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I'm one of their customers. I often see that one green car parked down the road. It's pretty good - their provided router is locked down to hell and they're on

I'm one of their customers. I often see that one green car parked down the road. It's pretty good - their provided router is locked down to hell and they're on a cgnat, but not having to deal with Comcast's 1.2tb data cap is well worth it. Checking Comcast's site now, it seems that they now offer "unlimited" data. Interesting, that option wasn't there 6 months ago. ~100 customers seems too small for the amount of effort they have put in so far. They've been working along all the roads near me for about a year, and they're out there running fiber conduit every day. The houses out here are far apart. Hopefully, they can make it work.

gs17 1y ago
> Checking Comcast's site now, it seems that they now offer "unlimited" data. Interesting, that option wasn't there 6 months ago. It's been there since they announced the data cap. I thought the unlimited bundled with leasing their higher end hardware came first, but the email from 2016 announcing that our plan was getting the cap mentions being able to pay for unlimited.
- nkellenicki 1y ago
  You've always had the _option_ of paying extra for unlimited data, however its only in the past month or two that they've started offering unlimited data as standard (in select markets). https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/stung-by-customer-losses-comcast-says-all-its-new-plans-have-unlimited-data/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/stung-by-custome...
  - PantaloonFlames 1y ago
    I’m sorry I still don’t get it. Could you explain that in different phrasing ? A comcast customer always had the option to pay for unlimited data. I get that part. What is the 2nd part? “Started offering it as standard” means what?
    - amethyst 1y ago
      In markets where Comcast has actual real competition, they "include" the unlimited data (aka no cap) with no extra charge when you sign up for their gigabit plans.
      - Spivak 1y ago
        You pay for their highest tiered and highest bandwidth plan and they have the audacity to impose a cap making that bandwidth work against you? Crazy. My household internet usage is quite modest, nothing anyone on HN would call data intensive—casual video streaming being the lion's share, and I blow out 1TB every month without fail.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    - dietr1ch 1y ago
      In the Bay Area Comcast offered (2017-2023 at least) internet with a default 1-1.2TiB/mo data cap that you can lift for the month for an extra 10-20usd (I don't recall, my roommate who played CoD was the one paying for this by himself on every month with huge updates). There's barely any competition here. You can pretty much chose from Comcast Business or XFinity, which both are just Comcast because of a free market with free as in not in jail.
      - rcleveng 1y ago
        Really 10-20 more? When I asked, and I'm in the Bay Area, the unlimited plan was $5 a month more than it would cost if I leased their modem.
        jacobgkau 1y ago
        How much more was it than if you weren't leasing their modem?
        baby_souffle 1y ago
  - wijwp 1y ago
    That's not true. I tried getting unlimited data like 7-8 years ago and they said I needed a business account to get it.
    - bayarearefugee 1y ago
      What ISPs offer and how much they offer it for tends to vary wildly region to region. If you live in a region where they have no meaningful competition (which is still fairly common in a lot of places in the US) well bend over and lube up.
      - observationist 1y ago
        They'll vary wildly, as much as they think they can get away with, in the hopes that you will never use the service and pay them as much as possible for it, and they'll bury your mailbox with crap to try to wear you down into coming back. They will happily let you pay for years, for services that no longer exist, no longer connected to any of their networks. They'll take you to court rather than pay anything back; they know they are receiving extra money, and there's a significant amount that comes in, but "oh, it's so confusing, and there are so many legacy systems, we can't possibly catch every mistake." The money they shuffle back and forth between each other, daily, reeks of book cooking - you might have a stretch of 20 miles of trunk in which there are 20 separate owners - not concurrent riding