6 ms·

I live in a rural college town on the East Coast USA. I paid Verizon 90 USD per month for 1.5Mbit DSL and a home phone number. I had this phone service for abo

by _wldu 5y ago

I live in a rural college town on the East Coast USA. I paid Verizon 90 USD per month for 1.5Mbit DSL and a home phone number. I had this phone service for about 12 years. It was horrible. When the phone rang, the DSL would stop working. When I ended calls, the DSL would stop working. There was so much static on the line I could barely talk/hear others. But it grew worse and started impacting my ability to work from home after COVID. Verizon said they could "roll a truck" to my house in about two months if I agreed to pay several hundred dollars upfront. I told them no. I had had enough. I ported my phone number to Consumer Cellular and use 4G for Internet access now. It's faster, $30 cheaper each month and much more reliable although I do limit my use as it has a 35 GB per month cap and "may" slow down if I go over that. I wonder, would it slow down more than Verizon's 1.5Mbit? I'm still Waiting on Elon and Starlink to save us.

umvi 5y ago
I feel like geo internet such as HughesNet would be both cheaper and better than what you describe. Geo is high latency but at least better bandwidth than 1.5Mbps
- mgamache 5y ago
  the latency would make real-time audio/video impossible. That's not a solution in the world of Zoom/discord.
itsoktocry 5y ago
>I'm still Waiting on Elon and Starlink to save us. What leads you to believe Elon's internet will, in any way, be pro consumer? Tesla certainly isn't, and their customer service is not good.
- Nextgrid 5y ago
  Competition is always good and will force other providers to up their game.
  - TurkTurkleton 5y ago
    Starlink, unfortunately, will not present meaningful competition. It will really only be viable in sparsely populated areas--even once the full constellation is deployed, there simply won't be the bandwidth for large numbers of users in densely populated areas like major cities--and both Starlink spokespeople and Musk himself have not been particularly coy about that fact...though I suppose neither have they tried particularly hard to push back against the prevailing tech-media narrative that once Starlink is fully armed and operational it will have Comcast, Spectrum, Cox, et al. quaking in their boots.
    - toast0 5y ago
      I think Starlink has a chance to raise the floor in rural areas. Telcos (usually) do an OK job when there's a competing cable company, and vice versa, but when it's just one offering, there's often low reliability, low speed or both. This is most often in rural areas, where Starlink should be viable. Some urban areas do fall into the same single provider, low quality offering, and Starlink won't be viable there.
      - kube-system 5y ago
        Starlink will be good for people in rural areas, but it won’t positively change the existing economics of terrestrial internet service. Frontier doesn’t offer slow DSL to rural areas because they’re rolling in cash from having no competitors. And when they lose customers to Starlink, it’s going to make their subscriber revenue to infrastructure expenditure ratio even worse.
        toast0 5y ago
        If I'm Frontier, why spend on infra to provide a better product to people in areas with no competitors? That's just money spent with no change in revenue. Now if there's a viable competitor, it's a choice between spending the money to keep customers or not spending the money and losing the customers over time. Terrestrial networking can easily beat Starlink on bandwidth, availability, latency, jitter, etc, all the quality metrics (except portability), but only if the terrestrial network makes the effort. Telcos have the ability to quickly roll out new networks when they're inspired. AT&T ran fiber to the home (GPON) in several markets within about 18 months when Google Fiber announced they were entering those markets (which they then decided not to). Telcos have an army of people (many consultants) who can run outdoor wiring and do home installation, they have easy access to poles, and (mostly) a decent database of addresses and line lengths to get multifiber lines factory manufactured to roll out with minimal field splicing. And that's the hard way; things like better remote terminal equipment and/or backhaul don't require a lot of capital or labor individually (but may in aggregate), or just more adaptive DSL speed profiles just developer labor and configuration pushes. I could probably get 50% more downstream speed and 2-3x my upstream speed, but my ISP has inflexible speed profiles; that's probably not the issue for people on 1.5 M dsl, but it's got to be an issue for some.
- api 5y ago
  Starlink is already faster and will provide some competition too.
- 29083011397778 5y ago
