8 ms·

Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users

91 points by tanglesome 13y ago

herge 13y ago
The more I think about it, the more I want government to step in and nationalise/regulate internet service, like they did with electricity. Internet access has become commoditized enough that there isn't much innovation in it's distribution, and it is so necessary for modern businesses that it makes economic sense.
- codegeek 13y ago
  I could not agree more for this specific case. Really wish Internet was just another utility that we paid for and not worry about the monopoly these ISPs have specially in some remote areas.
  - humanrebar 13y ago
    There is some parallel, but ISPs are not commoditized like electricity utilities are. Once consumer-level data is pretty even across the board and companies are only competing for lock-in and price, those kinds of regulations make much more sense. In other words, let's wait until use cases like uploading multiple HD video streams are trivial before we freeze the current technical expectations and business models.
    - MichaelGG 13y ago
      Why would regulation freeze technical expectations? IP transit pretty much boils down to cables and switches. A regulatory model that mandates specific speeds could probably even specify allowed tariffs. In theory it should be fine. I'm not sure there's a whole lot of "business models" for such a simple thing as transit. Most of those models are just trying to find breakage so you can market services you hopefully don't have to deliver. The real problem is, like the telephone network, you end up getting all sorts of little exceptions and silly tariffs and they don't get updated and it turns into an idiotic mess. But in theory, mandating target coverage and speeds should work just fine. Just like the phone network, if the FCC decides to actually get involved and fine people, companies will take things seriously (for the most part...).
      - humanrebar 13y ago
        I don't think transit is an apt analog to data provider services. I also don't think transit is regulated to the degree that you would like to regulate data. We don't have omnibus shipping/commuting/travelling utilities, and many of the constituent parts of this hypothetical megautility (USPS, AmTrak) are money pits that fail to adapt to the changing needs of the population. In other words, I don't think transit is a commodity either. Electricity, water, garbage, sewage... those are commodity utilities, for the most part. I would also mention phones, but landlines are quickly becoming redundant, which underscores my point if anything.
        wtallis 13y ago
        He's not talking about DOT road/rail/air transit. He's talking about IP transit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_transit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_transit It's the most basic and fundamental service provided by an ISP, and should be the only service ISPs can provide, to prevent the conflicts of interest that make net neutrality regulations a necessity. When ISPs are an endpoint for traffic rather than just a conduit for it, they have a financial incentive to try to force their customers to use their content services over external content providers.
  - saalweachter 13y ago
    Remote areas? I had remarkably little choice in New York City. I lived in Brooklyn and had Optimum Online. I was happy with it, but then moved to Queens and now I had to switch to RCN, because they were in my building and Optimum wasn't. Moved to Manhattan, and had to get TWC, until FiOS was installed in the building.
    - jcromartie 13y ago
      You probably had a choice to opt out. I must pay $50/month to Comcast for TV service in my apartment in the DC suburbs, whether I use it or not (and I don't). I then pay them $80 more for Internet. The only other option is wireless.
      - pavel_lishin 13y ago
        ... how does that work? Was it a part of your lease agreement, or a mandatory part of your ISP's offer?
        jcromartie 13y ago
        Yes, it's one of the apartment's hidden fees. I'm sure the apartment gets a cut.
    - codegeek 13y ago
      I hear you. I used to live in NYC (queens) a long time ago and remember the only option in our building was TWC. But when I say remote area, I mean the entire area. We only have comcast or nothing. So now I am forced to pay for the "bundle" of TV and Internet even though all I want is Internet. Yes I called them to only get Internet and even then, you have to pay for the basic cable package. Leave it or take it.
