Man who built ISP instead of paying Comcast $50K expands to hundreds of homes

Meanwhile I live in San Francisco and I still can’t get affordable symmetric gigabit fiber internet to my home.

More frustrating is to chart how close you actually are to gigabyte symmetric. AT&T and Sonic has wired up large parts of the city but if they don't serve you, it's often by just a block or two, depending on where you are in the city. Rumor has it that local ISP MonkeyBrains is also getting in on the fiber game.

2 years ago, Sonic pulled fiber in my neighborhood in the East Bay. Gigabit is $65/month (including taxes/fees + 1 unused phone line). Very happy with Sonic!

That's nuts to me.

I live in a town of ~15k people in a Southern state, and I have symmetric gigabit. Granted, I pay ~$110/mo, but I have the option of symmetric 300Mbps for ~$50/mo. Neither plan has a data cap.

Then again, I chose my home based on the local ISPs' physical network topology. I didn't rely on their service maps, either - I physically went to their installation folks and got a copy of their maps.

Yeah. A couple blocks away Sonic has wired up the entire neighborhood. I've been begging them to wire up my street for years with no luck. I used to be a customer but switched to Monkeybrains because I couldn't take dsl speeds any longer.

Monkeybrains is my favorite ISP, I currently use them. Affordable and reliable. A couple hiccups over the past few years (my internet speed was cut by 80-90% for a day or two) but resolved with a phone call. Nothing so bad as Comcast regularly becoming nigh-unusable at peak times.

$110 absolutely falls under "affordable" gigabit. If I want symmmetric gigabit, I can get it, with a Comcast business plan. But last I checked it was in the $four-figure range.

I pay around $35/mo for 100Mbps symmetric using a microwave satellite on my house's roof.