7 ms·

> The only types of Internet service plans shown in the table are DSL and fiber optic cable plans. Since cheapskatesguide.org is about finding the best deals, I

> The only types of Internet service plans shown in the table are DSL and fiber optic cable plans. Since cheapskatesguide.org is about finding the best deals, I excluded from consideration categories of Internet services that I feel are not good deals. Do you guys have especially rubbish cable internet in the US? Or especially amazing DSL? Cable is much better where I am in Into than DSL.

danaris 6y ago
Not at all. At least around here, cable internet goes up into the hundreds of Mbps, while DSL tops out around...10, I think? for prices that are roughly comparable. Excluding cable internet seems like a really terrible idea if you're trying to compare prices for broadband in the US. Edit: units
- bluntfang 6y ago
  Do you mean Mbps?
  - gowld 6y ago
    Yes
  - danaris 6y ago
    Ack, yes, thanks.
- milankragujevic 6y ago
  This has always bothered me, why is DSL so bad in the USA? A part of that is due to thin twisted-pair phone wiring, which is 26AWG instead of 20AWG (0.8mm)[1] in parts of Europe, and presumably because the country is huge[2], but still, I get better service over DSL than cable (in Eastern Europe) because DSL is a dedicated connection from the CPE (modem) to the DSLAM (the central office equipment). Most of the congestion is on the last-mile network from the CO to the customer premises, so having a dedicated link provides a much more stable connection. DOCSIS works over CATV cable, which is a shared medium and it is not electrically isolated, so i.e. neighbors can create noise for you if they have badly designed or malfunctioning devices. VDSL2 35b supports up to 300/100 Mbps for local loops of 300m or less (984 feet), and 35b degrades gracefully to VDSL2 17a for up to 25/4 Mbps at 1300m (0.8 miles). So, in densely populated areas, xDSL would work much better than cable, for people who want a stable connection. Cable is oversold and can provide a small percent of the speed sold at any time, but usually 90% of the rated speed is available in off-peak intervals. Additionally, cable has higher ping times than xDSL and more complex CPE that must be controlled by the ISP (even if you buy your own, the CMTS will reprogram it with a configuration file on boot, and the ISP can open any backdoor they want). Compared to this, DSL CPE can be bought from anywhere and used on any network without ISP interference because DSL is a dedicated medium so there is no trusted part of CPE needed to limit the speed to the user, compared to cable where the CM must have a "trusted" part that the user can't control which will do access control, encryption and also QoS and speed limiting. [1] thinner wires have higher attenuation on high frequencies and/or longer distances [2] sparsely populated area usually means higher average local loop length
  - danaris 6y ago
    Thank you for the very informative post. The best answer I can give to your opening question is "because the telecom companies are rabidly anti-consumer." They absolutely do not want to upgrade their equipment, since at least the mid-'90s. For a while, Verizon was neglecting its copper in favour of fibre, at least in densely-populated areas (in sparsely-populated areas, it just neglected its copper in favour of nothing). Now, so far as I can tell, it has a deliberate strategy of abandoning copper to push people onto its wireless service, which has vastly higher margins and much less regulation (and different regulations, where it has them).
    - milankragujevic 6y ago
      Yes, but that [1] is done elsewhere too, yet I do not see this problem. Just replacing the central office equipment is enough to improve speeds for a larger and larger percentage of users served by the DSLAM in the telephone exchange. The USA, being a technological superpower for decades, surely has enough resources to replace a few pieces of equipment in the CO and offer users something better. This is very strange because the new equipment can actually lower costs for the ISP because it is more efficient, easier to manage, more reliable and more compact. I do not have insight to understand the regulatory landscape and market conditions, however the more I think about it the less of a point I have. I think you are right about the answer [2], I keep trying to find technical excuses but can't. This is a sad thing really. Especially since it costs the same [3] to run the networks in .. [eastern european countries], USA, Russia, Germany, France, Belgium, Australia. No matter the diversity of terrain, the vast scale of the territory, the weather conditions, population density, there is an analogue to USA somewhere, and they don't have it that bad. [1] neglecting copper in favor of fiber [2] "because the telecom companies are rabidly anti-consumer." [3] in general the maintenance and personnel costs may differ due to regulation and market conditions but the equipment costs the same everywhere, and where there is a higher market baseline cost for labor, the ISP can raise the price of services
  - jschwartzi 6y ago
