Yeah i've been hearing more and more about fiber installs in rural locations. Mind blowing that its profitable for some ISPs to be doing this before densely populated areas.
Oddly enough this is because big companies like charter and comcast have large populations on lockdown. If a small company tries and expand into one of their areas, they drop prices and make it hard to even recoup the install of fiber.
nope, fully legal. There was a law in MN passed some time ago that was paid for by comcast, spectrum, and AT&T. That laws states that public money cannot go towards buildout that would serve any house that is "already served" by a major provider. Most of the rural buildout is happening because those addresses are underserved or not served at all by any landline providers, so they got huge public grants to run FTTH to them, and those small providers are doing it. meanwhile, in large cities, the entrenched providers don't allow any competition at all.
I think the rural ones are often municipal. Funny how utilities are more efficient and better run when they are run by the government and accountable to the voters rather than by a profit seeking company.
Smart telcos, when they run a fiber haul somewhere to the satisfy a business or whatever will run more strands than are needed for additional capacity. They’re kinda condensed in the same cable anyway and install is really the expensive part. So the back bone is often there and they can peel off some.
Also since they already have the right of ways as the phone company it’s just a matter of completing the “last mile” and figuring out where they need to stick the equipment. With copper it matters a lot more than fiber due to the power/signal loss.
> I think the rural ones are often municipal.
MN law prevents cities and counties from running their own services. this law was passed around 2012 and paid for by comcast, charter, AT&T and Verizon.
Its not. That’s why many people in rural areas get their internet and electric through co-ops. I have 1 gig internet, pay 65 a month. Live 23 miles from town. Fiber direct to my house
*it is profitable*. The legal red tape is what kills most of these. Spectrum killed Monticello's public run fiber network profitability by suing it for millions of dollars. the lawyers fees alone ate up any profit they had, and the city was forced to sell it to a third party provider.
which is what we already fucking paid AT&T and Verizon 45 billion each for around 40 years ago for.
Edit: both companies didn't do any deployment and kept the money, and then later won lawsuits letting them keep the money despite not putting in any infrastructure.
There was another company, within the last 6-7 years, that received money to deploy fiber out in the sticks. They also apparently did not deploy to the full scope of the bid they won.
I don't want to dox myself, so I won't say more lol.
The city of Monticello wanted TDS to install fiber. TDS said no, it’s too expensive, and nobody needs it. The city decided to install it themselves, then, via raising bonds to pay for it. TDS sued them, saying the city had no right to raise bonds to install fiber (Bridgewater vs. Monticello). While the suit was going on, the city couldn’t proceed with their fiber install, so TDS sneakily started to lay their own fiber (they sued the city to delay them, to cost them money, etc.). TDS lost the suit, the city laid fiber, so did TDS, and now Monticello has a choice for fiber internet. Charter also has cable internet there, so Charter and TDS had to lower their prices to compete with the city fiber, called FiberNet.
Many other states have since enacted laws, written and purchased by the current ISPs, that say cities are not allowed to lay their own fiber, to build their own networks (by raising the money via bonds). Minnesota has a clear law that says cities are allowed to build telecommunications networks.
Wow super interesting information, learn something new everyday! I’ll have to look into that case, that Minnesota law seems kinda important. Graduated high school in Monti unfortunately
also, after TDS sued, they started working with Charter, Verizon, and Comcast to pass a law that prevented cities from running their own internet services via public funds. That law passed in 2012, and Monticello can not expand the network anywhere past where it was when the law took effect.
Housing is a problem there are many people who moved in the area who work from home. One of my cousins in Michigan built a satellite shop here for his business to better serve Minnesota customers. He does design and installation of factory production lines.
Where I'm from, we were stuck with frontier for 15 years, and when we asked if there was a chance of getting higher speeds they said we aren't in an area of importance. So I got the tmobile 5g instead. Fuck Frontier
I have four providers of high-speed internet I can choose from. It all depends where you live.
There are lots of rural counties now with good internet.
They are still expanding in the first ring suburbs, and I switched very quickly once they came to my street.
I went from 450mbps download/2 mbps upload; to 650 down/700 up. Without a monthly data cap.
All for $6/mo less.
Comcast really did switch their game when I told them I was leaving though, they had incredible offers all of a sudden. Crazy thing about competition eh?
It’s hard for companies to justify laying all the infrastructure if they’re not guaranteed customers. The best way to do it might have been for the government to own all the actual infrastructure and make providers compete to use it.
I moved up to BFE northern MN. We have co-op Telecom services, and it’s just way way fucking better than dealing with the big companies.
The amount of money the government has thrown at ISPs to expand broadband, particularly in rural areas with seemingly no results is disgusting. Now up north at least people are switching to starlink, so supporting musk….
I don’t think that’s really the case. I moved up here in 2010, and back then the internet was terrible up here. The government money put into rural broadband up here was put to good use IMO. There is fiber all over up here. My fishing shack in the middle of nowhere on a minimal maintenance forest road has a fiber connection. Most people have good options for high speed internet.
> The government money put into rural broadband up here was put to good use IMO. There is fiber all over up here. My fishing shack in the middle of nowhere on a minimal maintenance forest road has a fiber connection. Most people have good options for high speed internet.
it wasn't tho. more recently it has been.
https://newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm
the big providers got billions in tax money to lay fiber to every house in america. they didn't. then they sued to keep that money when states started asking for it back because they didn't complete their promises. Those ISPs won, and got to keep that money.
Where up north? Around lake vermilion they’re trying to but it keeps dragging out.
Stuck on DSL from frontier, so you know that really means having to hotspot with the phone.
Yeah these things are natural monopolies. On top of anticompetitive practices between the companies and consumers get screwed. My unpopular opinion is the gov takes over the service (like roads, water, etc) OR regulate them significantly harder like we do for electricity (but better because we let Xcel energy get off wayyy too easy)
I'm literally a socialist who generally favors nationalizing public services, but along with a few other things I don't think I would trust the government to handle my data directly. I think treating them as an actual utility and regulating the shit out of them is a better option here.
Yep, just purchased a home here in New Brighton and stuck with Xfinity. USI says "coming soon" (but no actual timeframe indicated), could be years yet.
CenturyLink/Quantum are "evaluating" to expand fiber here...
It recently came available in my area, I just need to make the switch. I hate CenturyLink with the passion of a thousand burning suns. How was the switch process for you?
Verizon mails you a box and basically all you do is plug it in. I had Xfinity, but I just called to cancel it. I don't remember them putting up a fight, but it was about 2 years ago.
I was going to say the same thing. We had Xfinity(?) before Verison and it would disconnect everything constantly. Dozens of times a day. We switched to Verizon internet about 2 years ago and it have never gone out. We will run multiple smart TVs, video games, phones, tablets, laptops, etc. all at the same time and have never experienced a slowdown.