separate fiber lines, but in sequence, each paying rent to or getting rent paid by the adjacent rider, even though only a single company actually services the entire span. It's funny how construction companies and ISPs get these rackets going, and then when people come along like these PrimeOne guys and offer a reasonable rate on a decent product, it's somehow vastly disruptive and threatening. They'll expand, and be encouraged and allowed to expand, and after 5 or 6 years, the big ISPs will start circling, and eventually buy them out, and they'll retire happy. AT&T or Lumen will own their network inside of 10 years, and they'll claim it's modernized and upgraded infrastructure. People with shitty oversold undermaintained cable internet will be left alone until the money stops. Starlink to phones is great, if it only didn't make ISPs so much money handling the base stations on the ground. There's fiber all over the US just hanging there, unused, unmaintained, because merger after merger after merger left giant piles of assets under the ownership of companies like comcast and centurylink and at&t, who left infrastructure to rot, often built with public funding, and maintained their local monopolies and shitty service. Whatever it is we're doing to regulate the industry at a federal level isn't working, but I imagine that's where a lot of the money goes.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- fuckinpuppers 1y ago
  Yeah they’ve offered unlimited for a few years now for an additional charge. Now as of last month all plans are unlimited if you just update to them. It wound up being cheaper for me too. However I still applaud these guys. There needs to be more competition.
WarOnPrivacy 1y ago
> I'm one of their customers. It's pretty good - their provided router is locked down to hell and they're on a cgnat This sounds like mine. I'm guessing yours doesn't support IPv6 because most fiber providers don't. For the router, I already build firewalls so that. I pay $10/mo to escape their cgnat. I've also alerted them to expect regular haranguing from me about deploying IPv6. Especially since bgp.he.net shows they have a /40 allocated to themselves; it doesn't seem to be used.
- jerf 1y ago
  "I'm guessing yours doesn't support IPv6 because most fiber providers don't." Yeah, what's up with that? I just got switched on to fiber and the CGNAT for IPv4 doesn't shock me much, but what's with the no IPv6 in 2025? I know enough to deal with it, but what's the deal? Is there something systematic here?
  - ta8645 1y ago
    Everybody can muddle along without IPv6, so it's easy to make it a very low priority. Especially for small shops that are struggling just to create a viable business. IPv6 needs something more to motivate it, a web destination or application that is only available on IPv6.
    - paleotrope 1y ago
      The eggs need some chickens first.
    - bigstrat2003 1y ago
      We used to have freeipv6porn.com, lol. But I suspect that was a joke as much as anything else given how much porn you can get for free all over the Internet.
    - throw0101b 1y ago
      > IPv6 needs something more to motivate it, a web destination or application that is only available on IPv6. How about not having to pay for (as) beefy CG-NAT hardware because people that go to Youtube, Netflix, MetaFace, TikTok, etc, can directly connect via IPv6.
babypuncher 1y ago
Comcast similarly removed their 1.2TB cap in my neighborhood within months of us getting fiber. It's almost like the only reason for the cap was because they could get away with it when there wasn't any competition.
- xedrac 1y ago
  Comcast is notorious for exploiting places that don't have any other real options. Just before Google Fiber was activated in my area, Comcast stepped up their game big time. The only problem is that they had spent years nickel and diming me for actual connection speeds that didn't even come close to their advertised rates, and their latency/jitter is garbage compared to fiber. Comcast clearly doesn't want to have to compete. In their defense, their connection was rarely down.
  - some-guy 1y ago
    When I lived in downtown Oakland CA, Comcast literally could not keep up price-wise with the competition. Their customer service jaw would drop when I told them our local fiber offered a flat fee cheaper than theirs for 10 gigabit symmetrical fiber. On top of that there was another local microwave wireless option that wasn't too terrible. The only thing in the end their salespeople could do was offer TV bundles but still wasn't cost-competitive. Not sure what their offerings are now but it was such an easy decision to switch.
