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I started with Comcast with 12Mbps service. Over time, they increased the base speed they offer to 20, 25, 50, and now 75. They have done this because they want

I started with Comcast with 12Mbps service. Over time, they increased the base speed they offer to 20, 25, 50, and now 75. They have done this because they want to have x% of their customers on "broadband", per the federal definition. This is all well and good, but they keep increasing the price, and refuse to offer lower-tier service. I probably wouldn't want 12Mbps anymore, but 20 or 25 would suffice. I wish I could pay a fraction of what I'm paying for 75Mbps and get a lower tier of service. It should suffice that x% of customers are offered "broadband" for a reasonable price, even if some choose a lower speed. Ultimately, this comes down to competition. There are no other wired options where I live (in the heart of Silicon Valley). I have considered using a cellular hotspot, but it's not competitive in terms of pricing. I'm all for prodding companies to move to faster speeds, but there should still be room for consumer choice.

Workaccount2 3y ago
In an extreme ironic twist, me, the techie nerd guy, has the slowest internet of the regular-folk friend group of mine. Everyone has got 1Gbps and here I am with 300Mbps.
- vladslav 3y ago
  My friends in third-world countries get faster and less expensive service than me in Silicon Valley. On top of that, there is no fiber connection in my neighborhood, and they've been on fiber for over 5 years. And there is a data cap also. It's just crazy and sad.
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    Are they in geographic region that is more densely populated? Or an area that was built out more recently? In my last house (also in SV) the choices were between Comcast and AT&T copper. The latter went up to 6/1, so was effectively useless. I'm sure it was laid down decades ago.
    - thumbsup-_- 3y ago
      Yes. Providers in India offer far more speed at far cheaper prices than US. The key to this is competition. There are many providers available in each major city which helps consumer. It's sad that in many US' major cities there is usually one or two providers only for a building or neighborhood. My building in SF only has comcast, so they have a monopoly and can charge whatever they want.
    - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
      You can find fiber connection in some remote vilage in slovakia. Consolidation is the cause - US had 2-se as many listed companies 30 yeats ago. Now US capital is buying up independant businesses across easterm Europe and developing countries, killing competition and the local economy.
    - vladslav 3y ago
      They are in a densely populated area. The city had issues with internet service for quite a while. The government started to invest heavily in fiber tech around the 2010s, and fast forward to now, almost everyone in the city can get a fiber connection to their home or apartment building. The cost is around ~28$ for 300Mbs and $80 for 1Gbs.
    - Fatnino 3y ago
      Much of residential silicon valley was built very quickly in the 50s
  - Fnoord 3y ago
    Check this out: > Broadband penetration as of June 2017: 23.5 broadband connections for every 100 people. > Distribution of broadband connections by type, as reported by Ancom, is as follows 94% FTTx (FTTH/FTTB/FTTC/FTTN) internet access connections, 4.8% Coaxial cable, 0.2% other. Now guess the country. Answer in ROT13 at [1]. Hint: it ain't a first world country. Another hint: Latine loquitur. Oh and it ain't a recent development either. They've been at it like forever. [1] uggcf://ra.jvxvcrqvn.bet/jvxv/Vagrearg_va_Ebznavn
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    If you develop later you can leapfrog countries that ground through all the necessary phases for the development to happen for everyone globally. But that doesn't mean you can keep pace. Hopefully your area gets an upgrade, or a Starlink, soon.
  - arllk 3y ago
    I live in Perú, and I have 400Mbps internet FTTH with no data cap, and the price is 37 USD [1], the competition of the internet providers is incredibly good for the consumers. The lowest plan that mi ISP offers is 100Mbps and is at 21 USD. [1] https://www.movistar.com.pe/hogar/internet/solo-internet https://www.movistar.com.pe/hogar/internet/solo-internet (Link in Spanish)
    - vondur 3y ago
      According to wikipedia the average monthly salary in Peru is $502 US. $37 per month doesn't seem that cheap to me.
      - nicoburns 3y ago
        As another point of comparison, a new ISP in my area of London is offering symmetric gigabit fiber for £25/month or around $30/month (USD).
        ZoomerCretin 3y ago
        Your country requires ISPs to share and rent lines. That does a great deal for competition and lowering prices
        vondur 3y ago
        $30/month USD compared to the average salary in London is pretty good. We unfortunately don't have much competition among ISP's here in the US.
  - Fatnino 3y ago
    Palo Alto just unveiled another fiber to the home plan to be ready by Jan 2025 in one select neighborhood (that I live just outside of, dammit). This plan will definitely come to fruition just like all the other ones since the 90s
    - msmith 3y ago
      It boggles my mind that Google Fiber has been available in Austin, TX for 10 years but is still not available in the communities next door to Google HQ.
      - ZoomerCretin 3y ago
