5 ms·

Demand for Youtube and FB are so high and ubiquitous that pretty much any ISP will immediately cave in. Yep, Comcast better be careful lest I leave them for

Demand for Youtube and FB are so high and ubiquitous that pretty much any ISP will immediately cave in. Yep, Comcast better be careful lest I leave them for the 6mbps competitors I have as options in the backwater community I live in called Berkeley, CA. I utterly fucking loathe Comcast, and yet they get thousands of my dollars because of an unspoken of oligopoly among ISPs that has grown out of the tacit agreement to not enter in to each others fiefs.

jff 10y ago
Does Sonic.net not provide service in Berkeley? Back when I lived in the Bay Area, I switched from Comcast purely because Sonic.net isn't an utterly loathsome company. Turns out with Sonic I didn't have to reboot my modem every other week either.
- kbar13 10y ago
  sonic speeds in many parts of the bay area (even in SF) is not competitive with comcast. they are rolling out fiber in select neighborhoods and can't wait until they come to my part of town.
  - mbreese 10y ago
    I had to switch from Sonic (to Comcast) for just that reason. I had a bonded DSL connection from Sonic that could just barely get 10Mbps. And the bonding really wasn't even worth it because one line was at 8 and the other at 2. And it was all due to the unmaintained copper coming from AT&T. I agree with their new strategy though - the only way to have any control over their service quality was to own their own fiber. Now, I'm in Cincinnati and have excellent fiber service from Cincinnati Bell, so it's possible to have good quality from the incumbent carrier.
  - thaumasiotes 10y ago
    Perhaps if comcast were deliberately strangling youtube, sonic's speeds would be competitive with comcast's.
- deleted 10y ago
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- equalarrow 10y ago
  Sonic is my preferred ISP. No data caps, no snooping, solid customer support. They're just happy being a great ISP. However, outside of their fiber offering, they are hobbled by AT&T copper. I've used Sonic many different times throughout SF and while their support guys have been great, any and all problems I've had were usually a result of the copper. And AT&T couldn't care less. Currently I have 50Mbps FTTN service from Sonic and it's rock solid. It's never been down in the few years I've had it. It does, however, still use AT&T infrastructure. But this is the only time I've used Sonic over AT&T and been pretty happy with it.
- mmanfrin 10y ago
  Sonic is reliant on AT&T boxes; the best I can get is dual copper, and given my distance from the box, my estimated speed is 6mbps. Oh how I've pleaded with them to bring fiber here. I remember when they announced that Berkeley was on the shortlist about 5 years ago.
gnicholas 10y ago
Years ago I wrote: How My Hatred Of Comcast Drove Me To Buy Their Stock [1]. TLDR: I hedged the possibility of oligopolistic/monopolistic pricing practices of a company that I cannot avoid by assuming that such predatory pricing practices will benefit their stockholders. Their standard rates in my area have doubled since I bought the stock. The stock price has tripled. I wish this experiment had ended differently, with me realizing that Comcast wasn't so bad after all, and selling the stock at cost. 1: https://medium.com/@nicklum/how-my-hatred-of-comcast-drove-me-to-buy-their-stock-a17ca03a832f#.l9t8jbo4a https://medium.com/@nicklum/how-my-hatred-of-comcast-drove-m...
deleted 10y ago
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jff 10y ago

Does Sonic.net not provide service in Berkeley? Back when I lived in the Bay Area, I switched from Comcast purely because Sonic.net isn't an utterly loathsome company. Turns out with Sonic I didn't have to reboot my modem every other week either.

kbar13 10y ago
sonic speeds in many parts of the bay area (even in SF) is not competitive with comcast. they are rolling out fiber in select neighborhoods and can't wait until they come to my part of town.
- mbreese 10y ago
  I had to switch from Sonic (to Comcast) for just that reason. I had a bonded DSL connection from Sonic that could just barely get 10Mbps. And the bonding really wasn't even worth it because one line was at 8 and the other at 2. And it was all due to the unmaintained copper coming from AT&T. I agree with their new strategy though - the only way to have any control over their service quality was to own their own fiber. Now, I'm in Cincinnati and have excellent fiber service from Cincinnati Bell, so it's possible to have good quality from the incumbent carrier.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  Perhaps if comcast were deliberately strangling youtube, sonic's speeds would be competitive with comcast's.
deleted 10y ago
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equalarrow 10y ago
Sonic is my preferred ISP. No data caps, no snooping, solid customer support. They're just happy being a great ISP. However, outside of their fiber offering, they are hobbled by AT&T copper. I've used Sonic many different times throughout SF and while their support guys have been great, any and all problems I've had were usually a result of the copper. And AT&T couldn't care less. Currently I have 50Mbps FTTN service from Sonic and it's rock solid. It's never been down in the few years I've had it. It does, however, still use AT&T infrastructure. But this is the only time I've used Sonic over AT&T and been pretty happy with it.
mmanfrin 10y ago
Sonic is reliant on AT&T boxes; the best I can get is dual copper, and given my distance from the box, my estimated speed is 6mbps. Oh how I've pleaded with them to bring fiber here. I remember when they announced that Berkeley was on the shortlist about 5 years ago.

gnicholas 10y ago

Years ago I wrote: How My Hatred Of Comcast Drove Me To Buy Their Stock [1]. TLDR: I hedged the possibility of oligopolistic/monopolistic pricing practices of a company that I cannot avoid by assuming that such predatory pricing practices will benefit their stockholders. Their standard rates in my area have doubled since I bought the stock. The stock price has tripled. I wish this experiment had ended differently, with me realizing that Comcast wasn't so bad after all, and selling the stock at cost. 1: https://medium.com/@nicklum/how-my-hatred-of-comcast-drove-me-to-buy-their-stock-a17ca03a832f#.l9t8jbo4a https://medium.com/@nicklum/how-my-hatred-of-comcast-drove-m...

deleted 10y ago

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