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 cable 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
Rural island off the coast of a european country:
10g fiber for $65/mo (I don’t even think they cared, I asked for more and I think they made up a number).
House literally down the street from google in silicon valley:
Comcrap $100 for shit cable, I’m paying $250 for actual upload speed.
This country is ruled by the corrupt.
In my country unlimited fiber was $6/mo. Imagine the shock when I moved to the US (also in Mountain View initially). Eventually I got AT&T fiber for “just” $40/month, but now I moved to an area outside their coverage and it’s back to Comcast :(
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.
Well, we’ve just crossed into what will be a third-phase Corporatocracy, and a Monopoly gamed service industry.
You have other options now that are not the usual players, but then you’re giving money to Starlink.
You have the option of organizing to create a local fiber concern as a public utility, but in a few months they’ll pass laws preventing that from ever happening.
Your best option on the Internet between is an unlimited cell plan and a hotspot, and it’s not a great option, but the competition is still so heavy that your bill won’t change. Higher latency, but probably decent throughput.
The 18-26 year olds just signed over our country to billionaire fascists. I had hopes for them, but they are collectively idiots. Born into late stage capitalism, spent their formative years growing up in the Age of Hate, and actively chugged down propaganda via YouTube and all social media.
No, we are not.
You can’t just blame 18-26 year-olds. This was a failure across all age groups. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/interactive-how-key-groups-of-americans-voted-in-2024-according-to-ap-votecast
And isn’t signing over the country to corporations something that’s been going on since the 1970s or something? I mean that comment is wrong on any level.
Way earlier than that, sunshine. The earliest example is probably the railways.
The younger age brackets broke slightly in favor of Harris. It was the folks between mid-life crisis and retirement that broke hard for Trump.
She somehow managed to perform worse with women than Biden did (53% vs 55%.)
Harris did not out perform Biden in ANY category.
No, the Democratic party ran a candidate that wanted to keep the status quo in a period the whole country needed change.
And during the last 4 years the sitting president was actually sleepy Joe. He should have arrested trump and his co conspirators and throw away the key after a very public trial.
But instead, they did nothing to stem the tide of fascism. If you want to blame people, blame the technocrats Trump was projecting on during his campaign. As if he is a small portion of who he says he is, he will show everyone what the Dems should have done.
No, the Democratic party ran a candidate that wanted to keep the status quo in a period the whole country needed change.
Name a time in history that “voting for change” isn’t what’s “needed”. The term has lost all meaning for how overused it is. Just like “think of the children” or “save the whales”.
If change is needed every 4 years, then that means 4 years ago you either voted the wrong guy in, or he didn’t do what he promised.
I’ve always been of the belief that campaign promises need to have more importance. If the American people vote for a candidate based on their promises, as they always do, then those promises damn well better happen.
If I campaign, and promise everyone free chocolate pudding. Then by 4 years later, everybody in this country damn well better have chocolate pudding.
Once voted in, it should be a federal crime to stand in the way of delivering campaign promises. So if I contact a pudding company, and they refuse to accept the contract to produce pudding, then the CEO is arrested, and the plant is seized by the government. The staff will be kept on, paid by the government. Anyone who quits will face criminal charges. Long story short, hell or high water, we’re delivering that pudding.
Because what happens if I don’t? Then on re-election day, not only am I barred from running, I’m also publically humiliated, and executed. Live on tv. Broadcast on every channel.
Which means you can’t campaign on vague promises, because then it’s easy to argue that you failed. You have to promise cut and dry easy to prove obligations. And if you fail, you die. If anyone stands in your way, it’s a federal offense.
The underlying problem with this country is that nothing means anything. Nobody stands for anything. Courts have no consequence. Explain to me how a 34x convicted criminal was even allowed to run for office, much less win? Explain how he’s not facing a court date. Explain how he won’t be in jail for his court ordered convictions.
The answer is, this all means nothing. Money rules this country. Fuck you. Fuck the citizens. Fuck justice. Fuck equality. Fuck everybody besides the rich. They fuck you. Not the other way around. I am an American, but I am NOT a patriot. I am ashamed of my country. I am embarrassed by my fellow citizens, and my government alike. You can’t blame one without the other. The citizens voted for fascism. They wanted this. They’re fine with the system being toothless and slanted. I’m just caught up in the crossfire. I’m not the worst affected. I can only feel empathy for those affected. And feel disgust for anyone wearing a red hat with white text.
Change in this case is not, “were doing everything completely different”, but more of where the focus of the policy is. And the focus on “the economy” does shit for normal people. I’m sure wrecking the economy will hurt them… but the simple fact is biden-harris failed to adress the issues facing a looooooot of americans.
