Internet Service News (US ISPs are bad and should feel bad)

[Krandor]

5G I think is going to be the solution for those in bumblefuck nowhere areas. Only problem is Trump is furiously masterbating to fucking over Huwai/China and Huwai is at the forefront of 5G implementation, and if they get blocked from providing infrastructure over them supposedly doing espionage for China, it could delay 5G rollout for years due to how far behind other companies are on implementing it.

Shit, I live less then a mile from T Mobile HQ, and work across the fucking street from the now T Mobile Field, and STILL get shitty 4G while at work.

[Gredival]

Fiber has been a thing for over three decades and yet we still have large portions of the country only served by cable, or worse yet phone lines. The driving force there is not land mass but entrenchment of existing corporations making it difficult to roll out something better. Sure, Bumblefuck Idaho isn't gonna get gigabit fiber as fast as a major metropolitan area but major metros and surrounding suburbs are still strangled by providers that have worked very hard to keep their monopoly positions intact for decades. When they succeed it becomes easy to not upgrade...people get to deal with whatever shit tier access is available because there's simply no alternative.

See Google Fiber as an example of just how hard it is to crack that nut. They didn't fail because the country is too spread out to provide service.

The problem is that the semi-natural monopoly nature of the service means that they don't have to work for their monopoly status. There simply ISN'T incentive to go compete for customers outside of major metropolitan urban areas where you get the most return for the cost of the fiber lines and server equipment. That's the ONLY place where there will be any competition.

The only reason the boondocks get phone service is carrier of last resort obligations.

[Gredival]

Even in densely populated LA, I've lived like 8 places all over the city/attached municipalities and have never, at any location, had fiber as an option.

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LA has several fiber loops, it's just that last mile service is delivered via cable not a direct fiber drops.

[Melena]

Shit, I live less then a mile from T Mobile HQ, and work across the fucking street from the now T Mobile Field, and STILL get shitty 4G while at work.

Probably because there's only a handful of cities who have it right now. Of course AT&T is trying to fool people with their horribly misleading 5Ge coverage in the bay area.

[Salodin]

5g is happening whether they want to rush it or not without Huawei. 4g can only handle so much and is fast approaching its capacity. Either we stop having kids or we upgrade to 5g to avoid service blackouts cause the lines are full.

Hopefully 5g will fix the broadband issue in flyover states.

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[D44kpunk]

4g can only handle so much and is fast approaching its capacity.

where are you getting this information?

[kuronosan]

4G is nowhere near capacity, and anyone arguing otherwise is crazy.

[Salodin]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/...-about-5g/amp/

Everything you need to know about 5g. If you've ever wondered why sometimes your 4g is fast, and others it's like eh, it's because of the number of simultaneous users where you are. It's the same for everything, phone lines too, but what there's no throttling your call, you just get an error message and say try again lol.

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[Salodin]

4G is nowhere near capacity, and anyone arguing otherwise is crazy.

Yeah sure it's not at capacity in bumblefuck, but in cities you are absolutely getting slower speeds when the network is busy because...?

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[kuronosan]

I'm in a major city. Speeds are fine.

[Salodin]

I live in a suburb. I beg to differ, at like 7pm at the mall on a Friday. Atm it's cool tho.

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[zoobernut]

The cell tower near my house recently got upgraded to 4g LTE which is awesome and I am considering switching to that for my home internet. Only problem is that it is the only cell tower in the area and we get very heavy tourist traffic. During peak hours when there are a lot of people in the area the speeds can slow down to 5mbps range. During off hours or during the week I can easily get 20-25mbps.

[Salodin]

Recently got 4g late? God damn dude...

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[D44kpunk]

Yeah sure it's not at capacity in bumblefuck, but in cities you are absolutely getting slower speeds when the network is busy because...?

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lived in several large cities, never saw or had that problem. the only times i would occasionally see it is disneyland etc type areas where people density is way too high and this was when 4g was in its infancy so i doubt it's still the same.

its nowhere near capacity afaik

[Krandor]

The only time I really see 4G get legitimately bogged down is during big sporting events, and that's only if said venue isn't smart enough to offer stadium/arena wide WiFi

[zoobernut]

Recently got 4g late? God damn dude...

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Our region only has one cell tower so I am lucky to even get signal at my house. A lot of people don't even get cell signal. And yeah they ran new fiber cables up the highway to the cell tower a few years ago and updated the inter office backbone to support more bandwidth last year and then finally a few months ago ATT wireless paid ATT land to update the equipment in the central office so it could support the 4g LTE traffic. So at my house I have only had LTE for about 2 or 3 months now. There are a couple of competing companies looking into bringing microwave towers into the area and then putting up omni wifi towers at the end of those links to sell high speed internet to the businesses and homes. I am torn if I should switch from satellite to LTE at home now or wait potentially for cheaper low latency data limit free high speed internet when the microwave links are done. One of the companies already has a gigabit link in to my sons elementary school.

[Byrthnoth]

5G has similar last mile problems to cable. It being the saving grace of rural areas is some TMo/Sprint merger hype bullshit afaik

[Salodin]

It has lower range than 4g towers, but akaif is smaller in footprint so the barrier to setting them up is smaller? Hopefully? But then I think they're directional too, so idk if that changes the costs.


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[zoobernut]

There are plans on the books to get 5G coverage all the way along the California coast. The majority of it will be done with micro cell sites stuck to the sides of power and phone poles. These will create a point to point mesh network. Not sure how they are going to cover the areas that don't have poles though.

[Byrthnoth]

Or deal with the comparatively shitty solid object penetration.

Google found this: https://www.pcmag.com/news/365565/wh...or-rural-areas

tl;dr: rural areas will get knockoff 5G insufficient for home internet but it'll be better than their current shitty service where it is installed.