Hacker News Reader

Comment by ldoughty | Hacker News Reader

The government shouldn't invest billions in proping up existing or new cities.. it should spend time reversing ISP regional monopolies and giving citizens choice on internet access.

The barrier to entry of a high tech job sector is primarily internet connectivity. You can't run a web server out of your house if your ISP doesn't allow it.. or if the top speed is 3Mbps. Sure, you could push stuff to a third party, but that increases development costs (in dollars and knowledge). And if you're doing a lot of data pushes, a 256Kb upload speed will be painful if you're pushing a 90MB container up to the cloud.

IT people flock to areas that have internet. It was a requirement both times I moved that there's >25Mbps high-cap wired internet. I would NEVER move to a place with less. I would be eager to move to a place that offers gigabit fiber that I could run a server behind (I mostly do cloud work, but I do enjoy having some at-home services).

View on HN

But in general the internet in the bay area kind of sucks? I am in Oakland at the moment and stuck with Comcast. Before in SF I was in a part of town again stuck with Comcast. Sure there are some providers rolling out fiber but its pretty slow. Yeah I could use monkey brains/webpass but I have never had a landlord willing to set it up.

ATT offers gigabit for $79.99 tax and fees included in many areas of the Bay Area.

"Many areas". I just got gigabit through ATT after years of waiting, and Sonic will be my 2nd gigabit provider in.. a few months. But I live <2mi from Facebook.

My in-laws live a couple of blocks from Stanford, and they've got grandfathered SBC DSL at like 6 down and 0.5 up. You can't even ORDER DSL at their house anymore through ATT, they just begrudgingly support it (sort of).

Atherton started their own fiber network just to solve for this problem.

There's plenty of money and demand for good internet in the bay area. The regulatory environment is killing it, not lack of demand or money.

Being "stuck" with Comcast is better than most rural areas in America. Even services like Comcast in many rural areas is many times worse then Comcast in suburbs. ISPs are happy to let the lines rot then to spend a few thousand dollars to repair a cable serving <25 customers.

Rural WV here. My internet in July of 2019 was upgraded from 8/2 to 25/5. Happy days are here at last.

No evidence of it, but I think the FCC definition of broadband changing had a lot to do with it.

It is neighborhood by neighborhood, with the best service in places with AT&T fiber to offer competition with Comcast. I moved from West Oakland, where my choices were 3Mbit DSL or Comcast, to San Jose, where I have gigabit fiber from Sonic (with AT&T plant). AT&T fiber is available up in the hills in Oakland, and there are still parts of SJ without fiber service.

I don't think that internet connectivity alone is enough.

I live in Chattanooga TN where we've had consumer gigabit fiber for the better part of a decade (and 10GB for a while now) and the tech scene is good but not amazing (particularly where startups are concerned).

> The barrier to entry of a high tech job sector is primarily internet connectivity. You can't run a web server out of your house if your ISP doesn't allow it.. or if the top speed is 3Mbps.

In my experience, after a certain point, most tech businesses don't really need better connectivity; most of the heavy lifting is done in the cloud these days.

Indeed! After reliable uncapped/high-capped 50Mbps speeds are available, with decent upload speeds, the speed increases are not as important from a business stance.

However, 24 million Americans do not have "broadband" access as of 2018[0]. Rural USA is 60 million americans[1].

It is _my guess_ that nearly all of these 24 million Americans without broadband are almost entirely rural, since they are the lowest priority for ISPs (too expensive per customer)... and this is 97% of the USA land mass[2] which is why ISPs avoid them (infrastructure too expensive).

So when people say tech startups can be anywhere... in reality, only 3-4% of the US land mass is reliably covered with high speed data, and those people must be happy to live in homes on ~1 acre or less lots (typical maximum for suburbs).

Running a server from home was not the best example, perhaps nowadays "reliable video calls with screen sharing" is a better metric for reliable, consistent, moderate bandwidth service.

[0]: https://www.fcc.gov/reports-research/reports/broadband-progr... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rural_areas_in_the_United_Stat... [2]: https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2016/cb16-210...

I disagree with your assertion that not being able to run a publicly addressable web server out of your house is a barrier to entry in tech jobs.

