1. Positive experiences with fiber (speed, symmetry, low latency)
- “And here in SF we have like 55%? Been waiting for it for 10 years in my hood.” – MrGando
- “In metro Atlanta… I pay a bit more with AT&T now, but it’s so worth every penny between streaming, gaming, and personal projects.” – chalupa-supreme
- “Absolutely. Buy multi‑GB game, watch it download quickly at gigabit speeds, be able to play it two minutes later.” – AndrewDucker
- “Also 1 Gbps symmetric allows me to backup my NAS offsite without impacting anyone else.” – outworlder
2. Barriers to fiber deployment (cost, geography, competition, regulation)
- “For buried infrastructure where the coaxial cable company already sells internet, you will almost never recoup your investment to bury new fiber and run it to all the homes.” – lotsofpulp
- “Sweden pushed for FttH even though all outdated cabling was already buried, no idea why just a city like SF cannot do the same.” – piva00
- “Bufferbloat was horrendous with Comcast… The only way around it was to cap download and upload to 80%, and that's a large dent on the already anemic upload.” – outworlder
- “FCC abolishes gigabit speed goal, suggesting it is unfair to slower technologies.” – pbkompasz
3. Pricing and value perception (Europe’s low‑cost fiber vs. US caps/fees)
- “Do you have a data cap? The cable provider near me charges you $10 for every 50 GB over 1.25 TB monthly… I ended up moving to fiber eventually, it was cheaper for the same speed and the upload speed matched the download speed as well.” – RiverCrochet
- “I moved to France from Portland, Oregon this year. I went from 1 Gb to 8 Gb fiber for half the cost in France.” – audidude
- “These sorts of prices are unheard of in the US, so incredibly low.” – epistasis (referring to EU fiber plans)
- “I don’t notice… What I did notice was the 1 mbit/s upload speed that came with it. Uploading large files to Google Drive was impossible.” – frollogaston
4. Critique of government subsidy programs and FCC decisions
- “Reminder that US taxpayer money was handed to the ISPs by the truckload on the promise of fiber. They took that infrastructure money and ran with it.” – Night_Thastus
- “In SF they burn stuff on the streets to prevent any change to the physical structure. No new apartments, no new infrastructure allowed.” – epistasis
- “The Carr FCC said last year that the gigabit goal ‘may be unreasonably prejudicial to technologies such as satellite and fixed wireless…’” – dguest
- “Since the FCC no longer consistently enforces ‘public good’ requirements on commercial exploitation… they're increasingly becoming a drag on innovation…” – mrandish