  We went from .4Mb download, with a 7 second ping, to ~100Mb and ~20ms ping when we changed from Telus (Alberta, Canada) to Starlink. Maybe Starlink won't be perfect, but the bar is lower than you can even imagine.
- milkytron 5y ago
  > Tesla certainly isn't, and their customer service is not good. How is Tesla not pro-consumer? Genuinely curious. My thoughts as a non-customer are that they have blazed the trail for normalizing EVs. Without Tesla, the Porsche Taycan likely wouldn't exist, Rivian wouldn't exist in the same way, and electric vehicles altogether would probably be in the same place they were 10 years ago. Even if their product isn't the best, at least it's an option, which leads to more competition, which in my eyes seems to be pro-consumer.
raptor99 5y ago
Is Verizon the only option there for the last 12 years?
f6v 5y ago
> 90 USD per month for 1.5Mbit DSL I can’t believe it. I paid an equivalent of couple dollars per month for that 15 years ago in Eastern Europe.
- lostmsu 5y ago
  Rural?
  - BiteCode_dev 5y ago
    Yes
  - iso1210 5y ago
    OP said he was in a town
- joshspankit 5y ago
  There’s both a legitimate challenge (the land masses are huge in countries like Canada and the US) and functional monopolies that are leveraged by the companies who own the infrastructure that stretches out over those land masses. Canada is an easier example because it’s essentially serviced by 3 companies who then lease out to the smaller “competitors”: for rural areas some people have the choice of either DSL over oxidized above-ground lines or tower-to-dish internet where the tower is daisy-chained from another tower or from it’s own oxidized lines. There is no cell coverage at all, and poor phone service. If someone in an area like that wants internet the company says that ~”the cost of the service must cover all the infrastructure and maintenance” and then they base that cost on only a few percent of people actually using it. In that way it’s hard to argue against “well, it costs us $1500/mo to provide service to 10 users, so we’re losing money when we charge a ‘reasonable’ $120”. But what’s really happening is that people in those areas are bandwidth starved, signing up for anyone who can provide decent service, and signing up in bulk while the company oversubscribes. It’s easy for them to still show losses publicly, but on the back end they are collecting government subsidies and using free capital to extend the network as far as they can.
fossuser 5y ago
We got Starlink in Placerville California and it’s great. Just make sure you place the dish in a location with zero obstructions. 50-180mbps down and 24-40ms latency. ~25mbps up.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  We just didn't get Starlink in Placerville, because we are surrounded by 100-ft tall trees. So we are still stuck on microwave links. (ATT ran fiber to within yards of the house more than a decade ago, and never lit it because the FCC allowed them not to. They pocketed the $half-trillion the FCC let them tax landlines for to build it, though.) But it is good news that Pville is in a served area now. Where did you find a prairie in Pville?
  - fossuser 5y ago
    We're lucky - it's at the top of a hill overlooking a giant valley up mosquito road I think on the west side of town? It took a few tries and there is still a minor obstruction which causes occasional 10s drops. It's my in-laws house (I just bought the starlink set up for them so there would be better connectivity when I'm there). If I had control over placement and such I think I could get a view without obstruction. They still have calnet as a fallback network, but it's slow and has similar latency.
  - iso1210 5y ago
    https://towerdirect.net/product/used-120ft-sabre-self-supporting-tower/ https://towerdirect.net/product/used-120ft-sabre-self-suppor...
  - missedthecue 5y ago
    The fcc never gave them half a trillion. The fcc never had half a trillion to give. Can you show me where in ATTs financial statements they gained $500 billion or anywhere near that?
    - mmmBacon 5y ago
      Are you familiar with the concept of hyperbole? A hyperbole is an exaggerated statement or claim not meant to be taken literally.
SXX 5y ago
> When the phone rang, the DSL would stop working. When I ended calls, the DSL would stop working. In Russia such issues were just solved by adding some passive "splitter" device that supposedly filtered some of voice call from DSL data transfer. Every DSL ISP did it.
- brewdad 5y ago
  Same. I still have a couple of DSL splitters Verizon gave me when I had DSL ~20 years ago. They should have been included with the installation. One can probably find the splitters online for a few bucks if they need them.
- ncmncm 5y ago
  All DSL subscribers everywhere get those.
tyfytyf 5y ago
You can also try https://startyourownisp.com/ https://startyourownisp.com/

