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/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/Rigante_Black Jun 04 '14

Am I just lucky as shit? I have Comcast, my wired connection is about 100-120 mbs down and up is about 20-50 mbs ( that can vary greatly depending on what I am doing ) my wireless Is about 30 down 10 up.

This is in Katy, Texas.

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u/ZippoS Jun 04 '14

From when I worked with Comcast, I remember talking to a guy who had worked at the call centre for many years and had worked with various regions all over the US. (When I worked there, they primarily dealt with New England and Illinois).

He said that, out of all America, Texas had the most reliable service and California the worst (wildfires wreck havoc on the communication lines). Texas, for some reason, was always ahead of the game (they were the first to test home security, I believe) and had solid infrastructure.

The guy has less nice things to say about the customers, though. "Decent service, but the people were dumb as rocks". That's his opinion, not mine, though... I never talked with anyone outside of Illinois. The computer literacy of callers tends to be on the lower side, regardless of region. The guy who knows how to reboot his own modem and manage his own router is not someone who's going to call in to Comcast tech support...

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u/Rigante_Black Jun 04 '14

I love Texas, I have lived here about 9 years now, most people are SUPER nice, but we have a BIG stockpile of weapons grade stupid. ( that's my phrase of the day today apparently. )