience in Location A is likely not what other people experience in Location B.

It all depends on the competition, regulation, infrastructure, geography, population density, history, and other features of an area.

I live in the middle of Capitol Hill and would love to ditch comcast, so I went to check this out. Good news, I qualify for "high speed" internet of up to 7Mbps!

Losing market share downtown maybe -- all I can get in Fremont is 100MBps from Centurylink, just a few blocks from Adobe, Google, Tableau -- it's nuts.

Fiber is slowly making its way through my town and I'm looking forward to the speed, but more than that I'm looking forward to telling Comcast that I don't have to put up with them anymore. I picture it like that episode of South Park, except with the roles reversed.

In the late 90s fiber was widely deployed by Telcos in the US in anticipation of future demand growth that never occurred due to the ability to extract greater bandwidth out of single fibers.

Bellsouth had fiber laid in much of suburban Georgia in the late 90s that remained dark. In the early 00s they were offering internet to some communities by running fiber to a box on the side of the house that converted it to 10mbit Ethernet capped at 1.5mbps and calling it "DSL".

I'm not sure what ever became of this infrastructure. I know that Google and others were buying up dark fiber networks but my understanding was that they were acquiring long haul links and not stuff deployed in communities.

The stories I heard about the expansion that was anticipating growth that never came was all about long-haul fiber: Fiber between cities and across the country. Some of that, one could speculate, was because these long haul fibers were being sold to businesses, who were paying ~$100/mbps, but the residential endpoints were still very slow (1.5Mbps DSL was blazing fast in 1998, if you could even get it), because the telcos were holding onto their in-ground copper investment.

It was more than just long-haul.

Some cities suffered from the growing pains of the fiber feeding frenzy. City streets would be torn up five or six times within a couple of months as competing fiber startups tried to cash in on the anticipated gold rush.

Those towns with good planning departments put together "street cut coordination" plans to minimize repeated disturbances. But most didn't get their acts together before the fiber bubble burst.

3-4 years ago the town in this article got tired of the tearing up of its main street, and refinished that street, after telling the likely suspects that they'd better put down extra capacity now if they were going to need it, because future digs would require the diggers to completely redo the road rather than just trench and fill.

I'm kind of surprised they weren't installing conduits and vaults. Isn't that common practice to facilitate easier repair of faults?

Fiber companies aren't interested in spending the extra money for conduits and vaults. They just want to get quick cash to feed to their investors.

They're currently installing fiber in my area with vaults that, according to my partner the engineer, are way closer together than they need to be. I wonder if something else is going in them as well...

Possibly your municipality is requiring them to do that in the build-out to make them future-proof.

That's what can happen when the provincial government runs the telco -- it's not a guarantee of course, but they act in the best interest of the stakeholders (the people).

My brother lives in Saskatoon as well and I remember going there in the early 2000s and his "cable" TV was IPTV (the cable box for his TV was connected with an ethernet cable -- it didn't even have a COAX connection). That blew my mind at the time but it made so much sense from a network health/bandwidth standpoint and allowed them to offer great options for movie rentals, etc.

Saskatchewan has a government run telco called Saskatel, that's why you're inlaws have decent service. Every where else in Canada has worse service than Comcast.

I’m in a major city in France and I use a gigabyte fiber for my 4 employees and it’s 19,90€ per month. And at home I have ADSL and the 3G is faster (12€ for 100Go per month, 8Go in Europe). For the first time, France has one thing working correctly ;)

>You can get gigabit now for around $100/mo, if you commit to a year. I'm just sitting on 120mbps for $90/mo, because people the next neighborhood over are getting door hangers saying the city fiber is coming soon.

I'm in FoCo and I think that gigabit is now $70 bc of the city announcement, but that is only an "intro" price (love that about comcast). It is also AFAIK not bi-directional gig. Uploads are still capped and you have a data transfer limit as well.

I think I checked 3 weeks ago, right about the time Connexion was saying they were lighting their first household in the next couple days. I MIGHT be misremembering the $100 gigabit, because they had a staggering number of offers (many different speed options with many different terms), but I think I recall there being a 400Mbps@$60/mo offer and the gigabit was $90 or $99 with a year commitment.

Would be VERY entertaining if they dropped it by $30-40 in the weeks since...

I was thinking about getting one of the lower levels because I'm on an older 120Mbps plan, which started out at $60 for a year or two, then jumped up. I'm not expecting Connexion any time soon, because of my location, but then I realized I need a new cable modem to get the new offer, so most of the saving over a year would be eaten up ($130 for a Surfboard).

Then the roads a block away started getting marked for utility locates. Hmm, I should ask one of my neighbors how crazy utility locates are, he works for a company that does utility locates...

> They are doing everything they can to protect their existing infrastructure and do as little as possible to upgrade services.

Well, that's how rent-seeking works.

Cox is now offering universal 1 gbps services, so I'm not sure the "do as little as possible to upgrade services" is accurate any longer.

> fibre to the home by the year 2000

weeps in fibre to the home axed for Australia in 2015

I have CenturyLink 1Gbps in Colorado Springs. Not sure what you mean about not upgrading their infrastructure. The price is $75 fixed forever as long as I always pay my bill on time.

Centurylink in Fort Collins offer 'up to 40 mbits' but it's rarely that fast and costs about $48 a month. Plus router rental. That's what we mean about them not upgrading infrastructure. They had their chance, and now the city will compete with them.

They used to quote their speeds in ATM frame rates, not in IP speed, and ATM has a lot of overhead. 15%? I wonder if their 40mbps is still quoting frame rates rather than actual IP throughput. Not sure, because 40mbps isn't enough for my home use, so I haven't even talked to them.

What is your home use scenario?

Where 40mbps isn't sufficient you mean? A family of 4 with a hell of a lot of video streaming being the primary one, but also not wanting my own Youtube videos to take 3-4 hours to upload 20 minutes. :-)

Could you please talk more about how why you consider the facts you've cited "$75 fixed forever" relevant to the "not upgrading their infrastructure" discussion?

it's also important to note that these companies are known for lying. I've had five separate CenturyLink employees lie to me over the phone in the past week and a half so I don't really even think their word something you can rely on.

I have CenturyLink 1Gbps in Colorado Springs. Not sure what you mean about not upgrading their infrastructure.

Not everyone lives on your block in your town in your state.

Personally, I hate those "fixed price forever" Internet offers. The price of Internet continues to trend down, I think of these plans as "We guarantee we will be overcharging you in 2-3 years" plans. :-)

Can't speak for Comcast, but for Centurylink, they've been rolling out fiber like crazy. In Seattle I have a fiber connection for $70 / month. This was maybe 3-4 years ago and never had an issue with it. It doesn't appear to be in bad faith. Now, who knows if they'll continue to roll it out.

Nice! Only 20 years late! :-) (referring to the $2B rate hike they were given to deploy fiber by Y2K)