by _wldu 5y ago

umvi 5y ago

I feel like geo internet such as HughesNet would be both cheaper and better than what you describe. Geo is high latency but at least better bandwidth than 1.5Mbps

mgamache 5y ago
the latency would make real-time audio/video impossible. That's not a solution in the world of Zoom/discord.

itsoktocry 5y ago

>I'm still Waiting on Elon and Starlink to save us. What leads you to believe Elon's internet will, in any way, be pro consumer? Tesla certainly isn't, and their customer service is not good.

Nextgrid 5y ago
Competition is always good and will force other providers to up their game.
- TurkTurkleton 5y ago
  Starlink, unfortunately, will not present meaningful competition. It will really only be viable in sparsely populated areas--even once the full constellation is deployed, there simply won't be the bandwidth for large numbers of users in densely populated areas like major cities--and both Starlink spokespeople and Musk himself have not been particularly coy about that fact...though I suppose neither have they tried particularly hard to push back against the prevailing tech-media narrative that once Starlink is fully armed and operational it will have Comcast, Spectrum, Cox, et al. quaking in their boots.
  - toast0 5y ago
    I think Starlink has a chance to raise the floor in rural areas. Telcos (usually) do an OK job when there's a competing cable company, and vice versa, but when it's just one offering, there's often low reliability, low speed or both. This is most often in rural areas, where Starlink should be viable. Some urban areas do fall into the same single provider, low quality offering, and Starlink won't be viable there.
    - kube-system 5y ago
      Starlink will be good for people in rural areas, but it won’t positively change the existing economics of terrestrial internet service. Frontier doesn’t offer slow DSL to rural areas because they’re rolling in cash from having no competitors. And when they lose customers to Starlink, it’s going to make their subscriber revenue to infrastructure expenditure ratio even worse.
      - toast0 5y ago
        If I'm Frontier, why spend on infra to provide a better product to people in areas with no competitors? That's just money spent with no change in revenue. Now if there's a viable competitor, it's a choice between spending the money to keep customers or not spending the money and losing the customers over time. Terrestrial networking can easily beat Starlink on bandwidth, availability, latency, jitter, etc, all the quality metrics (except portability), but only if the terrestrial network makes the effort. Telcos have the ability to quickly roll out new networks when they're inspired. AT&T ran fiber to the home (GPON) in several markets within about 18 months when Google Fiber announced they were entering those markets (which they then decided not to). Telcos have an army of people (many consultants) who can run outdoor wiring and do home installation, they have easy access to poles, and (mostly) a decent database of addresses and line lengths to get multifiber lines factory manufactured to roll out with minimal field splicing. And that's the hard way; things like better remote terminal equipment and/or backhaul don't require a lot of capital or labor individually (but may in aggregate), or just more adaptive DSL speed profiles just developer labor and configuration pushes. I could probably get 50% more downstream speed and 2-3x my upstream speed, but my ISP has inflexible speed profiles; that's probably not the issue for people on 1.5 M dsl, but it's got to be an issue for some.
api 5y ago
Starlink is already faster and will provide some competition too.
29083011397778 5y ago
We went from .4Mb download, with a 7 second ping, to ~100Mb and ~20ms ping when we changed from Telus (Alberta, Canada) to Starlink. Maybe Starlink won't be perfect, but the bar is lower than you can even imagine.
milkytron 5y ago
> Tesla certainly isn't, and their customer service is not good. How is Tesla not pro-consumer? Genuinely curious. My thoughts as a non-customer are that they have blazed the trail for normalizing EVs. Without Tesla, the Porsche Taycan likely wouldn't exist, Rivian wouldn't exist in the same way, and electric vehicles altogether would probably be in the same place they were 10 years ago. Even if their product isn't the best, at least it's an option, which leads to more competition, which in my eyes seems to be pro-consumer.

