I’m sorry I was only speaking of the US, as this is a US company.
> You already knew that home broadband competition is sorely lacking through much of the US, but a new report released today helps shed more light on Americans who have just one choice for high-speed Internet.
> Comcast is the only choice for 30 million Americans when it comes to broadband speeds of at least 25Mbps downstream and 3Mbps upstream, the report says. Charter Communications is the only choice for 38 million Americans. Combined, Comcast and Charter offer service in the majority of the US, with almost no overlap.
> Yet many Americans are even worse off, living in areas where DSL is the best option. AT&T, Verizon, and other telcos still provide only sub-broadband speeds over copper wires throughout huge parts of their territories. The telcos have mostly avoided upgrading their copper networks to fiber—except in areas where they face competition from cable companies.
Also, “broadband” being 25 mbit is their lobby’s choice and definitely should not be a legitimate threshold in the modern world.
Then add that even though others operate in different regions, they generally do not compete for high speed service or are very poor at delivering it, thereby not actually presenting an alternative even though they “officially” do.
Also, be clear that these two companies, that dominate areas of the US, collude.
While 30 million is too much, that’s less than 10% of the population. In the most populated areas it’s most common to have a duopoly. Sucks but “I don’t think there are many places that aren’t Comcast only” is not close to being accurate. They’re not even the dominant provider in Texas and New York.
If anything it makes it easier for them to survive, antitrust below the national scale is much harder to apply.
> At least 49.7 million Americans only have access to broadband from one of the seven largest cable and telephone companies. In total, at least 83.3 million Americans can only access broadband through a single provider.
> Over the past two years, federal stats suggest that Charter and Comcast have an absolute monopoly over fewer households, but we think this is mostly a mirage resulting from how the FCC reports data. A significant number of the census blocks showing new competition are likely only partially served.
The fiber broadband association themselves reports over 70 million household availability for fiber. That just doesn’t square with your original statement.
> Don’t know why you’ve got such a pro-Comcast / Charter bent
Kindly go fuck yourself.
Stick to facts without baseless accusations.
DSL / wireless does not count. Very, very few homes have access to fiber. Most homes only have coaxial broadband, and most of those are only served by Comcast.
I do not believe 70M households have fiber available. I have searched many, many houses in many, many metros, and the ones with fiber are few and far between.
The FCC map is not reliable at all. You only see that fiber is not available when you search the address on the ISP website and it returns with the option for DSL. Even in the region I live now, the FCC map says fiber available in most of the city, but in reality, it’s only the newer housing developments. 90% are older homes in developments from a couple decades ago, and they only have coaxial.
The common factor in fiber availability is a housing development built after 2005 or even 2010, or built so long ago that the utilities are overhead and maybe they could string up fiber for a sufficiently low price.
Any home in any development built 1970 to 2010 with underground utilities that did not already have fiber will most likely not have fiber.
Also, any apartment building from before ~2010 will not have Ethernet wired to the apartment, only coaxial wires, and the apartment building owner is not going to wire it up for fiber, even if fiber is run to the building itself.
These numbers are from the FBA themselves, I don’t see how it is in their interests to lie that way (they have anticonsumer reasons for not doing so, this is not a defense).
I’m more inclined that you’re experiencing sampling bias. Infrastructure is clustered - fiber or anything like that is not “few and far between”. More like large swaths have coverage within deserts. If you’re always looking two doors from the house in the desert, it too does not have water.
I would personally never buy a house with comcast only and would likely not without fiber (I currently live in a Uverse/Shitcast ghetto which essentially leaves me with only one option). I sympathize with the shittiness of US broadband but I see no reason to stretch the facts, they suck regardless. And we do not represent the normal customer. In reality wireless options and even comcast are options to people if they compete on price, and fiber does have to compete with those in the real world.
> These numbers are from the FBA themselves, I don’t see how it is in their interests to lie that way. I’m more inclined that you’re experiencing sampling bias. Infrastructure is clustered - fiber or anything like that is not “few and far between”. More like large swaths have coverage within deserts. If you’re always looking two doors from the house in the desert, it too does not have water.
I don’t know why they would lie either, maybe they are using FCC maps since that is the best data they can afford. And given the low rates of new construction, I still doubt the figures, given the economics of a business installing fiber in older neighborhoods with underground utilities.
I would love to be wrong though, as I also nix living in any place only served by coaxial internet.
> In reality wireless options and even comcast are options to people if they compete on price, and fiber does have to compete with those in the real world.
Yes, which is why installing fiber has to be a taxpayer funded effort by the government, because it will never make financial sense for a business to spend all that money to install the infrastructure and have Comcast just lower their prices to below the fiber business’s installation costs.
Really? There are entire states (and countries) without a Comcast presence.