  - PantaloonFlames 1y ago
    > is notorious for exploiting places that don't have any other real options. Isn’t this standard competitive practice ? Charge what the market will bear. I don’t know if I’d call that “exploitation”. If there’s one gas station 90 miles from every other gas station in the Nevada desert, they’re gonna charge more, aren’t they?
    - xedrac 1y ago
      Yes, it certainly is. But isn't it interesting that Comcast is almost universally hated? I used the word "exploit" simply because had they treated their customers better and focused on putting their best foot forward, I don't think they would have bled customers nearly as quickly.
justusthane 1y ago
> their provided router is locked down to hell From the article, it sounds like the "default" option is for the customer to supply their own router, which I appreciate: > Prime-One provides a modem and the ONT, plus a Wi-Fi router if the customer prefers not to use their own router.
- eurleif 1y ago
  Modem and ONT? I'm under the impression that there's nothing called a "modem" for fiber, and that the ONT serves a similar role. Am I confused?
  - lstamour 1y ago
    Can’t speak to this exact circumstance, but more generally: The ONT translates the SFP+ networking to fibre optic, but the modem is still somewhat necessary for logins if you use PPPoE as a wrapper for example. In telecom fibre optic, it often also assigns a particular vlan to internet packets and separate vlans for TV and phone. But I’m not an expert here, just explaining why I needed a modem function in my router as well as a media converter to house the ONT. As far as I know, nobody uses separate boxes for the modem and router, that kind of thinking died when wifi became more widespread and included by default with ISP plans.
    - vel0city 1y ago
      I wouldn't really call that a "modem" though, it's not really doing modulation/demodulation work to convert between media types. The terminology I usually hear for the provider's box handling any final authentication and VLAN splitting is usually a "residential gateway", which can be configured to bridge to a client's equipment. Definitely splitting hairs here though on terminology.
    - kalleboo 1y ago
      The component that does the PPPoE and VoIP VLAN is typically just referred to as a router (or a "residential gateway" for companies that want to sound less technical), I've never heard as it referred to as a modem, usually the ONT is referred to as a modem as it's MODulating/DEModulating the optical signal.
wmf 1y ago
their provided router is locked down to hell and they're on a cgnat So not actually better than Comcast, just bad in a different way.
- myrandomcomment 1y ago
  I love how these guys are trying to sort the lack of competition in broadband, stood up and did something about it and all the geeks on HN are upset that they are not doing something that the majority of their customers would not give shit about or even come close to understanding. Everyone here that has started a company to challenge the entrenched monopoly raise your hands please. I understand the tech deeply and that does not translate to the practical needs of trying to run a successful business. I raise a toast to these guys. Well done.
  - tsol 1y ago
    Given they have a hundred ish customers its likely at most a couple would even know how to do that, or care. It's just not worth their time to worry about this right now. They seem to be doing just fine
newZWhoDis 1y ago
It was there 6 months ago, because when I moved and had to switch to comcast in 2021 I found out about the cap after ~5TB/mo
- baby_souffle 1y ago
  I vaguely remember reading something about their consolidating plans and simplifying pricing slightly. Part of that was eliminating the data cap. This article couldn't have passed through my inbox more than 6 weeks or so ago so it is a very recent change.
imzadi 1y ago
I'm on the other side of the country and was a Cox customer for over a decade until they decided to add a data cap to their plans. Fortunately, wyyred rolled into town right around the same time, offering fiber at higher speeds, no data caps, and half the cost. It was an easy decision. I also noticed that Cox is now advertising unlimited data for free. Too little too late.
deleted 1y ago
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deleted 1y ago
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gs17 1y ago