raptor99 5y ago

Is Verizon the only option there for the last 12 years?

f6v 5y ago

> 90 USD per month for 1.5Mbit DSL I can’t believe it. I paid an equivalent of couple dollars per month for that 15 years ago in Eastern Europe.

lostmsu 5y ago
Rural?
- BiteCode_dev 5y ago
  Yes
- iso1210 5y ago
  OP said he was in a town
joshspankit 5y ago
There’s both a legitimate challenge (the land masses are huge in countries like Canada and the US) and functional monopolies that are leveraged by the companies who own the infrastructure that stretches out over those land masses. Canada is an easier example because it’s essentially serviced by 3 companies who then lease out to the smaller “competitors”: for rural areas some people have the choice of either DSL over oxidized above-ground lines or tower-to-dish internet where the tower is daisy-chained from another tower or from it’s own oxidized lines. There is no cell coverage at all, and poor phone service. If someone in an area like that wants internet the company says that ~”the cost of the service must cover all the infrastructure and maintenance” and then they base that cost on only a few percent of people actually using it. In that way it’s hard to argue against “well, it costs us $1500/mo to provide service to 10 users, so we’re losing money when we charge a ‘reasonable’ $120”. But what’s really happening is that people in those areas are bandwidth starved, signing up for anyone who can provide decent service, and signing up in bulk while the company oversubscribes. It’s easy for them to still show losses publicly, but on the back end they are collecting government subsidies and using free capital to extend the network as far as they can.

fossuser 5y ago

We got Starlink in Placerville California and it’s great. Just make sure you place the dish in a location with zero obstructions. 50-180mbps down and 24-40ms latency. ~25mbps up.

ncmncm 5y ago
We just didn't get Starlink in Placerville, because we are surrounded by 100-ft tall trees. So we are still stuck on microwave links. (ATT ran fiber to within yards of the house more than a decade ago, and never lit it because the FCC allowed them not to. They pocketed the $half-trillion the FCC let them tax landlines for to build it, though.) But it is good news that Pville is in a served area now. Where did you find a prairie in Pville?
- fossuser 5y ago
  We're lucky - it's at the top of a hill overlooking a giant valley up mosquito road I think on the west side of town? It took a few tries and there is still a minor obstruction which causes occasional 10s drops. It's my in-laws house (I just bought the starlink set up for them so there would be better connectivity when I'm there). If I had control over placement and such I think I could get a view without obstruction. They still have calnet as a fallback network, but it's slow and has similar latency.
- iso1210 5y ago
  https://towerdirect.net/product/used-120ft-sabre-self-supporting-tower/ https://towerdirect.net/product/used-120ft-sabre-self-suppor...
- missedthecue 5y ago
  The fcc never gave them half a trillion. The fcc never had half a trillion to give. Can you show me where in ATTs financial statements they gained $500 billion or anywhere near that?
  - mmmBacon 5y ago
    Are you familiar with the concept of hyperbole? A hyperbole is an exaggerated statement or claim not meant to be taken literally.

SXX 5y ago

> When the phone rang, the DSL would stop working. When I ended calls, the DSL would stop working. In Russia such issues were just solved by adding some passive "splitter" device that supposedly filtered some of voice call from DSL data transfer. Every DSL ISP did it.

brewdad 5y ago
Same. I still have a couple of DSL splitters Verizon gave me when I had DSL ~20 years ago. They should have been included with the installation. One can probably find the splitters online for a few bucks if they need them.
ncmncm 5y ago
All DSL subscribers everywhere get those.

tyfytyf 5y ago

You can also try https://startyourownisp.com/ https://startyourownisp.com/