However, I have friends in the heartland interested in tech jobs. I tried to help one learn HTML and CSS over Zoom calls and quickly discovered internet quality (speed, latency, etc) is a barrier to entry. When your internet isn’t even good enough to pair program that’s a problem. We even went to the trouble of finding the nearest buried fiber (half a mile away on a major road) and calling the owner (Sprint) to see how much it would cost to splice him in as a customer (a ridiculous sum).

I still can’t comprehend how we had an extended period (nearly a decade) of high unemployment across the heartland and the most portable job which pays a living wage was importing talent from the other side of the globe.

I agree with you -- it's not the ONLY barrier to entry, but it can be A barrier to enter that also works as a good standard to support many features IT workers need... Though I suppose video calls w/screen sharing is now a better measuring stick for the current shape of IT.

It’s a barrier to entry for equality of many sorts. The right not to be spied on is tied up in the inequality of Internet access. No paid offering for $(NETWORK_SERVICE) can compete with the zero monetary cost of centralized ad-funded services. If you could host your “cloud” photos, emails, or whatever on the home connection you already pay for then it might be a different story.

> The government shouldn't invest billions in propping up existing or new cities.

I agree and would add that the government shouldn't try to "drag jobs" from anywhere to anywhere else (per the article's headline). The U.S. government wasn't designed to do that, won't be good at it and will likely fail after spending a bunch of money that would be better spent on one of the other priorities they are supposed to be doing (and are already failing at).

I have symmetric gigabit fiber with no caps in Colorado. https://ting.com/internet/town/centennial

You do realize we have internet in the rest of the country, right? I get over 150 Mbps regularly at my house with Comcast. Upload is around 3Mbps. But I could change to Comcast business to get symetric at my house. Or I could colocate in any number of DCs in my area. Or I could move to another neighborhood and get USI Fiber[1] for about $100/mo. I don't because I don't want to move from the current neighborhood I am in.

Internet access may suck in many places, but not everywhere. Don't assume that you need to be in SF to get good internet. Most metropolitian areas in the US have good internet.

[1] https://usinternet.com/fiber/coverage-map/

I live in a part of the US where 2 miles down the road the top speed is 15Mbps DSL. I'm right on the boarder of a small town. just close enough to get Comcast at 25Mbps for ~$100/month.

If I'm not on the outskirts of this small town, I have to move 45 minutes away for equivalent service

I understand that the internet still sucks in rural US. I have a friend in a similar situation as you. But having someone proclaim that tech can't be done outside of SF because of lack of internet is dismissing so much of the country.

This happens even within the Bay Area. After going from Comcast Business cable to Sonic gigabit fiber in San Francisco I can never go back. It’s like going from an HDD to an SSD for the first time. They both technically do the same thing, people argue online if the speed difference really matters, but it’s the _latency_ difference that makes it so amazing. I get 2ms pings now. It makes the network mentally invisible in a way that’s hard to describe without experiencing.

Don't get me wrong, I would love fiber. USI has been laying down fiber across Minneapolis at a very fast rate over the last 10 years. I think almost half the city is covered now. But I really like my neighborhood and I don't want to move. I am sure USI will get to me eventually, but it will take time and my road will be expensive due to being on a hill above the street level.

Absolutely, and that’s why good access shouldn’t be so concentrated. My comparison to San Francisco was in the sense that it’s difficult to find good and equitable and affordable residential access in the country’s tech capital much less across the vast rural areas inland.

What's your monthly cost and is that something you can write off or charge to customers? I can't validate the cost for what I do but for about $135 a month I can reach usable upload speeds. Sitting at the decent but weak upload bottom tier plan subsidized by my apartment for now.

Comcast forcing you into a business plan to get even remotely adequate upload speeds is a pure scam.

You are not wrong, but it isn't a major issue for me.

Is it what consumers demand?

Why should you have to move to get superior service? It should be regulated that access to equal internet service regardless of geographic location, where physically possible, is required by law.

I have to triple (3x) my Comcast bill to get decent upload speeds for basic systems I host at home. My pricing is about 2/3 the actual cost as my apartment has a deal with Comcast.

So for someone down the street, assuming they have the infrastructure set up, it's about 4.5x my monthly cost for useful up speeds. No I'm fine with my existing download, that can stay where it is and I won't hit issues any time soon. But for decent upload people around here are out... $135 a month just for internet.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com