[mountainofdeath]

FWIW, I have Verizon FiOS in NYC at a reasonable price. The city of NY and the state do their best to keep Verizon and Spectrum at arms length.

By way of contrast, my parents live in the mid-west and were plagued between a choice of slow AT&T DSL or expensive but slightly faster Comcast/Spectrum/Consolidated (A terrible overbuild provider) cable internet.

The game changed entirely when Google Fiber started rolling out. First in the inner city, then to inner suburbs and just recently to the outer suburbs after spending the better part of decade fighting city councils that obviously preferred Spectrum and AT&T.

Since then 1. Prices have stabilized and declined somewhat from the incumbent carriers. 2. Spectrum did an in-place upgrade and now 500 Mbps down is standard for a reasonable price. AT&T turned around and built it's own GPON network ahead of Google fiber in areas where Google didn't have service.

Isn't competition wonderful?

[freedomben]

City councils and planning commissions are the worst. They are so captured by people in the real estate business that you can't do anything without consulting them (agents, brokers, developers, investors, even flippers, mortgage people, and lawyers). Non-real estate people that run and make it will find that 95% of the donors are real-estate industry people, so good luck if you have positions that they don't find agreeable. Oh and the same people own the state politicians too, so even if you do manage to get the city council, state law is going to tie your hands pretty dramatically.