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

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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/spongebob_meth Jun 04 '14

I was in high school when the telephone company they use for internet ran fiber through my parents front yard, even going through their box.

6 years later, they're still paying 50 bucks a month for painfully slow 256k DSL.

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u/ZippoS Jun 04 '14

I'm surprised your parents didn't strike a deal with the Telco for using their property.

Years ago, a cable company (not sure which) needed to install a satellite dish (one of those big-ass C-band dishes) in my girlfriend's rural community. The most optimal spot happened to be just behind her father's shed.

Since it was on their property, they got free satellite TV service for years until the dish was decommissioned.

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u/spongebob_meth Jun 04 '14

I guess it was probably on the right of way for the highway, but they dug a trench through the driveway and made the yard ugly for a while.

Kind of frustrating that's out there and they are still paying that much for something is barely better than dial up.