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Comment by thetinguy | Hacker News Reader

IMHO google fiber is the reason isps in the us offer gigabit.

Unfortunately most cable providers offer "gigabit" where upstream is sub-5 to 10 Mbit

I've had AT&T gigabit fiber in Louisville for four years now and it's fully symmetric. I frequently run speed checks and I always see uploads close to 1gbit.

I was amazed to see gigabit AT&T in the Red River Gorge (Stanton, KY) when I was there last month. I have a feeling the public-owned fiber backbone (Kentucky Wired) has something to do with that level of accessibility

I lust after such a thing. But here only AT&T copper is available, with a max speed of 20 mbps, and apparently they're no longer accepting new accounts:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/2020/10/03/att...

This leaves me with zero options for wired broadband.

Recently I got an advertisement from t-mobile (as one of their customers) about their home internet offering.

I currently have gigabit service through comcast/xfinity. Tons of stability issues, but that aside even in the best of times it's as you say.. super low upload bandwidth. And even worse they still impose a terabyte bandwidth cap on me unless I pay them an additional $30/mo.

Well, I looked into the t-mobile internet. It's an LTE router, no bandwidth cap, a flat $50/mo total... and the upload bandwidth I get is around 40-60Mb/s. Download bandwidth between 60-100Mb/s.

Certainly seems so in Austin, TX.

Google Fiber arrived, and now Spectrum has "940 Mbps Internet", AT&T Fiber has "Internet 1000", and Grande (regional cable company) has "Gig Internet".

And in neighborhoods where they overlap, some of those providers have prices (introductory offers?) that are ~$10/month cheaper than in other neighborhoods.

In my area FIOS is the reason. Verizon finally rolled it it out and as if by magic existing providers suddenly found a lot of bandwidth in their back pockets.

In DC I moved about 8 blocks down the road, from a neighborhood wired for Comcast and Fios to one where Comcast was the only option. The Comcast only street had worse service and prices about 50% higher.

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