ID10T Techcast
ID10T Techcast is a weekly podcast where Tyler Woodward, a broadcast engineer, goes over the past week's news in Linux, tech and broadcasting and tells you what he thinks about it. Episodes run 15 to 30 minutes.
Every episode runs through the week's stories, like Linux security holes and open source, Big Tech and AI companies, the FCC, and radio and TV, then ends with one longer opinion piece. Some weeks it's a security hole, some weeks it's why radio isn't dead yet.
The show is for right to repair, privacy, a real nationwide US privacy law like Europe's GDPR, decentralized social media like Mastodon and Bluesky, and independent and community radio. It's critical of big corporations, tech billionaires and AI companies, and it calls out both political parties when they earn it. Everything's explained in plain English, no jargon.
More at ID10T.fm.
ID10T Techcast
Fiber powered is a lie: how ISPs sell you coax and call it glass
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
There's a box on my basement wall where light turns into internet, and most people paying for "fiber" don't have anything close to it. I break down the term "fiber powered," why Spectrum is selling coax as if it's the real thing, and how the FTTH, FTTN, FTTC alphabet soup exists to hide exactly where your fiber connection actually stops.
I also get into the AT&T versus Spectrum lawsuit, because AT&T is suing Charter over the fiber powered branding and they're not wrong. But AT&T pulled the same trick with fake 5G labels on 4G phones a few years back, so nobody in this fight is innocent. I explain what HFC networks are, why your upload speed gets choked on shared coax, and what the fine print is actually admitting when you read it closely.
This is a consumer rights problem dressed up as a tech story. If you're paying for internet every month, you deserve to know what wire is actually running to your house.
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The word fiber ends up printed on bills for wires that are copper that have no light whatsoever
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to go through.
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Little pulses of electricity.
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And there's a whole vocabulary built to keep people from noticing it.
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A lot of buzzwords.
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A lot of marketing tricks and tactics.
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Well, I'm going to pull the veil on all of that marketing jargon today.
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We're going to talk about this because there's a term that's being used in the industry called
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quote unquote fiber powered.
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Well, we're going to talk about that.
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We're going to talk about Spectrum's HFC network, the whole FTTX naming game and yes, I will
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tell you what these acronyms mean in a little bit.
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We're also going to talk about AT&T versus Spectrum, yeah those two are in a fight right
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now.
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And the one consumer protection that showed up worked and is already getting trimmed
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back.
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Now, there's a little box on the wall in my basement where the light comes in and no, that's
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not a metaphor.
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Real pulses of light, a hair-thin strand of glass runs from the pole in my backyard underground
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to my basement and into a little box called an ONT.
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I know it's a lot of acronyms.
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That one I'll tell you right now.
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That stands for optical network transport.
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I have real fiber.
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The whole thing.
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One gigabit symmetrical.
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One gig up, one gig down.
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And no, I don't need two gigs, I don't need two and a half gigs, I don't need five
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and only ten.
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All these tech YouTubers that like to gloat about how faster internet
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is.
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Some of them, I've seen this a couple times on YouTube, some of them like to boast about
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having ten gigabit per second coming into their house.
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Nobody needs that.
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Sorry, it's a side tangent, sorry, I just had to get that off my chest.
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Now, back to fiber running into my house, at least a one gigabit per second that's
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running to my basement, to my unified system and going through the house.
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I know how lucky that is.
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I know how lucky I am to have fiber here to the home because most people don't
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have that and a lot of them are thinking that they do because they've been
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duped by the internet service providers.
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This is the whole reason I've been annoyed this week because that AT&T
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versus Spectrum fight that we're going to talk about, AT&T is calling
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out Spectrum's shenanigans.
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But, but, AT&T is not exactly in the clear on this because they've
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done the same BS with 5G on their 4G network.
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I got a lot to talk about, I'm worked up this week.
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I'm Tyler, thanks for being here.
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This is the Tyler Woodward Project at TylerWoodward.me.
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This is the show where I show up, worked up on things.
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That most people probably don't care about, but I do because I'm just
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that kind of person.
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Some people like trains, I like tech.
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You know, and the other thing is too, a lot of things used to be a
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lot simpler than they are now.
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And today's word is fiber.
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And how he keeps ending up printed on bills for wires that are not
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copper, they do not contain any light.
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They're pulses of electricity.
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Everything I'm about to say here is my opinion.
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My read on it, fair warning.
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Yes, as if you couldn't tell already by the first four minutes,
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I'm running a little warm on this one.
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Here's my honest, the mission up front.
