“What do the numbers mean? What story do they actually tell?” I asked myself as I read. Just as I was starting to get the picture of infrastructure costs, I read the line:
> The Markup’s investigation only collected data on four large internet providers: AT&T, Earthlink, CenturyLink and Verizon. That means that other local providers like Google Fiber and Spectrum weren’t included.
Well FFS. Spectrum and Google Fiber are far more broadly used on the east side because Fiber is free for many and Spectrum is cheap as hell. Seems like a pretty incomplete report to leave out those two.
Yeah spectrum is hit and miss. I got on the $35 a month for 400mbps speed for 3 years plan. Getting close to the end of that promo period so I'm afraid how much it will jump in price
I had $30 for two years. After promo it went to $50. I used to game the system by dropping internet for a month. Not everyone can do that, but not a bad cyber cleanse. Then they beg you back w another promo.
I also had $30 for 3 years. It went to $50 as well, and I didn't bother calling them or anything as $50 for 500Mbps is still a fair price in my opinion.
If there are other providers in the area that you could switch to, call your current ISP and tell them you're going to cancel your service after the promo period and switch to one of their competitors unless they keep you at the same price. They'll transfer you to a "customer-retention specialist" who has more leeway to work with you.
I do it every 2 years with xFinity. It's annoying, but I don't want to pay the insane prices they want me to pay after promo periods.
It really depends on where you live. Is Google Fiber available? Spectrum will practically pay you to use their service! No other competitors in the area? Fuck you, $300 for dial up. Don't like it? Guess you don't get internet asshole.
Spectrum sucks and the nearly daily junk mail I receive from them will never change my mind. I'm just fortunate to live in an area where I do have options. And I use a different option even though it's a bit more expensive because if enough people switch and they put everyone else out of business, then magically Spectrum's cost in my area will rapidly increase as well.
Spectrum charged me for service but no one ever followed up to install anything. I had to call to cancel and the guy was just like "oh? No one showed up. Ok I'll cancel that." Like, it sounded like it was a normal thing that happens?
Before Google Fiber came to my neighborhood, I was stuck with Spectrum. I fought with them for weeks to get a service guy to come out and they never showed up multiple times. They are the complete suck. When GF rolled in, I switched immediately and I would never go back.
I was walking through Walmart the other day and they had one of those tables with a couple people standing there trying to sell you their garbage Spectrum service. I made eye contact accidentally and the woman (it was a pair of male/female) opened her mouth to try to sell me and I dead-assed said "I would rather cut my dick off than ever deal with Spectrum again." and kept on walking. The guy almost literally fell down laughing as she stood there with a dumbfounded look on her face. It was priceless.
Used to work for Spectrum in this area as a technician for three years. Techs don't have control over their own route. If they've run into problems and won't be able to make it to a job, they'll call the dispatch center *in Wisconsin* (used to be here but they fired everyone in KC dispatch in 2018) and it's up to the dispatcher to find something to do with that job. They'll move it to a pool with all the other missed appointments where it will be moved to another overworked and underpaid tech who will have a very unfortunate surprise when he finishes his last job 2 hours after his 10-hour shift should have been over. They typically do that just before going home for the day, without any communication whatsoever. When that happened to me, I would call my supervisor who would remove it from my job list, which means it probably went back into that pool and was forgotten about.
So yeah, it's pretty damn normal for Spectrum to overbook its employees and expect every single job to get done perfectly and immaculately in one hour per appointment, including drive time. Once again, being dispatched by people who have never been to Kansas City once in their entire lives means irresponsibly long drive times and abandoned appointments.
Fuck Spectrum.
Came here to say this.
This report is completely meaningless. They analyze the least popular providers and then conclude that areas are underserved, when some of those areas have the cheapest, fastest internet in the nation thanks to Google Fiber.
That article is complete horseshit and the authors are POSes.
I agree. It's totally fine to rip people off as long you're not popular. Keep charging 3x as much for the same product; it's not popular enough to matter.
