
More than 39M Americans Only Have Access to One Wired Broadband Provider - edward
http://broadbandnow.com/report/2013-underserved/
======
martingordon
Basing this analysis on ZIP Code greatly underestimates the reality many
Americans face, especially in more densely populated areas.

Here in New York (10003, for example), the site says I have four options for
broadband, but in reality, many buildings have exclusive contracts with ISPs
(I could only get TWC in my old building, for example).

My sister lives in Miami and she also has access to one ISP, despite the site
giving two options. Her ISP, Hotwire Communications (which gives her "up to"
20 Mbps), isn't even listed.

Same thing with my parents' ZIP Code (and they live in a single family home).
The site says they have access to three ISPs, but one of them is only 12 Mbps
and the other isn't actually available.

~~~
rayiner
There's nothing you can really do about this. Even if there were dozens of
potential providers, apartment buildings wouldn't want to accommodate dozens
of companies running wiring through their building or putting equipment in
their telecom closets. And they certainly don't want to take on the cost and
hassle of maintaining their own wiring inside the building.

~~~
enraged_camel
>>Even if there were dozens of potential providers, apartment buildings
wouldn't want to accommodate dozens of companies running wiring through their
building or putting equipment in their telecom closets.

I don't see why this is such a big deal. Where I'm from, different telecom
companies come into apartment buildings to set up boxes and run wires and
everyone is OK with it.

~~~
rayiner
In our building, a brand-new luxury complex with hundreds of units, the
building owner wouldn't even let Verizon run fiber to each unit. They were
only allowed to get into a telecom closet on each floor with VDSL the last few
hundred feet.

~~~
walterbell
Single-provider building policies will eventually reduce the market value of
the real estate, eliminating any minor economic benefit that may accrue in
kickbacks from the single provider.

------
biesnecker
I'm lucky, I have access to two really shitty, overpriced providers, not just
one shitty, overpriced provider.

~~~
asyncwords
I'm in the same boat, living in a small town in Iowa. We pay $57.95/month for
the fastest package — 12M down and 512K up. If my ISP ever gets uppity, I have
the "luxury" of switching to the only other provider at $39/month for 6M down
and 512K up.

The price of living in a small town I guess.

~~~
mfisher87
Chicago suburb. $120 for 50/10\. I have one other option, but I stopped doing
business with AT&T a decade ago. I agree this _is_ better speed for the price
than yours, but only marginally. Areas with affordable, reliable, fast
broadband are the exception, not the rule. There are _very_ few areas with
competition.

~~~
nsxwolf
Also, don't forget the caps. I think we should start adding a third value to
the downstream/upstream tuple. So I have 30/10/350G.

Most of us are paying for a fixed amount of data now.

------
jrochkind1
Maryland/Baltimore don't show up on that list, but while Verizon has some
existing DSL (not FiOS) customers, they don't seem to be taking any new
customers (and you can find no evidence on the internet that they offer DSL in
Baltimore).

Baltimore essentially only has a Comcast option.

I wonder if it's actually even worse than this article suggests -- not only is
DSL slower than most people want, but there are some places Verizon may
technically 'offer' DSL, but in fact not really. (many places? I think Verizon
is focusing on FiOS and there may be other places that they only 'offer' DSL,
but do not really offer it at all?)

~~~
jseliger
When I lived in Tucson I had a similar problem. IIRC Comcast offered
acceptable speeds (15/1?) and Qwest or similar offered maybe 1.5 Mbs down and
less up. "Competition" existed only in a theoretical sense.

