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.
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.
No, once the FTC is gutted, the isps will resume their stronghold. Data caps, overages, slower speeds, etc.
All of our FTC investigations and antitrust suits will disappear.
Also get ready of net neutrality disappearing, and you’ll have sites blocked just because of ISPs not liking them.
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.
Starlink?
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.
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
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…
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.
Not only aren’t we going to get better internet, the internet in the united states you’re using right now, is going to be unrecognizable in the next 12 months, all free services will charge, cost for access will increase, vpn usage will be curtailed, and pirate sites will be blocked. Better? We just re-elected a fascist tyrant who wants to close as many avenues of free speech against him as he possibly can, as well as funnel as much cash to media and tech oligarchs as he can to keep them onside, and now he’s got both the house and senate with which to do just that.
Better? dude.
VPNs and piracy aren’t going anywhere. Unfortunately, data caps won’t be going away either.
VPNs and piracy aren’t going anywhere.
That’s not true at all.
They’ll both be going on my next PC!
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.
there may not be many services online (except torrents perhaps)
Hmm… arr, matey
Yo ho ho.
I’m in EU and I have 2 different internet connections without a data cap, because I work from home and don’t want to commute to the office if one type is down. Both have bandwith caps tho (that way they are cheaper and it’s still good enough for me).
However, I want to suggest you use traffic shaping. In Linux, I used “trickle” many years ago, so I could download things without disturbing my family streaming or video calling. Idk how it works in other OSes, but the idea is to send a big download through a special network filter that slows it down to your configured bandwith, delaying it so much that you don’t reach your bandwidth cap. (The dowload will take months.) Also, I think I have seen something like this built into Steam and Filezilla. If I remember correctly Steam also had the option to pause downloads manually, but you have to remember to keep an eye on it, if you do that.
Qbittorrent has the option to set limits for both upstream and downstream bandwidth. I believe this works on any platform. Not sure if Mac or Windows have system level bandwidth settings.
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.
That’s more c/usa tho (politics) and less c/technology.
Yes. This is neither news nor an article. Report it.
Crappy (30-40mbit/sec) but uncapped FTTC here, plus 5G FVA at 300mbit/sec but 1Tb monthly cap here.
Combining both and separating heavy traffic (fucking fortnite and many steam big games) on the crappy uncapoed, and arr’ing too, leaves tons of data for high speed anything.
Total cost? 22€ + 24€ = 46€/month, no surprises. A lot more expensive than having fiber indeed, but I am deep into the woods, so.
Ah, and when i go over my 1Tb data cap on the FVA, I get throttled to 6mbit/sec, nothing extra to pay.
So I’m familiar with the Fiber to the Cabinet/Curb (FTTC), but the only FVA I’m familiar with is an attenuator and I know you’re not talking about checking light levels through fiber. What’s FVA in this context?
I’m guessing here, but the only thing that makes sense in context is Fixed Wireless Access, FWA.
Maybe some error with the initialism snuck in because Shimitar is from Italy. I could see myself doing something similar, since in German we read W as “vee”.
Pretty sure it depends on where you live. My CenturyLink gigabit internet in Seattle is superb, symmetrical up/down, $75/mo. Haven’t had significant problems in 10 or 15 years.
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 :(
We used to have it terrible in the UK in the 90s and 2000s. Basic ADSL was trialled in 1999 and available in maybe late 2000 I think. But it stagnated for a while.
When it came to fibre, interesting things are happening. As well as the “national” (although privatised) telco installing it, there are many independent companies fitting it. Where I live I have the option of the official telco (1000/110) and a private company (1000/1000). Of course I chose the latter :P
Some people have 3 or more options.
Yeah in the future there might well be a handful of overall winners that vacuum up the losers and carve up the territory. But right now, it’s a good time for the normal people… At least for internet.
EDIT: Just to add, some are ISPs and will only sell their own product. Some are wholesale, so even if they’re the only company in your area, you can often buy from multiple ISPs through them.
There are places on the US that have a similar thing going on. I can get my fiber from 2 ISPs, same line. I can also turn it off or on when I want and I can pay month to month on either. However, this is super rare here.