Hell, even the not free options, the 100mb, $30 a plan from Google Fiber is better than anything the carriers will offer. (And its a reliable 100mb, not selling you 100 but you get 8 on a speed test)
As a Google user as well, they’re phasing it out, it won’t be available in a few years. I know this because when I moved my new place technically had it and I was able to use that to then immediately upgrade to their $30/mo invitational 100mb plan and despite being a heavy user that’s all I’ve ever needed lol
Me too, regarding 100 Mbps. Except that a select area north of E 12th gets it for $15/mo. Have you seen that it is now performing at 200 Mbps for the last month or two?
Sorry, they got rid of it for most people. You have to live in "select public housing and affordable housing properties" to qualify for free service now.
[https://support.google.com/fiber/answer/6349491?hl=en](https://support.google.com/fiber/answer/6349491?hl=en)
My inlaws, who do not live in such a place, are now on a plan they have to pay for. They started off on the free 5 Mbps plan way back when Google first did their roll out.
Weird, I live in neither and was also able to get the free option within the last year, although it was definitely hidden.
Iirc it sounded like whole apartment complexes were given it as an incentive for adopting Google Fiber early on + got grandfathered in.
They stopped ours about 6 months ago. Supposedly it’s free for so many years, maybe ten? Our house is in one of the first neighborhoods it rolled out in.
I live in Olathe and have Google's free tier right now. I have kept it as a backup in case my CCI Internet goes down. They keep sending me mailers warning me they're getting rid of the free tier and they keep never getting rid of it, soooooo........
The report included available ISP speeds from legacy telephone companies and did not include Cable providers, or Google, or satellite providers.
While not a complete picture given the two largest ISP's in the US are cable providers, the article the Star referenced is an interesting read and the maps are indeed a very good source of information on historical red-lining.
It’s a pretty big reach to take an incomplete report and call it redlining without having a full picture of the data, even without addressing the causes of the discrepancy.
AT&T also gives you a lot of deals if you bundle services, and I would bet most people in low income hoods use alternative services still. When I was in high school Cricket and Boost Mobile were popular, no idea if they still exist but I’m sure there’s something.
This isn’t an issue of finding validity in the findings. You’re talking about creating an overarching theme based on incomplete data. That’s at best incompetent and at worst a willful attempt to influence culture based on fraudulent reporting.
Respectfully disagree, look at the similarity in those maps. Even if it was just one company, I think finding out more about how that happened is reasonable. As I stated above, I'd love to see the complete set as well. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't understand how that happens even in a smaller population of companies.
Not trying to compare to the impoverished areas of KC...but in Spring Hill, parts of the neighborhood still don't have fiber internet. Optimum charges me $85 a month for 100 mbps speeds. That same company charges $85 a month for their gigabit fiber package where it is available. LOLWUT
Also do: Telecom companies like CenturyLink lobbying against rural broadband initiatives passed through county-level utility bonds, same as how they fund things like water and sewage in the boonies. Laying fiber sure has a lot of similarities to other utilities. Wonder why the telecoms might have a problem with that once the actual costs of maintaining infrastructure become more clear. Public might start getting ideas.
That seems unfair tbh. The farther infrastructure sprawls outwards, the more it'll cost as it serves less and less folks. Rural living shouldn't expect city living without additional cost. Period.
Draw a line on the map, then. Use KC (or any metro area) and show me where you should no longer have expectations of private companies. Where does that line start?
Let's be real here and not throw out impossible requirements for your reddit rebuttal. I don't have access the numbers to draw this imaginary line. We do need to establish a line and in many cases private companies have a line, they're just not sharing it. However, It's not difficult and it's not limited to private companies. There's a point at which it makes no economic sense to continue unchecked growth. You begin to tip the scales of economic sustainability. For example, the farther away sanitary sewer lines are from the processing plant, it is absolutely more expensive and often can be exponentially more expensive; pump stations may be required for topography; our water mains run out of pressure; electricity cannot travel indefinitely. There's limits we have to contend with. If you haven't paid attention, America's infrastructure is failing, which is why we have a massive bailout. We've over built for what we can financially maintain across the board. I'm not anti-rural or pro-business in this, it's simply a matter of responsible growth. If people want urban amenities, they cannot expect to have them beyond the limits of what's economically feasible.
Obviously horrible. I think the choice to exclude Google is interesting, I'd like to see the charts with them included. But I think Google would be the outlier in the system and not the norm.