    As a counterpoint to that, Ziply just bought Frontier in my area and now owns all the DSL and FTTH service. They have the worst customer service I have ever experienced. They rolled through and canceled all the autopay, didn't tell us for three months, sent us a letter telling us we didn't have to do anything, and followed that up by sending us no bills or anything until the account was three months past due. Not a single person on their customer service team could refund a $30.00 late fee on an account that had previously been current for 5 years. On top of that when my fiancee was calling every CSR she would get on the phone with would offer to transfer her to the correct department, then hang up. She literally spent a total of 8 hours on the phone over the course of two weeks, so it ended up costing them way more money than they extracted from their little late fee. And their CEO had the unmitigated gall to say they have the best customer service on their website. In contrast, Comcast/Xfinity have not caused any problems at all for me over the 10+ years I've been a subscriber. Also Comcast was able to give us 300 megabit cable for less than the cost of 75 megabit fiber from Ziply. So it wasn't even comparable. So yeah, DSL/FTTH might be more technically capable, but it's only as strong as the company providing the service.
aequitas 6y ago
Also the promoted speed for DSL is often the max speed you will be capped at, if your connection can attain that speed that is. Where I'm from most ISP's won't sell you a DSL less than 40-50Mbit. But my line only supports up to 15Mbit. So essentially I'm forced to pay for more capacity I can't even use.
- lotsofpulp 6y ago
  I’ve never seen DSL in the US with more than 2 or 3 Mbps.
  - gruez 6y ago
    What's your sample size? Your local neighborhood? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_VDSL_and_VDSL2_deployments#North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_VDSL_and_VDSL2_deploym... VDSL supports at least 55Mb/s down.
    - chrismeller 6y ago
      ADSL is the only one I’ve seen in the US, and it doesn’t even get close.
    - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
      VDSL requires that the owner of the copper wires gives a damn about maintaining them.
    - lotsofpulp 6y ago
      Suburbs of many major US cities.
wink 6y ago
German here, there's always been a debate that cable was usually fine for surfing and downloads but often had problems with low latency for games. Also DSL is usually "either it works or it doesn't" and not "ugh, 10% of down/upstream available at night when everyone is watching Netflix. (DSL goes to 50/100 here, usually) Also the biggest cable providers were historically bad at customer service unless you took the business plan for twice the price. If cable is even available at all (never was available where I lived, in a big city). My takeaway simply is that it's not about the technology, but the ISP handling it.
- derefr 6y ago
  > Also DSL is usually "either it works or it doesn't" and not "ugh, 10% of down/upstream available at night when everyone is watching Netflix. Here in Canada, "cable internet" is (and has been for years) a fiber run to the neighbourhood and/or apartment-building head-end switch, with coax runs up from there to individual dwellings. There really isn't any contention on the bandwidth of the shared coax medium any more. It's like an office that has one Ethernet hub per four-cubicle workgroup, with the hubs all connected to an Ethernet switch. Collision avoidance / channel narrowing, despite being theoretically possible at the hub level, doesn't really come up with so few transmitters connected to each hub.
  - wink 6y ago
    Interesting. While interested in networking per se, I've never really dug into the "last mile" or how ISPs connect households, except from basic troubleshooting.
thebean11 6y ago
I've never lived somewhere where DSL was available and better than cable. The one time I had DSL it was slow and unreliable, standard 30mbps cable was miles better.
mrep 6y ago
At least where I am, cable is better than DSL but still not that good. We are paying for 600 mbps but we never really get any more than 30 mbps no matter how much we complain and conference calls tend to stutter quite a bit.
chrismeller 6y ago
The overwhelming number of people I know in the US (including my mother) are all cable. DSL was only ever in the 3mbps down range, but cable easily hits the 100 range.
- eikenberry 6y ago
  (US, PacNW) I used DSL whenever available due to it's reliability compared to cable. With cable I'd have outages at least a few times a year (for up to a week) and with DSL I'd have outages once every few years (never more than a day). I always just figured the phone company was used to high uptime requirements (critical communications infrastructure) while cable was not (optional entertainment). When I last had DSL (2016) I had 40mbs down/5mbs up. Now I have fiber at 1gbs symmetrical for $65/mo.
- kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
  I had 4Mbps DSL once. Then the line went bad and I was moved to a crummy pair that could only muster 2Mbps. All within 1000ft of a CO with a straight shot through an old railroad right of way.