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I have no skin in this fight.
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I already have the good version.
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Nobody's fooling me here.
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I'm smart enough to know what the difference is between fiber and
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copper, but I know some of, some of you out there listening
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might not, and I want to help you get the good stuff, the good
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internet, the real stuff, because if you can get fiber, get
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fiber.
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I can look at the box that's on the basement wall.
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In the upload speed next to it on my speed test and tell you
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exactly what I'm getting 940 megabits per second up 940 megabits
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per second down because you got to account for a little bit of
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overhead when you're going back from the fiber to the copper
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network.
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Sorry, just got to point that out there.
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So this whole episode is me being a little upset on behalf
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of people that have been sold this fiber powered promise and are
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not actually really getting fiber to the home.
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Close, close, but not quite.
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You know, so again, this is just me being mad on behalf of
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other people, which is either fine, which is either a fine
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way to spend an afternoon or is going to be deeply insufferable.
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And I can't really tell you really which days or which at this
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point, but I keep watching people get sold the same word that I
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got in the mail the other day from a certain internet service
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provider for a wire that will never do what my wire is doing
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here at the home.
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I can't let that sit because I hate this marketing crap.
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They're trying to sell you something it is not.
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So let me tell you what fiber powered really means, because it
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sounds like it should mean fiber.
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And again, as we've already established, it doesn't.
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Real fiber is a strand of glass carrying your data as light
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all the way to your house.
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And the best part about fiber is it's symmetrical upload is as
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fast as that download almost no lag low latency if you're if
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you're a gamer, it's what you want.
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It doesn't care about the weather or your neighbors.
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That's what's in the box on my basement wall fiber powered
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means the glass runs to a box down the street and from that
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box to your house.
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It's copper coax the cable TV wire.
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Pitcher it that wire that you screw screw into the back of your
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TV, I guess whoever still has cable TV, that's what it is.
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The same one that ran cartoons into your living room.
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In 1998, the word doing all lifting there is powered.
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Your internet is powered by fiber the way a gas station
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sandwich is powered by a kitchen microwave somewhere.
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Technically, yes, a kitchen was involved, not the same as
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it being fresh.
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And here's the trick.
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It isn't aimed at the part of you that knows what coax is.
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It's aimed at the tired part that just wants the internet
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to work no shame in it, but that's the target that last
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stretch of copper is where you lose the thing you thought
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that you bought that you're paying monthly for, you know,
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$70, $80, $90 a month, your upload is getting choked down
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to a fraction of your download.
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You share that copper with the whole block.
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Your neighbor, both sides, the neighbor behind you,
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neighbors cross street, you're sharing it with all of them.
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So when everybody gets home in the evening after work,
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after school, and turns on the TV, the computer,
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the laptop, you feel it.
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That isn't fiber.
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That's cable wearing.
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Well, since it's almost Halloween, a fiber costume.
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The company doing this, the loudest is Spectrum.
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And yes, Spectrum has grown quite a bit over the last few years.
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They bought a bright, what was a bright house in Florida?
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They bought a Time Warner, and I'm sure they've gobbled up
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other little smaller ISP and cable companies all over the country.
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The other name they go by or used to go by, the parent name,
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is still Charter Communications.
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You know, if you wanted the parent corporate name.
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They ran a whole campaign calling the service Fiber Power
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delivered over the Spectrum Fiber Broadband Network.
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Sounds fancy, right?
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Sounds like, oh man, I'm getting fiber, like those other people
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that have Google fiber and whatever.
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I don't know what else is out there.
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What is it now?
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What did what did Centralint call it?
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Quantum fiber.
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In the fine print.
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And it is very fine print.
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They even admit it.
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Powered by fiber connected to your home by coaxial cable.
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They wrote down the truth.
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They just wrote it really fricking small.
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So here's my message to Spectrum.
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And I mean the people upstairs, those marketing executives,
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not the tech that's trying to install your service.
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They're just trying to do their job.
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You already own the Fiber Spectrum.
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It runs to the node at the end of the block.
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You're one bill away from the real thing.
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Finish it.
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Pull the glass, the last stretch to the house.
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And you have money for it.
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It's sitting in the pay package of whoever signed off
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on the word powered or the term fiber powered.
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Take a slice of what you hand the executive suite
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and put it in the ground.
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In the real wire all the way to the home.
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You keep printing the word fiber in front of.
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All right, I'll get off my soapbox on that one.
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And remember like 12 minutes ago, I said I would explain
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what all these acronyms mean.
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So let's do that in the alphabet.
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Well, it's, it's, it's a bit.