The real problem is that the US has allowed corporations to make laws and basically run the infrastructure. We need some serious lobbying overhaul or outright ban and lawmakers and judges to have a damn backbone to those with $. It’s ridiculous.
Consider WISPs like Verizon/T-Mobile. They absolutely will kick you off for excessive usage, but 1.5 terabytes would not be considered excessive usage.
That’s not a WISP, just fyi. That’s just a cellular hot spot. Cellular hot spots operate on frequencies in the RF spectrum, the same frequencies that your cell phone connects to.
A WISP is an ISP that serves internet over microwave radios, which operate not in RF frequencies but in microwave frequencies. They might use point to multi point radios, where a radio on a mountain top feeds signal to many smaller radios at each subscribers house in a valley below. They might also have fiber to an apartment building, with fiber to each unit, then use a point to point radio as a wireless backhaul to connect another apartment building across a river that can’t have fiber run directly to it. They’ll still have fiber running to each unit in that second building though.
TLDR; cellular providers are not WISPs.
I think your splitting hairs there a bit as a cellular internet service provider is a wireless internet service provider because the thing you put in your window does not connect to anything except for electricity. Also, 2.5 gigahertz and 3.7 gigahertz are both higher frequencies than what your microwave uses to cook your food. The only difference is the power and the range.
I never said anything about a microwave cooking food, I said they used microwave radios.
A hotspot is a cellular modem with a wireless lan radio. It is provided by cellular network operators in order to allow the connection of non-cellular network devices to connect to the cellular network, and thus the internet as a whole.
A WISP is not a cellular network operators, a WISP is a Wireless ISP, who provide internet to customers over wireless microwave radios.
The FCC classifies and regulates these operators as distinct entities. I am not splitting hairs, they are different.
Go to WISPAPALOOZA and tell all the WISP people that cellular operators are WISPs lol.
I guarantee you there’s no cellular network operators who are members of WISPA.
Have you not seen over the last couple of years the proliferation of like the T-Mobile Home Internet, Verizon Home Internet and AT&T Home Internet? They provide you a box that sits in your window and connects you to the cellular network using Wi-Fi for your entire house. It’s not like those little hotspots used to get a couple years ago. Those had limited Wi-Fi range and could generally only be connected to like 10 devices at once, where these are full home internet replacements.
That’s still just a cellular modem stuffed in to a much better router though. It’s a cellular connection. Yea, with 5g it’s a ton better than 3g, but it’s a cellular connection, provided to you by a cellular network operator. Cellular network operators are their own thing, regulated by the FCC as their own thing, whether the cellular connection is happening on your phone or on your cellular company provided router, it’s still connecting to the cellular network.
Look. Starlink is a satellite internet provider right? But you understand that no wires are physically connecting the starlink terminal to the starlink satellites right? It’s “wireless”. Starlink is not a WISP, it’s a satellite internet provider. T-Mobile or Verizon or whoever aren’t WISPs, they are cellular network operators. They are separate and distinct things.
Language has meaning, words have meaning. A WISP isn’t just an ISP using technology that doesn’t need a wire to your house, it’s a specific thing. You’re using it wrong.
Edit - I can put a SIM card in my MikroTik right now, then unplug the Ethernet cable that runs to my ONT box, and have unbroken internet access. That doesn’t suddenly make the cellular network provider a WISP, it makes them a cellular network provider. I’m accessing the cellular network. They’re providing me access to the network over cellular. Idk how else to explain this.
I see what you’re saying, but most people are not going to take that nuance into account. To them, since there is not a wire connecting the device to the network, it is a wireless ISP.
To the layperson all internet is Wi-Fi.
I understand that, but they’re wrong.
I switched to the Tmo 5G internet a few months ago and it has been great. It’s not symmetric, DL is faster than UL, but it almost always matches or beats the 500D/50U cable service I had previously.
Looks like I did hit 1.2 TB one month but am usually half that.
It is definitely very area dependent because I used to live in a super rural area where the wired ISP only gave like 10 down by like one or two up and T-Mobile was doing 70 down by like 20 up. Either way, it was absolutely fast enough and had no issues.
