Hacker News Reader

Comment by misterbwong | Hacker News Reader

In many areas of the country, the cable companies basically have localized monopolies on high speed internet. They claim they have competition in DSL and satellite (!!!) but these technologies just can't compete on speed in this day and age, leaving cable as the only viable alternative. From what I gather, this is one of the reasons why Google started Google Fiber.

View on HN

Interesting. Over here, providers are offering VDSL2, advertised as 100/100Mbit. Given my experience with DSL, that probably means about half that for the average user who is 2-3km from the DSLAM box. That's still pretty respectable. Is noone offering modern DSL in the US?

Nope, sadly not. Even in San Francisco (which is pretty sad for being the heart of tech) it is cable or legacy DSL. If you are at a building that has an exclusivity agreement with AT&T, you might even end up paying them $50+ a month for 28mbit fiber. (yes, fiber terminates at my door but that's the max speed they offer)

Well, there is Webpass for some in SF. I pay $60/mo for 100mbits up & down, and some buildings go up to 500mbits. No contracts, and I just hook up to an ethernet jack in my apartment. It is a local startup that is expanding elsewhere.

Webpass is the best Internet service ever. I signed up as soon as our building got it, it was $50/mo then for the 100Mbs. Definitely worth it if you have the opportunity to live in a building that has it. Really straightforward website, billing, and setup. It looks like they're expanding to some other cities. I wish them luck.

Yep, webpass is greatest thing ever.. and there's also sonic.net and paxio.com and gowaveg.com depending on where you are too.

I love WebPass, and I used them exclusively in my previous apartment but this new building has this silly exclusivity agreement and Comcast can't make installations on this building as they somehow managed to make this residential building show up as a business address on Comcast's website.

I could get Sonic Fusion FTTN but that's just rebranded AT&T, and peaks at 28mbits. I get better LTE speeds than that.

I tried to bring in MonkeyBrains but the building administration refused, saying they would have to drill into load-bearing columns. Just an excuse.

To be fair, there is sonic does offer vdsl2 in many parts of the city, over 100Mbit down, albeit a bit less up. There's also webpass for larger buildings which offers almost a gigabit during non-peak times. So SF isn't as dire as you make it sound, though I agree it's behind many other cities.

What?! In Cincinnati I had CincyBell Fibre about three years ago. I think I paid around $60 ~ $70. I don't remember the advertised speed, but it was crazy super fast.

It varies. If you are in an area with actual competition, they try harder. Where I live, it's crappy TWC 20/5 or so for $60 a month, or a selection of DSL providers offering everything from 5/1 to 0.5 megabits per second for around $20 a month. Seriously, there is an ISP offering a 0.5 Mbps DSL for $20 a month, oh, and it bursts to 1 Mbps...

VDSL2+, which is rolling out next year, is even supposed to handle 500/200 – in some areas T-Online has been testing it, and supposedly it works (but it means you have to be less than 100m from the box).

I stay with Comcast because it is way cheaper then AT&T but with AT&T's VDSL I could get 45mbps (fiber to the neighborhood box, apparently).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com