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FTTH, FTTN, FTTC.
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What does all that mean?
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Well, FTTH is fiber to the home.
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FTTN is fiber to the node.
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And well, FTTC, if you haven't guessed yet, is fiber to the curb.
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They call the family FTTX, fiber to the X.
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And the X is the con.
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It's wherever the fiber quits.
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Fiber to the node means the glass reaches the box on your street.
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Usually down on a pole somewhere or in a cabinet on a corner.
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And it stops there.
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The only letter.
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My dog's over here saying hi.
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Hey Pixie.
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I gotta give her some pets.
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She's, she's very needy.
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All right.
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Where was I?
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Oh yeah.
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So that FTTX, that's where the fiber ends.
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That's where the glass is reaching some cabinet or a pole on your street.
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The only letter that means what you were sold if you were getting fiber to the home, FTTH.
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Well, I just gave it away.
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H. Home.
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All the way to the door.
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Fiber powered.
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That stupid term is just fiber to the node down the street.
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And then it rides on coax the rest of the way to your house.
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Now, I'm not saying okay, you know, a few hundred feet.
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That's where the fiber ends and you're getting it coaxed because eventually it does go to Ethernet.
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It does turn back to coax somewhere usually in your house.
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The problem though.
00:14:18.200 --> 00:14:21.760
And we might get further into this is HFC.
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What is it?
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I'm blinking on what HFC means.
00:14:26.960 --> 00:14:31.200
But basically when you're on copper, you don't get the symmetrical speeds.
00:14:31.420 --> 00:14:33.120
You know how lopsided is asymmetrical.
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You usually get what 100 megs down and 10 megs up.
00:14:39.100 --> 00:14:42.160
That's where the limitation of this technology comes in.
00:14:42.160 --> 00:14:47.820
Now, spectrum in some areas is doing high frequency split or whatever it is,
00:14:48.200 --> 00:14:52.940
where you can do symmetrical on coax, but that's not widespread yet.
00:14:53.760 --> 00:14:56.920
So, because I know someone's going to type in the comments and call that out.
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So I'll get that out of the way now.
00:15:00.740 --> 00:15:01.400
All right.
00:15:01.720 --> 00:15:03.940
Now, here's the other part.
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This is where it starts to get good.
00:15:07.680 --> 00:15:09.600
And I mean infuriating.
00:15:10.400 --> 00:15:13.860
Remember how we talked about AT&T at the beginning of this episode?
00:15:14.540 --> 00:15:15.080
Yeah.
00:15:15.520 --> 00:15:25.300
AT&T, the same AT&T that a few years ago decided to do some shenanigans.
00:15:25.380 --> 00:15:26.280
Yeah, we're talking about that one.
00:15:26.880 --> 00:15:34.000
The company that got mad enough to drag spectrum into court over this big blue.
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Last month, in August, AT&T has sued Charter and federal court over in Texas
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arguing that fiber-powered tricks people into thinking they're buying real fiber.
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Which we've established.
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You're not.
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You're getting it on coax.
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And on the facts, AT&T, they're right.
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I hate admitting it, but, you know, big blue is right.
00:16:08.060 --> 00:16:12.240
But you have to know, again, who's making the argument.
00:16:12.680 --> 00:16:14.020
Again, AT&T.
00:16:14.340 --> 00:16:20.620
AT&T, the same company that I mentioned a few years back, did some of their own shenanigans.
00:16:22.200 --> 00:16:30.340
AT&T, took an ordinary 4G phone network and pushed a little software update
00:16:30.340 --> 00:16:32.900
that made your phone say 5G-E.
00:16:37.300 --> 00:16:39.760
You know, in the corner? 5G-E.
00:16:40.400 --> 00:16:41.900
You want to know what the E was?
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Well, the E stood for evolution.
00:16:47.980 --> 00:16:49.440
It wasn't 5G.
00:16:49.440 --> 00:16:53.560
It was 4G with a little fancy new sticker on it.
00:16:54.120 --> 00:16:55.960
Well, remember Sprint?
00:16:56.140 --> 00:16:56.820
Remember those guys?
00:16:57.160 --> 00:16:57.600
They sued.
00:16:58.260 --> 00:17:01.880
A review board told them to knock it off.
00:17:02.800 --> 00:17:04.100
And eventually they did.
00:17:05.680 --> 00:17:12.500
So the company, standing up in court right now saying you shouldn't have to be an expert
00:17:12.500 --> 00:17:18.880
to know what you're buying is the same company that put a fake 5G label on millions of phones.
