How would you feel this holiday season if you owned your own home, or rented an apartment, or moved into an assisted living community and the powers that be insisted that you only purchase, cook and eat a Butterball turkey?

There are other turkeys out there. Some are much better. But it is mandated that you eat a Butterball. (We have nothing against Butterball turkeys, we’re just using them as an example.)

We recently discovered that there are situations where property managers and Homeowners Associations have the right to dictate which Internet Service Provider you have to use in order to live in their building or community.

We dug a little deeper. In some instances, the sole provider was a cable company. If you’ve been reading our blogs, you know we’ve proven that fiber is better than coax cable.

“The 50/50 data split between the fiber line and the cable line was causing performance issues. Because the cable line is half duplex – where data can only travel in one direction at a time – we saw four to five times higher latency and jitter than the full duplex fiber line where data can travel in both directions at the same time.”

This quote comes from a blog we wrote about a totally different subject titled Balancing Act but clearly illustrates the point. So whether you own your own home or you are renting how and why is it possible that you are locked into inferior Internet service? We haven’t gotten to the bottom of this yet but we know a few things.

Is this legal? Yes. If the property management company or HOA enters into an agreement with an ISP, there’s really nothing you can do about it but we’re still looking into it.

It just doesn’t seem right. When there are better Internet options out there, you should be able to access them. We can see an HOA mandating that you can’t paint your house purple, put a donkey on the front lawn or leave your garbage cans by the curb all week. But not this.

Our research found an apartment complex, an assisted living facility and a low income housing complex that all faced this dilemma. This is America, shouldn’t everyone have the freedom to choose their Internet provider?

If fiber is available in your area and that’s what you want there shouldn’t be any reason why you can’t get it. If you are not in this situation, good for you. Give thanks that you will be able to stream Thanksgiving Day football games without worrying about latency and jitter.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you from the JitterWorks team.