Hacker News Reader

Comment by msgodel | Hacker News Reader

In the US fiber has started to show up in very rural areas now as well. My parents got it last year and I never thought that would happen in my hometown.

It's some small company I never heard of before, back when I lived there Verizon got a ton of government money to do this and just never did, everyone was pissed about that.

View on HN

I'm still pissed about Verizon pocketing billions in subsidies and not finishing their work. My area was next up for fiber installation before Verizon stopped, and so I'm stuck with Comcast or DSL. Comcast claims to offer symmetrical GiB up/down, but I've yet to get that. Now I can't even get in touch with a human for support without spending 30 minutes with a bot.

Weird opposite experience. I’m suuuper rural NY (what others have described as ‘American Siberia’) and for some reason Verizon quietly started building out their fiber network in the past several years again, something even I didn’t anticipate happening.

I always knew they had Syracuse and Rochester as major FIOS markets, but I was blown away to see the trucks all the way this far north and on my very road. Last I’d known they’d said they had stopped all buildout. Next thing I know, they pick back up their pace, then pick up the homework they let Frontier finish for them with the Frontier FIOS buildout, too.

Our nearest town, Durham Kansas (population 100) got buried fiber optic recently. The company is actually planning/hoping to expand to the rural area around town as well, so maybe we'll get it as we're only two miles out of town. They do offer 1gig symmetric but I think it's $200/month. I'd just like the reliability and low latency of fiber vs our current WISP.

It's a huge difference isn't it? When I used to stay here in the past, the DSL was awful. It made it very annoying to work online. Now, it's as good as back in Seattle.

Oh lol there wasn't even DSL, everyone wanted that. The options were dialup (over ISDN for a while which was one of the best options until that went away), geosynchronous satellite, or LTE if you're even near a tower.

That's why I'm so surprised they have fiber all of a sudden.

Starlink is now kind of a global baseline that ISPs have to compete against regardless of location. In rural areas it's very reasonable to expect 200-400mbps downloads and 20-40mbps uploads for $120/month. A bit pricey but it's a level of service that DSL and GEO sats can't even think about matching, so companies have to build cable, fiber, or 5G towers if they want to have a comparable offering.

In Vermont you can get GB fiber to the house but it will cost you $90/month after the intro period. Vendor: Fidium.

My parents for fiber in a rural area too. It's roughly $100/mo for something like 20/20.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com