Under a Gibbous Moon

An article by Ars Technica relates how Monticello, Minnesota finally got a fiber optic upgrade to their internet service from their local provide TDS Telecommunications: threaten to build you own. Imagine that the threat of competition would get them to finally cut through the crap and improve their service.

While I live no where near Minnesota, I have experienced this in my neck of the woods in eastern Pennsylvania. The broadband internet for my apartment building was provided by RCN, the local cable company. The only type of cable offered was the ancient one way system. This is where data streams down via the cable by is sent upstream by a good old fashioned modem.

Seriously, my building still had this as its only option up until about a year ago. When I asked RCN, they told me that the wiring in the building was not capable of supporting dublex and that that it was up to the property owners to upgrade it.

So things remained until one fine day when we all received a piece of junk in our mail informing us that Verizon was now offering DSL at our location. Within the week, we received similar communications about how RCN was coming out to upgrade our so that we could be on the cutting edge that, before, wasn’t their problem.

In case you’re curious, I am now with Verizon, their service is cheaper, faster, and even after RCN’s promised upgrades many of the new services (i.e. Video On Demand) still did not work.

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