(1) https://medium.com/@MarkFarrellSF/supervisor-farrell-to-intr...
(2) https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2018/07/12/america...
(3) https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190401/08232241919/telec...
I'm in Toronto, thank goodness this is becoming more common, not less. I was recently condo hunting and I noticed most new buildings had Beanfield or their competitor, FibreStream. The building we ended up with has the latter, so we're getting 500Mbps symmetric/no cap.
Yay for not having to annually fight with Bell for a "promotional" rate anymore!
I suppose maybe the cable networks are more optimized for average user behaviour (far more download than upload), but maybe there's also a fundamental limitation with the cable infrastructure that prevents faster uploads, perhaps to do with cable's legacy delivering television broadcasts? Whereas with fibre, almost everything I've seen available comes with symmetric speeds by default.
DOCSIS 3.0 (I think that's the latest) allocates a particular ratio of download vs upload frequencies, so even when speeds increase the asymmetry is still the same. I heard the next version of DOCSIS might change that though. Ideally there'd be enough fiber to not require DOCSIS anyway, but I don't have my hopes up for that.
Hopefully with a lot more WFH arrangements people start demanding symmetric connections. But
Anything more than that, especially in gigabit range is just gimmicks, IMO.
However, there was a technical issue I had some months ago with a faulty Arris modem provisioning file that disabled upstream bonding across most of their models. It took an email to the CEO to sort it out (after a Reddit and DSLReports post on the matter).
Previously I had been on a 50/10 tier and when the new business class tiers were released they blamed my trusted old SB6121s for being too old, so I bought 2 newer ones in the SB series and had same issues. After writing the CEO and CC'ing all the techs I spoke to and including links to the threads they gave me a direct engineering contact that confirmed the issue. For the trouble they credited me out 2 months of service.
I can get up to 1gbit connection for 15 EUR, 100mbit for 7 EUR because of competitive market
We usually only have one or two competing provider per building, but their prices are still low(same as yours).
This is an opportunity for wireless. I've lived in buildings with exclusive internet agreements. I was able to bypass those in some cities back when WiMax was still available. I got double the speed for half the price when I was living in an AT&T building, and the same speed for half the price when I was in a Qwest building.
I'm not a fan of the new breed of satellite internet startups, but if they put fear into the wired/fibered carriers, then at least some good will come out of them.
The dystopian future is here.
What cost that company $200,000 in 1998 and took up an entire rack now can be bought for about $2,000 from Ubiquiti and mounted in a few U in a rack. They even have the software available to run your own ISP!
Builders get big providers to pay for communications wiring, in some cases including that of their competitors, for the privilege of exclusive advertising rights. Those same big providers need to provide (some level of) service to all the people in their geography.
Between influences like these and regulation, the big providers have to shoulder significant costs which they pass on to their consumers. The upstarts don't have these costs and can offer much better pricing.
The regulators and politicians can then step in and gain voter favor by going after these big, "bad" providers by enabling new entrants into the market with must better cost structures (e.g. regional service only) or even just outright subsidizing them, ultimately seeming to go after a problem that they actually created.
Whether this public/private capitalist mess is more cost effective than a public entity is unclear, but it does succeed in shifting accountability away from the government.
In the end the citizens pay for it all, just inequitably. Perhaps it is a capitalist victory that a price sensitive consumer can invest the time to find a better deal and opt out of subsidizing rural communities.
So the expenses around lobbying, wining and dining a few politicians etc. are totally worth it.
Disclosure: I work for sonic, and this is my personal understanding of the strategy, which may have other nuances.
I'd love it if the fiber in the building was public so I could just pay 1/2 what I pay AT&T for Sonic instead.
When we moved to SF a few months ago, Sonic wasn't available in our building so we had to get AT&T. I'm paying almost double what Sonic charges for basically the same service.
In both cases, where buildings had exclusivity agreements or had the fiber providers lay the fiber themselves, residents are worse off. Buildings should be running their own fiber and letting residents hook up to whoever they want.
Same thing with residential house internet; cities should own the last mile infrastructure (sure, pay providers to dig it and run it if you have to).
Especially since we're migrating off of copper and onto fiber; this is the chance to get it right for the next few decades!