Hacker News Reader

Comment by mmm_grayons | Hacker News Reader

Symmetric gigabit is under $80/mo from AT&T where I live. That's not only good new infrastructure but also significantly cheaper than the old cable stuff. Maybe were the space less regulated ISPs would make a greater investment, especially were it easier to start one's own. If the WISP idea ever gets really good that would solve most of the situation.

View on HN

I live in a rural area and also pay $80/mo for internet. This gets me a 160 KB/s unmetered connection, which has been the best available for about a decade, unless I want to spend a lot of money or suffer cripling bandwidth caps. Millions of dollars have been awarded each year during this time to deploy rural broadband in the state. Areas serviced by small, local ISPs have fiber to the door, but unfortunately, I'm serviced by a big, nationwide ISP thata just sucks up all that money and never delivers. I can hardly wait for Starlink or one of the proposed competing satellite constellations to come online.

Also: during the 90's, Wired published a fiber map, and at that time, there were seven different fiber networks in place within a quarter mile from my house. For over a decade ISDN has been a little over a thousand feet away, but the provider won't connect without charging several thousands of dollars to run line and install a repeater, despite the tens of millions of dollars the state and feds have given them to roll out rural broadband.

> Maybe were the space less regulated ISPs would make a greater investment, especially were it easier to start one's own.

I’m genuinely curious: what regulations are hampering investment? Cause it’s not net neutrality (ISPs have said to their investors that it doesn’t)

Seriously, the governments have taken almost a hands off approach to the internet, and it’s now evident that it’s not working.

The most common issue is that municipal governments treat service providers as a revenue source. They charge high fees per utility pole, foot of trench, or resident serviced. These fees are then passed on to the user, who thinks the provider is responsible for the high costs.

The government does not take a "hands off approach to the Internet." It might seem that way, because the federal government does that. But when you're talking about building physical things in specific places, that's largely the domain of cities and states, and accordingly most of the relevant regulation is at the state and local level.

State-and-local permitting is one huge morass. When I had fiber installed to my house, Comcast had to get permits to hang fiber on a utility poll. Then there were different permits for diverting traffic temporarily while hanging the fiber. Then there were other permits for trenching. The whole process took months. And there is a skilled worker there that has to shepard the process through the bureaucracy.

Other regulations prevent offering television service (a key revenue source) without commitments to build a certain footprint. That means you can't start an ISP with a "minimal viable product" and grow from there. You have to be willing to commit huge amounts of money up front before you see a cent of revenue.

It's very illustrative to look at the deals Google Fiber struck with municipalities, because that shows you where are the real pressure points. Two features appeared in almost every accepted proposal for a Fiber city: (1) one-shot, fast-track permitting; and (2) no build-out requirements.

>Symmetric gigabit is under $80/mo from AT&T where I live.

That's nice. It's apparent that you live in or near a large metropolotian area. But we're talking about places like Vermont, Upstate NY, and rural Ohio that currently have DSL, or 3G, as their only option.

>That's not only good new infrastructure but also significantly cheaper than the old cable stuff.

Not sure where you get your figures from, but fiber optic is more expensive per foot than copper. In fact, the FTTH installs use some of the most expensive fiber to limit potential issues. On top of that, rural areas are especially difficult because the population density just might mean miles between homes. So, this isn't as much about regulation as it is for-profit companies not willing to take a loss to serve the few.

> Symmetric gigabit is under $80/mo from AT&T where I live.

One datapoint without even stating where you are is meaningless. In general, urban and well off suburban areas have enough resources and density for several competing providers that will actually maintain infrastructure. Meanwhile "competition" in rural areas consists of aging coax versus aging copper. We've had over a decade of private companies promising to build out modern infrastructure if given public money, with few results. Only when rural areas build out municipal fiber do they get reliable gigabit with no customer service hassle.

> Symmetric gigabit is under $80/mo from AT&T where I live

They advertise a similar deal in my city. It isn't actually available anywhere except for a tiny patch of rich-people-land of course.

I have comcast, signed up for a $70 dollar 80/10 package, now it's 150/10 and 120/mo. I have my own router and basic cable. It would cost more to drop basic cable. I can't even downgrade to save money. Comcast has no competition above 100mbps so they can get away with charging 150 for a 1gbps asym connection that has a 1tb cap. Insane. Just slow me to 3g speeds during surges. The actual cost of a bit traveling through and out their network is infinitely close to 0.

Burlington Telecom provided excellent service as a public utility. Symmetric gigabit for $70 and 150 Mbps for $55.

$80 is ridiculously expensive

In my area it's $88/month for 150Mbps down/10Mbps up.

I have been considering downgrading as one third the speed is around half the price I think. :/

Reply on news.ycombinator.com