I actually tried writing to the head of Qwest Arizona and Qwest nationally to
try and convince them to run faster pipes to my area—a lot of students and
younger people who like fast Internet access lived there—but didn't get any
action.

~~~
hga
"Qwest"\---Century now, right?---has never been very serious about this, but
then again I've read that unlike AT&T and Verizon they also didn't try to
compete with the cablecos on video. So as I recall they didn't put egregious
caps on their slow offerings.

Right now I'm in one of those locations that's outside of any city (but only
by a hair, part of the property is inside one), so it's only AT&T. We could in
theory enjoy ~1.5 Mbs down after a DSLAM upgrade some time ago, but we don't
bother because AT&T, to protect their U-verse video offerings puts strict caps
on DSL. Even in small-medium sized cities/metro areas like mine (Jopin), where
they don't offer U-verse (besides that brand for new generation DSL), and
pretty clearly never will. 150 "GB" as they calculate it, $10/each 50 GB over.

Now, having started in the bad old days when 1200 baud was fast, and if you
were lucky you could get 2400 baud or greater on a direct link, I'm only so
unhappy, with my parents disgruntled by this limit on Internet video. But
we're certainly "roadkill on the Information Superhighway", and I don't, for
example, see this being addressed by the White House/FCC proposed 300+ pages
of new regulations. Then again, they're not yet public, but even the most
positive descriptions indicate we're SOL.

Oh, yeah, the price keeps increasing, right now it's $39/month as long as you
have an also expensive voice land line (all told with the nickle and diming
taxes, another 30+ dollars).

On the other hand, AT&T i.e. SWB is a freaking telco, the service is rock
solid. Everyone of my friend with cableco Internet service has notably worse
reliability, enough to impact e.g. working from home.

------
kefka
The [Reddit] thread has much more information regarding this article,
including the Author and co-founder of the site.

The head of this study is on reddit, as reddit.com/u/NickReese

This study does not take in account the upcoming change of bradband >=25Mbps .
The current site uses >=10Mbps .

There's also question regarding their data, as it does seem compromised in
certain locations. He was looking into it, after a few redditors that
supposedly had multiple broadband providers only had one, and some none at
all.

[Reddit]
[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2vk1xx/after_33b...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2vk1xx/after_33b_spent_more_than_39_million_americans/)

~~~
svachalek
It shows 17 providers for Cupertino but many of them are business only, a lot
of them don't even show claimed bitrates, and it looks like it's counting LTE
as broadband (while it's fast, it's insanely expensive to actually use for
more than a few gigs per month).

It's been a couple years since I moved out of there but at the time I'm pretty
sure I only had one true broadband choice, Comcast. This being a few miles
from Apple and Google.

------
127001brewer
This is a posting from July 22, 2014 that states, " _Yet as of the 2013 over
39 Million Americans (12.1% of the population) only have access to 0 or 1
broadband providers..._ "

What are the numbers now that broadband has been re-defined as "25 mbps" [1]?

[1] [http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-finds-us-broadband-
deploymen...](http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-finds-us-broadband-deployment-
not-keeping-pace)

~~~
nickreese
Hey, co-founder of broadbandnow.com and author of the article. We'll be
rerunning the stats with the new definition shortly. I'll make sure it's
posted here.

------
PaulHoule
More to the point, DSL is not "broadband" unless it is being used to avoid the
need to send the CWA into an apartment building to rewire it.

~~~
hapless
I'd love to see the numbers on who can choose between one cable provider, and
several (useless) providers of 3 mbps dsl.

I'll bet it's a lot more than 12%.

~~~
k__
Has there happened a redefinition of broadband since it got faster?

I got 30MBit at the moment, but when I got my first DSL connection back in
2001 I got 1Mbit and it was considered broadband...

~~~
matthewmacleod
As of January, minimum broadband speed is 25Mbps:
[http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/29/7932653/fcc-changed-
defini...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/1/29/7932653/fcc-changed-definition-
broadband-25mbps)

------
DanielBMarkham
I live in Virginia and have access to ZERO wired providers and zero wireless
-- all we have is satellite. That's because the state allowed Verizon and
others to chomp up the lucrative northern Virginia market with FIOS without
requiring that they upgrade the rest of their wired switching equipment in
less-populated areas. So Verizon makes money on the nicest part of the market
-- and the rest of us get nothing. And this is from a company using eminent
domain to provide their service.

I thought it was a bad situation ten years ago. Now I think it's a scandal.
Especially for poorer areas on the Mid-Atlantic, the tobacco deal was
specifically supposed to provide broadband. The idea was that over time we
would trade off tobacco farming for some kind of technology work. Instead we
were sold out.