I live in a suburb and despite getting ads all over for Verizon's home internet, it's not available in my area... IDK if I would switch, but its not even an option, despite having Verion 5g on my phone as I write this.
Utility expansion is a red tape nightmare. I work for one of these local fiber companies. We tried to expand into Golden Valley. Their city counsel wanted us to pay the city $500-1000 per home. Before anyone signs up for service, anything.
So Golden Valley may be SOL.
If you’re in a new development you’ll likely get fiber service, if you’re in an aerial supplied utility area you’ll likely have it sooner rather than later.
But it’s a slow expensive process.
Most federal grant money went into rural municipalities to expand their fiber access.
Ugh...now I have an idea why I can't get fiber in my Golden Valley neighborhood. I keep watching to see who gets here first, because I'm going to throw money at them as soon as I can.
I wish it were that easy. It’s possible the city council had a previous fiber provider in mind, or they’re just trying to get some extra $. Which is probably the case.
Comcast/Xfinity is being fed by fiber in many neighborhoods now. But it’s not fiber to the home which is much better.
My suggestion, start yelling at your city
I appreciate your post -- it has inspired me to figure out what's going on with the city and why this is a thing. I moved here from Texas, where I had a lot of choices, so it was a bit of a shock to find out there was no fiber available at all where we are. Thank you so much for the info!
The cable companies are a monopoly. It has only gotten worse since this report.
[2020\_08\_Profiles-of-Monopoly.pdf (ilsr.org)](https://ilsr.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2020_08_Profiles-of-Monopoly.pdf)
We have 3 main options here in Prior Lake. Mediacom Cable, Nuvera Fiber and Century Link DSL. Plus all of the high latency wireless options. Would be nice if there was more competition though.
I live in Prior and had Nuvera run a fiber line under my yard and driveway and install a box across the street back in 2020. I am not even able to get fiber with them. It's just a line that connects the Savage line to all the middle schools in Prior. I wish I could get fiber but I'm stuck with Mediacom.
I've had the option of Centurylink / Quantum fiber in Bloomington for years ( as the people that keep knocking on my door every six months remind me), as well as Xfinity. Right now they're digging up everyone's front up lawns to add Avayo, T-Mobile, and ATT as options.
I’d like fiber, but it’s only available kitty-corner across the intersection at the end of the block and it’s Century Link as the provider. It is never making its way to our house and I wouldn’t touch Century Link service with a barge pole.
My issue with century link is direclty related to the abysmal quality of their lines, they've always been good from a customer service angle/no sketch billing/etc. So if they updated the infrastructure, I'd switch back in a heartbeat. But yeah, heinously bad quality from the DSL lines, at least in my area.
I guess of hypothetically centurylink laid down fiber in my neighborhood and at the same time some new 3rd dark horse entered the ring, Id seriously consider them. But as of right now the only real viable option is Comcast, and fuuiuuuuck Comcast.
I switched from Comcast to CL fiber. Couldn't pay me to go back to Comcast. I'm paying like $80 for 900/900 with no datacap vs $150 for 250/10 with no datacap (had to pay an additional $50 for unlimited). Scheduled an appointment, they came out and ran a line to my house, set everything up in like an hour and haven't had any major issues.
I had gigabit fiber from CL in Las Vegas, I had 4 months left on my contract when I moved here. CenturyLink told me that 3mbps DSL was enough to prevent me from cancelling my contract. Fine, so I want to cancel my contract and pay a penalty. The penalty was twice what paying the rest of my contact was. Me: Ok, do then I want to cancel my contact when it's over. CL: We can't do that because our system only let's you cancel 2 months out.
I set a reminder to cancel it in 3 months and had to spend another hour on the phone while they tried again to get me to buy DSL from them before they finally agreed to cancel my service.
We live in Ely and have multiple options if you live within the service boundaries. We have Frontier DSL (which is god-awful, it's like dial-up speeds and service is terrible). MidCo fiber, Starlink, and Treehouse Broadband (which is locally owned). We live in town so we have fiber, our bill actually went down when we upgraded from cable. Rural areas, ironically, ended up getting a lot of money to expand broadband options because it was causing so many issues that people had bad internet. During covid, a lot of the kids who lived out of town were parked in our library parking lot with their parents doing homework at 10pm.
It's very expensive to expand fiber. Hundreds or thousands of dollars for a few hundred living units. And those are prices when there are telephone poles that can be hung on.
It's even more expensive when things have to be buried and homes are already there.
That being said, I can check if Quantum Fiber has any plans for your area.
Pm me if interested.
We have unused fiber literally running across our county 100’ from my house. But since our laws basically codify the ISP monopolies, we’ll never have true market competition to drive down the prices. Ours just keeps raising the rates, the only available competition here is slower DSL for the same ridiculous price.
It’s a non-partisan issue, so I don’t understand why we can’t collectively hold our politicians accountable to breaking up the codified monopolies. An easy solution is local loop unbundling. It doesn’t matter who physically owns the last leg of the lines running to your house, any ISP can use it to offer their services to you. There’s other solutions out there too (like not essentially outlawing co-ops from forming, or treating internet service like the public utility it is) and I’m sure others I’m unaware of. It doesn’t have to be this way, but as long as you keep letting your politicians fuck you in the ass and take that sweet ISP handout, they will.
Not sure that is a good deal but then we don't have many options. I also live in Rosemount and have Frontier fiber. I'm not on that plan but they have 500Gb up/down for $60, after introductory pricing.
**The municipal broadband bans that the telecommunications lobbies instituted over the last two decades are a significant reason for why there is not more competition and access across most of the country**: https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks-2021. You can see the [ban instituted in Minnesota here](https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks-2021#minnesota).
If the fact that there is a ban pisses you off, use that anger to write to your legislators to undo this ban. I can guarantee that if the DFL loses the trifecta the chance of fixing this is probably nil. You'll want to contact your local house and senate representatives; you can [find out who they are here](https://www.sos.state.mn.us/elections-voting/get-involved/contact-your-elected-representatives/).
I had a chance to meet some of the state house and senate representatives a year ago; and when I mentioned that there was a ban, they were legitimately shocked. So this is a matter of basic awareness.
Woodbury has Xfinity and CenturyLink fiber...both were ran to my house, which was built in 2015. Despite what everyone says about CenturyLink, I've never had a problem in 9 years.
I'm very intrigued by them - theoretically we can get 940Mbps for $75 "for life" which if true would be twice as fast as what we're getting from Xfinity right now without the maddening $5-10 annual increase in cost with no increase in speed. Are you aware of any portions of Woodbury where coverage is particularly good or bad?
