[JAFTEM]

Also have bad internet in LA. I grew up in North Dakota though, and back there my family is getting 1 gigabit internet for $100/mo from Midcontinent.

Absolutely bizarre and ridiculous that North Dakota, a state that has far less developed infrastructure than either coast, has better internet than Los Angeles.

[rayiner]

Is it? I’ve got two fiber lines into my house in a Maryland county where most people are on septic and well. Unsurprisingly, Big California cities have Big California impediments to broadband deployment.

[kristopolous]

The biggest impediment is corrupt corporate capital not investing in their infrastructure. Some have taken government subsidies and threw elaborate parties and went on luxury cruises while not building anything. There's court cases about it, such as https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151022/09232532594/fcc-h...

The companies take that money and do things like buy multi-billion dollar companies with it instead.

The market in this sense is free from competition, free to block municipal broadband (illegal in 20 states), free from the consequences of providing terrible service, free from the risk of losing customers, and free from the social obligations of providing a civic service.

It's classic profiteering, capital extraction, dodging responsibility, and engineering the marketplace that leads to California's and the US's subpar system.

And it stays that way because hoards of people either apologize for it or just refuse to see what it is regardless of the evidence, because they have a larger commitment to their ideas of how things are supposed to be then there reality of how things actually are.

Until people break their mythical love affair with the idea that there is no sustained abuse or corruption in a manufactured free market, we will forever be shackled by reading to address its glaring and obvious issues.

[rayiner]

> The biggest impediment is corrupt corporate capital not investing in their infrastructure.

This is easily disprovable. Broadband providers invest tens of billions a year in infrastructure. The fastest cable or wireless connection available to you is probably 10x faster than it was a decade ago. By comparison, your Intel laptop is maybe 3-4 times faster, maybe less. That cost gobs of money--building cell towers, pushing fiber deeper into the cable network, reducing users per HFC node by a factor of 10, etc. This is all incredibly labor intensive and expensive; it's not just a matter of downloading "DOCSIS 3.1" onto some head ends and calling it a day.

> Some have taken government subsidies and threw elaborate parties and went on luxury cruises while not building anything.

Note also that the "government subsidies" are anything but. The article you link to is talking about Universal Service Fund money, which is actually taken from ISPs and given to other ISPs. It doesn't come out of general tax dollars.

> leads to California's and the US's subpar system.

According to Akamai, U.S. broadband is among the fastest in the world, faster than all the large EU countries: https://www.akamai.com/fr/fr/multimedia/documents/state-of-t.... We're in the top 10, right after Denmark, and ahead of the U.K., France, Germany, Spain, Italy, etc. (the countries comprising 70% of the EU population).

> And it stays that way because hoards of people either apologize for it or just refuse to see what it is regardless of the evidence

Exactly the opposite is true. The actual evidence shows that the 1996 deregulation has been a monumental success in terms of amount of money invested and actual broadband speeds achieved. Proponents of heavy regulation have to deny the actual evidence (dollars spent, speeds achieved) because it suggests a shocking result: even deregulation that resulted in much less competition than anticipated is still better than the prior, heavily-regulated system. (I'm writing this as my awesome government-funded train system is stuck between Annapolis and D.C. for no apparent reason.)

What's holding us back from being even better (and which is why I have fiber but much of Silicon Valley does not) is state & local broadband regulation. Red tape that makes it hard to string up fiber (or forces you to bury it, at much higher cost), hard to create an "minimal viable ISP," etc. When I lived in Baltimore, for example, Verizon wanted to come in and compete with Comcast. The city literally wouldn't let them do it, and pleaded with Google to come build Fiber instead. Which Google wouldn't do, because, quite reasonably, Google only builds Fiber in places where cities are willing to waive requirements municipalities uniformly require for other providers: https://crosscut.com/2014/12/google-fiber-never-come-seattle....

[kristopolous]

There's a lot here. Thanks for responding. I'll hopefully have the time to read that document and get back to you later.

