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Comment by jseliger | Hacker News Reader

I currently live in NYC, and I've lived in Raleigh

Howdy neighbor: I live in NYC too. A lot of NYC already does have fiber in the form of FiOS. I'll also observe that NYC's overall Internet situation appears to be much better than many places; right now I'm paying $50 a month for 50 Mbs down / 5 Mbs up through RCN. In Tucson, where I used to live, I was paying $70 for 12 down / 1 or 2 up.

Google is presumably targeting the places with the crappiest service and the most amenable local governments; NYC's service isn't terrible and its government isn't exactly known for being responsive.

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RCN is a solid provider from what I hear. I'm JUST out of their coverage area and am consigned to Comcast. Tis a terrible fate.

I'm JUST out of their coverage area and am consigned to Comcast. Tis a terrible fate.

That hurts. We're looking for a new place to live and I have been asking landlords if their buildings get FiOS service. It doesn't seem to be an uncommon question, and the ones without it seem somewhat unhappy about the situation.

> right now I'm paying $50 a month for 50 Mbs down / 5 Mbs up through RCN

And I'm paying $54 for 20 Mbs/down on Time Warner, which is already a "discounted rate". (I'm in Manhattan).

The building next door to me has FiOS, but my landlord has no incentive to let them wire my building too.

I agree that New York City isn't the best target for Google Fiber, but the Internet situation here varies very heavily based on where in the city you live (not just the neighborhood, but which physical building and management company).

Hear hear. I've never been more frustrated about the ISP situation than when I lived in NYC. I have some friends that had such a bad experience with TWC (daily outages) that they voluntarily dropped down to ridiculously slow DSL, their only other option.

"The building next door to me has FiOS, but my landlord has no incentive to let them wire my building too."

Is your building rent controlled?

If not, I suspect your landlord is short sighted. I am curious to see whether property values will start to diverge based on quality of internet access. With more people wanting to work from home, I think availability, speed, cost, and quality of Internet access will have an impact on property values.

(Of course, you're in Manhattan, which means landlords can do almost anything and still charge insane rents, so this may not apply to you. Sorry.)

In New York City, buildings aren't rent-controlled (or rent-stabilized); individual apartments are. I highly doubt that any units in my building are rent-controlled (that's very rare in NYC these days). There may be one or two that's rent-stabilized, but given the neighborhood and the tenancy of the building, I doubt it.

> I think availability, speed, cost, and quality of Internet access will have an impact on property values.

In New York, that's vastly dwarfed by the many other factors that affect property values. As much as you and I think Internet access is important, most NYC tenants care more about location, bedbug history, sunlight, etc.

I live in Tucson now and I'm paying $70/month for 50 down / 10 up, but that's for residential. Commercial lines are horrible; $99/month for 10 down / 2 up.

I'm on TWC and would love to get off it. How happy are you with RCN?

Fairly happy. We had the option of TWC or RCN and chose RCN based on reputation: TWC's is horrible, and anything I can do to avoid paying them money is probably a net Good Thing.

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