8 ms·

The average home connection in Canada is something around 15-20Mbps, IIRC. Your average 4G is already faster than that. I get similar speeds on average on my ph

The average home connection in Canada is something around 15-20Mbps, IIRC. Your average 4G is already faster than that. I get similar speeds on average on my phone compared to my home internet. The two reasons I still have dedicated home internet at this point are data caps and latency (gaming). Otherwise, my phone usually gets comparable - or better! - speeds than my home connection.

Phlarp 8y ago
My home connection has a data cap now (fuck you comcast) so the first 5g provider to sell a real unlimited plan will get my money.
- metamet 8y ago
  T-Mobile is piloting just that: https://www.t-mobile.com/news/home-internet-pilot https://www.t-mobile.com/news/home-internet-pilot And I hate Comcast. The $50/mo to unlock true unlimited internet was absurd. I actually cancelled my Comcast last month and went to Century Link. The overall speed is slower, the lack of data cap and being 1/3 of the price has been worth it. It feels good to no longer be giving them any money, especially after their billing would routinely "forget" discounts that were supposed to be on my account. I got offered free Starz for 3 months and $30 off my bill for the coming year, which just happened to only be there for a month... So after calling them to have the issue fixed once, and then seeing it happen again the very next month, I finally cut ties.
  - ac29 8y ago
    T-mobile de-prioritizes this product though: "During congestion, Home Internet customers may notice speeds lower than other customers due to data prioritization" At least where I live, T-mobile towers are at least occasionally congested. Its not too uncommon for data to be slow or even non-functional with good signal levels (on my smartphone, don't know about this home product).
  - JohnFen 8y ago
    You are so fortunate to have options for your ISP! Where I live (in a good sized city), my options consists solely of Comcast.
    - metamet 8y ago
      Yeah, it really is a blessing. I'm sorry to hear they've got a stranglehold on you. Their customer service is really terrible, and they can get away with it because they know you're stuck. I am in Minneapolis and Century Link has managed to become the primary secondary option to Comcast. Some neighborhoods are lucky and have US Internet's Fiber as a third option. On top of that, Century Link has been pushing hard to expand their fiber. I am relegated to only 40MB connection on the copper connection in my neighborhood right now, but the technician that came out to do the install said that (unofficially) they're hoping to have Century Link's fiber be an option in the next year. $45/mo for 40MB. Will be $65/mo for fiber. Still a fraction of Comcast's insane rates.
- kijin 8y ago
  And then, a couple of years down the road, your ISP will silently begin to throttle your connection once you reach 1TB per month. :(
- folkrav 8y ago
  Pretty much all home connections have too up here, unfortunately. I have to pay a CAD$15/month extra to have unlimited transfer, otherwise it's capped at 400GB IIRC, and overage charges are outrageously expensive.
  - Phlarp 8y ago
    Mine is 1tb/month, but $50/month to get unlimited. The sooner internet gets treated like a utility the better.
    - metamet 8y ago
      And I believe it's $10/50GB you go over the 1tb/month. Microsoft's One Drive was doing a constant upload/download one week, refreshing itself constantly, costing me $200. Ugh.
    - kcorbitt 8y ago
      You realize that existing utilities don't provide unlimited usage for a flat fee, right?
      - Phlarp 8y ago
        I honestly don't understand the fear of usage based billing. It's the only sane way to charge for this kind of thing. The marginal price for a "unit" of data is just too high. The real "cost" of delivering a terabyte of Netflix or Youtube content is so small compared to the price ISPs are able to charge.
        ghaff 8y ago
        Well, if the cost is that low, I would think that would be an argument for just making it a flat rate. Historically, I think the fear among people like those here was more or less two-fold. 1.) The original top 1% downloaders were mostly those downloading lots of "Linux distributions" (and of course many other types of media) over torrents. I'm sure quite a few of those 1% ers were on sites like this and preferred to effectively be subsidized by the 99%. 2.) Whether or not it was just a rationalization for #1, many made the argument that bandwidth caps would constrain innovative services because if you turn a meter on, people are going to use bandwidth-intensive services a lot less and the Internet will be less generally useful as a result. The dynamics today are probably a lot different. I imagine the profile of a big home bandwidth consumer now is a family that watches a lot of Netflix and YouTube.
cobookman 8y ago
But the 4G towers have less bandwidth than the coax network. So if everyone used 4G for home internet speeds would be worse. With 5G and recent increase in cell tower coverage. We are almost there.
- ryacko 8y ago
  The 5.8 GHz band has 500 MHz total of bandwidth. Many cell phone companies already have more than that much bandwidth already, they just have to deploy more small cells. The only result of 5G would be the end of public wifi which typically has 5 - 10 mbps speeds.
  - xur17 8y ago
    > The only result of 5G would be the end of public wifi which typically has 5 - 10 mbps speeds. Not if they charge anything close to what they charge now.