        Probably due to the extreme level of veto-ism in the Bay Area. Everyone wants internet, but if 5 people complaining about yards or roads being dug up can get work to stop indefinitely, costs are going through the roof. There's far more uncertainty in that political environment than anywhere else. For reference, I live in a small town of ~6,000 people, and we're getting fiber laid. For the longest time we only had 25mbps, and then a new provider came in with coaxial and offered 200mbps (with a data cap), and now a third is laying fiber. Our average income is $34k/year, so it's not because we have more money than the opulent Bay Area.
        Workaccount2 3y ago
        It could simply be that poor people don't complain about infrastructure projects like rich people too. Or they don't have the tools/connections to effectively stop it.
        I_Am_Nous 3y ago
        I imagine if you are renting a property, you are less likely to complain about things going on around the property because it's not your property to "defend." If you own (and especially if you are part of an HOA) you might be more likely to complain if there is construction going on for 3+ months in your neighborhood. So it probably does fall into rich vs poor in the same way that renters may be less likely to be rich.
  - 867-5309 3y ago
    "faster" here is relative. unless you live in eastern USA or western Europe, you'd be lucky to see half the quoted "speed", since that is where the majority of the internet resides
- warner25 3y ago
  Me too. I tell everyone who will listen that they should look at their actual bandwidth usage. I've looked at the detailed statistics on my Google Nest WiFi router, and my family's peak usage never exceeded about 30 Mbps. That's with me working from home as a CS PhD student and my wife homeschooling our kids during the day. I have 300 Mbps (down) because that's the lowest, cheapest tier that my ISP offers. Maybe people are actually using their 1 Gbps bandwidth if they have multiple 4K TVs and do serious gaming? I don't know, I doubt it. I tell everyone to look at their actual cellular data usage too. I think all middle class Americans just buy unlimited plans now, but I do just fine with 500 MB per month for $5.
  - pests 3y ago
    I have 3 days left in my billing cycle on phone and I've used 8.5GB of data. I have WiFi everywhere I go too. 500 for $5 would cost me about $50 - unlimited makes perfect sense.
    - warner25 3y ago
      What do you do with all that, especially with WiFi everywhere? Are you continuously streaming video while on-the-go between WiFi networks? That's fine, it's just stunning. I'm admittedly a minimal user of my phone. I average about 10 unlocks per day. Especially when I'm on-the-go, it's just calls and text messages, some driving directions, and maybe looking up a phone number or business hours. If I use it to listen to an audiobook or podcast, I download those ahead of time on WiFi. Using only 200 MB per month is normal.
      - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
        > I'm admittedly a minimal user of my phone. I average about 10 unlocks per day. That's about 5 - 10 times the amount of unlocks I do. Not what I'd consider minimal, at all. :D
        warner25 3y ago
        Nice! I have a few days in the past month with only 1-2 unlocks, but those are outliers. At a minimum, my wife and I will exchange a couple messages per hour when I'm out of the house. I like to think that I could live as a total weirdo without a phone (just my Google Voice line from my laptop) if I were single.
- isilofi 3y ago
  Non-techie notices "internet is slow" because their youtube video is blocky or pages load slowly. Non-techie goes to ISP to complain. ISP upsells to a more expensive plan. The actual reason in almost all cases: non-techies are clueless about their slow and shitty WIFI. Picking empty or less busy channels, using 5GHz, using gasp cables, all black magic and never done. Sometimes the upselling actually helps because the better plan comes with a maybe-better AP...
  - gosub100 3y ago
    > their slow and shitty WIFI I'm still embarrassed about the time I called my ISP and complained that the new Xmbs package they just installed is capped at only Ymbps only to realize I had run the speed test over wifi (back in the wireless-g,maybe n days)...
  - lifeisstillgood 3y ago
    I live with the shitty wifi because the yak-shaving that comes with "ok, I will set their router to be pass through, now I need to install openwrt on that 100$ recommended router, and run a cable behind my drywall upto the second floor, and install anothe openwrt and bang goes a weekend and really I am only do that once I order a second line because taking out my family's internet for the whole weekend because I will fuck it up at least once .. ok. Next month honest
  - gnicholas 3y ago
    Yeah, the Comcast sales reps spin ridiculous tales about how much speed you need. People who don't know better are fooled by this, and end up paying way too much for speeds they don't remotely need.
  - doubled112 3y ago
    And some techies regret our choice to have both a Mikrotik AP and walls. You can have decent WiFi and one of those, but not all three. That'll teach me to stay consistent.
  - Workaccount2 3y ago
    When I had the fiber connection for my new internet run to my house, I told the tech I want the router/modem combo installed in the basement. The guy strongly insisted I not do it, but then when I persisted I had to sign two waivers acknowledging that my wifi will probably be shit and the basement is a terrible spot. I was just using their router/modem as a pass through, but man, they really don't want people putting routers in their basement. I can totally understand why too.