Just last week, a neighbor came to me asking about doing internet work for a
call center from their house. I told them it was impossible, short of leasing
a T-1 or T-3 from Verizon. I cannot tell you how whacked it is to say that in
2015.

~~~
ra1n85
Why is it Verizon's responsibility to provide you with service? I am certainly
not a fan of big communication companies and the monopolies, but I can't see
the logic behind your argument. How are you entitled to a fast internet
connection?

If internet access is a concern of yours, it should likely factor into your
thinking when choosing a place to live (just like access to other services
like fire/police/education).

~~~
FireBeyond
It's not. However, he's fairly entitled to have a beef with his government,
that allowed such a deal to proceed knowing likely full well what the reality
would be.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
Which is exactly my beef.

Nobody here is demanding that any one company do anything. The thing is, we've
electrified the country, we've run phone service to just about everybody. This
is a solved problem. It's not like the internet was some super weird thing
that's just impossible to do. You want the business in the lucrative areas,
you gotta provide it in the not-so-lucrative areas. That's the trade we made
with those other services, and that was the trade anybody in their right mind
would have made with the internet.

Verizon's not to blame -- aside from just being weasels. There's no crime in
that. (In my mind they could have made out better had they kept their eye on
the public interest instead of quarterly reports, but that's neither here nor
there. No crime in being short-sighted)

The problem here, as you point out, lies in the government officials. I swear
after watching this go on year-after-year I find it extremely difficult to
believe that anybody can be that inept. I strongly suspect payoff money
somewhere, but I doubt anybody will ever prove anything.

~~~
rhino369
The problem is that we never had a regulated internet monopoly.

The government made AT&T and Dominion Virgina Power run telephone and
powerlines to everyone, but in exchange there was legally no competition.

Now the government wants competition, but that means there is nobody on the
hook to subsidize this guys internet connection.

It is probably more efficient to just install LTE instead. Running fiber to
every farm house is a waste of money.

------
jkot
How about wireless? It is good enough for many cases. Especially on country
side without interference from other users.

I would like to offer two stories:

\- Czech Republic before 2005 had really bad internet service. Single
telecommunication company had monopoly. It only offered expensive dial-up and
very slow ADSL. So it gave rise to community driven internet providers based
on WIFI. They even made their own hardware based on laser diods. The biggest
community network had about 500K users.

\- Ireland around 2010 had (and still has) very bad internet access. Goverment
gave free license to new mobile phone operator which used exclusively 3G
networks. One of the conditions was to provide internet access over phone for
montly fee 20 Euro. Many people are now using phone as their main connection
(I know case where monthly traffic was 44GB without any complain from
provider).

~~~
xdissent
Here in the states, Comcast cable modems/routers automatically create a
"public" wifi hotspot in your home by default, so the infrastructure for a
large wifi network exists in many places. The catch is, for the public to join
the wifi network they must have a Comcast account in good standing. I can only
assume based on Comcast's intent to build "the largest public (private) wifi
network" themselves and the recent legislative attacks against
community/public broadband networks that attempting to create a truly public
wifi network using any of the available broadband providers as a backing
service would be a Bad Idea. Anecdotally, the wireless broadband providers
here are also a joke.

------
jimktrains2
[http://broadbandnow.com/Pennsylvania/Pittsburgh](http://broadbandnow.com/Pennsylvania/Pittsburgh)
Looks like it's pretty decent, but everywhere I've lived so far (which has
been in quite a bit of the city in the past 4 years) has not had access to
FiOS. In my apt right now I only have access to Verizon DSL because Comcast
canceled my account because I wanted to downgrade. (Their sales staff could
only upgrade, status quo, or cancel outright -- not downgrade.)

Also,
[http://broadbandnow.com/Pennsylvania](http://broadbandnow.com/Pennsylvania)
claims that 90% of people have access to 100mb service in my county. 1) No. 2)
"Access" doesn't mean at any price anyone but a business can afford.

------
jqueryin
I am one of these 39M Americans. My sole provider is AT&T through a 6mbps DSL
line. I live in Charlotte, NC within 20 minutes of the center of the city.

It's unfortunate that I live on a more rural road where there's an approximate
1 to 1.5 mile stretch of road with absolutely no houses. Beyond that, my
street has only 20 houses after this stretch. This is definitely off-putting
for carriers to install new lines down to us because they're likely to not see
ROI foreeeever.