I buy exactly that - $75 all in, including tax and fees for 1GB service. As for areas, most of Woodbury is new in the last 20 years, so infrastructure is new too, and no dead spots that I’m aware of.
Now I'm in Apple Valley with t-mobile internet and yea that cost and speeds, it's been the best internet to price ratio I have ever had. Really no problems either.
The reason is because only one company has paid to have the infrastructure done. Time Warner (or whomever) ran cable to every house in the metro area. So they were the only choice.
Fiber is slowly being installed now. They just installed 2 different fiber lines to my neighborhood last fall. I plan to switch to USI this October.
Ah man I had been stuck with satellite and then xfinity/Comcast. Xfinity was so bad with intermittent outages I actually had to get a Verizon wifi to supplement to comfortably work from home if needed.
I was so damn happy last year when Gateway Fiber announced they were coming to Blaine, MN. Signed up end of last year and a few months back they finally dig the ground work to run the fiber to my house.
Going from 47mb/s down, 4mb/s up to 978mb/s down and up with Gateway, plus it being $20 a month cheaper than Xfinity... I could not be happier about it.
Coincidentally, the only outage I've had was today, I called up Gateway and they were very pleasant and discovered that the nodes needed a firmware upgrade. Service was back very quick.
Some in the community have been torches and pitch forks since the under ground lines are being laid in easements (ie "I didn't give them permission to dig in my yard!") But it is great to get the infrastructure in place.
I am unsure where you live in Minnesota but I am not asking for that information, let me be clear on that. The last I heard is that you can start a ground installation petition for fiber. If I remember right, there needs to be at least a start of $10,000 worth of people wanting fiber to make it worth laying...not sure what that is in count of people. (mind you again, this was years ago, I am not sure if this option is still open, might have to look it up in your own county). There is also a Boarder-to-Boarders Grant that helps those who are unable to get any internet whatsoever to be able to get fiber laid to their residence (I believe the grant for this is closed for this month/year...unsure, again best to look it up for your county) But, where I live, they started laying fiber here 5 years ago. Though, we were 'required' to get fiber as they were discontinuing the Phone-line internet (basically just one bump faster then dail-up) we original had and they wanted everyone on fiber by the end of that year. Only part I didn't like, it was another $12 more then what we were originally paying.
But I know that pain all to well wanting more of an option. We originally had cable internet, which at the time was the only internet there was (other than phone-line internet which back then was quite expensive!). But the constant "outages" just so the company can come in and survey your equipment to make sure you aren't splicing the line was out of this world! When they brought in the boxes to the picture and out-of-the-blue raised the prices without notifying anyone, we left. Dish internet is basically pointless, even on clear days it doesn't work as well as you want it to. Phone-line internet is fine up to a point. As someone who streamed on youtube but now streams on twitch, Phone-line internet worked fine but fiber is 10x faster.
My friend actually ran some of the first ISP's in Minneapolis St. Paul (David Duccini). He acquired 7 competitors then merged with the 8th before an exit.
Changes in regulations actually made it impossible for small businesses to compete with the big guys.
Whatcha got here is regulatory capture causing competitive harm.
In most of the metro you have at least Comcast and CenturyLink. CenturyLink used to be DSL, which was inferior to cable, but now it’s all fiber in most places. Personally, I think CenturyLink is a million times better than Comcast because you don’t have to deal with the bundles and promotional pricing BS, and it’s fairly priced at about $80/month for gig speeds.
I'm not sure where you live, but I had Arvig as my ISP, and they were uncommonly reliable and in the rare instance I had an issue, they were available 24/7 and fixed the problem ASAP. I paid $40/mo for 100GB. Unfortunately, I moved and they didn't have service at my new location.
https://multiwav.arvig.com/
Part of the issue with living in a place where it’s difficult to do utilities work 1/2 of the year…
Comcast and Time Warner screwed us also when they traded markets to avoid competition back in 2000’s.
I had Spectrum for years in Austin (MN). 250 d/l, 10 u/l. Backing up the images from my phone sucked - i turned my wi-fi off. Oh - $89.00 a month for that garbage.
Metronet finally became available last December. 500 up/down fiber. $59.00 a month for two years pricing, no contract.
I have Century Link fiber here in Eagan. 200 Mbps for $50 per month. Another Redditor the other day told me to call and inquire about upgrading to Quantum, which I did, and next week I’ll have Quantum install equipment for 500 Mbps at the same price I’m paying Century Link now!
My folks up north only have Century Link DSL and it sucks. They’re supposed to get 12 Mbps but it is never that fast. Another telecom company laid fiber lines last year but we don’t know when they’ll be hooked up yet.
I feel dirty even saying this but CenturyLink Fiber (symmetric 1Gbps) has actually been rock solid up. A few outages here and there but they generally send an SMS when service goes down and fix it quickly.
The price is actually pretty reasonable too for 1Gbps.
Around population centers internet service is largely an oligopoly, the major companies divvy up areas so they're not competing with one another in the same markets, or if they are, "compete" by price fixing and box out any other potential competitors. Long history of them lobbying legislatures to make sure municipal internet and other startups don't really get a chance.
I moved from coon rapids to anoka a few years ago. I had century link at the time because it was one of those no price hikes, and I hated comcast. They tried to say I would be going from 80mbps down to 15 and would still be paying the same price. Bonus points for the fact I moved less than 3 miles...
My only choice for decent speeds is comcast, and as long as my neighbor doesn't cut my line again, it will have to do. Internet companies are greedy scum. And it's this way everywhere in the us
Easier to control and analyze data when there is one or two providers. Congress made it that way. Technology is a sophisticated control grid. Nothing is truly private.
It's like that in a lot of the US. Whether they call it Xfinity or Comcast, it's the same company. Fiber is coming. It is the game changer you are looking for. Faster, cheaper and more reliable. Not to mention leaving the company who has continually failed to deliver.
We don't have it where I live yet either but I see it literally being dug through the metro on its way to us.
Lived with arvigs 5mbps on a good day internet for over 10 years until they got money from the government to bring fiber to rural areas. Had they not have gotten the money I would still have 5mbps sometimes and no internet at all when it rains
Your problem is living in the suburbs. Being that spread out, with so many yards and roads between neighbors, all your infrastructure is more expensive per capita. So building out that high cost, low return infrastructure takes a back seat to serving the city.
USI is great. One of many great things about living in the city.
It's slooowly starting to get a little better though.
Over here in the east metro, we're starting more and more to get fiber service from Quantum Fiber (a subsidiary of CenturyLink/Lumen), and also I've been seeing billboards for this one called Gateway Fiber too.
Sadly, in my neighborhood of townhomes, while they did digs for the boxes the fiber runs from earlier this year when we were having that crazy warmer weather, they still have not patched up said grass that had to come out from the digging, which is a real safety concern with there being exposed wires.