tehwalrus 13y ago
In the UK, we have loads of broadband companies who sell service through BT phonelines. (catch: you have to pay BT for line rental, which at £13/month isn't too bad, and you do get a phone number for that.) This acts very much like the "municipal fiber network" proposed in the article - all your customer service is with who you pay your bill to, and they set your download limits and any throttling (and there are more expensive options[1] that offer larger, well-defined limits and promise not to throttle.) Fibre connections seem to be either BT or Virgin running their own (separate) infrastructure all over the place, and you can get cable broadband if you actually want cable TV. Personally I've stuck with ADSL2+ since, in London, that's good enough. When I move out next year, we'll see which hardware can get me the best speeds. [1] http://idnet.net http://idnet.net
- cdr 13y ago
  That was supposed to be how it worked in the US, at least in the late 90s/early 00s - phone (and cable too, I think?) telco network operators were legally obligated to let other ISP companies lease their lines and deliver service to customers. There was no real enforcement though, and network operators just waged guerrilla warfare on independent ISPs - inexplicable "delays" connecting lines for customers that disappeared if the customer got impatient and signed up for the telco instead, service limitations and outages that telco customers on the same lines didn't notice, etc - until most/all of the independent ISPs went bankrupt or gave up.
- davidgerard 13y ago
  Yes. OpenReach - the bit that actually runs the network - is legally part of the private company BT, but, through several reorganisations and a privatisation, is still functionally the GPO of the 1970s: a highly-regulated bit of public social functionality. Except a new phone line now takes three weeks instead of six months.
- Spittie 13y ago
  Sadly this doesn't always work. We have a similar system here in Italy (Telecom Italia own pretty much the whole phone network, and it's forced to rent it to other ISP, at a low price because it's considered a monopoly). Fine, yes? No. The other ISP just rent less bandwidth than they'd really need, so they can't offer a decent service (during peak hour it's very easy to get less speed than what you'd get with a 56k). It doesn't help that we don't have a cable network too, so we're stuck with the phone one. This mean low theoretical max speed (20mb down and 1mb up, with adsl2+), and the signal get really bad as soon as you get a bit far from the central. Now, this is (very slowly) changing, the bigger ISP are starting to get their own infrastructure and some big cities are starting to get cabled in FTTC (no FTTH because "or copper network is good enough" [sic]). I've also the feeling that I won't see FTTC anytime soon, even if I live ~10km from Milan. There's also to say that there isn't really any interests for high-speed internet. Last I've heard, only 15% of the people reached by a 20/1 connection buy it (preferring the slower 10/1 or 7/480k, which cost respectively 1€/month and 5€/month less).
salient 13y ago
If you want competition, stop letting local governments make "deals" with the ISP's to bring such and such Internet or service to that area. Almost always that ensures the company will get a monopoly in that area. It's precisely for this reason why I'm against states making deals with ISP's even if it means bringing gigabit fiber to their areas. Will it still be fast enough 10-15 years later? Because you can bet they aren't going to upgrade it anymore after they get their local monopoly. I'm sure 1-10 Mbps seemed super-fast 10 years ago, too, when they made the first deals from which they got their current monopolies.
- jessaustin 13y ago
  In addition to the predictable obsolescence you cite, a problem with making deals with USA telcos is that they seldom stick to the terms of those deals. Even if some stick-in-the-mud with an excess of conscience won't play ball at the local or state level, they can always overrule that with the commissioners they've bought at the next higher level. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/billions-in-customer-overcharging_b_1958875.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/billions-in-cus...
- mindslight 13y ago
  > I'm sure 1-10 Mbps seemed super-fast 10 years ago It's plenty fast now, too. Good-quality 1080p H.264 video is 3Mbps. 6Mbps is 50GB/day. If this is not enough, you most likely have a software problem. Not that we shouldn't strive for progress, but most of the complains in these comments are completely different from the rural horror stories of the article - they're taking for granted development that isn't actually there. Signing up for the cable company because it has the highest advertised speeds and then complaining about the implications of a shared medium provided by an unregulated monopoly is myopic entitled whining. Look into competing DSL options, really. Your new provider may even have warm-blooded people answering the phone.
