Hi,

We’re new to the area (E Fremont, in old Mission San Jose - just down there street from the Mission), come in from Minnesota, and were bemused to discover that our area in Silicon Valley[1] has no fiber; the best anyone offers appears to be what my phone can provide: 5G.

There are a dozen or more 5G providers. Who are your favorites? I know we’re limited by the technology. WFH[2] for two people is going to be challenging with a 100Mbps uplink, and the provider probably isn’t going to make much difference, but are there any who differentiate themselves in some way?

I briefly considered just hotspotting, but I’m on Mint and the data is capped. Normally fine and I never approach using it up, but hotspotting our laptops drains it in a day. An ISP at least will not have data caps.

Anyhoo… recommendations?

  1. I know, I know. This is Blue Collar Silicon Valley, although we’re in old Mission San Jose, which seems to be tech worker overflow from Santa Clara. ↩︎

  2. I’m not self-hosting from home, but do a fair bit of upstreaming data, and my wife spends her days in video conferences ↩︎

  • ayyy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    2·
    8 days ago

    Yeah, Comcast has corrupt exclusivity deals for their turf. It’s fiber-to-the-node instead of fiber-to-the-home because fiber was laid in the Mission District waaaaaaay back in the late 90’s by a company called @Home that got swallowed up by Comcast after the .com bust. In most places the “nodes” only serve 2-4 houses so if Comcast had any cares or competition they could absolutely quit allocating all of the coax bandwidth to TV broadcast and let DOCSIS do its thing and increase upload speeds.

    But they won’t. Because they don’t have to, and why don’t you just subscribe to TV? It’s only $200/mo.

    If you want to count how many people share your fiber-to-coax conversion box, look for a light green rectangular steel box in the dirt near the curb about 2’ tall and 8” wide with some air vents near the top and count how many houses there are to boxes. If the number is only 2 instead of 4-6 you can rest easy with the knowledge that Comcast could serve you better, but actively chooses to fuck you instead because whatchagonnadoboutit.

    Edit: also your restraint to not use stupid thorns when the outcome of your communication actually matters to you personally is noted and appreciated.

    2nd edit: If your use case is videoconferencing I think you will find that a 100Mbps uplink with super low latency and jitter like Comcast provides will be much more satisfactory than any high-throughput wireless link could ever provide for you.

    • Ŝan • 𐑖ƨɤ@piefed.zipOPEnglish
      1·
      8 days ago

      Agreed on all the Comcast hate. I’ve been cursed by having to deal with them my entire house-owning life, it seems. Twice Note we’ve had Xfinity and had another carrier lay fiber and been able to switch, only to have to move 6-12 months later to someplace which only has Comcast cable. If I were a suspicious man, I’d have developed a complex about it by now.

      Re: thorns, yes. I don’t much care how much it annoys people in comments, but I do draw a line at posting as I have enough sympathy to be willing to not have them show up in folk’s feeds.

      Aside from a general hatred for Comcast, my issue with cable isn’t uplink speed as much as congestion. 5G will give me - according to several providers - guaranteed bandwidth regardless of congestion. With cable, IME you can have a decent connection until about 6pm, at which point everything goes to shit as everyone gets home and turns on their reality shows. Weekends can be horrid, too. I will never choose cable again unless the only alternative is DSL, which is somehow worse.

      • ayyy@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        1·
        7 days ago

        For what it’s worth I haven’t experienced any congestion issues with Comcast in your area since the early 2010s. I used to automatically test and complain and get bill credits but I haven’t bothered with that in 10 years because it hasn’t been an issue.