00:17:19.560 --> 00:17:20.940
It's rich, isn't it?
00:17:21.500 --> 00:17:23.520
That's how these corporate telecom companies work.
00:17:24.320 --> 00:17:27.100
They're both right about each other.
00:17:28.980 --> 00:17:30.960
That's the joke, if you haven't figured it out.
00:17:32.140 --> 00:17:38.120
Everybody in this fight has done the exact thing they're accusing the other guys of doing.
00:17:38.680 --> 00:17:40.520
Nobody here is the good guy.
00:17:40.960 --> 00:17:44.440
They're all taking turns being the one who got caught.
00:17:46.080 --> 00:17:49.660
And it isn't only the word fiber.
00:17:50.140 --> 00:17:52.600
The whole vocabulary is built like this.
00:17:53.860 --> 00:17:54.940
Up to.
00:17:56.420 --> 00:17:58.020
Watch for up to.
00:17:59.400 --> 00:18:02.620
When they say speeds up to a thousand.
00:18:03.380 --> 00:18:04.260
Up to.
00:18:05.220 --> 00:18:06.320
That's the whole sentence.
00:18:07.600 --> 00:18:11.100
You can get a fraction of that every day.
00:18:11.840 --> 00:18:13.740
And they've told you the truth.
00:18:15.340 --> 00:18:16.500
It's a ceiling.
00:18:18.880 --> 00:18:21.520
That they have no plans of helping you reach.
00:18:22.160 --> 00:18:23.820
Sold to you as a promise.
00:18:24.320 --> 00:18:25.260
You signed up for it.
00:18:25.300 --> 00:18:26.540
500 megabits per second?
00:18:26.940 --> 00:18:32.800
Yeah, but read that little word up in the corner that says up to 500 megabits per second.
00:18:34.300 --> 00:18:37.480
Most people don't achieve those speeds.
00:18:37.480 --> 00:18:42.840
For a various number of reasons, it could be the network outside the home.
00:18:43.000 --> 00:18:46.160
I'm talking about the cable company, the phone company, whoever.
00:18:46.940 --> 00:18:48.500
It could be their own home equipment.
00:18:48.700 --> 00:18:50.200
It could be their own local network.
00:18:50.760 --> 00:18:54.020
So many different factors, but yes, it could be that.
00:18:54.280 --> 00:19:00.160
But a lot of times, remember that fiber is going to a node on the corner of your block
00:19:00.160 --> 00:19:02.440
and getting split with everybody in your neighborhood.
00:19:03.220 --> 00:19:14.860
So up to, well, if everybody is using the 500 megabits per second that they're sold,
00:19:16.940 --> 00:19:20.900
well, something's got to give somewhere if there's only a gig pipe coming into that node.
00:19:21.520 --> 00:19:25.620
A lot of times it's 10 gigs, but you get to just what I'm saying.
00:19:33.040 --> 00:19:41.260
Now, give me one fact, and then I'll be done with the chart stuff.
00:19:42.440 --> 00:19:51.560
Charter, the company running the loudest fiber ads, and I put fiber in quotes,
00:19:52.700 --> 00:19:59.060
told the government that it's real 100% fiber.
00:20:00.660 --> 00:20:07.920
The glass to your house version reaches only a small number of customers.
00:20:08.600 --> 00:20:14.980
Everybody else gets the fiber ads that rides on copper.
00:20:16.260 --> 00:20:20.720
So the fiber and fiber powered is real.
00:20:22.080 --> 00:20:24.840
It's just probably not going to your house.
00:20:26.440 --> 00:20:27.960
Then there's the price.
00:20:29.920 --> 00:20:34.000
The number they quote you is usually a promo.
00:20:34.760 --> 00:20:39.840
Charter does this, Comcast does this, AT&T does this, Verizon does this.
00:20:40.440 --> 00:20:46.300
They usually give you some awesome ass promotion to get you in the door, sign the piece of paper,
00:20:46.880 --> 00:20:53.600
and it's real, it's a real price, usually for a year or two, and then it climbs.
00:20:54.780 --> 00:21:00.840
And then it climbs more, and then next year they raise the price again, maybe twice a year.
00:21:01.780 --> 00:21:06.900
And the climb, well that was their whole plan, because these guys are cons.
00:21:08.220 --> 00:21:15.940
The cheap number was debate, and a lot of them cap your data and watch what you do on the pipe
00:21:15.940 --> 00:21:19.820
you rent from them anyways, because you're the product and the wire is debate.
00:21:21.600 --> 00:21:24.160
All right, I gotta take a breath here.
