Hot take: fiber to the home is overrated in small towns

Spent last week in rural Nebraska wiring up a 12-house subdivision and everyone kept asking about fiber. The cost to run it is double what coax would be and these folks just stream Netflix and check email. Why are we pushing gigabit speeds when a solid 100 meg plan works fine for 95% of people out here?

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sarah8181mo ago

Oh man, someone finally said it! I watched a whole neighborhood lose their minds because they got fiber and then used it to... watch the same four shows on Netflix they were already watching. Meanwhile the farmer down the road just wants his grain prices to load faster than dial-up and honestly coax would do that just fine. But no, we gotta dig up everyone's yard twice and charge them extra so they can brag about a speed test they'll never actually use. It's like buying a race car to drive to the mailbox.

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dianahayes1mo ago

Funny how we never ask what people actually need before we start digging up their whole street. The farmer with the slow grain prices and the family streaming Netflix have totally different problems, but the answer for both is always "more fiber." Nobody ever stops to question if the real issue is just bad wifi placement or an old router that a $50 fix would solve. Like, who decided that everything needs to be gigabit when most people can't even tell the difference past 100 megs? The speed test is the only thing that gets faster, not the actual loading of things that matter. So what would you say if the utility company asked you first, "what do you actually do online?" because I bet the answers would barely justify half the upgrades happening everywhere.

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