It is just amazing and frustrating that we live in Silicon Valley and just a short distance away from the biggest concentration of innovate technology companies of Google and PARC, Apple but for many, we are only offered 1989 copper wired technology to our homes for Internet Service.
This is a mostly a last mile problem. The wild Internet in its abuses and advances is basically 99.9 percent fiber run. When you connect with servers throughout the world with your internet browsers or yours smart phones, 99 percent of that distanced traveled is done all over fiber connections. Copper wire is simply too slow, and an out dated technology for data,
For many of our residential communities, that last mile is serviced by a few older telecos or “cable TV”(remember that idea) vendors who never originally designed their copper infrastructure systems for Internet. With the way the market forces work today, many folks in the US have very few good competitive options for internet. Los Altos Hills has mostly moderate service and other area with no or very little service. It DOES NOT have options for really good service (gigabit speeds) with direct fiber to the premise options.
There are many forces in play here, but in LAH requiring undergroundiong of power and telco in newer (post 1980) subdivisions prevented cable companies from installing anything for many. Here we are 40 years later, our undergrounding requirements have left many without good internet options.
Los Altos Hills Community Fiber 