00:21:25.220 --> 00:21:26.520
That was a grim run.
00:21:27.020 --> 00:21:28.600
You stuck it out so far.
00:21:29.020 --> 00:21:30.000
Hey, power to you.
00:21:33.660 --> 00:21:41.760
Let me talk about the part where I need to stop joking, because this is the one that got me.
00:21:41.760 --> 00:21:45.140
For a minute there, we had a fix.
00:21:46.240 --> 00:21:47.900
We had a real fix.
00:21:48.880 --> 00:21:59.200
A few years ago, the government made these companies put a label on their service, a broadband label.
00:22:00.400 --> 00:22:09.940
If you haven't seen it, they modeled it on the nutrition fix, the little rectangle that you see on the side of a cereal box.
00:22:09.940 --> 00:22:12.280
I loved it.
00:22:14.060 --> 00:22:19.920
Standardize, same format no matter who the internet service provider was.
00:22:21.040 --> 00:22:23.500
Here's the real price after the promo.
00:22:24.180 --> 00:22:30.380
Here's the real typical speed that you will see, none of that up to fantasy nonsense.
00:22:31.400 --> 00:22:36.660
Here's the data cap, the fees, all of it.
00:22:36.660 --> 00:22:50.720
In one box, a nutrition label looking box for broadband facts that you could hold up next to another company and actually compare the real details.
00:22:52.480 --> 00:22:57.440
It was the one thing that cut through all of this nonsense.
00:22:58.060 --> 00:23:04.080
You didn't have to know what HFC meant, which I'm blanking on.
00:23:05.520 --> 00:23:11.420
You didn't have to decode what Howard Bye meant.
00:23:12.120 --> 00:23:15.820
The label was going to tell you.
00:23:18.240 --> 00:23:21.340
They kicked in for everybody back in 2024.
00:23:23.640 --> 00:23:31.640
And, well, I gesture to everything what's happening right now around the country, in this country,
00:23:32.640 --> 00:23:41.460
by late 2025, the FCC voted to start pulling pieces of it back.
00:23:43.040 --> 00:23:44.800
Because, of course, they did.
00:23:45.880 --> 00:23:51.440
Now, I want to be fair because they're not deleting the whole label.
00:23:52.700 --> 00:23:55.800
They still get an A for effort or whatever.
00:23:57.380 --> 00:24:02.480
They're stripping out requirements because I'm sure they've been lobbied to.
00:24:03.660 --> 00:24:14.880
So companies, they don't have to read the label to you over the phone.
00:24:15.700 --> 00:24:18.420
Don't have to offer it in another language.
00:24:19.140 --> 00:24:26.000
Don't have to keep it in a format on a computer or, I'm sorry, that a computer could read.
00:24:28.300 --> 00:24:32.280
They don't have to show it to you inside your own account.
00:24:35.200 --> 00:24:39.100
Just little cuts, six of them so far.
00:24:39.300 --> 00:24:42.540
And I swear, I am not making this part up.
00:24:42.540 --> 00:24:51.200
The official filing where they propose weakening the transparency label is titled in part,
00:24:51.840 --> 00:24:55.740
delete, delete, delete.
00:24:58.040 --> 00:25:00.440
That's the name on the file.
00:25:01.800 --> 00:25:04.120
On the transparency rule.
00:25:05.580 --> 00:25:09.340
Delete, delete, delete.
00:25:09.340 --> 00:25:11.920
Delete, delete, delete.
00:25:13.300 --> 00:25:24.400
One of the FCC commissioners called it one of the most anti-consumer things she had seen in her time there.
00:25:26.580 --> 00:25:30.460
The chairman called it simply cutting red tape.
00:25:31.740 --> 00:25:36.840
The usual words in today's political climate, ah, nothing to worry about, right?
00:25:39.340 --> 00:25:54.720
So the one tool that let you see through all of it, showed up, worked for a year, and is already getting quietly chopped up, trimmed back, whatever.
00:25:55.140 --> 00:26:01.840
Not killed, just a little trim at a time until it's a shell of what it was supposed to be.
00:26:01.840 --> 00:26:08.580
Just enough that the average person can't use it and nobody has to own killing it outright.
00:26:10.380 --> 00:26:12.780
I mean, we're onto this con, aren't we?
00:26:18.700 --> 00:26:21.480
You're allowed to be angry about that.
00:26:23.080 --> 00:26:25.220
Consider this your permission slip.
00:26:26.380 --> 00:26:27.880
Not at the wire.
