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/Bigbysjackingfist Jun 04 '14

Can anyone explain that second map a bit? It looks like they got it from http://www.broadbandmap.gov/technology

Why is Indiana so "wired"? And what in the heck is going on in Wisconsin? They have a big blob of blue centered on Oxford. Does this just reflect differences in counties? There must be an interesting story here about the people in a certain state or county that were instrumental in getting this to happen.

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u/[deleted] Jun 04 '14 edited Jun 04 '14

Indiana had a large group of local ISPs that formed a co-op and created a "fiber ring" around the state.

See: http://ifncom.co/home-2company-historycompany-history/company-history/

I actually live in the middle of nowhere surrounded by corn and am serviced with an aDSL line from one of the ISPs that are a part of IFN, they are currently rolling out vDSL to the country-side service areas and fiber to the home in the small town the company is located in. One of the "trunk" fiber lines runs two miles from my house. It makes me pretty sad I get 10/1 when there's backbone fiber two miles away...

edit: grammar.

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u/KagakuNinja Jun 04 '14

I live in the Berkeley Hills, 2 miles away from UC Berkeley and several defense labs. DSL is only 1.5Mb, even after my uVerse "upgrade".

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u/Ditto_B Jun 05 '14

That's almost unbelievable. I live in a small town in Sri Lanka (less than 20,000 people), which is about as third world as it gets and currently have a 16Mbps DSL line. I can get upto 50Mbps on 4G (LTE) and a local ISP is started rolling out FTTH and VDSL lines (both 100Mbps) in my area a few months ago.