danaris 6y ago

Not at all. At least around here, cable internet goes up into the hundreds of Mbps, while DSL tops out around...10, I think? for prices that are roughly comparable. Excluding cable internet seems like a really terrible idea if you're trying to compare prices for broadband in the US. Edit: units

bluntfang 6y ago
Do you mean Mbps?
- gowld 6y ago
  Yes
- danaris 6y ago
  Ack, yes, thanks.
milankragujevic 6y ago
This has always bothered me, why is DSL so bad in the USA? A part of that is due to thin twisted-pair phone wiring, which is 26AWG instead of 20AWG (0.8mm)[1] in parts of Europe, and presumably because the country is huge[2], but still, I get better service over DSL than cable (in Eastern Europe) because DSL is a dedicated connection from the CPE (modem) to the DSLAM (the central office equipment). Most of the congestion is on the last-mile network from the CO to the customer premises, so having a dedicated link provides a much more stable connection. DOCSIS works over CATV cable, which is a shared medium and it is not electrically isolated, so i.e. neighbors can create noise for you if they have badly designed or malfunctioning devices. VDSL2 35b supports up to 300/100 Mbps for local loops of 300m or less (984 feet), and 35b degrades gracefully to VDSL2 17a for up to 25/4 Mbps at 1300m (0.8 miles). So, in densely populated areas, xDSL would work much better than cable, for people who want a stable connection. Cable is oversold and can provide a small percent of the speed sold at any time, but usually 90% of the rated speed is available in off-peak intervals. Additionally, cable has higher ping times than xDSL and more complex CPE that must be controlled by the ISP (even if you buy your own, the CMTS will reprogram it with a configuration file on boot, and the ISP can open any backdoor they want). Compared to this, DSL CPE can be bought from anywhere and used on any network without ISP interference because DSL is a dedicated medium so there is no trusted part of CPE needed to limit the speed to the user, compared to cable where the CM must have a "trusted" part that the user can't control which will do access control, encryption and also QoS and speed limiting. [1] thinner wires have higher attenuation on high frequencies and/or longer distances [2] sparsely populated area usually means higher average local loop length
- danaris 6y ago
  Thank you for the very informative post. The best answer I can give to your opening question is "because the telecom companies are rabidly anti-consumer." They absolutely do not want to upgrade their equipment, since at least the mid-'90s. For a while, Verizon was neglecting its copper in favour of fibre, at least in densely-populated areas (in sparsely-populated areas, it just neglected its copper in favour of nothing). Now, so far as I can tell, it has a deliberate strategy of abandoning copper to push people onto its wireless service, which has vastly higher margins and much less regulation (and different regulations, where it has them).
  - milankragujevic 6y ago
    Yes, but that [1] is done elsewhere too, yet I do not see this problem. Just replacing the central office equipment is enough to improve speeds for a larger and larger percentage of users served by the DSLAM in the telephone exchange. The USA, being a technological superpower for decades, surely has enough resources to replace a few pieces of equipment in the CO and offer users something better. This is very strange because the new equipment can actually lower costs for the ISP because it is more efficient, easier to manage, more reliable and more compact. I do not have insight to understand the regulatory landscape and market conditions, however the more I think about it the less of a point I have. I think you are right about the answer [2], I keep trying to find technical excuses but can't. This is a sad thing really. Especially since it costs the same [3] to run the networks in .. [eastern european countries], USA, Russia, Germany, France, Belgium, Australia. No matter the diversity of terrain, the vast scale of the territory, the weather conditions, population density, there is an analogue to USA somewhere, and they don't have it that bad. [1] neglecting copper in favor of fiber [2] "because the telecom companies are rabidly anti-consumer." [3] in general the maintenance and personnel costs may differ due to regulation and market conditions but the equipment costs the same everywhere, and where there is a higher market baseline cost for labor, the ISP can raise the price of services
- jschwartzi 6y ago
  As a counterpoint to that, Ziply just bought Frontier in my area and now owns all the DSL and FTTH service. They have the worst customer service I have ever experienced. They rolled through and canceled all the autopay, didn't tell us for three months, sent us a letter telling us we didn't have to do anything, and followed that up by sending us no bills or anything until the account was three months past due. Not a single person on their customer service team could refund a $30.00 late fee on an account that had previously been current for 5 years. On top of that when my fiancee was calling every CSR she would get on the phone with would offer to transfer her to the correct department, then hang up. She literally spent a total of 8 hours on the phone over the course of two weeks, so it ended up costing them way more money than they extracted from their little late fee. And their CEO had the unmitigated gall to say they have the best customer service on their website. In contrast, Comcast/Xfinity have not caused any problems at all for me over the 10+ years I've been a subscriber. Also Comcast was able to give us 300 megabit cable for less than the cost of 75 megabit fiber from Ziply. So it wasn't even comparable. So yeah, DSL/FTTH might be more technically capable, but it's only as strong as the company providing the service.