00:26:27.880 --> 00:26:32.460
At the choice to make the wire harder to see clearly.
00:26:32.920 --> 00:26:34.620
That was a horrible analogy.
00:26:36.380 --> 00:26:38.240
You want to know what really gets me.
00:26:39.140 --> 00:26:40.720
If you haven't figured it out yet.
00:26:41.820 --> 00:26:55.340
We used to have a connection that was bad, flat out bad, horrible, excruciating, and it never once lied to you about it.
00:26:57.420 --> 00:26:59.040
Do you know what I'm talking about?
00:26:59.560 --> 00:27:02.940
You can hear those screeching sounds in your nightmares some nights.
00:27:20.500 --> 00:27:21.780
Dial up.
00:27:22.840 --> 00:27:24.040
America online.
00:27:24.460 --> 00:27:31.440
Yeah, AOL had its own problems, but at least think of dial up in the general sense of dial up.
00:27:32.140 --> 00:27:33.920
MSN, NetZero, whatever you had.
00:27:35.020 --> 00:27:36.220
That screech.
00:27:37.220 --> 00:27:38.420
That static.
00:27:39.480 --> 00:27:42.780
The two robots screaming at each other to shake some hands.
00:27:43.960 --> 00:27:48.400
It kicked you off the second somebody picked up the damn telephone.
00:27:49.140 --> 00:27:53.220
And it told you exactly what it was every time.
00:27:54.220 --> 00:27:55.380
You heard it working.
00:27:56.020 --> 00:27:57.200
You heard its limits.
00:27:58.880 --> 00:27:59.520
Now.
00:28:01.000 --> 00:28:06.980
We're officially out of the dial up era now because AOL finally killed it off for good last year in 2025.
00:28:08.800 --> 00:28:12.400
And there were still a couple hundred thousand people on it.
00:28:14.340 --> 00:28:22.340
And you know why there was a couple hundred thousand people still on AOL in 2026?
00:28:23.880 --> 00:28:26.500
Because nothing better ever reached them.
00:28:30.300 --> 00:28:36.980
We traded a bad connection that was honest for a good one that isn't.
00:28:38.000 --> 00:28:41.940
The tech got so much better, so much better.
00:28:42.940 --> 00:28:50.900
And the words, typical corporate telecom, well they got a whole lot worse.
00:28:56.940 --> 00:28:59.460
You know why they got worse?
00:29:00.440 --> 00:29:04.180
Because there's no competition.
00:29:09.180 --> 00:29:14.580
You know, in the dial up days, the phone company delivered the phone line to your home.
00:29:19.620 --> 00:29:28.140
They sold you the phone line, but anybody with a few phone numbers and some modems,
00:29:28.260 --> 00:29:30.780
they could spin up an internet service provider.
00:29:30.780 --> 00:29:33.640
I mean, you had dozens.
00:29:35.080 --> 00:29:37.540
So many dial up internet service providers.
00:29:38.760 --> 00:29:43.080
I'm trying to think, you know, you had, oh, some of the bigger names.
00:29:43.280 --> 00:29:43.940
You had Earthlink.
00:29:45.140 --> 00:29:46.280
You had MSN.
00:29:47.340 --> 00:29:48.840
Did Yahoo do dial up?
00:29:49.180 --> 00:29:50.560
Yahoo probably did dial up.
00:29:50.700 --> 00:29:51.580
You had AOL.
00:29:52.060 --> 00:29:52.800
You had Juno.
00:29:55.080 --> 00:30:00.320
Oh, I say Earthlink, Juno, that zero, AOL, MSN, Yahoo.
00:30:01.460 --> 00:30:02.760
I'm sure there was others.
00:30:06.600 --> 00:30:08.160
You had competition.
00:30:12.420 --> 00:30:19.480
When the people handling the wires got involved in doing the internet.
00:30:21.920 --> 00:30:23.140
Well, it got better.
00:30:23.320 --> 00:30:25.660
It got faster because they owned the network.
00:30:25.860 --> 00:30:29.520
They could improve, make actual infrastructure improvements.
00:30:33.740 --> 00:30:39.160
And in most towns, you still only have the cable company and the phone company.
00:30:39.920 --> 00:30:46.700
You do get a little bit of, you know, you can get out there now with some fixed wireless access like,
00:30:46.700 --> 00:30:51.400
you know, 5G from Verizon and T-Mobile and AT&T.
00:30:53.300 --> 00:31:02.700
So where you only have a cable and a phone company, you could probably jump to a cellular provider.
00:31:03.280 --> 00:31:04.960
There is Starlink now.