- Terr_ 3y ago
  As someone who plays games a lot more than watches movies, I don't need much bandwidth, what I really want is low latency.
- xattt 3y ago
  It might be that you’re informed enough to consider that 300 Mbps is more than enough.
sidewndr46 3y ago
I got hit by this as well. Speed was doubled 'for free' one month with no notice. A few months later the price was doubled.
whateverman23 3y ago
Would it actually be that much less costly to give you 20-25 vs 75, though? My uninformed assumption was that it was largely artificial once you get to a low enough speed.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  Well, if there's not a cost difference, why do they keep trying to double my pricing when the base tier goes up? My sense is there is some cost savings at these lower tiers, but more importantly it would prevent ISPs from jacking prices up while using higher speeds as the rationale ("Look, we just tripled your speed, and it only costs double!"). ISPs would be less likely to double prices without any service improvement. But since many people don't care about the service improvement, it's an illusory benefit for them.
  - jacksnipe 3y ago
    They’ve already trained consumers that higher speeds cost more. They would need a compelling reason to keep costs the same after increasing speeds.
    - vel0city 3y ago
      I've had many instances where ISPs increased my speeds without increasing prices. If pricing stayed even close to fixed my gigabit internet would cost well over $10,000mo, considering back in the day I was paying SBC for less than a meg for more than I'm paying for a gigabit today. And that's before adjusting for inflation, those 90s dollars are worth way more than 2023 dollars.
    - jakogut 3y ago
      In my area, a competitor just finished installing fiber to my neighborhood, and is offering symmetrical gigabit speeds for less (nearly half the price) than I was paying for 500/20 Mbps to the incumbent cable company before. The cable company now needs to both increase speeds _and_ lower prices to even keep their existing customers. This is a good place to be, as a customer.
teaearlgraycold 3y ago
I'm in an area with competition and I think I'm paying like $60/month for 10Gbps.
- huytersd 3y ago
  What? I wasn’t even aware consumer speeds got that high. No caps I hope?
  - bitbckt 3y ago
    Sonic in the Bay Area offers 10Gb symmetric at that price, no cap. I upgraded from their 1Gb plan to 10Gb with no change in price. Unfortunately, I’ve since moved to another part of the country, with much less enlightened ISP options.
  - Jiocus 3y ago
    Started seeing consumer 10Gbps back in 2018 (in Sweden). The problem was there wasn't many consumer router devices around back then to support that kind of link. It might have even been unheard of, so one ISP solved it by designing their own custom device to specification - just so they could offer 10Gbps asap.
    - tracker1 3y ago
      That would be my problem... my router has 2.5gbps ports, and I've only got 2 devices on my network supporting 10gb (nas and my desktop)... everything else is 1gb or 2.5gb. I'm not sure what the hardware costs would be to support that.
  - teaearlgraycold 3y ago
    No caps, no cap :P I even made my own router because I didn't like the consumer options available: https://danangell.com/blog/posts/10gbps-router-for-fun/ https://danangell.com/blog/posts/10gbps-router-for-fun/
  - geraldwhen 3y ago
    I have 5gbps available at my house, but what would I use it for? Symmetric 1gbps is fine for me.
gknoy 3y ago
> I have considered using a cellular hotspot, but it's not competitive in terms of pricing. I had the opposite experience. I was a very happy Comcast customer for a year or two (their curfew-for-kids-computers feature on their router was great, and the mobile app integration was very handy), but the 5G Verizon offering was cheaper and faster (where I live). I have never felt so bad canceling my account, as everything about the experience was great, but VZ had double (or more) the upload speed.
- Galacta7 3y ago
  I would love to get Verizon 5G Home Internet for my mom, who is currently getting gouged by Verizon with DSL (and slow barely better than dial-up DSL). Unfortunately, she's not eligible, as Verizon apparently limits the number of 5G customers they offer in a given area -- due to bandwidth limitations. So it's great for folks who can get it, but pretty limited in terms of how many people can actually sign-up for service.
mixdup 3y ago
>This is all well and good, but they keep increasing the price, and refuse to offer lower-tier service. I probably wouldn't want 12Mbps anymore, but 20 or 25 would suffice. I wish I could pay a fraction of what I'm paying for 75Mbps and get a lower tier of service. It should suffice that x% of customers are offered "broadband" for a reasonable price, even if some choose a lower speed. The problem is that most of the costs of providing broadband are fixed costs. To run a coaxial cable from their headend to your house, and to provide employees and crews to repair it and install it all costs the same whether you buy 10 megabits or 2 gigabits The variable costs--things like backbone bandwidth, paying for transit, doing node splits, etc are a smaller part of the overall cost than you might expect This lower end of the market, though, is being taken up by Fixed Wireless (T-Mobile and Verizon primarily) for example you can get Verizon home wireless internet for as low as $25. My mom has it, and it's decent 50 megabit service for a low price