  - Jtsummers 13y ago
    So we can saturate our internet connections with one video stream. That means it's not fast enough. Presently living alone so this is mostly a nonissue for me, but what about people with 2+ users at home? One wants to watch the latest Doctor Who, the other wants to check their email and browse the web, someone is losing out.
coldcode 13y ago
Funny how efficient electric service is now in Texas. There is one outfit that installs and maintains the lines, and dozens of competing service companies that just handle billing (and oddly enough all use the same third party billing software). Compare that with the ISP situation where each town has a cable company and a phone company and that's it. Except where an older phone company had a presence years ago where those lucky folks can also get FIOS as an option. My town, the 50th largest city in the US, has TWC and AT&T and no FIOS. So I have an option of Dumb or Dumber. The laws in this country to allow monopolies are a joke, but both political parties could care less.
- ahlatimer 13y ago
  Depends on where in Texas you're talking about. In Austin, we have the City of Austin Utilities (though the suburbs do seem to have options). El Paso only had one option when I lived there, too.
lemonsrsour 13y ago
We have a lot of competing ISPs here in Lithuania. Just for comparison, I pay <15$ for 100mbps connection and in the 10 years I had maybe one or two outages that were fixed within few hours.
stuff4ben 13y ago
Makes me think twice about changing my Internet from Earthlink (provided by TWC) to a faster offering from TWC. It works now and I don't think I've ever had an outage in the almost 10 years I've had it in 2 separate houses. Only problem is it's slow as dirt. They advertise 15/3 but I rarely get over 380Kbps upstream which makes working from home all but impossible for me. I'd love to get 30 or 50Mbps down, but I'm afraid of what might happen if I switch...
chimeracoder 13y ago
It's time to make Internet access a public utility, just like water and electricity. In this day and age, Internet access is as much an essential part of life as both of the above. Remember that the cables that they use were paid for with public tax money. The private companies are selling back to us the infrastructure that we already paid to build. This is one issue on which neither progressives (who tend to favor government utilities/services) nor libertarians (who tend to favor the free market) are happy, because we have the worst of both worlds: a government-sanctioned, unregulated monopoly, using infrastructure built with public tax dollars, and re-sold to the original payers (the public) at monopolistic prices. Unfortunately, recent efforts in this direction have completely failed. A North Carolina town dissatisfied with Time Warner banded together to create a municipal ISP, and Time Warner sued, on the basis that they "couldn't compete[0]" with the superior speeds and lower prices that the municipal ISP provided. In the end, Time Warner won[1]. I, like 80% of people in the US, have no choice as to my broadband provider. I don't have a landline. I don't have cable TV. All I need is Internet access, and for that, my only option is paying Time Warner Cable, at whatever price they decide to charge, for whatever service they decide to give me[2]. [0] read: "didn't want to compete" == "it's cheaper for us to sue you than to lower our prices to market rate" [1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/11/the-price-of-muni-broadband-eternal-war-with-time-warner-cable/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/11/the-price-of-muni... [2] Pro-tip: If you're stuck with TWC as well, don't pay for the higher speed levels. That's just the maximum possible speed, and they don't guarantee you anything close to that, for any portion of your monthly service. If you live in a congested area, you're likely to get the same speed regardless of which tier you purchase, so just pick the cheapest one.
- Jtsummers 13y ago
  I lived in Wilson before that hooplah. It was fantastic. My job moved back into the Raleigh area so I moved with it (cheaper than a 70mile+commute every day, especially at 15mpg). Ended up on TWC where I got 10Mbit/second at $60/month versus the 20Mbit/second at $40/month (I recall paying less, but that's the currently listed price on the Greenlight site).
- aroch 13y ago
  RE: #2 I can't find the relevant FCC directive at the moment (It may in fact be a state law for me, I can no longer remember), but it's illegal for them to sell '30mbit' service as "30mbit is the highest theoretical speed". Essentially a floating average of your max speed has to be at +/-5% of the sold bandwidth.
caiob 13y ago
Lately, I don't mind connection speeds as much as I care about absurd data caps. It's almost 2014, for god sake. Are we still having to fight for our data usage?
