3 ms·

There is the possibility that the providers aren't intentionally gouging their customers. Even though the market is small, there is enough of a market to drive

by drewr 17y ago

There is the possibility that the providers aren't intentionally gouging their customers. Even though the market is small, there is enough of a market to drive prices down. I think it's much more likely that those companies are just so horribly inefficient that it really does cost them a lot to provide you with high-speed access.

wtallis 17y ago
Several years ago my family got cable internet from Time Warner. The modem/router they provided was one of the first models to support DOCSIS 3.0. We stayed with Time Warner for at least 2 years, and they never rolled out DOCSIS 3 support at their end. The maximum speed we could get from them was 6Mbps. We're now using DSL, and the maximum we can get is 6Mbps, though with more reliability than from cable. The nearest cable box is next to our neighbor's driveway. The phone company has fiber to their box in our other neighbor's yard. There's enough competition to keep price inflation mostly at bay, but there clearly isn't enough to convince the ISPs to invest in the equipment that would be able to give us connections that are four times faster. Efficiency doesn't have a lot to do with it. For all practical purposes, our local ISPs aren't spending any money to improve service in areas that already have some service.
Groxx 17y ago
Non-growth (negative growth!) despite significantly more paying users and far more fiber lines than a few years ago? What have they been rolling all that fiber out for, if not to crank up the speed? Oh, wait. To sell the same speed to more people for the same price to make way more money. I don't buy inefficiency. They're selling it at this speed for this cost because they can, just like cell phone companies. Which from a business standpoint makes perfect sense, but it's at the cost of screwing everyone else. Since significantly better businesses / strategies clearly exist if it's just a sign of business incompetence, why haven't the successful ones, say in Japan or Korea, migrated over here and decimated the market?

by drewr 17y ago

wtallis 17y ago

Several years ago my family got cable internet from Time Warner. The modem/router they provided was one of the first models to support DOCSIS 3.0. We stayed with Time Warner for at least 2 years, and they never rolled out DOCSIS 3 support at their end. The maximum speed we could get from them was 6Mbps. We're now using DSL, and the maximum we can get is 6Mbps, though with more reliability than from cable. The nearest cable box is next to our neighbor's driveway. The phone company has fiber to their box in our other neighbor's yard. There's enough competition to keep price inflation mostly at bay, but there clearly isn't enough to convince the ISPs to invest in the equipment that would be able to give us connections that are four times faster. Efficiency doesn't have a lot to do with it. For all practical purposes, our local ISPs aren't spending any money to improve service in areas that already have some service.

Groxx 17y ago

Non-growth (negative growth!) despite significantly more paying users and far more fiber lines than a few years ago? What have they been rolling all that fiber out for, if not to crank up the speed? Oh, wait. To sell the same speed to more people for the same price to make way more money. I don't buy inefficiency. They're selling it at this speed for this cost because they can, just like cell phone companies. Which from a business standpoint makes perfect sense, but it's at the cost of screwing everyone else. Since significantly better businesses / strategies clearly exist if it's just a sign of business incompetence, why haven't the successful ones, say in Japan or Korea, migrated over here and decimated the market?