There are not plenty of ISPs for 99% of people in the US. You have one provider, maybe 2 if you’re lucky, and if you’re really lucky one will offer an uncapped symmetrical fiber connection. But that’s not the case for 99% of people.
I live in the Bay Area - my options are shitty Comcast for $66 for 60Mbps or $50 for 18Mbps from AT&T. I live in a building with 75+ units. Imagine that. My parents in a third world country have far more options, with better speeds (including Fiber) and far cheaper options too.
> my options are shitty Comcast for $66 for 60Mbps or $50 for 18Mbps from AT&T.
So sonic.net doesn't service your area? They were a great CLEC/ISP when I was in the bay area, mostly carried over AT&T lines so you could get it anywhere AT&T did DSL.
It's irrelevant if you can only get 18Mbps. I pay Comcast $95 to get 150 or 250 down, internet only, because ATT and Sonic can only get me 40.
Thankfully, ATT just rolled fiber down my street last week, and I was on Sonic's preorder list the day after they announced it for my neighborhood. No timeframe, but I'm ecstatic to be using a local ISP again, not to mention symmetric gigabit with no caps for half of what comcast charges me.
When I lived in Chicago, the building I was in with almost 700 units the only choice for internet was AT&T DSL which struggled to get to 3 Mbps, simply because the wiring in the building was old.
I know a business in Chicago that has to do everything on tethered cell phone connections because the phone lines are too old to handle DSL, and the cable company won’t run a line across the street to their factory.
Moving to the Bay Area, I was surprised to find such limited ISPs given that the Bay is home to SV and its neighbors. I don't know what I expected, but I certainly didn't expect it to be as limited as it is here.
Yes, I misinterpreted the comment. After being frustrated by lack of any decent internet almost everywhere, I have a knee jerk response to the words “plenty of ISPs”. You can go all the way from coast to coast and still have to choose being abused by either Comcast/Verizon/ATT/Centurylink/Spectrum/Charter.