- gnicholas 3y ago
  > you can get Verizon home wireless internet for as low as $25. I hope this leads to wired ISP price reductions, or at least slower price growth. I happen to live in a VZW dead zone, so unfortunately it won't work for me...
- PaulHoule 3y ago
  There also is a step between DSL and cable and fiber. I have a fiber to the node situation that gives consistent and reliable 20 Mbps down and I have two of those with load balancer. With VDSL they could sell 100Mbps service to a few houses close to the node. A real upgrade for me would involve running a cable through a beaver meadow. There is an electric line and crews do go in there to limb up trees and they are planning to replace a pole, if there was some rational coordination of services and a commitment to universal service they’d get the fiber in when they do a maintenance cycle on the power line.
  - dekhn 3y ago
    I mean, the beavers would probably also appreciate an upgrade.
adamsvystun 3y ago
I agree that there should be more consumer choice. But is there anything FCC can do to increase it? Is it in their jurisdiction?
- gnicholas 3y ago
  Well, they seem to be able to offer incentives based on how many customers are on "broadband", so presumably they could offer incentives related to offering lower tiers/pricing, or to ISPs entering a market that only has one provider.
- toast0 3y ago
  > But is there anything FCC can do to increase it? Is it in their jurisdiction? Sure. They could apply the line sharing rules from the 1996 Telecom Act. Afaik, that's still law, but when courts said the FCC couldn't apply it to telephone companies and not cable companies, the FCC opted to declare the market was competitive and end mandatory line sharing. Help from congress would be great, though. There was a lot of shenanigans under the line sharing regime, like ILECs pricing retail internet lower than wholesale prices. After a transition period, the line owners shouldn't offer retail service at all, make them restructure it into actually separate companies providing the internet service vs the lines.
ClumsyPilot 3y ago
> There are no other wired options where I live (in the heart of Silicon Valley) This reads like a joke.
josh_carterPDX 3y ago
I'm a Comcast customer and bundle my services. Every two years, once the introductory rate expires, I call to get a new "promo" rate or just say they can cancel me right then and there. They've never taken me up on the cancellation. As a result I have a full 1GIG service at my house and feel like I pay a reasonable amount. I'm just not a big fan of their "security" features. Other than that, I haven't had many issues here in Oregon.
- tzs 3y ago
  When I had Comcast bundles I did similar, except instead of calling I went to their nearest office. I liked doing this in person because I sometimes have trouble understanding call center accents.
jmyeet 3y ago
We don't need competition. We need to provide Internet access as a heavily-regulated utility, ideally as a municipal service. Competition for last-mile Internet actually makes very little sense because it's an overbuild. Imagine it costs $2000 per household to connect a fiber network. With 70% of households signing up, that produces a certain cost. Now imagine there was a second fiber network that also cost $2000 per household that splits the customer base. By definition, this is going to be more expensive. Capitalism created this problem. It won't solve it. This is capitalism working as intended: doing the absolute least possible for the highest possible price while lobbying to exclude competition (eg by making municipal broadband illegal). Expecting markets to solve this problem is neoliberal brain rot. Let's imagine that you do get 2 or even 3 ISPs in an area similar to Comcat, Spectrum, AT&T or Verizon. Now what? They just collude to keep speeds low and prices high [1]. Build municipal broadband. Failing that, regulate ISPs like utilities. And this would include unbundling TV services. [1]: https://www.legitreviews.com/american-isps-collude-to-keep-broadband-speeds-low-and-prices-high_14209 https://www.legitreviews.com/american-isps-collude-to-keep-b...
m463 3y ago
I started comcast with 100Mbps service and they have increased my bill every year too. sigh
hn_acker 3y ago
> I'm all for prodding companies to move to faster speeds, but there should still be room for consumer choice. There certainly should be consumer choice, but in your case another problem is that the amount you pay Comcast for 75 Mbps download now should be no more than what you paid for 12 Mbps before. As I wrote in a different comment [1]: > It's not reasonable for big ISPs like Comcast to offer me 300 megabits download 15 megabits upload for $70 a month (might've been $90, but assume $70) while EPB of Chattanooga [1] offers 1 gigabit symmetrical for $67.99 a month. What speed any individual actually needs doesn't have to come into the picture. In matters of consumer protection, the principle of the thing matters just as much as actual consumer needs. (Ignore the [1] inside the quoted paragraph above. I'm leaving it in for Ctrl-F purposes.) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38105873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38105873
jedbrown 3y ago
They tripled the price of my grandmother's service over a five year period despite no speed increases so I figure they were going to charge you more regardless.