And your chocolate pudding example perfectly aligns with the failure to imprison Trump. The Americans don’t care about ANY of his crimes because the justice system and the president did not Care.
If it was soooooooo important, he would have been thrown in jail, publicly prosecuted and executed for treason… and he was not. Instead everyone danced around it, and SHOWED the American people there are zero consequences while saying “he is so dangerous, he is so bad, he is a criminal”. Well like you say, talk is cheap. Put up or shut up… and the American people said the same. All the anti Trump rhetoric was dismissed because if any of it where true he would have been in jail.
The fact Biden is the most pro worker and pro u ion does not mean shit if the whole world saw you use executive power to publicly stop the strike. The fact that he later in backrooms got them ak OK deal… was done in the limelight… so that’s an own goal. He should have targeted the Corporation at the same time… but he did not.
So I get what you are saying. And I argue, the Dems fucked themselves… a lot… repeatedly…
Boomers and the owner class gutted the country…
Some clown online blames gen z for voting +2 for trump after Harris and DNC botched a campaign 🤡
Pathetic, try again
Yeah, pretty much. The way the rest of the world deals with it is by splitting the infrastructure maintenance and retail sides to eliminate the profit incentive to not do maintenance.
You have a company who owns a/the fibre network in an area and is obligated by anti-monopoly rules to sell access to the network at the same rate and terms to anyone who wants it. They have a profit incentive to maintain the network to a reasonable standard because having a functioning network is how they make money. In a lot of places this wholesale provider will be at least part government owned given that the government usually pays a good chunk of the cost to build out large national infrastructure projects like fibre networks.
Separately, you have retail ISPs who buy access to the fibre network (or 4g, satellite, …) and sell it to the public along with value adds like tech support, IP addresses, peering agreement etc.
It’s never work in the US because holding private companies accountable for how they spend public money and maintaining well regulated competitive markets is communism or something.
It’s never work in the US because holding private companies accountable for how they spend public money and maintaining well regulated competitive markets is communism or something
It did work in the US for many years. During the 90’s the Internet was regulated like that. Phone lines, t1’s etc were infrastructure that the ilec was required to provide at the same cost to isps they used internally to sell service to consumers.
Then Bush came in and ruled that fiber and cable were immune from those common carrier laws.
Internet in NZ used to work a bit like the US does now with one large ISP that is also the network operator and gave exactly zero shits about quality of connections or internationally competitive pricing, except they got greedy and charged their retail arm half what they charged their competitors. Anti-monopoly folks got very pissy about this and managed to get the largest fine permitted by law, forced them to split their wholesale arm off into a separate company, banned them from tendering on the government-funded fibre network (which cost them literally billions of dollars) and then changed the law so that if they did it again there wouldn’t be a cap on the penalty they could impose.
In 20 years we went from ~35th of the 38 OECD countries in internet speed and accessibility to 9th. Markets only work long-term if you actually regulate them
This is exactly how my local municipal fiber network works. The the county owns, and builds put, the fiber network and maintains it, selling network access to local ISPs who sell to customers.
Only shitty part is that if you want to have a connection built out that isn’t on their plan, you have to fund the fiber run to you from wherever the nearest spot is, and that can be many thousands of dollars.
I imagine if we expanded the program like you’re talking about in the rest of the world, we could actually run it fine, like, we have the ability to… It’s just that the people in power are fucking awful.
It doesn’t matter if you have 2 Gigabit internet if no one in the world is uploading even half that fast.
Just to point out something, yes, there may not be many services online (except torrents perhaps) that will max out your gigabit connection, but you are looking at it from the perspective of a single user. I’m in a family of four, also with a roommate in the house, and with everyone gaming and streaming and doing their thing, it can easily saturate it.
The point of a high speed connection is to be able to do many things simultaneously, not really one giant thing by itself.
We had to pay extra for no caps
fr fr
there may not be many services online (except torrents perhaps)
Hmm… arr, matey
Yo ho ho.
I don’t know where you are or what other ISPs are involved, but skimming some discussion online, it looks like these Cox guys – at least in the several locations I see being discussed, if not everywhere – have data limits on all of their residential plans, though they have business plans that do not.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CoxCommunications/comments/hf6zwf/cox_resumes_unnecessary_data_caps/
I get 200 down and 20 up for $85. I came from $100 for 3Mbps DSL, so this is winning for me. I use 4 or 5 TB a month without a problem on Cox.
That particular snippit was four years back, so I suppose prices and speeds might have changed.
