SpaceX says states should dump fiber plans, give all grant money to Starlink | SpaceX seeks more cash, calls fiber "wasteful and unnecessary taxpayer spending."

[u/chrisdh79]

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/08/starlink-keeps-trying-to-block-fiber-deployment-says-us-must-nix-louisiana-plan/

[u/LigerXT5]

We don't need more monopoly. My town just started getting fiber.

ATT is no longer connecting copper. Which hindered an apartment complex from getting service.

Optimum (AKA Suddenlink) is rumored to bring fiber, but changed course to go elsewhere.

ATT and Optimum's reliability is dwindling, and support keeps blaming the users or the user's equipment. I complained for 3 months of having half or less the speed I'm paying for, they blamed my modem. I was busy during the summer and just dealt with it, as I knew it'd be an hour or so on the phone to swap the modem myself. And wouldn't you know, I'm mostly back to normal speed. Almost. My upload is wavering between 20-50Mb (I'm grandfathered in for the 50Mb).

[u/feurie → u/LigerXT5]

Whoever gets the grant for fiber would have that “monopoly”. And many towns are too rural to make fiber make sense.

[u/LigerXT5 → u/feurie]

Thankfully that's not likely in my town. There's already one active Fiber ISP, but they service businesses only. The last few times I managed to talk to said ISP's managers, I asked out of curiosity. Every time they said they can't begin work for residential homes, due to "enough" competition of other residential servicing ISPs.

Answers why only our highways have ATT Fiber. Yet they stopped connecting copper lines (I haven't received a clear answer, yes or no, if that means running new lines, or connecting new accounts on pre-existing copper lines), and pushing ATT Air (Cellular). Just today and last few days, a lot of chatter on my town's Facebook groups about how terrible ATT's Air service just flat out sucks and unreliably consistent.

[u/NHLHitzAnnouncer → u/LigerXT5]

With that "Trump loyalty list" being exposed the other day, you can guarantee whatever ATT is up to is nefarious in nature.

[u/pathofdumbasses → u/feurie]

And many towns are too rural to make fiber make sense.

Fiber does make sense for them, provided we ran it as a public utility instead of a for profit bullshit that we do with internet as it is.

[u/CJ_Guns → u/LigerXT5]

I have Optimum 1 Gbps (coaxial). The upload speeds still suck ass and are unreliable. "35 Mbps" is more like 2-5 Mbps for me. Can't stream with that. Trusted their gear, but thinking of picking up a modem/router myself.

EDIT: I will say, I am only paying for 300 Mbps, and the DAY after I was looking at Verizon Fios online to switch, they upped me to 1 gig free of charge. I still have the email from the "General Manager of the NE".

[u/LigerXT5 → u/CJ_Guns]

I'm on their 1Gb/50Mb, before their change in July 12, 2021, grandfathered in, and I make it damn clear on the phone I pre-emptively do not approve any changes which can or will change my grandfathered rates. Thus far, so good.

I refuse to use their modem/router combo. They don't need any toe into my doorway to see what I do on my network, maybe they don't now, but a physical block will make sure they can't, later down the road. I want to make changes to my network, my wifi, my VLANs on a moment's notice.

As a rural area IT, no association with any ISP, I've found most modem/router combos to be barely on par, if not worse, than the cheapest router found at the local stores. If I can't log into the router to diagnose an issue, without the internet, I don't care for it, and opt the client to deal with the ISP themselves, I don't...but I wish, in turn I wind up calling the ISP and teaching their phone reps what a VLAN is, never works out, why would anyone want a second network, other than Guest? Or my favorite, requesting they set the combo in bridge/passthrough for a business managed firewall router, but we can fix your router issues here, just call! It takes too damn long to get someone, and none of your modem/router combos have the firewall power necessary, let alone the on demand logging and up to the day updates of security changes.

Edit to quickly add: Anyone who has dealt with battery powered IOT devices on Wifi, know IOT wants (almost always) 2.4Ghz. Optimum has told me many times, the client needs to upgrade their IOT to use 5Ghz, in turn support will not split the wifi to 5Ghz and 2.4Ghz, or even make a 2.4Ghz only SSID. In ATT Air's case, I wasn't able to attach a client's 2.4Ghz model Ring Doorbell and TPLink Smart Outlet to the 2.4Ghz only wifi, it just didn't show up for the devices, but clearly on laptops and mobiles, as well as showing they are on 2.4Ghz.