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Comment by JohnTHaller | Hacker News Reader

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JohnTHaller·

tldr;

Today: 100Mbps down / 20Mbps up (45 million Americans lack access as of Dec 2022)

2015 onward: 25Mbps down / 3Mbps up

Pre-2015: 4Mbps down / 1Mbps up

The commission's longterm goal is 1Gbps down / 500Mbps up. These distinctions of 'broadband' help determine where to focus resources.

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We are in the 45 million. When we moved here over a decade ago we were told by TDS that they were expanding their service and should be able to provide us with 50Mbs 'soon'. 10 years later we are still 5Mbs (3 in real-world situations). With no plan to expand here ever. Fortunately, the local electric company got a grant and is rolling out 1Gbs fiber to 100% of their customers. TDS couldn't do it because it wasn't 'profitable'. The electric company is fast-tracking the build-out and we should have service less than 18 months after they started.

I got 1 gig fiber to the home just this last year thanks to a an electric company fiber co-op. Couldn't get DSL before because the lines were so degraded and no one offered it. Until now the only available internet was wireless in a highly forested area.

Despite living in a city, I was one of those 45 million until pretty recently. Due to some weird network topography, I only had one option, spectrum, and it never worked very well, and they never were very incentivized to fix it.

Now that 5G Internet exists, I am paying $25 a month for 300 Mb access and my life is better. I debated over years just because of the inability to get decent Internet at home.

So they would like to get to the level of Romania.

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