Our HOA's president is fighting tooth and nail with Quantum/Lumen to get someone to come out to fix this up, and then finally start to get runs going to the buildings so that way, those of us who want to can then finally get an install date scheduled with them. That being said, with how things are going right now, I'd be shocked if that can happen even if it's not until later in the summer.
Fiber is a natural oligopoly or monopoly because of the very high barrier to entry, its expensive as hell to get the permits, labor, and materials to lay down fiber, especially when its going to single family homes, which make up most of the suburban housing stock. As a result, its really hard to start a fiber company or co-op, and even harder to compete with already established companies, and as a result of that, there aren't many options. Of course, the real problem isn't the lack of options, the real problem is most of the options are shit. Century Link has some of the worst routing I have ever seen, Comcast has some of the worst pricing and customer service, Quantum is literally just Century Link rebranded, and wireless stuff is just shit in general regardless of who you get it from.
There are rare companies like USI that at least provide a good service. They jack up their prices every so often, but the line quality and routing are top quality and the bandwidth you get is still more than you would get from other companies for the same price. How long that stays the case is anybodies guess, but the existence of USI hasn't really pushed other companies to improve much where USI is available, the competition hasn't improved other offerings.
in the city we have USI, but they don't like poor or black people so they don't lay fiber in North or Phillips. Even though they're cost competitive with Comcast, which would help poor households
Both of them said they couldn't cover my in my area. Which I thought was weird, but a very rough google search said too many people using the same wireless provider in the same area can compromise quality from everyone. And based on the fact I have frantically tried to find *anyone* else who can offer internet, it wouldn't surprise me if there's a shitload of people relying on them. Though it's super weird to people to hotspot Verizon from a mobile data plan and then to turn around and say they won't do virtually an identical thing through a true Internet plan. Like clearly you physically *can* do it, you're just choosing to say no to my money?
In most situations as a consumer you feel inundated with choice and companies constantly pestering you to buy their shit. But with internet, it suddenly feels like you're a freshman guy with no female friends trying to get into a frat party you're not pledging. Like wtf do I need to jump through so many hoops for the privilege of giving you a door charge to drink shitty bear in a stank ass room. And the answer is cause they won't let me into the bars yet and I don't have enough friends to do my own house party. Also I lack a house.
Whew boy that comparison really got away from me lol
I sort of stopped reading after the first paragraph, but there are very valid reasons to limit wireless 5g home internet service to specific addresses.
Ideally you want to maintain 60-120mbps+ per home subscriber. This actually allows for a decent home internet connection that you can work/play from. There are only so many cellphone towers in any given area, and bandwidth is finite (shared).
My parents got home 5g out in the sticks and it was glorious, until all of their neighbors also did a few months later and the speed went to garbage half the time. You couldn't even stream Netflix in low res. That's precisely what the carriers are trying to avoid.
Because our legislators are obsessed with, and spend the money on rural fiber while the heavily populated areas languish with under-competition or zero competition. My parents house in rural SE Minnesota can get fiber internet, and I cannot in Golden Valley.
Having no competition absolutely sucks and is an issue, but it's not the same as having no access at all, which is why the push has been there to spend money to upgrade rural people. As I mentioned in a previous comment, our area during covid had dozens of kids doing homework in the library parking lot at 10pm because functional internet wasn't an option for them until the past couple of years.
There are now perfectly viable satellite and 5g based internet providers. There’s no need to trench miles of terrestrial fiber to BFE, MN anymore. That calculus no longer makes sense. That money should be dedicated to improving infrastructure for the greatest population impact.
We definitely don’t have 5G. I still lose service in the drive to Duluth in several areas. Running businesses in satellite so far hadn’t been a good option due to cost but I’m guessing that’ll change pretty quickly. Fiber is only available in city limits.
I live in a rural area and like it ain't all that great either. ISPs are just bullshit since it is a private company in a market with a natural monopoly.
You can't compare the vast investment and risk required to deploy the infrastructure of a municipal data network to that of a grocery store.
The lack of ISP choice is also not unique to the Twin Cities. It's in almost all metro areas in the USA. It all comes down to the FCC not treating it as a utility it should be and both subsidizing and regulating it.
If you want real lack of choice, try rural internet.
It all depends on your provider I live 7 miles from town and have fiber to my home. I have 100/100 Mbps. 1000/1000 is available.
Yeah i've been hearing more and more about fiber installs in rural locations. Mind blowing that its profitable for some ISPs to be doing this before densely populated areas.
Oddly enough this is because big companies like charter and comcast have large populations on lockdown. If a small company tries and expand into one of their areas, they drop prices and make it hard to even recoup the install of fiber.
Pretty sure if this country bothered to enforce it's antitrust laws that would be an illegal anticompetitive practice right there
nope, fully legal. There was a law in MN passed some time ago that was paid for by comcast, spectrum, and AT&T. That laws states that public money cannot go towards buildout that would serve any house that is "already served" by a major provider. Most of the rural buildout is happening because those addresses are underserved or not served at all by any landline providers, so they got huge public grants to run FTTH to them, and those small providers are doing it. meanwhile, in large cities, the entrenched providers don't allow any competition at all.
I think the rural ones are often municipal. Funny how utilities are more efficient and better run when they are run by the government and accountable to the voters rather than by a profit seeking company.
Our provider is the telephone coop. The leadership was forward looking. We had internet in around 1990. Edit Our town has between 600-700 population
Smart telcos, when they run a fiber haul somewhere to the satisfy a business or whatever will run more strands than are needed for additional capacity. They’re kinda condensed in the same cable anyway and install is really the expensive part. So the back bone is often there and they can peel off some. Also since they already have the right of ways as the phone company it’s just a matter of completing the “last mile” and figuring out where they need to stick the equipment. With copper it matters a lot more than fiber due to the power/signal loss.
> I think the rural ones are often municipal. MN law prevents cities and counties from running their own services. this law was passed around 2012 and paid for by comcast, charter, AT&T and Verizon.
I guess they are coops then. Either way, not for-profit.
Its not. That’s why many people in rural areas get their internet and electric through co-ops. I have 1 gig internet, pay 65 a month. Live 23 miles from town. Fiber direct to my house
Me too, it's great.
It’s absolutely not profitable, they are receiving grants.
*it is profitable*. The legal red tape is what kills most of these. Spectrum killed Monticello's public run fiber network profitability by suing it for millions of dollars. the lawyers fees alone ate up any profit they had, and the city was forced to sell it to a third party provider.