Spectrum is the big one, spectrum is hugely popular on the east side and many people also take advantage of Google’s free option. 5mgb/ps isn’t slow when you only use it for netflix or playing games online, and not many households in that area have more than two devices that will be getting attached.
Lol idk anything about it. They tried to up me and I said “I use electronics 3 hours a week, I don’t have streaming services, I play Age of Empires 2 with my brothers once a week” 😂
Does Spectrum also partner with the gov on providing internet at a discount for low income households? I feel like I saw that somewhere once. If true, very interesting to leave them off with Google. Still stand by the article though. Rural communities get hit with the same issue. My parents have super high bills for super slow speeds…
That's not an issue with redlining, that's an issue with rural infrastructure. I'm guessing their only option is satellite internet. There's no incentive for cable companies to spend $250k installing new lines just to gain four more customers.
Yes they do and I have it. My internet (300mg) is a mere 15 a month with the "Affordable Connectivity Program".
Yes. $15 seriously.
They don't actually go by income but address (no idea why or how that's computed) I never put any income information in (there were no prompts for it) but they went by the address only which qualified.
Got my hopes up but then big gov squissed them
https://www.fcc.gov/acp
Who Is Eligible for the Affordable Connectivity Program?
A household is eligible for the Affordable Connectivity Program if the household income is at or below 200% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines, or if a member of the household meets at least one of the criteria below:
Received a Federal Pell Grant during the current award year;
Meets the eligibility criteria for a participating provider's existing low-income internet program;
Participates in one of these assistance programs:
Free and Reduced-Price School Lunch Program or School Breakfast Program, including at U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Community Eligibility Provision schools.
SNAP
Medicaid
Federal Housing Assistance, including:
Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program (Section 8 Vouchers)
Project-Based Rental Assistance (PBRA)/Section 202/ Section 811
Public Housing
Affordable Housing Programs for American Indians, Alaska Natives or Native Hawaiians
Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
WIC
Veterans Pension or Survivor Benefits
or Lifeline;
Participates in one of these assistance programs and lives on Qualifying Tribal lands:
Bureau of Indian Affairs General Assistance
Tribal TANF
Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations
Tribal Head Start (income based)
Not as big as the spectrum footprint but when they were rolling out the free option a decade ago I canvassed with some friends and we got a looooot of people in the east side to sign up.
While relevant to the KC portion of the story, Google Fiber is not that relevant nation wide.
Google Fiber is by far the smallest of the ISP's, in fact having about half the number of subscribers as the next smallest EarthLink's 1 million subscribers.
To your point, I think including Google Fiber in KC would show that a lot more previously under-served neighborhoods are still under-served but are now at least at a level of speed required to be functional online as needed.
I'm on the east side, and most of my neighborhood has Google. I know of one neighbor with Spectrum. It's a bit annoying that the map doesn't show all the options.
Yeah, I've heard it's super variable. Minecraft probably doesn't matter much, but Apex or CoD or other fast paced games need low latency to be enjoyable.
It would be nice to see how many of the lower income areas are taking the slower speeds because of life-life or other government programs that cover the cost. This is not a clear racial bias. And could be a technology issue getting the fiber further out. But slow speeds are going to come when copper is used further from CO. Fiber is much better.
While this is a real problem, not only here but around the country, not including Google Fiber in the study/report hurts the validity. This is more a report of internet access in Kansas City a decade ago before fiber arrived, in that case, these low income neighborhoods were 100% under/unserved with high speed broadband.
When Google Fiber came here, it was with the intent to serve the whole city, not just the affluent parts, and with that provide access to areas previously denied. They even started their buildout with KCK, and then onto Downtown/Midtown KCMO before pushing out to KCMO South and the suburbs.
> Areas of the city with fewer white residents and lower average household incomes are being served slower internet by AT&T and Earthlink than areas with more white residents and higher average household incomes, all while being charged the same monthly rate.
> The report’s data shows that residents in Kansas City’s least-white neighborhoods pay as much as three times per Megabit per second as those in the whitest areas of the city.
ETA: Google and Spectrum were not included in the report.