00:31:05.960 --> 00:31:15.220
But even Starlink and fixed wireless access, FWA through the cell companies, they still only have limited reaches.
00:31:16.300 --> 00:31:18.060
There's still dead spots out there.
00:31:21.940 --> 00:31:24.520
So the dial up providers, they didn't own the hardware.
00:31:24.700 --> 00:31:25.860
They didn't own the infrastructure.
00:31:26.100 --> 00:31:32.600
They couldn't keep up with the big boys who actually owned the infrastructure that they had previously delivered services on.
00:31:32.940 --> 00:31:44.740
And I wonder, and I'm sure they've tried this, maybe we should open up the wires, let more providers on it.
00:31:44.740 --> 00:31:49.380
Utopia Fiber is a company out there that does this.
00:31:51.220 --> 00:31:52.560
Oh, where are they at?
00:31:53.280 --> 00:31:57.640
Utopia, let's see, Utopia Fiber.
00:31:58.060 --> 00:31:59.740
They are...
00:32:01.040 --> 00:32:02.360
What the hell are they?
00:32:04.280 --> 00:32:04.840
Utah.
00:32:06.240 --> 00:32:07.380
They're over in Utah.
00:32:07.860 --> 00:32:10.780
And what they do, I'm going to bring up their website here,
00:32:11.820 --> 00:32:17.420
is they build out the infrastructure all the way up to 10 gigabits per second.
00:32:17.460 --> 00:32:18.360
These guys are amazing.
00:32:19.560 --> 00:32:26.000
And then you can be a provider and be on that network, sell your services.
00:32:27.120 --> 00:32:36.780
Utopia lays the fiber, but then allows other providers to lease that line and deliver services to you.
00:32:37.840 --> 00:32:42.460
I mean, you've got so many companies out there who are on this service.
00:32:42.760 --> 00:32:55.400
Just in Utah, you have Three Wave, you have Beehive, you have Centracom, you have ETS, Fastel, FiberNet, Fusion, Info West,
00:32:56.500 --> 00:32:59.120
Rise Broadband, Sumo Fiber.
00:32:59.560 --> 00:33:02.140
And you know what these prices are that are listed on their website?
00:33:02.140 --> 00:33:09.460
For most families, you probably don't need more than 250 megabits per second.
00:33:11.780 --> 00:33:20.020
And even if you did want a gig like me, I pay damn near $75 a month for my one gigabit per second through Brightspeed.
00:33:20.680 --> 00:33:22.360
And don't get me started on Brightspeed.
00:33:22.460 --> 00:33:23.620
That's a whole nother episode.
00:33:24.320 --> 00:33:29.280
But for most of these providers on here, it's like 40 bucks a month.
00:33:30.700 --> 00:33:32.380
Because there's competition.
00:33:35.340 --> 00:33:37.520
Wi-Fi Pros is another one on here.
00:33:38.160 --> 00:33:42.980
They sell services all the way up to 2.5 gigabits per second at $68 a month.
00:33:43.480 --> 00:33:46.820
I pay 75 for Brightspeed and get one gigabit per second.
00:33:47.360 --> 00:33:49.360
And they still think I'm on DSL.
00:33:49.660 --> 00:33:51.380
Like I said, that's a whole nother episode.
00:33:51.800 --> 00:33:57.060
I get sales, door-to-door salespeople coming up trying to get me to switch off of their DSL and go to Fiber.
00:33:57.500 --> 00:34:03.060
And I have to explain to them, I can show you the ONT on the back of my house where that light goes to, but...
00:34:04.220 --> 00:34:05.420
Again, a whole nother episode.
00:34:07.580 --> 00:34:10.180
Let me wrap this up, because this has gone on too long already.
00:34:13.100 --> 00:34:14.140
Here's where I come down.
00:34:15.060 --> 00:34:17.740
And it isn't a fix, because I don't know what the fix is for this.
00:34:18.620 --> 00:34:23.180
Because there's probably, there's just, there's not an easy way to do anything anymore.
00:34:24.500 --> 00:34:25.920
You already know the game.
00:34:27.220 --> 00:34:29.240
This game. That they're playing.
00:34:29.760 --> 00:34:36.780
So be the person who asked the boring question for somebody who doesn't.
00:34:37.280 --> 00:34:42.920
When a friend is about to sign up and the ad says Fiber, be the tech hero.
00:34:43.680 --> 00:34:46.680
I know a lot of us tech guys, we don't like to be the family tech guy.
00:34:47.500 --> 00:34:50.060
You know, grandma got a new phone, we cringe.
