I’m an unfortunate captive of the oligopoly of the internet industry in the USA. In many places, you have 2-3 choices of internet, and all of them suck ass. I’m in this situation. All internet providers in my area have a 1-1.5 terabyte data cap. So when I download Call of Duty for 250 gb and it fails and has to update or reinstall, I’ve wasted 500 gb, and have now reached 50% of my data cap in just 1 day. There are crazy fees, for example, Cox Cable says:
If you go over, we’ll automatically add 50 gigabytes of data for $10 to your next bill. That’s enough for about 15 hours of streaming HD video. If you use that 50 gigabytes, we automatically add another 50 gigabytes for $10 and so on until you reach our $100 limit of data overage charges or until your next usage cycle begins.
So your $90 a month internet can easily become $190 a month, which is fuckin criminal, like that is so scummy and asinine how that can even be legal. But it is perfectly legal. The FCC is also looking into these data caps but now that we have a new anti-federal government president elect… This is probably toast… Nothing will change now that most federal agencies are about to be deleted.
From a technology standpoint too, nothing is really getting better
Comcast is still using Coax instead of Fiber Optic and desperately trying to convince people that somehow, someway coax can be just as good. Do with that info what you will, I have no opinions on it. There was a Federal program started recently to expand rural internet access, which will probably be gutted in 2025 leaving many without suitable internet again. Fiber Optic is fast, but still, not new technology, and doesn’t solve a critical issue… It doesn’t matter if you have 2 Gigabit internet if no one in the world is uploading even half that fast. A single download on Steam is like 450 Mbps, Epic Games launcher is horrifically slow. I get like 120 Mbps max when downloading Fortnite updates even with 1500 Mbps internet hard wired to my router with top tier hardware
It’s just sad to think about the future of internet in the USA, and knowing we’ll be imprisoned by these data caps for the foreseeable future.
Data caps are insane in 2024
Things are getting better. A new fiber-only network provider is expanding across my region so I got it installed a few months ago. No data caps, 500 Mbps up+down for $50/month.
Speaking of fiber and things that are not fiber, asymmetric connections are one of the most predatory internet practices in existence, only a small distance behind data caps. Oh, you want our super expensive 1gbps plan? How about 3mbps upload?
There used to be very real hardware reasons that upload had much lower bandwidth. I have no idea if there still are.
Probably because they don’t need to as we are used to it and also more bandwidth to multiplex for other residens/clients to offer.
“I get like 120 Mbps max” Literally 5-10x faster than most internet in the UK, no datacaps here though.
are you sure youre not confusing Mbps and MB/s
Nah the UK uses megabits too, because inflating your percieved speeds eightfold is good marketing everywhere.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/constituency-data-broadband-coverage-and-speeds/
out of 650 uk constituaries, 167 have lower average speeds than 120 mbps. the lowest is 48.1
I have literally never seen internet above 40 mbps, even in the middle of Glasgow. Is this based on actual useable internet speeds or just the connection speed to the nearest relay down the street?
no idea, comes from ofcom but i gave up looking
1.5Tb data cap, jeez. I regularly push 6tb of monthly traffic by myself. This feels like mobile internet all over again, but now with wired…
They probably kill off any agency who would protect your consumer rights, anyway. And redefine “broadband” as “you’ve got modem access, so stop whining”. And let the companies keep the subsidies they got for making the former broadband definition happen.
Based on Ajit Pai last time, there will be a significant rollback on consumer rights and protections. You can bet Starlink will get greenlit for anything they want though.
At this point, I wonder why people aren’t simply laying down cable between eachothers homes to create communitary networks.
Because thats not the internet, thats LAN
Make a large enough LAN and you get a small internet hub.
That’s quite the investment
How much is your average subscription over there?
Probably like $120/month. You can certainly get lower, if you want like 15Mbps.
The infrastructure cost is prohibitively expensive though. Current ISPs have rigged it so the barrier for entry is massive. And making something actually widespread will force you to get permits from local government, which the ISPs lobby.
No, no.
I literaly mean you pull a cabbke between yours and your neighbors house. Then the next house and so on and so forth.
Like building a record breaking lan party.
Okay so is it your immediate neighbour only because as soon as you go onto public land you need permission, duct acces and consider traffic management.
No one here trusts their neighbors like that lol. It would be awesome though
Comcast is still using Coax instead of Fiber Optic and desperately trying to convince people that somehow, someway coax can be just as good.
Comcast are starting to offer 2Gbps symmetric (same speed up and down) via DOCSIS 4.0 in some areas.
Yep. It’s pretty nuts how much they can push over copper. And remember that just having a coax cable at your house doesn’t mean it’s copper the whole way back to the ISP.
You’re right - upstream connections are usually fiber. In fact there’s a name for this type of network: HFC (hybrid fiber + coax)
Is it on coax or fiber? And do you still share that bandwidth with your neighbors?
The 2Gbps symmetric though Comcast is still cable. In theory, DOCSIS 4.0 supports up to 10Gbps down and 6Gbps up over cable, although real-world speeds are always lower than theoretical speeds.