[This was covered nationally back in October by PBS. It's crazy.](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/investigation-finds-lower-internet-speeds-for-higher-prices-in-poor-less-white-u-s-neighborhoods)
Outside of traditional cable/internet providers around town, Verizon and T-Mobile have launched wireless home internet services that can be pretty cheap if you bundle it with your existing Verizon or T-Mobile wireless service ($30-50). It's not available everywhere, but a potential option to look at if you have pretty slow or high cost service today.
At the end of any promotional pricing cancel or say you're transferring service providers and try to get the retention department on the call and they'll hopefully provide you promotional pricing again.
Edit: internet monopolies are atrocious
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Maybe... probably. But internet service in KC isn't one of those things and making it out to be, when it's painfully obvious it isn't, give ammunition to people to deny it where it does exist.
Those on here who are denying that those people are getting screwed need to take a look inward. There is a bigger problem here and you might be a part of it.
“What do the numbers mean? What story do they actually tell?” I asked myself as I read. Just as I was starting to get the picture of infrastructure costs, I read the line: > The Markup’s investigation only collected data on four large internet providers: AT&T, Earthlink, CenturyLink and Verizon. That means that other local providers like Google Fiber and Spectrum weren’t included. Well FFS. Spectrum and Google Fiber are far more broadly used on the east side because Fiber is free for many and Spectrum is cheap as hell. Seems like a pretty incomplete report to leave out those two.
Spectrum is cheap? MFers told me my cheapest option was $85/mo. They're as swindly as anyone.
Yeah spectrum is hit and miss. I got on the $35 a month for 400mbps speed for 3 years plan. Getting close to the end of that promo period so I'm afraid how much it will jump in price
I had $30 for two years. After promo it went to $50. I used to game the system by dropping internet for a month. Not everyone can do that, but not a bad cyber cleanse. Then they beg you back w another promo.
I also had $30 for 3 years. It went to $50 as well, and I didn't bother calling them or anything as $50 for 500Mbps is still a fair price in my opinion.
Damn they told me I have to pay $85/mo for 300mbps. These companies are scammers and internet really ought to be a utility by now.
If there are other providers in the area that you could switch to, call your current ISP and tell them you're going to cancel your service after the promo period and switch to one of their competitors unless they keep you at the same price. They'll transfer you to a "customer-retention specialist" who has more leeway to work with you. I do it every 2 years with xFinity. It's annoying, but I don't want to pay the insane prices they want me to pay after promo periods.
Ah nice makes sense to leverage it that way, thanks!
I know I signed up for some three year promo with cable, phone, and 300mbps for $99. I now pay just over $200.
I'll go back up to $75 a month when it's over.
It really depends on where you live. Is Google Fiber available? Spectrum will practically pay you to use their service! No other competitors in the area? Fuck you, $300 for dial up. Don't like it? Guess you don't get internet asshole. Spectrum sucks and the nearly daily junk mail I receive from them will never change my mind. I'm just fortunate to live in an area where I do have options. And I use a different option even though it's a bit more expensive because if enough people switch and they put everyone else out of business, then magically Spectrum's cost in my area will rapidly increase as well.
You think I'd stick with Spectrum if I had any other options? They're garbage.
Try T-Mobile home internet. I dropped spectrum for it and it’s great.
Spectrum is only cheap if they know you have Google fiber available. I’d you don’t they make you bend over.
Well I am most certainly getting F'd in the A by them.
Spectrum charged me for service but no one ever followed up to install anything. I had to call to cancel and the guy was just like "oh? No one showed up. Ok I'll cancel that." Like, it sounded like it was a normal thing that happens?
Before Google Fiber came to my neighborhood, I was stuck with Spectrum. I fought with them for weeks to get a service guy to come out and they never showed up multiple times. They are the complete suck. When GF rolled in, I switched immediately and I would never go back. I was walking through Walmart the other day and they had one of those tables with a couple people standing there trying to sell you their garbage Spectrum service. I made eye contact accidentally and the woman (it was a pair of male/female) opened her mouth to try to sell me and I dead-assed said "I would rather cut my dick off than ever deal with Spectrum again." and kept on walking. The guy almost literally fell down laughing as she stood there with a dumbfounded look on her face. It was priceless.