I really don't know what to do. Satellite is currently unacceptable with the
bandwidth caps and latency.

Does anybody have any suggestions? I've contacted all of the major providers
looking to get updates to our area.

~~~
rayiner
What's your LTE situation look like? Also, how do you like your neighbors? It
might be worth someone's while to run fiber out there if they could guarantee
they'd have 100% uptake to those other houses.

~~~
jqueryin
LTE is spotty. Looking at coverage maps, it does some interesting things and
covers half of our street but our house remains uncovered for the most part.

I don't know that I could get 100% uptake, but I could definitely get 50%. At
one point I read that they have cutoffs of, say, a minimum of 10 houses to
qualify for serviceability. I think this is an attainable number. There's
actually another 20 or so homes at the beginning of the road that I believe to
be unserviceable too.

Is there a way to contact the NTIA regarding their BTOP program? I'd
personally be interested in seeing where they're investing their money given
North Carolina took in a very large chunk ($150M). I'm all for trying to
strong arm this until I get better service.

------
strick
>More than 39M Americans Only Have Access to 1 Wired Broadband Provider

And those who have more than 1 are served by an oligopoly who overcharge for
mediocre (at best) service.

Are the few cities with municipal broadband or Google Fiber seeing better
service and prices?

~~~
wmeredith
Yes! Dramatically improved services and pricing from Comcast and Time Warner
have followed Google fiber and municipal broadband wherever they pop up.
Imagine that...

Sources:

[http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast-Fights-Google-
Fib...](http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast-Fights-Google-Fiber-in-
Provo-With-New-Pricing-125390)

[http://www.techrepublic.com/article/comcast-time-warner-
take...](http://www.techrepublic.com/article/comcast-time-warner-take-on-
google-fiber-in-kansas-city-can-the-incumbents-compete/)

[http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/pressured-by-google-
fiber-t...](http://www.digitaltrends.com/web/pressured-by-google-fiber-time-
warner-ups-speeds-slashes-rates/)

[http://www.provobuzz.com/comcast-makes-pathetic-attempt-
to-b...](http://www.provobuzz.com/comcast-makes-pathetic-attempt-to-battle-
google-fiber/)

[http://www.muninetworks.org/content/comcast-reacts-google-
fi...](http://www.muninetworks.org/content/comcast-reacts-google-fiber-provo)

------
nfriedly
I'm in this group and it seriously blows. Windstream DSL is my only option for
wired internet. During the daytime, my speed is usually around the advertised
6mb down/0.75 up. But in the evenings and on weekends, I frequently see it
drop to 0.5/0.1 or less. During the past year I've had a dozen or more
outages, including two that lasted for a day or more.

When I want to download something quickly (or just open a web page some
evenings), I tether to my cellphone which thankfully has unlimited LTE service
because I've refused to sign a new contract. (Speeds are around ~18/5 if I put
the phone in my front window.)

A guy working at Time Warner (which provides 50mb service about 0.5 miles from
my house) said it would cost around $22k for them to wire up my neighborhood
and that was too much for them.

After that, I've started looking into what it would take to run my own fiber
lines to my neighborhood. It looks like it'd cost me that much or more, which
is not an insurmountable amount, but it is significant. And I'm not sure if
there's any way I could ever hope to make it profitable.

Edit: Oh, and I forgot to mention: my price has gone up twice during the past
year - I'm now paying ~$65/month.

Second edit: I just realized that my service doesn't qualify as "broadband",
even under the FCC's _old_ definition. I have zero wired broadband providers
available.

~~~
gknoy
How many people are in your neighborhood? Perhaps you could crowdfund part of
it and say, "We will pay you X to wire up our neighborhood ...", and defray
the cost enough to make it viable.

~~~
nfriedly
Yea, I've tried that - no luck so far, but I haven't given up on the idea.

I usually consider "my neighborhood" to be the ~0.75 mile road that I live on,
which is about 18 single-family homes. I've met just about everyone, but I've
only lived here for ~1 year, so I wouldn't say that I know anyone really well.

------
stephengoodwin
Austinite here. Here's what's available to us:

Time Warner is the most available and is the only cable option for many
people.

Grande Communications is available in a few, selected areas.

Google Fiber is slowly becoming available across the city, one neighborhood at
a time, but is not available to most at the moment.

AT&T U-verse is also an option, but the impression I've gotten is that Time
Warner is still much faster.

