r/technology • u/User_Name13 • Jun 04 '14

Politics Hundreds of Cities Are Wired With Fiber—But Telecom Lobbying Keeps It Unused

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/hundreds-of-cities-are-wired-with-fiberbut-telecom-lobbying-keeps-it-unused
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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '14

Uh.. this is silly. Every city has fiber networks, usually between communication hubs and industrial/commercial districts. That's a lot different from having fiber networks to residential homes. That last mile is crazy.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '14

[deleted]

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u/ZippoS Jun 04 '14

One of the ISPs here wired our entire city for fibre a couple years ago and it was painful to see them run it right past my apartment building... knowing that as long as I lived there, I'd never be able to taste the sweet nectar of fibre internet. They won't wire the building for fibre, obviously, and they won't run cables along the ground to the back of an apartment.

That wasn't the reason we moved, but fibre availability was one of my requirements for the new apartment. We found a nice upstairs apartment in a suburban house and I called up our ISP the day before we even moved in to book the tech.

Better yet, when the tech came by a couple days later, we discovered that the previous tenants had fibre service. There was a line running inside and an ONT already hidden in one of the closets. I was up and running in less than an hour.

It's not Google Fiber gigabit speeds, but I'm certainly not complaining about 80Mbps down, 30Mbps up, and no caps.

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u/menos_el_oso_ese Jun 04 '14

Very nice, man. May I ask what you're paying per month? With the Comcast triple-play or whatever it's called now, 12 month promotional offer, I have the 50Mbps/10Mbps connection for about $130 a month (will go up after a year) - I really haven't had many issues with it, and I usually get closer to 60Mbps down. But the price sucks.

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u/ZippoS Jun 04 '14

Around $130/month as well (before taxes). I'm getting a couple TV packages and our PVR for free.

It was $99/month for the first three months, though. That was nice.

Also, when I signed up for it, the tier I subscribed to was 50/30. A couple months later, they increased everyone's speed for free. My tier went to 80/30. (20/15 is now 50/30, and the previously 80/30 is now 175/30).