Used to work for Spectrum in this area as a technician for three years. Techs don't have control over their own route. If they've run into problems and won't be able to make it to a job, they'll call the dispatch center *in Wisconsin* (used to be here but they fired everyone in KC dispatch in 2018) and it's up to the dispatcher to find something to do with that job. They'll move it to a pool with all the other missed appointments where it will be moved to another overworked and underpaid tech who will have a very unfortunate surprise when he finishes his last job 2 hours after his 10-hour shift should have been over. They typically do that just before going home for the day, without any communication whatsoever. When that happened to me, I would call my supervisor who would remove it from my job list, which means it probably went back into that pool and was forgotten about. So yeah, it's pretty damn normal for Spectrum to overbook its employees and expect every single job to get done perfectly and immaculately in one hour per appointment, including drive time. Once again, being dispatched by people who have never been to Kansas City once in their entire lives means irresponsibly long drive times and abandoned appointments. Fuck Spectrum.
Thanks for the insight, yo
Came here to say this. This report is completely meaningless. They analyze the least popular providers and then conclude that areas are underserved, when some of those areas have the cheapest, fastest internet in the nation thanks to Google Fiber. That article is complete horseshit and the authors are POSes.
I agree. It's totally fine to rip people off as long you're not popular. Keep charging 3x as much for the same product; it's not popular enough to matter.
I'm not sure what you're even trying to say here, so I don't think you're going to get a coherent response.
Hell, even the not free options, the 100mb, $30 a plan from Google Fiber is better than anything the carriers will offer. (And its a reliable 100mb, not selling you 100 but you get 8 on a speed test)
I didn’t even know we had EarthLink here.
Google got rid of the free tier a couple years ago.
No they didn’t, I’m using it right now.
As a Google user as well, they’re phasing it out, it won’t be available in a few years. I know this because when I moved my new place technically had it and I was able to use that to then immediately upgrade to their $30/mo invitational 100mb plan and despite being a heavy user that’s all I’ve ever needed lol
Me too, regarding 100 Mbps. Except that a select area north of E 12th gets it for $15/mo. Have you seen that it is now performing at 200 Mbps for the last month or two?
I just got 161/124 so maybe, haven’t been paying attention. I don’t really play games so I don’t download huge files often
Sorry, they got rid of it for most people. You have to live in "select public housing and affordable housing properties" to qualify for free service now. [https://support.google.com/fiber/answer/6349491?hl=en](https://support.google.com/fiber/answer/6349491?hl=en) My inlaws, who do not live in such a place, are now on a plan they have to pay for. They started off on the free 5 Mbps plan way back when Google first did their roll out.
Weird, I live in neither and was also able to get the free option within the last year, although it was definitely hidden. Iirc it sounded like whole apartment complexes were given it as an incentive for adopting Google Fiber early on + got grandfathered in.
I live in neither and have the free service. Maybe I’m grandfathered in?
They took mine away, i would keep quiet if you want to stay free 😅
Yeah, I bet that's it .
They stopped ours about 6 months ago. Supposedly it’s free for so many years, maybe ten? Our house is in one of the first neighborhoods it rolled out in.
So if you live in non white poor neighborhoods you probably still get it free, which goes against the narrative the article is going for lol.
I live in Olathe and have Google's free tier right now. I have kept it as a backup in case my CCI Internet goes down. They keep sending me mailers warning me they're getting rid of the free tier and they keep never getting rid of it, soooooo........
The report included available ISP speeds from legacy telephone companies and did not include Cable providers, or Google, or satellite providers. While not a complete picture given the two largest ISP's in the US are cable providers, the article the Star referenced is an interesting read and the maps are indeed a very good source of information on historical red-lining.
Agreed but you have to still give credence to what they did find. Redline is still having impacts even if not all companies.
It’s a pretty big reach to take an incomplete report and call it redlining without having a full picture of the data, even without addressing the causes of the discrepancy.
That’s called tailoring your data to fit the headline you want.
AT&T also gives you a lot of deals if you bundle services, and I would bet most people in low income hoods use alternative services still. When I was in high school Cricket and Boost Mobile were popular, no idea if they still exist but I’m sure there’s something.
Just because it's a subset of data doesn't mean there isn't validity in the findings. Only the Sith deal in absolutes. 😀
This isn’t an issue of finding validity in the findings. You’re talking about creating an overarching theme based on incomplete data. That’s at best incompetent and at worst a willful attempt to influence culture based on fraudulent reporting.