~~~
josephjrobison
The biggest bullshite in Austin is that now that Google rolls into town, Time
Warner and AT&T are scared, so now they are complimentary upgrading everyone.
Yes they may have made recent upgrades too, but it takes someone like Google
to make them provide something better.

And even though I got a complimentary upgrade to 300mbps down, it's capping
out at 100...

~~~
Audiophilip
>And even though I got a complimentary upgrade to 300mbps down, it's capping
out at 100...

Isn't a 100 Mbit router that is the bottleneck? Be sure to have Gigabit
Ethernet support in your modem/router as well as your computer. Sorry if I'm
stating the obvious!

~~~
josephjrobison
That's a good question - I believe my router is good up to 300mbps but I'll
double check!

------
silveira
In DC in theory you have 3 providers but in practice that's not how it works.
Even though my neighbors had RCN or Verizon they could not serve me. I ended
up stuck with Comcast and everything this implies. Then I moved to another
place, just a round-robin, now I'm stuck with Verizon.

------
nickreese
This article was based on the OLD definition of broadband and that included
DSL as a wired provider.

When the FCC releases it's 2014 dataset we'll re-release this same report and
apply the new definition. (My gut says the results will be much different)

Also in using the site if you find that your zip is vastly inaccurate (lots of
areas in PA that we're investigating) drop us a note here or via help [at]
broadbandnow.com and we'll dig into the data.

You can check your zip here:
[http://broadbandnow.com/search](http://broadbandnow.com/search)

Our goal is to help make shopping for broadband easier.

It's a big undertaking as the industry leverages it's opaqueness to charge
higher prices, but hopefully we can bring more transparency to the
marketplace.

------
justanother
Greetings from beautiful Cedar Key, Florida. Bright House Networks will take
your order for 90Mbps cablemodem, but the installer who eventually comes out
will tell you that they don't do cablemodem here. AT&T will sell you 3Mbps
(yes that's a 3) DSL that has horrendous packet loss and dropouts. There are
no WISPs, although expensive LTE service is really good. Fortunately this is
an area that is eligible for Exede Satellite Internet's Freedom plan, which is
enough for work, google hangouts, Netflix, and more. TL;DR zero reliable wired
providers of any sort, and one terrible one.

[Disclaimer: Do not interpret this as a complaint, I knew what I was getting
into when I moved here, and I do love this place for a lot of reasons]

------
digitalneal
Yep. I live right outside Chicago. Comcast is the only game in town... well
that is a lie. You can also get at&t which offers lightning fast speeds
upwards to 1.5mb for THE SAME PRICE as comcasts 16MB offering. Wooo
competition!

------
adregan
In my neighborhood in Brooklyn, It seemed I could choose from some pretty slow
DSL from Verizon or cable Time Warner (turns out to be pretty slow a lot of
the time). Then I found a smaller company offering much faster Fiber
connections for the same prices as the DSL or Cable. So I called them up, and
while they do service our street, they are specifically not allowed to service
our house. I assumed the worst—two companies dividing up territory. Ended up
with some pretty terrible Cable internet that gets decent speeds around 1AM
when I am either asleep or out of the house. Rest of the time it crawls.

------
gz5
And it gets worse...

As critical services move to the Internet, and we become reliant on IoT and
cloud for our day-to-day, including emergency communication, many residences
and businesses will need access to at least _two_ permanent connections
because we will need 99.999 uptime (and some programmable CPE to abstract the
user from switching between the providers when one is down or degraded).

