4 ms·

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.

by Phlarp 7y ago

metamet 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y ago
  Mine is 1tb/month, but $50/month to get unlimited. The sooner internet gets treated like a utility the better.
  - metamet 7y 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 7y ago
    You realize that existing utilities don't provide unlimited usage for a flat fee, right?
    - Phlarp 7y 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 7y 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.

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.

by Phlarp 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y 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 7y ago
Mine is 1tb/month, but $50/month to get unlimited. The sooner internet gets treated like a utility the better.
- metamet 7y 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 7y ago
  You realize that existing utilities don't provide unlimited usage for a flat fee, right?
  - Phlarp 7y 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 7y 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.