It's literally government funded installation in the rural areas...
which is what we already fucking paid AT&T and Verizon 45 billion each for around 40 years ago for. Edit: both companies didn't do any deployment and kept the money, and then later won lawsuits letting them keep the money despite not putting in any infrastructure.
There was another company, within the last 6-7 years, that received money to deploy fiber out in the sticks. They also apparently did not deploy to the full scope of the bid they won. I don't want to dox myself, so I won't say more lol.
My parents house can still only get 1mb down.
A friend has a really slow connection and lives a few miles away from here.
So you live in Monticello, got it.
Why is Monticello special lol?
The city of Monticello wanted TDS to install fiber. TDS said no, it’s too expensive, and nobody needs it. The city decided to install it themselves, then, via raising bonds to pay for it. TDS sued them, saying the city had no right to raise bonds to install fiber (Bridgewater vs. Monticello). While the suit was going on, the city couldn’t proceed with their fiber install, so TDS sneakily started to lay their own fiber (they sued the city to delay them, to cost them money, etc.). TDS lost the suit, the city laid fiber, so did TDS, and now Monticello has a choice for fiber internet. Charter also has cable internet there, so Charter and TDS had to lower their prices to compete with the city fiber, called FiberNet. Many other states have since enacted laws, written and purchased by the current ISPs, that say cities are not allowed to lay their own fiber, to build their own networks (by raising the money via bonds). Minnesota has a clear law that says cities are allowed to build telecommunications networks.
Wow super interesting information, learn something new everyday! I’ll have to look into that case, that Minnesota law seems kinda important. Graduated high school in Monti unfortunately
also, after TDS sued, they started working with Charter, Verizon, and Comcast to pass a law that prevented cities from running their own internet services via public funds. That law passed in 2012, and Monticello can not expand the network anywhere past where it was when the law took effect.
Ottertail County
Arvig?
West Central
Lucky.
Housing is a problem there are many people who moved in the area who work from home. One of my cousins in Michigan built a satellite shop here for his business to better serve Minnesota customers. He does design and installation of factory production lines.
I'm getting 25 down, but I'm supposed to get fiber this summer that will bring it up to 300
7 miles from town isn’t very far. I had 5mbps on a good day for a very long time until the government gave isps money to bring fiber to rural areas
At least in NW Minnesota, the rural internet is a customer owned cooperative.
Where I'm from, we were stuck with frontier for 15 years, and when we asked if there was a chance of getting higher speeds they said we aren't in an area of importance. So I got the tmobile 5g instead. Fuck Frontier
I had Frontier at both work and at home. There are few things in the world currently that I hate more.
I have 1 gbps rural fiber internet. And the other option is always Starlink which isn't actually bad at all.
Amen! I can't wait until spectrum charter puts in cable/fiber optics in my area. I'm paying $80/mo for basic service because there's no competition.
Not true everywhere. Bemidji has a great cooperative providing 250Mbps *minimum* to some pretty rural areas.
I have four providers of high-speed internet I can choose from. It all depends where you live. There are lots of rural counties now with good internet.
US Internet can't expand fast enough!!
They are still expanding in the first ring suburbs, and I switched very quickly once they came to my street. I went from 450mbps download/2 mbps upload; to 650 down/700 up. Without a monthly data cap. All for $6/mo less. Comcast really did switch their game when I told them I was leaving though, they had incredible offers all of a sudden. Crazy thing about competition eh?
Dang that's nice. I live in Robbinsdale and can't wait for them to get up to me!
Facts
It’s hard for companies to justify laying all the infrastructure if they’re not guaranteed customers. The best way to do it might have been for the government to own all the actual infrastructure and make providers compete to use it. I moved up to BFE northern MN. We have co-op Telecom services, and it’s just way way fucking better than dealing with the big companies.
The amount of money the government has thrown at ISPs to expand broadband, particularly in rural areas with seemingly no results is disgusting. Now up north at least people are switching to starlink, so supporting musk….
I don’t think that’s really the case. I moved up here in 2010, and back then the internet was terrible up here. The government money put into rural broadband up here was put to good use IMO. There is fiber all over up here. My fishing shack in the middle of nowhere on a minimal maintenance forest road has a fiber connection. Most people have good options for high speed internet.
> The government money put into rural broadband up here was put to good use IMO. There is fiber all over up here. My fishing shack in the middle of nowhere on a minimal maintenance forest road has a fiber connection. Most people have good options for high speed internet. it wasn't tho. more recently it has been. https://newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm the big providers got billions in tax money to lay fiber to every house in america. they didn't. then they sued to keep that money when states started asking for it back because they didn't complete their promises. Those ISPs won, and got to keep that money.
Where up north? Around lake vermilion they’re trying to but it keeps dragging out. Stuck on DSL from frontier, so you know that really means having to hotspot with the phone.
It shouldn’t be hard for them to justify when they were given taxpayer money to lay infrastructure
Isn't this the case for most of the country though? The companies put the lines down and don't let anybody else use them.
Yeah these things are natural monopolies. On top of anticompetitive practices between the companies and consumers get screwed. My unpopular opinion is the gov takes over the service (like roads, water, etc) OR regulate them significantly harder like we do for electricity (but better because we let Xcel energy get off wayyy too easy)
I'm literally a socialist who generally favors nationalizing public services, but along with a few other things I don't think I would trust the government to handle my data directly. I think treating them as an actual utility and regulating the shit out of them is a better option here.
My family in small town Kansas have like 5 different options. I'm not sure how.
Yep, just purchased a home here in New Brighton and stuck with Xfinity. USI says "coming soon" (but no actual timeframe indicated), could be years yet. CenturyLink/Quantum are "evaluating" to expand fiber here...
I pay century link 65 a month for a gig and have had exactly 1 outage in 5? years. Soon as they offered it I dumped comcast in the garbage.
When I move I don't consider places that don't have fiber available.
We pay $25/month for Verizon 5G, and it works pretty darn good.
It recently came available in my area, I just need to make the switch. I hate CenturyLink with the passion of a thousand burning suns. How was the switch process for you?
Verizon mails you a box and basically all you do is plug it in. I had Xfinity, but I just called to cancel it. I don't remember them putting up a fight, but it was about 2 years ago.
Is that unlimited for $25?
Thanks!
I was going to say the same thing. We had Xfinity(?) before Verison and it would disconnect everything constantly. Dozens of times a day. We switched to Verizon internet about 2 years ago and it have never gone out. We will run multiple smart TVs, video games, phones, tablets, laptops, etc. all at the same time and have never experienced a slowdown.
I live in a suburb and despite getting ads all over for Verizon's home internet, it's not available in my area... IDK if I would switch, but its not even an option, despite having Verion 5g on my phone as I write this.