This means even two broadband providers will not always be sufficient. Many of
us will need at least four total (true) broadband providers: 2+ wired 2+
wireless to then choose from in truly healthy, competitive enviro...

~~~
hga
Counterwise, you've just illustrated why I pay absolutely no attention to the
IoT and will be surprised if it really gets anywhere any time soon (like,
probably within my lifetime, assume a quarter century), and make sure nothing
bad will happen when my rock solid AT&T DSL does occasionally go down.

Heck, Heinlein discussed this sort of thing in his 1966 _The Moon is a Harsh
Mistress_.

------
NDizzle
Technically I could get DSL, but their bandwidth isn't really broadband.

------
jackmaney
I'm actually surprised that that minimum is as low as 39 million.

------
Havoc
Access is relatively. Eg. I only found out there is a second provider after I
had signed the long term contract and the tech was physically installing it.
(he mentioned the other provider during troubleshooting)

Then again their packages are a reasonable compromise between nice and the
realities of Internet so it's cool. Eg. Gigabit access but only unmetered late
at night. So if you need to pump a terabyte of data you can do so...at 1AM.

------
waspleg
My city is divided in to monopolies. Where I live specifically is Comcast. If
I go to one of their "competitor's" websites and put in my address they will
literally say "Sorry we don't service your area, Comcast does" and then auto-
redirect me to a Comcast order page. There are no other choices. $80/mo for
25/3.

------
klochner
Our building in downtown San Francisco is limited to 2 options that are both
more the $700/month for 20Mbps up/down.

It is _insane_.

~~~
rlpb
Does that not affect the rent/purchase value of apartments in that building?
Or are the prices so high because of the location that it doesn't really have
any impact?

------
bshimmin
Not just the US. Where I'm based in (an only moderately rural part of) the
south west UK, I have a choice of BT Broadband and literally no one else.
(And, even more annoyingly, BT have posters on cable boxes around the smallish
town I live in advertising that Fibre is available here when, in fact, it is
most certainly not.)

------
hoopism
Says ~2% for Massachusetts... Makes me hate my single choice of Charter even
more.

One of the worst providers I have ever experienced.

------
arvindravi
I have access to NO Wired Broadband Provider, for over 4 years now. But hey,
I'm not an American.

------
tomphoolery
I am one of them. Can't believe how Comcast has monopolized themselves in
South Philadelphia. No choices. It's the most irritating thing ever, and will
most likely make me move to another part of the city (or another city
entirely) if they don't shape up.

~~~
tsuyoshi
I live in South Philadelphia (7th and Oregon), and while I have neither
Comcast nor Verizon service, it seems like I can get either. They both mail me
at least once a week, and occasionally come to my door, asking me to sign up.
I investigated signing up for FIOS, but the cost was $90/month, and it just
isn't worth that much to me. I have FIOS at work and it's fantastic, but my
employer only pays $25/month for it.

From what I understand, Verizon is not expanding their FIOS service area
anymore, because so many people are like me, and don't want to pay much for
it.

------
matwood
Number seems low given there are many people still using AOL!

[http://www.businessinsider.com/millions-of-people-still-
pay-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/millions-of-people-still-pay-for-aols-
dial-up-service-yes-really-2015-2)

~~~
schwap
This is only how many _have access_ , not how many are using it.

------
contingencies
#firstworldproblems ... It's as if people are not thankful to have good
connectivity in the first place. Try living in a developing country, a heavily
firewalled country, or on a boat for instance. You will learn to appreciate
wired US broadband.

------
johnchristopher
What are typical DSL, ADSL and cable speed (up/down) in the US ? And how much
does it cost ? With/without quota ?

