I’m settling into Austin here and preparing a move into my new apartment. As I was working through internet setup, I was impressed to find an all-you-can-eat menu of four easy fiber options for internet, with symmetrical gigabit starting at $60 and no data caps.
Last year when I left San Francisco, I was paying over $100/month for a 100 mbps / 20 mbps cable connection, no better than what I’d first gotten in the late 90s, and with a strict 1.2 TB cap (overage cost: $10 every 50 GB).
I’d tried to find another ISP, any other ISP, but there were none. Previously I’d had MonkeyBrains, but this landlord wouldn’t allow the invasive rooftop antenna installation, and the unit didn’t have good line of sight anyway. Not even the other dinosaurs like AT&T provided service.
Why were there no alternatives? Because “progressive” San Francisco banned them, handing a de facto monopoly on a silver platter to Comcast, which was more than willing to take advantage of that by offering 1990s speeds, punitive data caps, and sky high pricing.
In Austin, competition is legal. Comcast (a garbage company full of garbage people) would love to charge $100 for a 100 mbps connection with no upload, but they offer $70 fiber instead. Why? Because every resident in the building has 3+ other options to choose from. They could try to pull the same racket here, and wouldn’t get a single taker. Turns out, competition works. Who could possibly have known.
On a related note, the apartment I’m renting is $200 cheaper than the San Francisco rent I paid 15 years ago back in 2011. The unit’s in a better neighborhood (right on the park), is larger, considerably better built (concrete between units so you aren’t sharing TV programming with your neighbors), and with full amenities. How? Because again, unlike “progressive” SF, building is legal. It’s so legal that despite booming population growth, rents between 2021-25 are down 4%, or a whopping 19% inflation adjusted.
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