You share bandwidth with your neighbours regardless of whether it’s coax or fiber. A common contention ratio for residential connections is between 40:1 and 50:1, meaning the bandwidth is shared between 40 and 50 people (i.e. 1Gbps of upstream bandwidth per 40-50 people with a 1Gbps connection). This is usually fine as it’s very unlikely that every customer will be using the full bandwidth at the same time. Residential usage is usually very spiky with only brief periods of high speed usage.
What about FTTH ?
I have a direct line from the DSLAM (?) to my apparent.
The bandwidth is still shared… It’d be prohibitively expensive to have dedicated bandwidth just for your connection, and most customers don’t need anywhere near that. Unlimited, dedicated 1Gbps is around 320TB of data per month.
A business-grade connection has fewer people sharing it, but it’s still shared. The only fully-dedicated connections are enterprise-grade connections (like in a data center), and even then it’s an upgrade that costs quite a bit. :)
Well it isn’t shared before the upstream server, that’s what FTTH is.
I’m seriosly interested in information supporting your claims, not because they are wrong (of course we share at a certain level, that’s the whole idea of the internet itself is) but because they are quite vague.
BTW for 40€ I get 10Gb/s symmetrical. I’m not in the US.
Well it isn’t shared before the upstream server, that’s what FTTH is.
FTTH just means that there’s fiber going into your house.
Most residential fiber internet connections use a technology called PON (GPON for gigabit or XGS-PON for 10Gbps). My understanding is that the fiber from your house goes into a splitter box in the street, which takes fiber connections from many customers (usually either 32 or 64 customers) and multiplexes them into a single fiber by either using different wavelengths of light or by time multiplexing. Upstream from this, bandwidth is shared.
Upstream from this is the internet, so it’s no longer shared (it goes wherever it wants to and it is the servers that are “shared” by users). So there might be a bottleneck in the “splitter box” but that’s it.
No. And I’m sorry to say, this administration is coming for social media as well. I hate watching the orange potato talk, and I dislike the individual who posted this, but unless you want to sit through a double long “reaction” vid by a youtuber who makes their living “reacting”, this is the shortest one.
He wants to gut moderation and make it so it requires a court order to remove any account from social media. There’s a lot to unpack here. It’s a scripted speech, illustrating the thinkers behind his administration this go. It talks about 1A, says everything in the speech is for 1A, including dumping the Hatch Act (keeps us safe at polling sites and makes buying votes illegal), but you should really listen to what he says about moderation of social media.
To me, it reads as a way of removing any anti-establishment, anti-MAGA spaces to talk without actually removing the spaces.
Echo chambering helps no one folks, I hate hearing him speak too, but you need to hear this one. https://youtu.be/xJfUXVOoFBo?si=pqphBah-_0YwW11V
You can’t feign growth without suppressing growth first
I feel your pain, I was stuck with Cox for many years and was paying $170 a month for one gig down, 30 megs up. Unlimited data. But the unlimited data was a lie because they called and threatened me once because I was uploading too much, apparently uploading doesn’t count for the unlimited data. Stupid assholes.
I was fortunate enough to move recently to a house that actually had fiber. My fiber provider just raised the price of their lowest plan, which is the one I’m on, 500 megas symmetrical for $65 a month. It used to be $50 a month. However, they lowered the price of all their faster plans. If I wanted, I could get 8 gigs symmetrical for $150 a month. That’s less than I was paying for Cox just a year ago for 1 gig fake unlimited.
At my current provider, all their plans are truly unlimited, even the lowest tier one like the one I’m on.
$170 is fucking insane for internet. 😡
No, once the FTC is gutted, the isps will resume their stronghold. Data caps, overages, slower speeds, etc.
Also get ready of net neutrality disappearing, and you’ll have sites blocked just because of ISPs not liking them.
Good time to invest in VPN companies
All of our FTC investigations and antitrust suits will disappear.
Well, maybe now with a republican FCC
lol, no
Well, maybe now with a republican FCC
I’d be surprised if it even exists a year from now
Oh I expect it to. The FCC censors airwave transmissions
Damn that’s a spectre that I hadn’t even thought of yet.
The rdds want to get rid if any agency that oritects us.
It’s totally possible! I live in CO and Comcast had a legal monopoly per state law. Nobody else is allowed to compete with their cable service. But you know what isn’t cable? Fiber! A local broadband company just installed fiber in my neighborhood this spring. I signed up for $89/mo gigabit service, no data cap, no installation fees at all. Between when I signed up and when they turned on service, they upgraded my service to 1.2 gigabit, same monthly price, no cap, no commitment, no upsell (their only other service is rural satellite Internet).
I talked to the technician installing it and he said they aren’t getting any subsidies from anyone. Not the city, state, or fed. It’s simply economically viable to run new gigabit fiber for $89/mo. All it takes is a company that can make the initial infrastructure investment.
No. And we’re going to have even more tech-illiterate old buffoons in offices where they’ll understand even less technology but they’re great at destroying things. So, they’ll happily line the pockets of ComCast, AT&T, Verizon and they’ll do fuck all to improve customer experience. In fact, if things go their way, they’ll bring back the idea of forcing you to choose whether you want to pay premium for high speed internet including the ridiculous limits already in place. That or they’ll give you the slow-lane subscription while talking down to you about having to pay so little to get so little and their data caps is even more restrictive, never mind how little you’ll be able to actually do on the slow lane.
Isn’t it wonderful?! /s
nope