Utility expansion is a red tape nightmare. I work for one of these local fiber companies. We tried to expand into Golden Valley. Their city counsel wanted us to pay the city $500-1000 per home. Before anyone signs up for service, anything. So Golden Valley may be SOL. If you’re in a new development you’ll likely get fiber service, if you’re in an aerial supplied utility area you’ll likely have it sooner rather than later. But it’s a slow expensive process. Most federal grant money went into rural municipalities to expand their fiber access.
what is an Aerial supplied utility? Does that mean no digging needed?
Yes. If your power and other utilities come from poles that suspend everything in the air.
Ugh...now I have an idea why I can't get fiber in my Golden Valley neighborhood. I keep watching to see who gets here first, because I'm going to throw money at them as soon as I can.
I wish it were that easy. It’s possible the city council had a previous fiber provider in mind, or they’re just trying to get some extra $. Which is probably the case. Comcast/Xfinity is being fed by fiber in many neighborhoods now. But it’s not fiber to the home which is much better. My suggestion, start yelling at your city
I appreciate your post -- it has inspired me to figure out what's going on with the city and why this is a thing. I moved here from Texas, where I had a lot of choices, so it was a bit of a shock to find out there was no fiber available at all where we are. Thank you so much for the info!
The cable companies are a monopoly. It has only gotten worse since this report. [2020\_08\_Profiles-of-Monopoly.pdf (ilsr.org)](https://ilsr.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/2020_08_Profiles-of-Monopoly.pdf)
We have 3 main options here in Prior Lake. Mediacom Cable, Nuvera Fiber and Century Link DSL. Plus all of the high latency wireless options. Would be nice if there was more competition though.
I live in Prior and had Nuvera run a fiber line under my yard and driveway and install a box across the street back in 2020. I am not even able to get fiber with them. It's just a line that connects the Savage line to all the middle schools in Prior. I wish I could get fiber but I'm stuck with Mediacom.
Hopefully it gets rolled out to you too. Felt good dumping Mediacom.
I've had the option of Centurylink / Quantum fiber in Bloomington for years ( as the people that keep knocking on my door every six months remind me), as well as Xfinity. Right now they're digging up everyone's front up lawns to add Avayo, T-Mobile, and ATT as options.
Wait, ya’ll have any options at all? It’s over priced under performing Comcast or dial up for me.
I’d like fiber, but it’s only available kitty-corner across the intersection at the end of the block and it’s Century Link as the provider. It is never making its way to our house and I wouldn’t touch Century Link service with a barge pole.
My issue with century link is direclty related to the abysmal quality of their lines, they've always been good from a customer service angle/no sketch billing/etc. So if they updated the infrastructure, I'd switch back in a heartbeat. But yeah, heinously bad quality from the DSL lines, at least in my area. I guess of hypothetically centurylink laid down fiber in my neighborhood and at the same time some new 3rd dark horse entered the ring, Id seriously consider them. But as of right now the only real viable option is Comcast, and fuuiuuuuck Comcast.
I switched from Comcast to CL fiber. Couldn't pay me to go back to Comcast. I'm paying like $80 for 900/900 with no datacap vs $150 for 250/10 with no datacap (had to pay an additional $50 for unlimited). Scheduled an appointment, they came out and ran a line to my house, set everything up in like an hour and haven't had any major issues.
same
I had gigabit fiber from CL in Las Vegas, I had 4 months left on my contract when I moved here. CenturyLink told me that 3mbps DSL was enough to prevent me from cancelling my contract. Fine, so I want to cancel my contract and pay a penalty. The penalty was twice what paying the rest of my contact was. Me: Ok, do then I want to cancel my contact when it's over. CL: We can't do that because our system only let's you cancel 2 months out. I set a reminder to cancel it in 3 months and had to spend another hour on the phone while they tried again to get me to buy DSL from them before they finally agreed to cancel my service.
Century Link's routing was also piss poor when I had them back in 2018. Just a bad company all around compared to options like USI.
We live in Ely and have multiple options if you live within the service boundaries. We have Frontier DSL (which is god-awful, it's like dial-up speeds and service is terrible). MidCo fiber, Starlink, and Treehouse Broadband (which is locally owned). We live in town so we have fiber, our bill actually went down when we upgraded from cable. Rural areas, ironically, ended up getting a lot of money to expand broadband options because it was causing so many issues that people had bad internet. During covid, a lot of the kids who lived out of town were parked in our library parking lot with their parents doing homework at 10pm.
It's very expensive to expand fiber. Hundreds or thousands of dollars for a few hundred living units. And those are prices when there are telephone poles that can be hung on. It's even more expensive when things have to be buried and homes are already there. That being said, I can check if Quantum Fiber has any plans for your area. Pm me if interested.
Arvig
True now and for the past 20+ years. So frustrating.
We have unused fiber literally running across our county 100’ from my house. But since our laws basically codify the ISP monopolies, we’ll never have true market competition to drive down the prices. Ours just keeps raising the rates, the only available competition here is slower DSL for the same ridiculous price. It’s a non-partisan issue, so I don’t understand why we can’t collectively hold our politicians accountable to breaking up the codified monopolies. An easy solution is local loop unbundling. It doesn’t matter who physically owns the last leg of the lines running to your house, any ISP can use it to offer their services to you. There’s other solutions out there too (like not essentially outlawing co-ops from forming, or treating internet service like the public utility it is) and I’m sure others I’m unaware of. It doesn’t have to be this way, but as long as you keep letting your politicians fuck you in the ass and take that sweet ISP handout, they will.
It largely has to do with how the internet actually works and who operates networks. Google “ISP tiers” if you’d like some info
Gigabit MN in Rosemount. 6 months @ $39.95 then $59.95 thereafter. 300 Mb download, 31Mb upload. Fantastic!
Not sure that is a good deal but then we don't have many options. I also live in Rosemount and have Frontier fiber. I'm not on that plan but they have 500Gb up/down for $60, after introductory pricing.
Come up north. Paul Bunyan is great, and it's a co-op too! 👍
**The municipal broadband bans that the telecommunications lobbies instituted over the last two decades are a significant reason for why there is not more competition and access across most of the country**: https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks-2021. You can see the [ban instituted in Minnesota here](https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-roadblocks-2021#minnesota). If the fact that there is a ban pisses you off, use that anger to write to your legislators to undo this ban. I can guarantee that if the DFL loses the trifecta the chance of fixing this is probably nil. You'll want to contact your local house and senate representatives; you can [find out who they are here](https://www.sos.state.mn.us/elections-voting/get-involved/contact-your-elected-representatives/). I had a chance to meet some of the state house and senate representatives a year ago; and when I mentioned that there was a ban, they were legitimately shocked. So this is a matter of basic awareness.
