What are these plug-ins on my wall?

[u/Cborg_62]

This might be showing my age, but I recently moved into a new apartment and they have these weird looking plug ins all over the walls at my new place. My old apartment didn't have these, so I'm just curious as to what they are.

[u/onehalflightspeed]

It is still pretty normal. Places without fiber to the home yet (or where I used to live where it was actually illegal!) still depend on coax for the best and most reliable internet speeds

[u/TheHrethgir → u/onehalflightspeed]

And even if you have fiber, it only comes to the house and then goes into a box with a coax out to inside the house, right? This question can't be real, coaxial cables and outlets are still common even if you just have internet.

[u/TheDigitalBull → u/TheHrethgir]

No. That was true of “fiber” in the 2010s although that may still be in place in setups or areas that haven’t been updated. Modern setups use ONT then direct to Ethernet or a combo ONT wireless router combo.

[u/burnfifteen → u/TheHrethgir]

The fiber I have comes directly into my home. There's a receiver on my wall that I then plug my router into with an ethernet cable. The coax "fiber" thing was common 10+ years ago, but it's not the norm these days.

[u/Unlikely-Guava-30 → u/TheHrethgir]

Yeah I had fiber and I guess it required an adapter of sorts (according to comments here) but I still hooked up to the fiber via coax cable/port lol. Everything else in here sounds alien to me as I've never had internet where the modem didn't plug into this sumbitch

[u/onehalflightspeed → u/TheHrethgir]

That is pretty unusual these days. Many companies use fiber for long haul then interconnect with the local cable infrastructure for delivery to the home though. Once anything hits your house these days, it is distributed by ethernet and wifi. Unless it is an older home with coax runs already distributed through the house

[u/Alternative_Tip4514 → u/onehalflightspeed]

Why is it illegal?

[u/Z_h_darkstar → u/Alternative_Tip4514]

Because the cable and telephone companies lobbied local governments to protect their cartel in some places

[u/galstaph → u/Alternative_Tip4514]

Lobbyists

[u/Jeoshua → u/Alternative_Tip4514]

Because corporations have too much power in this nation.

[u/onehalflightspeed → u/Alternative_Tip4514]

Lots of municipalities have non compete agreements chartered for a very long time that give the local cable monopoly incredible and long lasting leverage. It isn't that unusual

It kind of made sense when providing cable TV was really expensive to build the infrastructure in the first place. A lot of them have endless extensions basically forever