> Checking Comcast's site now, it seems that they now offer "unlimited" data. Interesting, that option wasn't there 6 months ago. It's been there since they announced the data cap. I thought the unlimited bundled with leasing their higher end hardware came first, but the email from 2016 announcing that our plan was getting the cap mentions being able to pay for unlimited.

nkellenicki 1y ago
You've always had the _option_ of paying extra for unlimited data, however its only in the past month or two that they've started offering unlimited data as standard (in select markets). https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/stung-by-customer-losses-comcast-says-all-its-new-plans-have-unlimited-data/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/06/stung-by-custome...
- PantaloonFlames 1y ago
  I’m sorry I still don’t get it. Could you explain that in different phrasing ? A comcast customer always had the option to pay for unlimited data. I get that part. What is the 2nd part? “Started offering it as standard” means what?
  - amethyst 1y ago
    In markets where Comcast has actual real competition, they "include" the unlimited data (aka no cap) with no extra charge when you sign up for their gigabit plans.
    - Spivak 1y ago
      You pay for their highest tiered and highest bandwidth plan and they have the audacity to impose a cap making that bandwidth work against you? Crazy. My household internet usage is quite modest, nothing anyone on HN would call data intensive—casual video streaming being the lion's share, and I blow out 1TB every month without fail.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - dietr1ch 1y ago
    In the Bay Area Comcast offered (2017-2023 at least) internet with a default 1-1.2TiB/mo data cap that you can lift for the month for an extra 10-20usd (I don't recall, my roommate who played CoD was the one paying for this by himself on every month with huge updates). There's barely any competition here. You can pretty much chose from Comcast Business or XFinity, which both are just Comcast because of a free market with free as in not in jail.
    - rcleveng 1y ago
      Really 10-20 more? When I asked, and I'm in the Bay Area, the unlimited plan was $5 a month more than it would cost if I leased their modem.
      - jacobgkau 1y ago
        How much more was it than if you weren't leasing their modem?
        baby_souffle 1y ago
- wijwp 1y ago
  That's not true. I tried getting unlimited data like 7-8 years ago and they said I needed a business account to get it.
  - bayarearefugee 1y ago
    What ISPs offer and how much they offer it for tends to vary wildly region to region. If you live in a region where they have no meaningful competition (which is still fairly common in a lot of places in the US) well bend over and lube up.
    - observationist 1y ago
      They'll vary wildly, as much as they think they can get away with, in the hopes that you will never use the service and pay them as much as possible for it, and they'll bury your mailbox with crap to try to wear you down into coming back. They will happily let you pay for years, for services that no longer exist, no longer connected to any of their networks. They'll take you to court rather than pay anything back; they know they are receiving extra money, and there's a significant amount that comes in, but "oh, it's so confusing, and there are so many legacy systems, we can't possibly catch every mistake." The money they shuffle back and forth between each other, daily, reeks of book cooking - you might have a stretch of 20 miles of trunk in which there are 20 separate owners - not concurrent riding separate fiber lines, but in sequence, each paying rent to or getting rent paid by the adjacent rider, even though only a single company actually services the entire span. It's funny how construction companies and ISPs get these rackets going, and then when people come along like these PrimeOne guys and offer a reasonable rate on a decent product, it's somehow vastly disruptive and threatening. They'll expand, and be encouraged and allowed to expand, and after 5 or 6 years, the big ISPs will start circling, and eventually buy them out, and they'll retire happy. AT&T or Lumen will own their network inside of 10 years, and they'll claim it's modernized and upgraded infrastructure. People with shitty oversold undermaintained cable internet will be left alone until the money stops. Starlink to phones is great, if it only didn't make ISPs so much money handling the base stations on the ground. There's fiber all over the US just hanging there, unused, unmaintained, because merger after merger after merger left giant piles of assets under the ownership of companies like comcast and centurylink and at&t, who left infrastructure to rot, often built with public funding, and maintained their local monopolies and shitty service. Whatever it is we're doing to regulate the industry at a federal level isn't working, but I imagine that's where a lot of the money goes.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
fuckinpuppers 1y ago
Yeah they’ve offered unlimited for a few years now for an additional charge. Now as of last month all plans are unlimited if you just update to them. It wound up being cheaper for me too. However I still applaud these guys. There needs to be more competition.

WarOnPrivacy 1y ago

> I'm one of their customers. It's pretty good - their provided router is locked down to hell and they're on a cgnat This sounds like mine. I'm guessing yours doesn't support IPv6 because most fiber providers don't. For the router, I already build firewalls so that. I pay $10/mo to escape their cgnat. I've also alerted them to expect regular haranguing from me about deploying IPv6. Especially since bgp.he.net shows they have a /40 allocated to themselves; it doesn't seem to be used.

jerf 1y ago
"I'm guessing yours doesn't support IPv6 because most fiber providers don't." Yeah, what's up with that? I just got switched on to fiber and the CGNAT for IPv4 doesn't shock me much, but what's with the no IPv6 in 2025? I know enough to deal with it, but what's the deal? Is there something systematic here?
- ta8645 1y ago
  Everybody can muddle along without IPv6, so it's easy to make it a very low priority. Especially for small shops that are struggling just to create a viable business. IPv6 needs something more to motivate it, a web destination or application that is only available on IPv6.
  - paleotrope 1y ago
    The eggs need some chickens first.
  - bigstrat2003 1y ago
    We used to have freeipv6porn.com, lol. But I suspect that was a joke as much as anything else given how much porn you can get for free all over the Internet.
  - throw0101b 1y ago
    > IPv6 needs something more to motivate it, a web destination or application that is only available on IPv6. How about not having to pay for (as) beefy CG-NAT hardware because people that go to Youtube, Netflix, MetaFace, TikTok, etc, can directly connect via IPv6.

babypuncher 1y ago

Comcast similarly removed their 1.2TB cap in my neighborhood within months of us getting fiber. It's almost like the only reason for the cap was because they could get away with it when there wasn't any competition.

