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Comment by ls612 | Hacker News Reader

Don’t most people in major metro areas have fiber options now? (Municipal or not)

Not even close. In my research, only housing developments with new underground utilities since ~2005 to 2010, or sometimes anything super old with overhead wires.

Anywhere developed between 1980 to 2005 with underground utilities or anywhere with dense apartment buildings like NYC have effectively zero fiber.

Counter argument: my neighborhood was developed in the 1970s with underground utilities (and electric only, no natural gas, which is a bit odd in my part of the USA). They installed gas lines in the 90s (ripping up all of the streets) and fiber in the 10s, running alongside the street and using directional drilling to pass crossroads.

NYC interestingly does have a lot of fiber. It was supposed to be citywide, but then there was an argument with Verizon over it and the suit was settled in 2020. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/11/verizon-wiring-u...

My subdivision was built in 2003/2004. Underground utilities. I have both AT&T fiber and Google fiber (as of a few months ago) available to me.

My subdivision was built in the mid-1800s. We do not have fiber :(

But I'll bet it has a lot more character.

Yeah, they call it asbestos.

Popcorn ceilings are the opposite of "character." They'll give you cancer if you drill through them AND they're dated, ugly as sin, and impossible to keep clean.

But they are much better at noise dampening a room (handy for multi-tenant buildings) and much more forgiving when finishing an imperfect ceiling.

I do agree they're a pain to clean/paint, but I'm saying there are still good use-cases for a textured ceiling.

From the mid-1800s?

Fios is pretty common in apartments buildings in NYC and area in my experience.

Obviously not? Where are you living where even if fiber is available in your city, it’s not just a small section you’d need to deliberately account for in your selection of housing?

Minneapolis has a private fiber ISP, my brother is in Madison and they too have private fiber available widely. I was under the impression there had been a lot of fiber deployment in cities in the past five years.

well, you're under a very, very, isolated/bad impression.

US Internet (private fiber ISP in the Twin Cities) is an anomaly, not the norm. Minneapolis is incredibly lucky to have a local, private ISP that offers fiber to the home at up to 10 gigabit/s. The only other ISPs in the US that I know offer similar services are either municipal ISPs, co-ops, or Google Fiber.

Cincinnati, Ohio has Altafiber (formerly Cincinnati Bell) that offers 2gbps down 1gbps up for $80/mo. I have it and it’s amazing.

Cincinnati Bell was early to roll out DSL too. Went to college here in the late 90s and had a mind blowing 768kbps. I could watch RealVideo at 640x480!

The Midwest absolutely has seen a lot of fiber going in the ground with federal money the past couple years and Metronet has expanded pretty aggressively.

That’s fair I was under the impression that the trends I’ve seen were national not limited to the upper Midwest.

I live in the LA metro area, 15min from downtown, and we only get Spectrum (coaxial cable)

The only alternative is to get something wireless, either a microwave antenna service or a cell-based hotspot

It doesn’t seem any companies are trying to compete or even improve their services

Spectrum goes down at least 3 times a month, sometimes for hours on end

Nope. In many areas yes but availability of service is still highly local. Even if you're near net the ISP could still want a build out fee vs an existing provider that's already on property.

It's pretty widespread in Seattle. We have Google Fiber, CenturyLink, and Wave G providing gigabit fiber services in different parts of the city. Then there is Atlas Networks which provides symmetrical gigabit services to apartment buildings via point to point wireless. I have Atlas and it has been fantastic.

I don't believe Google has fiber in Seattle. There is "GFiber" which from their site is: "GFiber is the company that offers Google Fiber and Google Fiber Webpass, high-speed broadband internet services that use fiber optic and wireless millimeter wave technology to deliver fast internet right to your home or business."

But millimeter wave wireless is available from Google in Seattle

A place I lived earlier had fiber, but only by Comcast. No other competition in the area, so Comcast charged whatever they wanted.

Is a million people enough?

I can get cable with fast downloads and 11Mbps uploads, or if I remember right the phone line option was 50Mbps each way.

No. And that's in developed countries. Talk about entitled.

"I mean it's one banana, Michael. What could it cost? 10 dollars?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl_Qyk9DSUw

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