Workaccount2 3y ago

In an extreme ironic twist, me, the techie nerd guy, has the slowest internet of the regular-folk friend group of mine. Everyone has got 1Gbps and here I am with 300Mbps.

vladslav 3y ago
My friends in third-world countries get faster and less expensive service than me in Silicon Valley. On top of that, there is no fiber connection in my neighborhood, and they've been on fiber for over 5 years. And there is a data cap also. It's just crazy and sad.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  Are they in geographic region that is more densely populated? Or an area that was built out more recently? In my last house (also in SV) the choices were between Comcast and AT&T copper. The latter went up to 6/1, so was effectively useless. I'm sure it was laid down decades ago.
  - thumbsup-_- 3y ago
    Yes. Providers in India offer far more speed at far cheaper prices than US. The key to this is competition. There are many providers available in each major city which helps consumer. It's sad that in many US' major cities there is usually one or two providers only for a building or neighborhood. My building in SF only has comcast, so they have a monopoly and can charge whatever they want.
  - ClumsyPilot 3y ago
    You can find fiber connection in some remote vilage in slovakia. Consolidation is the cause - US had 2-se as many listed companies 30 yeats ago. Now US capital is buying up independant businesses across easterm Europe and developing countries, killing competition and the local economy.
  - vladslav 3y ago
    They are in a densely populated area. The city had issues with internet service for quite a while. The government started to invest heavily in fiber tech around the 2010s, and fast forward to now, almost everyone in the city can get a fiber connection to their home or apartment building. The cost is around ~28$ for 300Mbs and $80 for 1Gbs.
  - Fatnino 3y ago
    Much of residential silicon valley was built very quickly in the 50s
- Fnoord 3y ago
  Check this out: > Broadband penetration as of June 2017: 23.5 broadband connections for every 100 people. > Distribution of broadband connections by type, as reported by Ancom, is as follows 94% FTTx (FTTH/FTTB/FTTC/FTTN) internet access connections, 4.8% Coaxial cable, 0.2% other. Now guess the country. Answer in ROT13 at [1]. Hint: it ain't a first world country. Another hint: Latine loquitur. Oh and it ain't a recent development either. They've been at it like forever. [1] uggcf://ra.jvxvcrqvn.bet/jvxv/Vagrearg_va_Ebznavn
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  If you develop later you can leapfrog countries that ground through all the necessary phases for the development to happen for everyone globally. But that doesn't mean you can keep pace. Hopefully your area gets an upgrade, or a Starlink, soon.
- arllk 3y ago
  I live in Perú, and I have 400Mbps internet FTTH with no data cap, and the price is 37 USD [1], the competition of the internet providers is incredibly good for the consumers. The lowest plan that mi ISP offers is 100Mbps and is at 21 USD. [1] https://www.movistar.com.pe/hogar/internet/solo-internet https://www.movistar.com.pe/hogar/internet/solo-internet (Link in Spanish)
  - vondur 3y ago
    According to wikipedia the average monthly salary in Peru is $502 US. $37 per month doesn't seem that cheap to me.
    - nicoburns 3y ago
      As another point of comparison, a new ISP in my area of London is offering symmetric gigabit fiber for £25/month or around $30/month (USD).
      - ZoomerCretin 3y ago
        Your country requires ISPs to share and rent lines. That does a great deal for competition and lowering prices
      - vondur 3y ago
        $30/month USD compared to the average salary in London is pretty good. We unfortunately don't have much competition among ISP's here in the US.
- Fatnino 3y ago
  Palo Alto just unveiled another fiber to the home plan to be ready by Jan 2025 in one select neighborhood (that I live just outside of, dammit). This plan will definitely come to fruition just like all the other ones since the 90s
  - msmith 3y ago
    It boggles my mind that Google Fiber has been available in Austin, TX for 10 years but is still not available in the communities next door to Google HQ.
    - ZoomerCretin 3y ago
      Probably due to the extreme level of veto-ism in the Bay Area. Everyone wants internet, but if 5 people complaining about yards or roads being dug up can get work to stop indefinitely, costs are going through the roof. There's far more uncertainty in that political environment than anywhere else. For reference, I live in a small town of ~6,000 people, and we're getting fiber laid. For the longest time we only had 25mbps, and then a new provider came in with coaxial and offered 200mbps (with a data cap), and now a third is laying fiber. Our average income is $34k/year, so it's not because we have more money than the opulent Bay Area.
      - Workaccount2 3y ago
        It could simply be that poor people don't complain about infrastructure projects like rich people too. Or they don't have the tools/connections to effectively stop it.
