Originally Posted by
gfunkdave
The story of cable operators and ISPs everywhere in places where there's no competition. They fight like hell to stifle competition (look at how vociferously they oppose municipally-led solutions, for example) and then do nothing to improve service while jacking up prices. I have Spectrum at home (the only option for >20Mbps in my area) and they charge me 3x what they charge in places with Fios or Google Fiber for the same speed. Because they can.
I agree that it seems like it should have been easy to offer Fios throughout Manhattan. I don't know why they don't. I think dealing with coop and condo boards is probably the reason, or at least a big part.
A former colleague told me that when he was at Verizon the VP in charge of Fios deployment knew it was going to be a money loser and canceled the buildout in Rhode Island just after they finished building the network past his house...
The current strategy isn't working. I don't think a municipally-led solution is the answer either. Look at Australia's attempt to build a national broadband network. There is massive cost overrun and unless I'm mistaken, it's still not finished. I think the solution here would be a massive private-public partnership. The truth is that there isn't a problem that the US can't solved. If we can put astronauts on the moon and build the world's most lethal and capable military, we can surely build the world's best internet infrastructure. Unfortunately, the hard truth is that it chose not to. This puts us in a long term economic disadvantage relative to our peers.