aequitas 6y ago

Also the promoted speed for DSL is often the max speed you will be capped at, if your connection can attain that speed that is. Where I'm from most ISP's won't sell you a DSL less than 40-50Mbit. But my line only supports up to 15Mbit. So essentially I'm forced to pay for more capacity I can't even use.

lotsofpulp 6y ago
I’ve never seen DSL in the US with more than 2 or 3 Mbps.
- gruez 6y ago
  What's your sample size? Your local neighborhood? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_VDSL_and_VDSL2_deployments#North_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_VDSL_and_VDSL2_deploym... VDSL supports at least 55Mb/s down.
  - chrismeller 6y ago
    ADSL is the only one I’ve seen in the US, and it doesn’t even get close.
  - kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
    VDSL requires that the owner of the copper wires gives a damn about maintaining them.
  - lotsofpulp 6y ago
    Suburbs of many major US cities.

wink 6y ago

German here, there's always been a debate that cable was usually fine for surfing and downloads but often had problems with low latency for games. Also DSL is usually "either it works or it doesn't" and not "ugh, 10% of down/upstream available at night when everyone is watching Netflix. (DSL goes to 50/100 here, usually) Also the biggest cable providers were historically bad at customer service unless you took the business plan for twice the price. If cable is even available at all (never was available where I lived, in a big city). My takeaway simply is that it's not about the technology, but the ISP handling it.

derefr 6y ago
> Also DSL is usually "either it works or it doesn't" and not "ugh, 10% of down/upstream available at night when everyone is watching Netflix. Here in Canada, "cable internet" is (and has been for years) a fiber run to the neighbourhood and/or apartment-building head-end switch, with coax runs up from there to individual dwellings. There really isn't any contention on the bandwidth of the shared coax medium any more. It's like an office that has one Ethernet hub per four-cubicle workgroup, with the hubs all connected to an Ethernet switch. Collision avoidance / channel narrowing, despite being theoretically possible at the hub level, doesn't really come up with so few transmitters connected to each hub.
- wink 6y ago
  Interesting. While interested in networking per se, I've never really dug into the "last mile" or how ISPs connect households, except from basic troubleshooting.

thebean11 6y ago

I've never lived somewhere where DSL was available and better than cable. The one time I had DSL it was slow and unreliable, standard 30mbps cable was miles better.

mrep 6y ago

At least where I am, cable is better than DSL but still not that good. We are paying for 600 mbps but we never really get any more than 30 mbps no matter how much we complain and conference calls tend to stutter quite a bit.

chrismeller 6y ago

The overwhelming number of people I know in the US (including my mother) are all cable. DSL was only ever in the 3mbps down range, but cable easily hits the 100 range.

eikenberry 6y ago
(US, PacNW) I used DSL whenever available due to it's reliability compared to cable. With cable I'd have outages at least a few times a year (for up to a week) and with DSL I'd have outages once every few years (never more than a day). I always just figured the phone company was used to high uptime requirements (critical communications infrastructure) while cable was not (optional entertainment). When I last had DSL (2016) I had 40mbs down/5mbs up. Now I have fiber at 1gbs symmetrical for $65/mo.
kevin_thibedeau 6y ago
I had 4Mbps DSL once. Then the line went bad and I was moved to a crummy pair that could only muster 2Mbps. All within 1000ft of a CO with a straight shot through an old railroad right of way.