smccloud I’m just depressed that all broadband expansion/upgrades have been taking place (by every ISP) seems to be taking place in the southern US, nothing much in the northern US. At least in the north central US.
There may be lots of factors, but, again, the ISPs are not sharing, and they generally are not going to (which I agree is unfortunate, but I fully understand their reasonings).
Among the factors may include weather, construction costs, and sometimes where they want the location to end up (capability wise).
While techs can (and do) work in all kinds of weather, remember that until just recently (date wise) the ground was still frozen in parts of the north, which means all operators (and their contractors, and they are using a lot of contractors) work where the weather is conducive for the most rapid outside work (with a big enough excavator I can dig into all kinds of frozen ground to deal with underground work, but that does not make it an ideal time to do the work; most road construction in the northern most states does not happen in the middle of February).
Construction can be complicated. Some locations have a longer regulatory process to do anything. Charter can start the process, but they do not have control of when they get approval, and they can’t really start to plan actual work before they get all the approvals (and if some middle of nowhere town is in the path, or some state road is about to rerouted, and they can’t get approval, many things have to wait). And then there is the cost to do the work. In reality, it costs less in some locations to perform the work. I would not be at all surprised if Charter has been looking at the greatest bang (customer numbers) per buck in order to be able to show to their owners (investors) their plan is working.
Also remember that Charter’s early deployments (phase 1) do not offer the same capabilities as later deployments. It may be that your location is targeted for phase 3 because they see the long term advantages to deploy ESD in your area. However, if that is true, that also means you get things later.