- drcube 13y ago
  Because anyone who uses more than 5GB a month is a pirate, don't you know?
  - hfsktr 13y ago
    It's ridiculous considering the variety of activities that require internet. According to the usage chart for the last few months when I log into TWC our house uses more than 5GB a day (we have 3 adults and a kid in the house).
  - ieatdots 13y ago
    Used to more or less be the case, until Netflix. =)
- Joeri 13y ago
  My cable provider finally got rid of data caps, only to reinstate them when netflix started making waves about coming to my country. I suspect the only reason data caps exist at all at this point is to avoid online vod services from completely replacing traditional cable tv.
adriancooney 13y ago
I've had a similiar horror story with Eircom, one of Ireland's main providers. We were paying for 3mb/s at €40/month but only receiving around 0.4mb/s. I gave customer service a ring and they said they could downgrade the line to 1mb/s which would improve the actual signal but we'd still have to pay for the 3mb/s. I really wish it was nationalized like electricity but I don't think our government is technically competent yet.
drcube 13y ago
>Of course, not everyone's home Internet is terrible. I dispute this. Is Google Fiber all right? Do you Silicon Valley folks get decent service? Because out here in the real world, ISPs are uniformly horrible. I haven't met or talked to anyone on the entire Internet who is satisfied, or simply not constantly enraged, by their ISP. It seems every single one is corrupt and incompetent at the same time.
- Tyr42 13y ago
  I don't hate my ISP. But I've got no cap, and good speeds.
  - alongenemylines 13y ago
    Ditto. My only complaint is the price. I pay for 10 mbit service from TWC, and regularly have speeds of 18 mbit. Also, my external ip hasn't changed since I installed my modem, and I don't pay for a static IP.
- mintplant 13y ago
  Comcast in San Jose provides decent speeds, but the connection can be spotty and drops out at times. Also, despite claims to the contrary, torrent traffic appears to be very heavily throttled. Whenever I try downloading a Linux ISO via torrent, download rates will often start out high, then sharply drop to somewhere under 100 kbps. On a related note, for whatever reason, no traffic on ports 6660-6669 (IRC) can get through, but I haven't seen this problem reported anywhere else. Combing through the settings on the router they provide, there doesn't seem to be anything blocking it on my end.
- dankoss 13y ago
  I've had no trouble with Comcast in my area in service or support. My problem with them is that they're colluding with AT&T to keep internet prices high and upsell everyone onto bundled plans, when all I need is internet (not home phone and TV service). Thus they charge $20/mo for 3Mbps, $50 for 6Mbps and $65 for 25Mbps unbundled internet, and AT&T charges roughly the same.
- 13y ago
protomyth 13y ago
Is there some law that keeps power and gas companies[1] from doing internet? 1) they have right of way to the home
forkrulassail 13y ago
I've been kicked from 7 South African ISPs as a top 2% or 'abuse' user, after paying for uncapped access. Things seriously need to change this side.
- nathanb 13y ago
  I visited SA a few months ago, with an eye toward possibly moving there and working remotely (I'm a software developer for a large software engineering corporation that's relatively friendly toward remote workers). My opinion was that it would be very difficult to be a remote software worker in SA because the network infrastructure was so poor. Everyone I talked to just used USB cellular modems to get online, and the load would actually cause the cell tower near my friend's flat to crash sometimes at peak hours. The Internet was entirely unusable for good portions of the day. Meanwhile, if you're willing to pay a premium for installation and use of a wired connection, you wind up dealing with the sort of thing you faced or just flat out apathy toward whether or not the service should actually work consistently. In your own experience, is this an accurate assessment?
mnw21cam 13y ago
Largely I'm happy with my ISP. Except that somewhere in their core network they have a broken link, which means that 0.01% of the internet is inaccessible to me, as of a couple of weeks ago when they "upgraded" my connection. Unfortunately that 0.01% includes my friend's computer which runs my backup email servers. Tried explaining this on the phone to the ISP. The script the phone-jockey had basically took me through rebooting the router, trying a couple of different browsers, and then saying that they were pleased to have solved the problem.