        I_Am_Nous 3y ago
        I imagine if you are renting a property, you are less likely to complain about things going on around the property because it's not your property to "defend." If you own (and especially if you are part of an HOA) you might be more likely to complain if there is construction going on for 3+ months in your neighborhood. So it probably does fall into rich vs poor in the same way that renters may be less likely to be rich.
- 867-5309 3y ago
  "faster" here is relative. unless you live in eastern USA or western Europe, you'd be lucky to see half the quoted "speed", since that is where the majority of the internet resides
warner25 3y ago
Me too. I tell everyone who will listen that they should look at their actual bandwidth usage. I've looked at the detailed statistics on my Google Nest WiFi router, and my family's peak usage never exceeded about 30 Mbps. That's with me working from home as a CS PhD student and my wife homeschooling our kids during the day. I have 300 Mbps (down) because that's the lowest, cheapest tier that my ISP offers. Maybe people are actually using their 1 Gbps bandwidth if they have multiple 4K TVs and do serious gaming? I don't know, I doubt it. I tell everyone to look at their actual cellular data usage too. I think all middle class Americans just buy unlimited plans now, but I do just fine with 500 MB per month for $5.
- pests 3y ago
  I have 3 days left in my billing cycle on phone and I've used 8.5GB of data. I have WiFi everywhere I go too. 500 for $5 would cost me about $50 - unlimited makes perfect sense.
  - warner25 3y ago
    What do you do with all that, especially with WiFi everywhere? Are you continuously streaming video while on-the-go between WiFi networks? That's fine, it's just stunning. I'm admittedly a minimal user of my phone. I average about 10 unlocks per day. Especially when I'm on-the-go, it's just calls and text messages, some driving directions, and maybe looking up a phone number or business hours. If I use it to listen to an audiobook or podcast, I download those ahead of time on WiFi. Using only 200 MB per month is normal.
    - anonymouskimmer 3y ago
      > I'm admittedly a minimal user of my phone. I average about 10 unlocks per day. That's about 5 - 10 times the amount of unlocks I do. Not what I'd consider minimal, at all. :D
      - warner25 3y ago
        Nice! I have a few days in the past month with only 1-2 unlocks, but those are outliers. At a minimum, my wife and I will exchange a couple messages per hour when I'm out of the house. I like to think that I could live as a total weirdo without a phone (just my Google Voice line from my laptop) if I were single.
isilofi 3y ago
Non-techie notices "internet is slow" because their youtube video is blocky or pages load slowly. Non-techie goes to ISP to complain. ISP upsells to a more expensive plan. The actual reason in almost all cases: non-techies are clueless about their slow and shitty WIFI. Picking empty or less busy channels, using 5GHz, using gasp cables, all black magic and never done. Sometimes the upselling actually helps because the better plan comes with a maybe-better AP...
- gosub100 3y ago
  > their slow and shitty WIFI I'm still embarrassed about the time I called my ISP and complained that the new Xmbs package they just installed is capped at only Ymbps only to realize I had run the speed test over wifi (back in the wireless-g,maybe n days)...
- lifeisstillgood 3y ago
  I live with the shitty wifi because the yak-shaving that comes with "ok, I will set their router to be pass through, now I need to install openwrt on that 100$ recommended router, and run a cable behind my drywall upto the second floor, and install anothe openwrt and bang goes a weekend and really I am only do that once I order a second line because taking out my family's internet for the whole weekend because I will fuck it up at least once .. ok. Next month honest
- gnicholas 3y ago
  Yeah, the Comcast sales reps spin ridiculous tales about how much speed you need. People who don't know better are fooled by this, and end up paying way too much for speeds they don't remotely need.
- doubled112 3y ago
  And some techies regret our choice to have both a Mikrotik AP and walls. You can have decent WiFi and one of those, but not all three. That'll teach me to stay consistent.
- Workaccount2 3y ago
  When I had the fiber connection for my new internet run to my house, I told the tech I want the router/modem combo installed in the basement. The guy strongly insisted I not do it, but then when I persisted I had to sign two waivers acknowledging that my wifi will probably be shit and the basement is a terrible spot. I was just using their router/modem as a pass through, but man, they really don't want people putting routers in their basement. I can totally understand why too.
Terr_ 3y ago
As someone who plays games a lot more than watches movies, I don't need much bandwidth, what I really want is low latency.
xattt 3y ago
It might be that you’re informed enough to consider that 300 Mbps is more than enough.

