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I'm in the Bay. My only reasonable options are Comcast cable and T-Mobile 5G. I had enough problems with Comcast that I went to 5G, and it's ... fine. The bill is $5/mo worse than the alternative, but there's been zero extra billing bullshit, so my actual internet expenses are slightly less than normal and don't involve 20hrs on hold every year.

The quality of service is the real problem. When the tower is busy (happens at least once a week), I usually drop to 30Mb/30Kb or so, which is little enough upload that even download-intensive applications often struggle. Plus, the jitter is terrible, latency is slightly worse on average, and 3 times so far I've had internet effectively down (spotty connections in the 1Kb/1b range) for days at a time.

Interestingly, "predictable uptime" is something I care about and is much better with T-Mobile. With Comcast I'd have at least one hang every 10 minutes or so for multiple seconds on an otherwise perfectly functional connection. With T-Mobile, it's either down for days (tower maintenance) or up (perhaps slow, but definitely up). That makes all sorts of near-real-time activities easier to coordinate.

I'd probably do it again (I don't think I actually have any options unless I get off my ass and finally sue Comcast), but it isn't a clear win.



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