crum 13y ago
Has anyone heard of: "Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age"
freeasinfree 13y ago
There are usually alternatives, but they're sometimes hard to find. MonkeyBrains in SF is top-notch. http://www.wispa.org/find-a-wisp http://www.wispa.org/find-a-wisp
Aloha 13y ago
I worked for a major ISP - Two of them, one being the largest suppliers of DSL nationwide and the other, their largest reseller. There are some horror stories out there - in truth, the majority of customers get what they pay for monthly without the plethora of stupids presented here. On the other hand, when I set up service with Comcast, my bill had 4-5 mystery charges monthly for 4 months, no one could explain what they were, and they got credited. But still, it was an hour of my time each time it happened.
jamestnz 13y ago
Interesting article for me, being that I have no experience with the ISP industry in America at all. "The best solution, I think, is to lay fiber in all the municipalities and have consumers choose their ISP, with service delivered on the municipal fiber lines..." This is exactly what has been happening where I live - Christchurch, New Zealand. A number of years ago, a city-owned LLC called Christchurch City Networks Limited (now known as Enable Networks[1]) began rolling out an extensive fibre network in the downtown/city-centre area. Initially, for about $700 (NZD) per month, you could lease a dark pair between your premises and your ISP of choice (or even directly between two arbitrary premises, plugging directly into your own equipment at each end, with no ISP involved). You'd then negotiate arbitrary speed/bandwidth/caps with your chosen ISP. We were paying something like $3000 per month for a 1000 mbit/sec internet connection with (IIRC) a 2TB cap. This was probably 8 years ago or something, it doesn't cost anything like this now. Latterly, they've been rolling out a GPON-based (passive) fibre network. If you are connected to this part of the network, there are highly standardised plans available from multiple ISPs. You can choose one of two speeds: 30 mbit/sec symmetric, or 100 mbit/sec symmetric. Different ISPs have different usage plans available. Any public (government-funded) school can sign up for a 30 mbit/sec plan, with unlimited traffic, for something like $200/month. Amongst home users, ADSL2+ and VDSL2 are both still popular choices (and our pricing there seems similar enough to the US, with stupidly low caps and high prices), but fibre continues to gain traction. [1] http://www.enable.net.nz http://www.enable.net.nz
sarah2079 13y ago
Talking with Comcast on the phone can seem like talking to someone from another planet. When I moved last year and needed to move my service with me, I was instructed to just bring the Comcast box to the new place myself, and then call a specific number when I had connected it to turn service on. Great! I thought, that sounds easy. Well it turns out the people answering at that number (the number they gave me, remember) were completely unfamiliar with the concept of moving. "You want to do what?" they asked incredulously, as if I was the first person they had ever encountered who had moved from one residence to another. "I have moved. My service has already been disconnected at the old address, and I would like to activate it at my new address" I repeated, thinking they had just misheard me. "Have you tried unplugging it and then plugging it back in?" they offered helpfully. After an hour on the phone and many, many transfers I was finally able to talk to someone who could handle this bizarre and complicated request. I hate to think how much time it will cost me if I ever have a real problem.
- simoncion 13y ago
  > I hate to think how much time it will cost me if I ever have a real problem. If you're a person with clue, get friendly with the folks at the local Comcast office, or one of the technicians. If you're technically inclined and can demonstrate that you're wise enough to only call them about issues with their network, you'll probably be able to get the support number for the local office.
TrainedMonkey 13y ago
I am surprised AOL is not mentioned. I remember story going around how subscription made by a person could not be cancelled even though that person passed away.

91 points by tanglesome 13y ago

herge 13y ago

The more I think about it, the more I want government to step in and nationalise/regulate internet service, like they did with electricity. Internet access has become commoditized enough that there isn't much innovation in it's distribution, and it is so necessary for modern businesses that it makes economic sense.