sidewndr46 3y ago

I got hit by this as well. Speed was doubled 'for free' one month with no notice. A few months later the price was doubled.

whateverman23 3y ago

Would it actually be that much less costly to give you 20-25 vs 75, though? My uninformed assumption was that it was largely artificial once you get to a low enough speed.

gnicholas 3y ago
Well, if there's not a cost difference, why do they keep trying to double my pricing when the base tier goes up? My sense is there is some cost savings at these lower tiers, but more importantly it would prevent ISPs from jacking prices up while using higher speeds as the rationale ("Look, we just tripled your speed, and it only costs double!"). ISPs would be less likely to double prices without any service improvement. But since many people don't care about the service improvement, it's an illusory benefit for them.
- jacksnipe 3y ago
  They’ve already trained consumers that higher speeds cost more. They would need a compelling reason to keep costs the same after increasing speeds.
  - vel0city 3y ago
    I've had many instances where ISPs increased my speeds without increasing prices. If pricing stayed even close to fixed my gigabit internet would cost well over $10,000mo, considering back in the day I was paying SBC for less than a meg for more than I'm paying for a gigabit today. And that's before adjusting for inflation, those 90s dollars are worth way more than 2023 dollars.
  - jakogut 3y ago
    In my area, a competitor just finished installing fiber to my neighborhood, and is offering symmetrical gigabit speeds for less (nearly half the price) than I was paying for 500/20 Mbps to the incumbent cable company before. The cable company now needs to both increase speeds _and_ lower prices to even keep their existing customers. This is a good place to be, as a customer.

teaearlgraycold 3y ago

I'm in an area with competition and I think I'm paying like $60/month for 10Gbps.

huytersd 3y ago
What? I wasn’t even aware consumer speeds got that high. No caps I hope?
- bitbckt 3y ago
  Sonic in the Bay Area offers 10Gb symmetric at that price, no cap. I upgraded from their 1Gb plan to 10Gb with no change in price. Unfortunately, I’ve since moved to another part of the country, with much less enlightened ISP options.
- Jiocus 3y ago
  Started seeing consumer 10Gbps back in 2018 (in Sweden). The problem was there wasn't many consumer router devices around back then to support that kind of link. It might have even been unheard of, so one ISP solved it by designing their own custom device to specification - just so they could offer 10Gbps asap.
  - tracker1 3y ago
    That would be my problem... my router has 2.5gbps ports, and I've only got 2 devices on my network supporting 10gb (nas and my desktop)... everything else is 1gb or 2.5gb. I'm not sure what the hardware costs would be to support that.
- teaearlgraycold 3y ago
  No caps, no cap :P I even made my own router because I didn't like the consumer options available: https://danangell.com/blog/posts/10gbps-router-for-fun/ https://danangell.com/blog/posts/10gbps-router-for-fun/
- geraldwhen 3y ago
  I have 5gbps available at my house, but what would I use it for? Symmetric 1gbps is fine for me.

gknoy 3y ago

> I have considered using a cellular hotspot, but it's not competitive in terms of pricing. I had the opposite experience. I was a very happy Comcast customer for a year or two (their curfew-for-kids-computers feature on their router was great, and the mobile app integration was very handy), but the 5G Verizon offering was cheaper and faster (where I live). I have never felt so bad canceling my account, as everything about the experience was great, but VZ had double (or more) the upload speed.

Galacta7 3y ago
I would love to get Verizon 5G Home Internet for my mom, who is currently getting gouged by Verizon with DSL (and slow barely better than dial-up DSL). Unfortunately, she's not eligible, as Verizon apparently limits the number of 5G customers they offer in a given area -- due to bandwidth limitations. So it's great for folks who can get it, but pretty limited in terms of how many people can actually sign-up for service.

mixdup 3y ago

>This is all well and good, but they keep increasing the price, and refuse to offer lower-tier service. I probably wouldn't want 12Mbps anymore, but 20 or 25 would suffice. I wish I could pay a fraction of what I'm paying for 75Mbps and get a lower tier of service. It should suffice that x% of customers are offered "broadband" for a reasonable price, even if some choose a lower speed. The problem is that most of the costs of providing broadband are fixed costs. To run a coaxial cable from their headend to your house, and to provide employees and crews to repair it and install it all costs the same whether you buy 10 megabits or 2 gigabits The variable costs--things like backbone bandwidth, paying for transit, doing node splits, etc are a smaller part of the overall cost than you might expect This lower end of the market, though, is being taken up by Fixed Wireless (T-Mobile and Verizon primarily) for example you can get Verizon home wireless internet for as low as $25. My mom has it, and it's decent 50 megabit service for a low price