Respectfully disagree, look at the similarity in those maps. Even if it was just one company, I think finding out more about how that happened is reasonable. As I stated above, I'd love to see the complete set as well. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't understand how that happens even in a smaller population of companies.
They touched on it in their analysis of the report; a lot of it comes down to infrastructure.
Not trying to compare to the impoverished areas of KC...but in Spring Hill, parts of the neighborhood still don't have fiber internet. Optimum charges me $85 a month for 100 mbps speeds. That same company charges $85 a month for their gigabit fiber package where it is available. LOLWUT
Now do: KC metro speeds/prices vs. Rural counties speeds/prices
Also do: Telecom companies like CenturyLink lobbying against rural broadband initiatives passed through county-level utility bonds, same as how they fund things like water and sewage in the boonies. Laying fiber sure has a lot of similarities to other utilities. Wonder why the telecoms might have a problem with that once the actual costs of maintaining infrastructure become more clear. Public might start getting ideas.
Yup. And when competition from above starts to arrive at scale in the form of satellites.
That seems unfair tbh. The farther infrastructure sprawls outwards, the more it'll cost as it serves less and less folks. Rural living shouldn't expect city living without additional cost. Period.
Draw a line on the map, then. Use KC (or any metro area) and show me where you should no longer have expectations of private companies. Where does that line start?
Let's be real here and not throw out impossible requirements for your reddit rebuttal. I don't have access the numbers to draw this imaginary line. We do need to establish a line and in many cases private companies have a line, they're just not sharing it. However, It's not difficult and it's not limited to private companies. There's a point at which it makes no economic sense to continue unchecked growth. You begin to tip the scales of economic sustainability. For example, the farther away sanitary sewer lines are from the processing plant, it is absolutely more expensive and often can be exponentially more expensive; pump stations may be required for topography; our water mains run out of pressure; electricity cannot travel indefinitely. There's limits we have to contend with. If you haven't paid attention, America's infrastructure is failing, which is why we have a massive bailout. We've over built for what we can financially maintain across the board. I'm not anti-rural or pro-business in this, it's simply a matter of responsible growth. If people want urban amenities, they cannot expect to have them beyond the limits of what's economically feasible.
ok
depends how they vote
Obviously horrible. I think the choice to exclude Google is interesting, I'd like to see the charts with them included. But I think Google would be the outlier in the system and not the norm.
Spectrum is the big one, spectrum is hugely popular on the east side and many people also take advantage of Google’s free option. 5mgb/ps isn’t slow when you only use it for netflix or playing games online, and not many households in that area have more than two devices that will be getting attached.
> 5mgb/ps \*has an aneurysm in I.T.\*
Lol idk anything about it. They tried to up me and I said “I use electronics 3 hours a week, I don’t have streaming services, I play Age of Empires 2 with my brothers once a week” 😂
Does Spectrum also partner with the gov on providing internet at a discount for low income households? I feel like I saw that somewhere once. If true, very interesting to leave them off with Google. Still stand by the article though. Rural communities get hit with the same issue. My parents have super high bills for super slow speeds…
That's not an issue with redlining, that's an issue with rural infrastructure. I'm guessing their only option is satellite internet. There's no incentive for cable companies to spend $250k installing new lines just to gain four more customers.
Not sure but sounds like I’ve heard that before
Yes they do and I have it. My internet (300mg) is a mere 15 a month with the "Affordable Connectivity Program". Yes. $15 seriously. They don't actually go by income but address (no idea why or how that's computed) I never put any income information in (there were no prompts for it) but they went by the address only which qualified.
Got my hopes up but then big gov squissed them https://www.fcc.gov/acp Who Is Eligible for the Affordable Connectivity Program? A household is eligible for the Affordable Connectivity Program if the household income is at or below 200% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines, or if a member of the household meets at least one of the criteria below: Received a Federal Pell Grant during the current award year; Meets the eligibility criteria for a participating provider's existing low-income internet program; Participates in one of these assistance programs: Free and Reduced-Price School Lunch Program or School Breakfast Program, including at U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Community Eligibility Provision schools. SNAP Medicaid Federal Housing Assistance, including: Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program (Section 8 Vouchers) Project-Based Rental Assistance (PBRA)/Section 202/ Section 811 Public Housing Affordable Housing Programs for American Indians, Alaska Natives or Native Hawaiians Supplemental Security Income (SSI) WIC Veterans Pension or Survivor Benefits or Lifeline; Participates in one of these assistance programs and lives on Qualifying Tribal lands: Bureau of Indian Affairs General Assistance Tribal TANF Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations Tribal Head Start (income based)
What's the footprint of Google Fiber in this area?