xedrac 1y ago
Comcast is notorious for exploiting places that don't have any other real options. Just before Google Fiber was activated in my area, Comcast stepped up their game big time. The only problem is that they had spent years nickel and diming me for actual connection speeds that didn't even come close to their advertised rates, and their latency/jitter is garbage compared to fiber. Comcast clearly doesn't want to have to compete. In their defense, their connection was rarely down.
- some-guy 1y ago
  When I lived in downtown Oakland CA, Comcast literally could not keep up price-wise with the competition. Their customer service jaw would drop when I told them our local fiber offered a flat fee cheaper than theirs for 10 gigabit symmetrical fiber. On top of that there was another local microwave wireless option that wasn't too terrible. The only thing in the end their salespeople could do was offer TV bundles but still wasn't cost-competitive. Not sure what their offerings are now but it was such an easy decision to switch.
- PantaloonFlames 1y ago
  > is notorious for exploiting places that don't have any other real options. Isn’t this standard competitive practice ? Charge what the market will bear. I don’t know if I’d call that “exploitation”. If there’s one gas station 90 miles from every other gas station in the Nevada desert, they’re gonna charge more, aren’t they?
  - xedrac 1y ago
    Yes, it certainly is. But isn't it interesting that Comcast is almost universally hated? I used the word "exploit" simply because had they treated their customers better and focused on putting their best foot forward, I don't think they would have bled customers nearly as quickly.

justusthane 1y ago

> their provided router is locked down to hell From the article, it sounds like the "default" option is for the customer to supply their own router, which I appreciate: > Prime-One provides a modem and the ONT, plus a Wi-Fi router if the customer prefers not to use their own router.

eurleif 1y ago
Modem and ONT? I'm under the impression that there's nothing called a "modem" for fiber, and that the ONT serves a similar role. Am I confused?
- lstamour 1y ago
  Can’t speak to this exact circumstance, but more generally: The ONT translates the SFP+ networking to fibre optic, but the modem is still somewhat necessary for logins if you use PPPoE as a wrapper for example. In telecom fibre optic, it often also assigns a particular vlan to internet packets and separate vlans for TV and phone. But I’m not an expert here, just explaining why I needed a modem function in my router as well as a media converter to house the ONT. As far as I know, nobody uses separate boxes for the modem and router, that kind of thinking died when wifi became more widespread and included by default with ISP plans.
  - vel0city 1y ago
    I wouldn't really call that a "modem" though, it's not really doing modulation/demodulation work to convert between media types. The terminology I usually hear for the provider's box handling any final authentication and VLAN splitting is usually a "residential gateway", which can be configured to bridge to a client's equipment. Definitely splitting hairs here though on terminology.
  - kalleboo 1y ago
    The component that does the PPPoE and VoIP VLAN is typically just referred to as a router (or a "residential gateway" for companies that want to sound less technical), I've never heard as it referred to as a modem, usually the ONT is referred to as a modem as it's MODulating/DEModulating the optical signal.

wmf 1y ago

their provided router is locked down to hell and they're on a cgnat So not actually better than Comcast, just bad in a different way.

myrandomcomment 1y ago
I love how these guys are trying to sort the lack of competition in broadband, stood up and did something about it and all the geeks on HN are upset that they are not doing something that the majority of their customers would not give shit about or even come close to understanding. Everyone here that has started a company to challenge the entrenched monopoly raise your hands please. I understand the tech deeply and that does not translate to the practical needs of trying to run a successful business. I raise a toast to these guys. Well done.
- tsol 1y ago
  Given they have a hundred ish customers its likely at most a couple would even know how to do that, or care. It's just not worth their time to worry about this right now. They seem to be doing just fine

newZWhoDis 1y ago

It was there 6 months ago, because when I moved and had to switch to comcast in 2021 I found out about the cap after ~5TB/mo

baby_souffle 1y ago
I vaguely remember reading something about their consolidating plans and simplifying pricing slightly. Part of that was eliminating the data cap. This article couldn't have passed through my inbox more than 6 weeks or so ago so it is a very recent change.

imzadi 1y ago

I'm on the other side of the country and was a Cox customer for over a decade until they decided to add a data cap to their plans. Fortunately, wyyred rolled into town right around the same time, offering fiber at higher speeds, no data caps, and half the cost. It was an easy decision. I also noticed that Cox is now advertising unlimited data for free. Too little too late.

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