00:34:50.680 --> 00:34:52.660
But be the friend.
00:34:52.880 --> 00:34:56.460
When the ad says Fiber, ask, ask the question for them.
00:34:57.000 --> 00:34:59.540
Does the glass reach the house?
00:35:00.140 --> 00:35:02.340
Or does it stop at a box down the street?
00:35:04.980 --> 00:35:07.420
Ask what the real price is after the promo.
00:35:08.340 --> 00:35:10.160
Now a lot of us have called on to that game.
00:35:11.340 --> 00:35:12.440
Tech or non-tech.
00:35:12.960 --> 00:35:17.140
We know corporate America will get you in the door at that low, low rate,
00:35:17.380 --> 00:35:18.880
and then bounce it up in about a year.
00:35:19.100 --> 00:35:21.080
We know how the cable companies operate in this country.
00:35:21.500 --> 00:35:22.700
That one we've called on to.
00:35:22.800 --> 00:35:24.580
But ask what it is anyways after the promo.
00:35:24.580 --> 00:35:27.400
Not the bait price to get you in.
00:35:28.520 --> 00:35:30.780
Pull up that broadband label with them.
00:35:32.500 --> 00:35:35.380
While it's, I guess, still allowed to exist.
00:35:35.860 --> 00:35:38.540
Because that box was built to answer all of this.
00:35:39.640 --> 00:35:44.980
And there are people working right now to hollow out those rules.
00:35:48.580 --> 00:35:50.880
Nobody gets fooled here because they're slow.
00:35:50.880 --> 00:35:55.900
They get fooled because a lot of money gets spent making sure they would.
00:35:56.540 --> 00:36:02.120
I've got the glass all the way into that little box on the basement wall.
00:36:06.940 --> 00:36:13.900
And it's the only thing that kind of buys me a clear view of the whole con.
00:36:13.900 --> 00:36:18.360
Most people are getting the word without the real technology.
00:36:19.120 --> 00:36:21.540
Without the proper wire.
00:36:22.700 --> 00:36:24.520
That was never an accident.
00:36:25.440 --> 00:36:26.700
Somebody chose it.
00:36:28.500 --> 00:36:33.360
And they're counting on nobody giving reason to think about it.
00:36:34.440 --> 00:36:36.540
Be the one who looks.
00:36:36.940 --> 00:36:39.280
Be the one who speaks up about it.
00:36:40.420 --> 00:36:41.800
Call them out on this.
00:36:42.480 --> 00:36:43.520
Marketing nonsense.
00:36:45.920 --> 00:36:46.780
That's the show.
00:36:47.260 --> 00:36:51.140
If you want to keep up on it, subscribe wherever you're listening.
00:36:52.600 --> 00:36:55.940
And you can find everything else at my website.
00:36:56.120 --> 00:36:57.020
TylerWoodward.me.
00:36:57.500 --> 00:36:58.300
Past episodes.
00:36:59.480 --> 00:37:02.860
And you like to say thanks, buy me a coffee.
00:37:03.200 --> 00:37:05.160
There is a buy me a coffee link on there.
00:37:05.900 --> 00:37:07.560
And if you want to leave a voicemail.
00:37:07.560 --> 00:37:10.440
If anything in this episode struck a chord.
00:37:10.660 --> 00:37:12.180
Or made you stop and think.
00:37:12.700 --> 00:37:14.160
Or maybe you got more questions.
00:37:14.700 --> 00:37:16.240
You can leave me a voicemail.
00:37:17.280 --> 00:37:20.760
At 608-668-4702.
00:37:21.120 --> 00:37:24.780
Again, 608-668-4702.
00:37:24.880 --> 00:37:25.880
Or you can email studio.
00:37:27.300 --> 00:37:29.580
At TylerWoodward.me.
00:37:30.140 --> 00:37:32.140
And if you're still listening at this point.
00:37:32.140 --> 00:37:36.020
On Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube Music, Amazon Music.
00:37:36.260 --> 00:37:36.840
And Auro.
00:37:37.200 --> 00:37:38.640
Tune in wherever you're listening at.
00:37:39.200 --> 00:37:39.800
Give me a rating.
00:37:39.980 --> 00:37:40.600
Five star rating.
00:37:43.280 --> 00:37:44.820
If that's all you do today.
00:37:45.240 --> 00:37:46.540
That'll be alright with me.
00:37:47.220 --> 00:37:48.120
Thanks for listening.
00:37:48.800 --> 00:37:49.900
I'll catch you guys next week.
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