I have it and it’s glorious. Spendy, but you’ve got your own 10g port on a switch at Comcast’s headend. And it’s actually 3 gbps total (between the 1g and 10g ports on the switch).

It sounds so much better than dealing with Comcast's cable plant. I keep a set of filters next to my modem so I can fiddle with the signal strength as large temperature changes affect it which in turn causes wild swings in my upload and download speeds. A truck roll might fix it once and for all but in the age of Covid that can't happen. Having fiber to the premises sounds heavenly next to that.

For once it's nice to live in old Europe :)

I have ftth from Fastweb in Italy and I get 1 Gbps down/200 mobs up for 24,95 €/month (with unlimited phone service included).

Apparently they're also going to bump download speed to 2.5 Gbps. You still have only 1gpbs ethernet ports on the provided modem/router, but the core idea is to give at least 500mbps to each client.

The broadband situation varies greatly across the US because we're such a big, sprawling country. Much of my city has access to symmetric 1G/1G connections, for example. Google has even been offering free fiber internet to public housing and select affordable housing buildings ( https://support.google.com/fiber/answer/6349491?hl=en ). Meanwhile, my friend who doesn't live very far from me is limited to DSL because he lives in a sparse location where houses are few and far between, making it prohibitively expensive to run new broadband infrastructure to everyone.

Mandating high speed internet access for everyone sounds great until you look at the costs for running new infrastructure to some of our more remote, rural cities.

>Mandating high speed internet access for everyone sounds great until you look at the costs for running new infrastructure to some of our more remote, rural cities.

Yes but broadband companies have already been given tax breaks and subsides to do that very work. They just haven't because (as an example) AT & T argues DSL still qualifies as sufficient for internet access. The original article was about upping the speed required to meet the definition of broadband from 25 down 3 up to 100 symmetrical. I'm not sure that'll actually make a difference unless broadband providers are required to install that new infrastructure.

When you’re talking about subsidies, cable companies are in a totally different boat than phone companies, because they’re regulated under an entirely different section of the communications act. It wasn’t until the Obama administration that broadband even came within the ambit of federal subsidies. Until then, the money was just for phone.

>Mandating high speed internet access for everyone sounds great until you look at the costs for running new infrastructure to some of our more remote, rural cities.

The same could have been said for water, gas, sewage, electric, and mail.

That's why Starlink will make sense mainly in the US, as there's only an antenna for the user to plug, there's no landline to extend. I estimate AT LEAST 25 million potential American customers that are in the same situation as your friend

One thing that really can bog down these infra things in the US (ya know, besides the general "got mine. screw you!" attitude of the oligarchs who rule this place) is the urban sprawl. On the same plot of land, you can have 8-16 housing units in a low-rise apartment building paying that 24.95 a month, whereas in the US that would be a single-occupancy detached home most likely.

Can you get good fiber (or internet in general) outside major urban centers in Italy?

i believe the 2gb symmetrical plan is actual fiber to the home, rather than the cable of the 1gb plan. but im not an expert by any means

According to the second article I posted where a medium.com user shared his experience, yes Comcast brought fiber to his premises.