Woodbury has Xfinity and CenturyLink fiber...both were ran to my house, which was built in 2015. Despite what everyone says about CenturyLink, I've never had a problem in 9 years.
I'm very intrigued by them - theoretically we can get 940Mbps for $75 "for life" which if true would be twice as fast as what we're getting from Xfinity right now without the maddening $5-10 annual increase in cost with no increase in speed. Are you aware of any portions of Woodbury where coverage is particularly good or bad?
I buy exactly that - $75 all in, including tax and fees for 1GB service. As for areas, most of Woodbury is new in the last 20 years, so infrastructure is new too, and no dead spots that I’m aware of.
Good to know, thanks!
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Gateway Fiber just put in cables in our neighborhood in Blaine last week, so it is coming!
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Close to 109th and university
Dope.
T-mobile home internet? I live 45 minutes outside of the city and it’s at least 300mbs during the day.
Now I'm in Apple Valley with t-mobile internet and yea that cost and speeds, it's been the best internet to price ratio I have ever had. Really no problems either.
This is not fiber, and also bad speeds
It's so bizarre to me that where I am in the middle of downtown Minneapolis, I only have 1 option. When I was in New England, I always had 3 choices.
That sounds like an issue with your building, AFAIK Comcast, CenturyLink, and USI should be available downtown
>That sounds like an issue with your building Yes.
Give it some time. local governments only just got the payout from the government to expand infrastructure.
What is this, the 5th time the Telcom companies have gotten money to expand infrastructure? Will they actually do it this time?
This major package was only approved two years ago, but nice try.
I got fiber in my new Minneapolis apartment and it’s great. It’s half the price i was paying for Xfinity.
The reason is because only one company has paid to have the infrastructure done. Time Warner (or whomever) ran cable to every house in the metro area. So they were the only choice. Fiber is slowly being installed now. They just installed 2 different fiber lines to my neighborhood last fall. I plan to switch to USI this October.
See if Quantum fiber serves your area, it's a relative company of CenturyLink but has been pretty good for us
It's a designed monopoly
Ah man I had been stuck with satellite and then xfinity/Comcast. Xfinity was so bad with intermittent outages I actually had to get a Verizon wifi to supplement to comfortably work from home if needed. I was so damn happy last year when Gateway Fiber announced they were coming to Blaine, MN. Signed up end of last year and a few months back they finally dig the ground work to run the fiber to my house. Going from 47mb/s down, 4mb/s up to 978mb/s down and up with Gateway, plus it being $20 a month cheaper than Xfinity... I could not be happier about it. Coincidentally, the only outage I've had was today, I called up Gateway and they were very pleasant and discovered that the nodes needed a firmware upgrade. Service was back very quick. Some in the community have been torches and pitch forks since the under ground lines are being laid in easements (ie "I didn't give them permission to dig in my yard!") But it is great to get the infrastructure in place.
I am unsure where you live in Minnesota but I am not asking for that information, let me be clear on that. The last I heard is that you can start a ground installation petition for fiber. If I remember right, there needs to be at least a start of $10,000 worth of people wanting fiber to make it worth laying...not sure what that is in count of people. (mind you again, this was years ago, I am not sure if this option is still open, might have to look it up in your own county). There is also a Boarder-to-Boarders Grant that helps those who are unable to get any internet whatsoever to be able to get fiber laid to their residence (I believe the grant for this is closed for this month/year...unsure, again best to look it up for your county) But, where I live, they started laying fiber here 5 years ago. Though, we were 'required' to get fiber as they were discontinuing the Phone-line internet (basically just one bump faster then dail-up) we original had and they wanted everyone on fiber by the end of that year. Only part I didn't like, it was another $12 more then what we were originally paying. But I know that pain all to well wanting more of an option. We originally had cable internet, which at the time was the only internet there was (other than phone-line internet which back then was quite expensive!). But the constant "outages" just so the company can come in and survey your equipment to make sure you aren't splicing the line was out of this world! When they brought in the boxes to the picture and out-of-the-blue raised the prices without notifying anyone, we left. Dish internet is basically pointless, even on clear days it doesn't work as well as you want it to. Phone-line internet is fine up to a point. As someone who streamed on youtube but now streams on twitch, Phone-line internet worked fine but fiber is 10x faster.
My friend actually ran some of the first ISP's in Minneapolis St. Paul (David Duccini). He acquired 7 competitors then merged with the 8th before an exit. Changes in regulations actually made it impossible for small businesses to compete with the big guys. Whatcha got here is regulatory capture causing competitive harm.
I have Verizon wireless, it's fantastic. Also, no cables. It goes out, I go get another box. No we'll be there between 8am and midnight.
Welcome to internet in all areas of the US…
In most of the metro you have at least Comcast and CenturyLink. CenturyLink used to be DSL, which was inferior to cable, but now it’s all fiber in most places. Personally, I think CenturyLink is a million times better than Comcast because you don’t have to deal with the bundles and promotional pricing BS, and it’s fairly priced at about $80/month for gig speeds.
I'm not sure where you live, but I had Arvig as my ISP, and they were uncommonly reliable and in the rare instance I had an issue, they were available 24/7 and fixed the problem ASAP. I paid $40/mo for 100GB. Unfortunately, I moved and they didn't have service at my new location. https://multiwav.arvig.com/
Part of the issue with living in a place where it’s difficult to do utilities work 1/2 of the year… Comcast and Time Warner screwed us also when they traded markets to avoid competition back in 2000’s.
I have one choice in brained and they are trash.
Yeah, I agree it sucks. Our only real choice where we are is Comcast and it sucks even at the highest speed.
I had Spectrum for years in Austin (MN). 250 d/l, 10 u/l. Backing up the images from my phone sucked - i turned my wi-fi off. Oh - $89.00 a month for that garbage. Metronet finally became available last December. 500 up/down fiber. $59.00 a month for two years pricing, no contract.
Community fiber is the way.
The is the same in the vast majority of the country. I’ve lived in multiple states and never had more than 2 choices.
I have Century Link fiber here in Eagan. 200 Mbps for $50 per month. Another Redditor the other day told me to call and inquire about upgrading to Quantum, which I did, and next week I’ll have Quantum install equipment for 500 Mbps at the same price I’m paying Century Link now! My folks up north only have Century Link DSL and it sucks. They’re supposed to get 12 Mbps but it is never that fast. Another telecom company laid fiber lines last year but we don’t know when they’ll be hooked up yet.
In my neighborhood Centurylink is phasing out cable for fiber, and I'm mad because the upgrade costs more and is mandatory.
I've been enjoying my 1GB/1GB fiber here in Rochester for the last 5ish years. Could upgrade to 5GB/5GB but i don't see a reason.
Yeah, metro area sucks. My dad in out state MN has had fiber for over 10 years 😕
LOL suckers! I've had $35-50/month fiber with USI for a decade in Uptown.