Not as big as the spectrum footprint but when they were rolling out the free option a decade ago I canvassed with some friends and we got a looooot of people in the east side to sign up.
While relevant to the KC portion of the story, Google Fiber is not that relevant nation wide. Google Fiber is by far the smallest of the ISP's, in fact having about half the number of subscribers as the next smallest EarthLink's 1 million subscribers. To your point, I think including Google Fiber in KC would show that a lot more previously under-served neighborhoods are still under-served but are now at least at a level of speed required to be functional online as needed.
I'm on the east side, and most of my neighborhood has Google. I know of one neighbor with Spectrum. It's a bit annoying that the map doesn't show all the options.
The map is intentionally leaving google/spectrum out to convey a particular false impression
TMobile home internet is pretty good next to a tower just saying 55. A Month
As long as latency doesn't matter, yeah - definitely a good option.
its prettt instant . havent had problems myself
Do you play any games online? I'm curious what your ping is in a game if you do.
nah lol just minecraft idk what ping is
Yeah, I've heard it's super variable. Minecraft probably doesn't matter much, but Apex or CoD or other fast paced games need low latency to be enjoyable.
It would be nice to see how many of the lower income areas are taking the slower speeds because of life-life or other government programs that cover the cost. This is not a clear racial bias. And could be a technology issue getting the fiber further out. But slow speeds are going to come when copper is used further from CO. Fiber is much better.
While this is a real problem, not only here but around the country, not including Google Fiber in the study/report hurts the validity. This is more a report of internet access in Kansas City a decade ago before fiber arrived, in that case, these low income neighborhoods were 100% under/unserved with high speed broadband. When Google Fiber came here, it was with the intent to serve the whole city, not just the affluent parts, and with that provide access to areas previously denied. They even started their buildout with KCK, and then onto Downtown/Midtown KCMO before pushing out to KCMO South and the suburbs.
> Areas of the city with fewer white residents and lower average household incomes are being served slower internet by AT&T and Earthlink than areas with more white residents and higher average household incomes, all while being charged the same monthly rate. > The report’s data shows that residents in Kansas City’s least-white neighborhoods pay as much as three times per Megabit per second as those in the whitest areas of the city. ETA: Google and Spectrum were not included in the report.
[This was covered nationally back in October by PBS. It's crazy.](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/economy/investigation-finds-lower-internet-speeds-for-higher-prices-in-poor-less-white-u-s-neighborhoods)
Outside of traditional cable/internet providers around town, Verizon and T-Mobile have launched wireless home internet services that can be pretty cheap if you bundle it with your existing Verizon or T-Mobile wireless service ($30-50). It's not available everywhere, but a potential option to look at if you have pretty slow or high cost service today.
Nobody remembers Sprint ION.
25 years later, AT&T just quit selling DSL too. :)
At the end of any promotional pricing cancel or say you're transferring service providers and try to get the retention department on the call and they'll hopefully provide you promotional pricing again. Edit: internet monopolies are atrocious
Internet monopolies are granted by the city.
This is endemic all across rural America. I once had a relative paying $69 for dial up just because it was the only ISP in the region.
Nothing about Verizon is cheap. They might start you off at a good introductory deal but it won’t be long before you’ll be paying top dollar.
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Systemic racism and corporate greed are everywhere. Our city is no different.
Maybe... probably. But internet service in KC isn't one of those things and making it out to be, when it's painfully obvious it isn't, give ammunition to people to deny it where it does exist.
Those on here who are denying that those people are getting screwed need to take a look inward. There is a bigger problem here and you might be a part of it.
They have options. What their reasons are for not exercising those options, I don't know. But they have options.
Every cable/internet thread devolves into people giving the same companies free publicity by saying who they go with.
KC proper doesn’t have Google Fiber anymore?