About 20 years ago when I upgraded from dial-up to cable, it was a game changing experience for me. At the time, no one could have imagined the apps that would take advantage of the speed and bandwidth that's available today. Same thing with the transition from 2G to 4G LTE. Who knows what developers would come out with if everyone have access to a gigabit connection? Other advanced economies are moving forward so they're probably on to something.

Hence, my confusion over the choice of Staten Island vs. Manhattan. Perhaps the boards and landlords are a little too much to handle, or they were doing some extensive build-out work in NJ and included SI in that. My building has three providers (Spectrum/ex-TWC, RCN, and FiOS) with 3 different physical infrastructures. It took FiOS a long, long time to arrive, and the offers are not so compelling. Perhaps that will change, but I doubt it -- which is a similar story as other places.

I was the same, I was always pushing the limits and couldn't wait to get faster speeds. Nowadays, I barely use 20% of my bandwidth (350Mps). Nothing has changed for me for about 5 years, and I can't see much more happening in the near to medium future that would require me to upgrade. Then again, I don't have kids or play games :)

I think the focus will be on wireless for the foreseeable future. Elon Musk is betting big on satellites. It could be a potential gamechanger if the pricing is right and latency is low. It won't rival fiber, but I suspect people will sign up if those two criteria are met.

This is like the chicken and the egg type of situation right? I'm pretty sure none of us would want to go back to the cable speeds of the early 2000s. It would be too slow for the apps that we're using now. I suspect that as soon as the use case is developed, people will demand more speed.

The bigger problem today are data usage caps. Comcast's is stuck at 1TB. So any benefit of a faster connection just gets you to the cap (and overage fees) faster. And at least in my area, Comcast's reliability is still pathetic. No matter how many trucks they roll, how many hours/days of "scheduled maintenance" they have, my Comcast connection is still as unreliable as it was 8 years ago.

What has improved over that time are my T-Mobile connections. 200+Mbps speeds, better coverage, higher data limits, lower prices. I have quite a few places I ditched DSL/Cable internet connections and just tossed a T-Mobile hotspot in the corner and called it a day. I don't even know T-Mobile's tech support number and would have to look it up. I have multiple numbers for Comcast memorized by heart.

Yep. Nothing is going to change as long as the FCC is controlled by a Republican.

Nothing is going to change as long as cities keep supporting a monopoly. As soon as your city allows a 2nd/3rd competitor to come in, things will change fast.
Luckily, OEC is expanding fast in my area and Cox will start feeling the squeeze and be forced to change, or go away.

I was just able to eliminate my data cap with Comcast. They initially told me I had to update my modem but the guy that came out said I had the latest and greatest. My modem rental went from $14 to $20/month but included in that $20 is no data cap.

And yes, I know, I could save money by buying my own modem but this way if something goes wrong, they have to figure it out regardless of the source and that's worth the price to me.

Many cities have at least two ISPs but if they're anything like where I live, only one (likely the cable one) is anything close to reasonable speed-wise. Plus, many states make it difficult to impossible for local communities to start their own ISPs, which doesn't help.

...which is why Comcast started their nationwide data usage cap in 2009? Or the FCC approving the Comcast-NBC Universal merger in 2011? Genachowski most certainly had a D behind his name. Tom Wheeler, also a Democrat was a telecom industry insider and staunch advocate AGAINST net neutrality.

The current Chairman, Ajit Pai, is an industry lackey as well, and I certainly disagree with many(most?) of his decisions. BUT he's no better nor worse than what came before him.

Correct. For the large majority of people, the options are cable or really slow DSL. Some are lucky enough to have a telco that has fiber, or a 3rd option, or local municipal wifi, etc. Just look at how the current ISPs have lobbied cities to fight Google Fiber to the point that they gave up. The city should have no say in that.

It'll be interesting to see what happens if 5G doesn't fully live up to its promises (that is, something like speeds ultimately not being much better than the current options and/or pricing not really decreasing despite additional "competition"). Will that end up forcing the country to finally roll out fiber to a much wider extent than has already been done?

BTW, the most annoying part IMO: AT&T Fiber is actually available in some parts of where I live. However, they hit the 11 million or so availability number the government required as part of the DirecTV deal prior to reaching my neighborhood, so they stopped expanding it further. :rolleyes: In fact, they put up what looks like a mmWave 5G cell on the light pole outside of my condo complex and actually ran fiber just for it (and not the U-Verse cabinets next to it); it seems like it wouldn't have been too much more effort just to convert the people using U-Verse in this area to Fiber.

Maybe it’s about time that Congress start reining in the industry lobbying.

It’s a shame that Google Fiber didn’t grow to become a big business. I am currently on a fiber connection and the speed/latency is really good.