gnicholas 3y ago
> you can get Verizon home wireless internet for as low as $25. I hope this leads to wired ISP price reductions, or at least slower price growth. I happen to live in a VZW dead zone, so unfortunately it won't work for me...
PaulHoule 3y ago
There also is a step between DSL and cable and fiber. I have a fiber to the node situation that gives consistent and reliable 20 Mbps down and I have two of those with load balancer. With VDSL they could sell 100Mbps service to a few houses close to the node. A real upgrade for me would involve running a cable through a beaver meadow. There is an electric line and crews do go in there to limb up trees and they are planning to replace a pole, if there was some rational coordination of services and a commitment to universal service they’d get the fiber in when they do a maintenance cycle on the power line.
- dekhn 3y ago
  I mean, the beavers would probably also appreciate an upgrade.

adamsvystun 3y ago

I agree that there should be more consumer choice. But is there anything FCC can do to increase it? Is it in their jurisdiction?

gnicholas 3y ago
Well, they seem to be able to offer incentives based on how many customers are on "broadband", so presumably they could offer incentives related to offering lower tiers/pricing, or to ISPs entering a market that only has one provider.
toast0 3y ago
> But is there anything FCC can do to increase it? Is it in their jurisdiction? Sure. They could apply the line sharing rules from the 1996 Telecom Act. Afaik, that's still law, but when courts said the FCC couldn't apply it to telephone companies and not cable companies, the FCC opted to declare the market was competitive and end mandatory line sharing. Help from congress would be great, though. There was a lot of shenanigans under the line sharing regime, like ILECs pricing retail internet lower than wholesale prices. After a transition period, the line owners shouldn't offer retail service at all, make them restructure it into actually separate companies providing the internet service vs the lines.

ClumsyPilot 3y ago

> There are no other wired options where I live (in the heart of Silicon Valley) This reads like a joke.

josh_carterPDX 3y ago

I'm a Comcast customer and bundle my services. Every two years, once the introductory rate expires, I call to get a new "promo" rate or just say they can cancel me right then and there. They've never taken me up on the cancellation. As a result I have a full 1GIG service at my house and feel like I pay a reasonable amount. I'm just not a big fan of their "security" features. Other than that, I haven't had many issues here in Oregon.

tzs 3y ago
When I had Comcast bundles I did similar, except instead of calling I went to their nearest office. I liked doing this in person because I sometimes have trouble understanding call center accents.

jmyeet 3y ago

We don't need competition. We need to provide Internet access as a heavily-regulated utility, ideally as a municipal service. Competition for last-mile Internet actually makes very little sense because it's an overbuild. Imagine it costs $2000 per household to connect a fiber network. With 70% of households signing up, that produces a certain cost. Now imagine there was a second fiber network that also cost $2000 per household that splits the customer base. By definition, this is going to be more expensive. Capitalism created this problem. It won't solve it. This is capitalism working as intended: doing the absolute least possible for the highest possible price while lobbying to exclude competition (eg by making municipal broadband illegal). Expecting markets to solve this problem is neoliberal brain rot. Let's imagine that you do get 2 or even 3 ISPs in an area similar to Comcat, Spectrum, AT&T or Verizon. Now what? They just collude to keep speeds low and prices high [1]. Build municipal broadband. Failing that, regulate ISPs like utilities. And this would include unbundling TV services. [1]: https://www.legitreviews.com/american-isps-collude-to-keep-broadband-speeds-low-and-prices-high_14209 https://www.legitreviews.com/american-isps-collude-to-keep-b...

m463 3y ago

I started comcast with 100Mbps service and they have increased my bill every year too. sigh

hn_acker 3y ago

> I'm all for prodding companies to move to faster speeds, but there should still be room for consumer choice. There certainly should be consumer choice, but in your case another problem is that the amount you pay Comcast for 75 Mbps download now should be no more than what you paid for 12 Mbps before. As I wrote in a different comment [1]: > It's not reasonable for big ISPs like Comcast to offer me 300 megabits download 15 megabits upload for $70 a month (might've been $90, but assume $70) while EPB of Chattanooga [1] offers 1 gigabit symmetrical for $67.99 a month. What speed any individual actually needs doesn't have to come into the picture. In matters of consumer protection, the principle of the thing matters just as much as actual consumer needs. (Ignore the [1] inside the quoted paragraph above. I'm leaving it in for Ctrl-F purposes.) [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38105873 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38105873

jedbrown 3y ago

They tripled the price of my grandmother's service over a five year period despite no speed increases so I figure they were going to charge you more regardless.