• hope@beehaw.org
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      2 years ago

      It was shocking to me just how prevalent lack of broadband is. I moved in with my in-laws in norcal midway through the pandemic and the only internet service choices were a 600Kbps DSL line or Verizon mobile hotspots at 3-5Mbps (which is a massive blessing in comparison). I worked remotely and would frequently have to drive to Target or a coffee shop in town to download anything. They aren’t even in that rural an area - there were houses about half a mile away with gigabit cable. The cable company wanted nearly $70,000 to build out a line.

      • veaviticus@lemmy.one
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        2 years ago

        Not exactly the same but similar… There’s 4 major providers who service my area, but only one of them extends down my block. So I can choose from DSL (which to be fair goes up to like 35 Mbps), but if I want higher, I’m vendor locked to Xfinity, who charges at least 2x the price of the local companies.

        Ive asked several times, but they quote hundreds of thousands of dollars to trench fiber down my street, and it’s just not worth it.

        Except, you know, there’s already fiber from Xfinity… They just wont share.

        The physical cabling needs to be government owned and rented out to the companies, not exclusively owned by one single company. We’ll never have competitive pricing unless it’s nationalized infrastructure