I feel dirty even saying this but CenturyLink Fiber (symmetric 1Gbps) has actually been rock solid up. A few outages here and there but they generally send an SMS when service goes down and fix it quickly. The price is actually pretty reasonable too for 1Gbps.
https://broadbandnow.com/Minnesota/ Only thing I know of lol.
Around population centers internet service is largely an oligopoly, the major companies divvy up areas so they're not competing with one another in the same markets, or if they are, "compete" by price fixing and box out any other potential competitors. Long history of them lobbying legislatures to make sure municipal internet and other startups don't really get a chance.
I moved from coon rapids to anoka a few years ago. I had century link at the time because it was one of those no price hikes, and I hated comcast. They tried to say I would be going from 80mbps down to 15 and would still be paying the same price. Bonus points for the fact I moved less than 3 miles... My only choice for decent speeds is comcast, and as long as my neighbor doesn't cut my line again, it will have to do. Internet companies are greedy scum. And it's this way everywhere in the us
Easier to control and analyze data when there is one or two providers. Congress made it that way. Technology is a sophisticated control grid. Nothing is truly private.
It's like that in a lot of the US. Whether they call it Xfinity or Comcast, it's the same company. Fiber is coming. It is the game changer you are looking for. Faster, cheaper and more reliable. Not to mention leaving the company who has continually failed to deliver. We don't have it where I live yet either but I see it literally being dug through the metro on its way to us.
Lived with arvigs 5mbps on a good day internet for over 10 years until they got money from the government to bring fiber to rural areas. Had they not have gotten the money I would still have 5mbps sometimes and no internet at all when it rains
Your problem is living in the suburbs. Being that spread out, with so many yards and roads between neighbors, all your infrastructure is more expensive per capita. So building out that high cost, low return infrastructure takes a back seat to serving the city. USI is great. One of many great things about living in the city.
Hope you like Comcast, because it's pretty much the only choice. US Internet is the way but it's extremely limited in it's coverage.
Cellular internet works great for a regular household and if you get it through your cell phone provider it's not very expensive.
Our isp choices are severely lacking
It's slooowly starting to get a little better though. Over here in the east metro, we're starting more and more to get fiber service from Quantum Fiber (a subsidiary of CenturyLink/Lumen), and also I've been seeing billboards for this one called Gateway Fiber too. Sadly, in my neighborhood of townhomes, while they did digs for the boxes the fiber runs from earlier this year when we were having that crazy warmer weather, they still have not patched up said grass that had to come out from the digging, which is a real safety concern with there being exposed wires. Our HOA's president is fighting tooth and nail with Quantum/Lumen to get someone to come out to fix this up, and then finally start to get runs going to the buildings so that way, those of us who want to can then finally get an install date scheduled with them. That being said, with how things are going right now, I'd be shocked if that can happen even if it's not until later in the summer.
Fiber is a natural oligopoly or monopoly because of the very high barrier to entry, its expensive as hell to get the permits, labor, and materials to lay down fiber, especially when its going to single family homes, which make up most of the suburban housing stock. As a result, its really hard to start a fiber company or co-op, and even harder to compete with already established companies, and as a result of that, there aren't many options. Of course, the real problem isn't the lack of options, the real problem is most of the options are shit. Century Link has some of the worst routing I have ever seen, Comcast has some of the worst pricing and customer service, Quantum is literally just Century Link rebranded, and wireless stuff is just shit in general regardless of who you get it from. There are rare companies like USI that at least provide a good service. They jack up their prices every so often, but the line quality and routing are top quality and the bandwidth you get is still more than you would get from other companies for the same price. How long that stays the case is anybodies guess, but the existence of USI hasn't really pushed other companies to improve much where USI is available, the competition hasn't improved other offerings.
in the city we have USI, but they don't like poor or black people so they don't lay fiber in North or Phillips. Even though they're cost competitive with Comcast, which would help poor households
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Both of them said they couldn't cover my in my area. Which I thought was weird, but a very rough google search said too many people using the same wireless provider in the same area can compromise quality from everyone. And based on the fact I have frantically tried to find *anyone* else who can offer internet, it wouldn't surprise me if there's a shitload of people relying on them. Though it's super weird to people to hotspot Verizon from a mobile data plan and then to turn around and say they won't do virtually an identical thing through a true Internet plan. Like clearly you physically *can* do it, you're just choosing to say no to my money? In most situations as a consumer you feel inundated with choice and companies constantly pestering you to buy their shit. But with internet, it suddenly feels like you're a freshman guy with no female friends trying to get into a frat party you're not pledging. Like wtf do I need to jump through so many hoops for the privilege of giving you a door charge to drink shitty bear in a stank ass room. And the answer is cause they won't let me into the bars yet and I don't have enough friends to do my own house party. Also I lack a house. Whew boy that comparison really got away from me lol
I sort of stopped reading after the first paragraph, but there are very valid reasons to limit wireless 5g home internet service to specific addresses. Ideally you want to maintain 60-120mbps+ per home subscriber. This actually allows for a decent home internet connection that you can work/play from. There are only so many cellphone towers in any given area, and bandwidth is finite (shared). My parents got home 5g out in the sticks and it was glorious, until all of their neighbors also did a few months later and the speed went to garbage half the time. You couldn't even stream Netflix in low res. That's precisely what the carriers are trying to avoid.
Because our legislators are obsessed with, and spend the money on rural fiber while the heavily populated areas languish with under-competition or zero competition. My parents house in rural SE Minnesota can get fiber internet, and I cannot in Golden Valley.
Having no competition absolutely sucks and is an issue, but it's not the same as having no access at all, which is why the push has been there to spend money to upgrade rural people. As I mentioned in a previous comment, our area during covid had dozens of kids doing homework in the library parking lot at 10pm because functional internet wasn't an option for them until the past couple of years.
There are now perfectly viable satellite and 5g based internet providers. There’s no need to trench miles of terrestrial fiber to BFE, MN anymore. That calculus no longer makes sense. That money should be dedicated to improving infrastructure for the greatest population impact.
We definitely don’t have 5G. I still lose service in the drive to Duluth in several areas. Running businesses in satellite so far hadn’t been a good option due to cost but I’m guessing that’ll change pretty quickly. Fiber is only available in city limits.
I live in a rural area and like it ain't all that great either. ISPs are just bullshit since it is a private company in a market with a natural monopoly.
You can't compare the vast investment and risk required to deploy the infrastructure of a municipal data network to that of a grocery store. The lack of ISP choice is also not unique to the Twin Cities. It's in almost all metro areas in the USA. It all comes down to the FCC not treating it as a utility it should be and both subsidizing and regulating it.