[unclebucknasty]

>Big California cities have Big California impediments to broadband deployment.

What have they done, relative to other cities, to impede broadband deployment?

[rayiner]

E.g. http://stopthecap.com/2011/06/29/san-francisco-still-in-stal...

[unclebucknasty]

Your example is a 2011 instance of a citizen's group in a single CA city opposing AT&T's indiscriminate installation of unsightly 4-6 foot boxes on sidewalks and other public property? The group asked that they instead be installed on private property or underground.

And it's an issue that was also raised in other non-California cities, including places like NC, CT, IL, DC, etc. See your article, links from it, and [0].

Come on man, you know this does not support your initial assertion.

[0] http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Comcast-Takes-Heat-for-Hu...

[rayiner]

The SF battle was particularly protracted and terrible. But the point about "unsightly" boxes gets to the heart of the problem. Burying this infrastructure costs money, and tanks the economics of fiber deployment. If you don't believe that coming from "big evil AT&T," just look at Google: they categorically refused to build Fiber to cities that imposed those sorts of requirements: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/09/how-kansas-city-....

Places like Louisville and Kansas City got Fiber and San Francisco or LA didn't because: 1) they didn't impose build out requirements (the obligation to pass all households regardless of neighborhood demand); 2) they didn't require burying utilities; 3) they fast-tracked permitting processes; 4) they permitted hanging rather than burying the fiber; and 5) they made space available for Fiber huts.

[unclebucknasty]

>But the point about "unsightly" boxes gets to the heart of the problem

The issue is hardly unique to "Big California cities" though, is it? Many localities across the country, including those I cited, have taken similar exception to fiber huts, "lawn refrigerators" and similar infrastructure components; so much so, that it's cliche by now. And, at it's core, it's the same old issue that has manifested in different ways since the phrase "property values" came into existence: everyone wants cell service, but no one wants a cell tower in their backyard.

You citing examples of cities that took a different approach is just the good-ol' association fallacy at its best. "Why, these places aren't California and look at what they did!"

But, it's funny that you mentioned Louisville and build-out requirements. Rather than imposing requirements, the city itself had a plan to expand fiber in an extremely cost-effective way (a third of the usual cost) and in a manner that would serve even lower income neighborhoods. Then, in stepped "tax-payer advocates" backed by the Koch brothers to block the plan, supposedly to protect taxpayers from such tyranny. [0]

The point is that broadband expansion has been an overwrought, complex fight that has impacted various municipalities across the country in different ways. Thus, it's disingenuous to suggest that broadband expansion challenges can be summed up as "Big California cities" and their "Big California impediments". In fact, it's so intellectually dishonest that it leaves a whiff of ideologizing lingering in the air.

[0] https://www.wired.com/story/koch-brothers-are-cities-new-obs...

[AboutTheWhisles]

> Big California cities have Big California impediments to broadband deployment

What is that exactly?

"First released in October 2013, and updated several times since, the DOCSIS 3.1 suite of specifications support capacities of up to 10 Gbit/s downstream and 1 Gbit/s upstream"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DOCSIS

[paul7986]

You in Westminister, MD or Howard county?

[rayiner]

Anne Arundel. Comcast offers gigabit pro here.

[paul7986]

Ah sure that and FIOS which is true fiber ...though for me 50Mbps is fine for streaming video.. not a gamer, running a business or mining BT.

[rayiner]

Both are fiber (gigabit pro is a 10-gig metro-e connection rate-limited to 2-gig at the switch). It's ironically easier to get it out here than in many places, because the county is easy-going about permitting and all the utilities are overhead.

[paul7986]

Yeah I have both FIOs and Comcast available to me in Harford County. Have the former now.

[BigChiefSmokem]

I'm in LA and I pay Spectrum $54 a month for 100mb and saw that their gigabit service is $104 a month for new subscribers.

[scarface74]

What's the upstream? Comcast offers 1 gigabit down but only 35Mbps up.

AT&T offers gigabit up and down for $70 a month. I usually get at least 900Mbps up and down.