For instance, in Europe I have a €27 subscription with unlimited data and
1.5megabytes/400kilobytes link. How does it compare ?

~~~
skizm
I pay Comcast (ewww I know, but my only choice) $60 for 105 down / 25 up
(megabits) and basic TV (no hd, but I hardly even use it). Not terrible and I
actually get these speeds when downloading stuff at 2am, but at peek hours I
get sporadic connection loss and slow downs which makes gaming... frustrating
to say the least.

------
nsxwolf
I have access to 2, but one of them is very slow DSL. My subdivision
technically has 2 cable providers, Comcast and Mediacom - but which one you
can get is determined by your lot number. My neighbors can get Comcast and I
can't.

------
Shivetya
I have two, but only if you count DSL as one and DSL speeds do not begin to
rival what the cable company offers. Cable wants 66 for what I have now and
DSL is 49 for less than a third.

Do I really have a choice when one of them is so unappealing?

------
bmmayer1
And the situation won't get better with new net neutrality rules...

------
abhididdigi
That's really bad for a country like USA. In India we atleast have access > 5
providers in big cities.

( Though, yes I agree there is no Internet in villages, but it's slowly
changing )

------
FrankenPC
According to the new definition of broadband, I now only have one. Cable. DSL
drops off the chart as it's only 1.5 Mb/s.

------
drivingmenuts
I'm in North Austin. The moment Google Fiber becomes available, I'm dumping
Time-Warner. End of discussion.

------
bicknergseng
I only have one option, AT&T Uverse, and I live in a < 10 year old building in
downtown San Francisco.

------
cletus
The US is simply going about this all wrong.

I'm from Australia but live in New York and luckily my building has access to
2 providers (TWC and FIOS). My previous building only had TWC.

The problem with having a monopoly over providing retail Internet access is,
well, that you have a monopoly. This is what infuriates me about the position
of cable companies demanding Netflix pay to "push" bytes onto their networks.

No one is pushing anything. The customers of cable companies are _paying_ for
Internet access and using that bandwidth to access services on the Internet
that include Netflix.

The only reason cable companies even care is because Netflix provides
competition to cable TV.

This situation can only exist because there are regional monopolies and for
some reason the US just loves pretending regional monopolies are somehow
"competition". Look at the Baby Bell situation as an earlier example.

In Australia, most people have only 1 physical option for fixed-line
broadband, being Telstra, which was the government telco but has since been
privatized. A few places also have cable Internet, typically over HFC, from
Foxtel (owned by Telstra) or Optus.

I say "physical option" because the ACCC (Australian Competition and Consumer
Commission; think of it like the FTC/FCC but without quite so much regulatory
capture) some years ago forced Telstra to provide space in exchanges for
rivals to put DSLAMs to provide ADSL service. Telstra receives income from
this and tries their damndest to undermine this situation but the fact is you
can get Internet from a bunch of providers because of it.

10+ years ago ADSL2+ was pretty decent. Now it's a tad archaic. Many people
don't have >2Mbps due to distance from the exchange.

The US solution is to encourage overbuilds. This is not a good solution. For
one, it's a waste to deploy so many networks. For another, providers will
cherry pick areas leaving many with still a single provider.

What you need is forced separation of retail and wholesale. I think the
Australian example provides good evidence for this.

Wholesalers need to be denied the ability to sell to retail customers and they
need to provide the same terms to all retailers.

The previous government in Australia brought in the NBN (Next generation
Broadband Network), which was to be FTTH for the vast majority of Australians.
Deployment was slow and only a few areas got hooked up. Despite what anyone
says, the cost was going to be way more than the government quoted (A$42B
originally). The new government has essentially decided on a mix of
technologies, being FTTH, HFC and FTTN.

FTTN is fiber to a box in the street and then copper cable the rest of the
way. With VDSL2, you can probably get to 100Mbps this way. Recent trials of
G.Fast have I think raised this to 1Gbps. So it's not a terrible solution.
It's certainly not FTTH however.

There is antitrust precedent for forced separation of services, like the
Hollywood Antitrust case of 1948 [1]. This separated studios, distributors and
theaters.

I don't know if Title II is the answer here either. US regulation has been
pretty terrible (eg the breakup of AT&T into the Baby Bells).

Still, most people do have one electricity provider and utility rules do
prevent them from price gouging since electricity, gas and water are essential
services. I believe that Internet access will be---or arguably already is--an
essential service in much the same way.

Whatever the case, building more networks is a pretty terrible solution to the
problem.

[1] US vs Paramount Pictures Inc. (1948),
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pict...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Paramount_Pictures,_Inc).

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unk
First world problems.

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paulhauggis
Well, this is roughly 13%. This isn't actually that bad.

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Slartibreakfast
I've only recently discovered the horror that is AT&T U-Verse. Some buildings
in Chicago have a contract with them so there's no escaping it. I can't
imagine how bad it would be if a whole state only had one provider like this.

~~~
juancastro
I totally agree with you.