Phlarp 8y ago

My home connection has a data cap now (fuck you comcast) so the first 5g provider to sell a real unlimited plan will get my money.

metamet 8y ago
T-Mobile is piloting just that: https://www.t-mobile.com/news/home-internet-pilot https://www.t-mobile.com/news/home-internet-pilot And I hate Comcast. The $50/mo to unlock true unlimited internet was absurd. I actually cancelled my Comcast last month and went to Century Link. The overall speed is slower, the lack of data cap and being 1/3 of the price has been worth it. It feels good to no longer be giving them any money, especially after their billing would routinely "forget" discounts that were supposed to be on my account. I got offered free Starz for 3 months and $30 off my bill for the coming year, which just happened to only be there for a month... So after calling them to have the issue fixed once, and then seeing it happen again the very next month, I finally cut ties.
- ac29 8y ago
  T-mobile de-prioritizes this product though: "During congestion, Home Internet customers may notice speeds lower than other customers due to data prioritization" At least where I live, T-mobile towers are at least occasionally congested. Its not too uncommon for data to be slow or even non-functional with good signal levels (on my smartphone, don't know about this home product).
- JohnFen 8y ago
  You are so fortunate to have options for your ISP! Where I live (in a good sized city), my options consists solely of Comcast.
  - metamet 8y ago
    Yeah, it really is a blessing. I'm sorry to hear they've got a stranglehold on you. Their customer service is really terrible, and they can get away with it because they know you're stuck. I am in Minneapolis and Century Link has managed to become the primary secondary option to Comcast. Some neighborhoods are lucky and have US Internet's Fiber as a third option. On top of that, Century Link has been pushing hard to expand their fiber. I am relegated to only 40MB connection on the copper connection in my neighborhood right now, but the technician that came out to do the install said that (unofficially) they're hoping to have Century Link's fiber be an option in the next year. $45/mo for 40MB. Will be $65/mo for fiber. Still a fraction of Comcast's insane rates.
kijin 8y ago
And then, a couple of years down the road, your ISP will silently begin to throttle your connection once you reach 1TB per month. :(
folkrav 8y ago
Pretty much all home connections have too up here, unfortunately. I have to pay a CAD$15/month extra to have unlimited transfer, otherwise it's capped at 400GB IIRC, and overage charges are outrageously expensive.
- Phlarp 8y ago
  Mine is 1tb/month, but $50/month to get unlimited. The sooner internet gets treated like a utility the better.
  - metamet 8y ago
    And I believe it's $10/50GB you go over the 1tb/month. Microsoft's One Drive was doing a constant upload/download one week, refreshing itself constantly, costing me $200. Ugh.
  - kcorbitt 8y ago
    You realize that existing utilities don't provide unlimited usage for a flat fee, right?
    - Phlarp 8y ago
      I honestly don't understand the fear of usage based billing. It's the only sane way to charge for this kind of thing. The marginal price for a "unit" of data is just too high. The real "cost" of delivering a terabyte of Netflix or Youtube content is so small compared to the price ISPs are able to charge.
      - ghaff 8y ago
        Well, if the cost is that low, I would think that would be an argument for just making it a flat rate. Historically, I think the fear among people like those here was more or less two-fold. 1.) The original top 1% downloaders were mostly those downloading lots of "Linux distributions" (and of course many other types of media) over torrents. I'm sure quite a few of those 1% ers were on sites like this and preferred to effectively be subsidized by the 99%. 2.) Whether or not it was just a rationalization for #1, many made the argument that bandwidth caps would constrain innovative services because if you turn a meter on, people are going to use bandwidth-intensive services a lot less and the Internet will be less generally useful as a result. The dynamics today are probably a lot different. I imagine the profile of a big home bandwidth consumer now is a family that watches a lot of Netflix and YouTube.

cobookman 8y ago

But the 4G towers have less bandwidth than the coax network. So if everyone used 4G for home internet speeds would be worse. With 5G and recent increase in cell tower coverage. We are almost there.

ryacko 8y ago
The 5.8 GHz band has 500 MHz total of bandwidth. Many cell phone companies already have more than that much bandwidth already, they just have to deploy more small cells. The only result of 5G would be the end of public wifi which typically has 5 - 10 mbps speeds.
- xur17 8y ago
  > The only result of 5G would be the end of public wifi which typically has 5 - 10 mbps speeds. Not if they charge anything close to what they charge now.