Comment by seanp2k2 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by seanp2k2 | Hacker News Reader

When I came to Silicon Valley in the early 2010s and realized that all of the king's horses and all of the king's men could not defeat the scourge that is the US ISP oligopoly even in their own backyards, I knew it was pointless to ever hope for real FTTH in Bay Area markets in the next couple of decades.

Wireless solutions have orders of magnitude less bandwidth than fiber, and you can run lots of fiber in a bundle, whereas there's limited spectrum and only one already-saturated RF environment going wireless.

Only in the past few months has Comcast (the only actual high-speed internet option in our fairly typical Silicon Valley suburban neighborhood of ~$2.5m average homes) deigned to offer upload speeds greater than the previous 35mbit cap...now we can push 200mbit for $120/mo (for 1.2tb monthly combined U+D, add $20 for "unlimited") and you usually have to buy a new modem even if your old one supported the tech, since they only support specific firmware on specific SKUs. Meanwhile, GFiber is offering 8gbps symmetrical for $150/mo unmetered.

Reminder also that Ricochet was wireless internet in 1994 on 900mhz ISM using FHSS in the Valley. Ooh how far we've come in 30 years.

In Silicon Valley, in a neighborhood of $2.5M homes, and thus household incomes on average of probably $600k+. It should be possible to get a fiber rollout, they aren't that expensive. Make a neighborhood ISP, or try and get a municipal ISP.

I seem to recall a few different "if we get this many signed up" flyers (more East Bay than South) trying to organize something along those lines - maybe the name was Compass? Also try Sonic and see if they have anything for you.

I've had ATT gigabit fiber for ~6(?) years now. And for the first time ever (started with a 300 baud modem in 1985), similar to recent CPU releases, don't feel a compelling need to upgrade. In fact, would consider 0.5 Gbps if it offered substantial savings, since we don't fully use 1 GB. But no caps, and getting measured throughput of 850+ MB/s for $85 (started at $70) is affordable (for SV) and has been very reliable other than when the very-early transceiver they installed (I was one of the first to get it) got waterlogged and shorted out - the replacement was installed indoors, so that won't happen again.

I'm not a fan of ATT's corporate policies by any means. But the alternatives are, well.. Comcast with a much worse service (not symmetrical) or some flavor of 5G.

People want their nice neighborhood of 2.5 m homes where 100% of utilities are underground and aesthetically pleasing. While people in ordinary neighborhoods in Japan with 100% aerial fiber on utility poles have far superior fiber based last mile ISP service.

Santa Cruz has one.

Silicon Valley is an aberration due to its low housing density. Places with more apartments and condos are much more likely to have infrastructure improvements since you can reach a lot more customers with a lot less money.

I live a little north of you, and had Webpass (wireless) in 2012 - $50/mo for 100 Mbps. Now it's $70/mo for 1 Gbps, but I'm with another wireless ISP for $35/mo for 500 Mbps.

It goes both way doesn't it.

I've looked up some non-shitty parts of the UK with 1gb/1gb fibre for about $40 a month (Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol ect) and all do seem to have population densities about twice that of Silicon Valley.

Then again my village with a population of about 300 does as well so i think it comes down to centralised investment.

Does state or federal not offer incentive to connect low density communities for the good of teh wider economy?

Here in North Texas a lot of the area has less density than a lot of the bay area, average incomes aren't as high, home values aren't nearly as high. And yet a large portion of the population is served by fiber to the home with 1-5Gbit symmetrical speeds available.

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