codegeek 13y ago
I could not agree more for this specific case. Really wish Internet was just another utility that we paid for and not worry about the monopoly these ISPs have specially in some remote areas.
- humanrebar 13y ago
  There is some parallel, but ISPs are not commoditized like electricity utilities are. Once consumer-level data is pretty even across the board and companies are only competing for lock-in and price, those kinds of regulations make much more sense. In other words, let's wait until use cases like uploading multiple HD video streams are trivial before we freeze the current technical expectations and business models.
  - MichaelGG 13y ago
    Why would regulation freeze technical expectations? IP transit pretty much boils down to cables and switches. A regulatory model that mandates specific speeds could probably even specify allowed tariffs. In theory it should be fine. I'm not sure there's a whole lot of "business models" for such a simple thing as transit. Most of those models are just trying to find breakage so you can market services you hopefully don't have to deliver. The real problem is, like the telephone network, you end up getting all sorts of little exceptions and silly tariffs and they don't get updated and it turns into an idiotic mess. But in theory, mandating target coverage and speeds should work just fine. Just like the phone network, if the FCC decides to actually get involved and fine people, companies will take things seriously (for the most part...).
    - humanrebar 13y ago
      I don't think transit is an apt analog to data provider services. I also don't think transit is regulated to the degree that you would like to regulate data. We don't have omnibus shipping/commuting/travelling utilities, and many of the constituent parts of this hypothetical megautility (USPS, AmTrak) are money pits that fail to adapt to the changing needs of the population. In other words, I don't think transit is a commodity either. Electricity, water, garbage, sewage... those are commodity utilities, for the most part. I would also mention phones, but landlines are quickly becoming redundant, which underscores my point if anything.
      - wtallis 13y ago
        He's not talking about DOT road/rail/air transit. He's talking about IP transit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_transit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_transit It's the most basic and fundamental service provided by an ISP, and should be the only service ISPs can provide, to prevent the conflicts of interest that make net neutrality regulations a necessity. When ISPs are an endpoint for traffic rather than just a conduit for it, they have a financial incentive to try to force their customers to use their content services over external content providers.
- saalweachter 13y ago
  Remote areas? I had remarkably little choice in New York City. I lived in Brooklyn and had Optimum Online. I was happy with it, but then moved to Queens and now I had to switch to RCN, because they were in my building and Optimum wasn't. Moved to Manhattan, and had to get TWC, until FiOS was installed in the building.
  - jcromartie 13y ago
    You probably had a choice to opt out. I must pay $50/month to Comcast for TV service in my apartment in the DC suburbs, whether I use it or not (and I don't). I then pay them $80 more for Internet. The only other option is wireless.
    - pavel_lishin 13y ago
      ... how does that work? Was it a part of your lease agreement, or a mandatory part of your ISP's offer?
      - jcromartie 13y ago
        Yes, it's one of the apartment's hidden fees. I'm sure the apartment gets a cut.
  - codegeek 13y ago
    I hear you. I used to live in NYC (queens) a long time ago and remember the only option in our building was TWC. But when I say remote area, I mean the entire area. We only have comcast or nothing. So now I am forced to pay for the "bundle" of TV and Internet even though all I want is Internet. Yes I called them to only get Internet and even then, you have to pay for the basic cable package. Leave it or take it.

tehwalrus 13y ago

In the UK, we have loads of broadband companies who sell service through BT phonelines. (catch: you have to pay BT for line rental, which at £13/month isn't too bad, and you do get a phone number for that.) This acts very much like the "municipal fiber network" proposed in the article - all your customer service is with who you pay your bill to, and they set your download limits and any throttling (and there are more expensive options[1] that offer larger, well-defined limits and promise not to throttle.) Fibre connections seem to be either BT or Virgin running their own (separate) infrastructure all over the place, and you can get cable broadband if you actually want cable TV. Personally I've stuck with ADSL2+ since, in London, that's good enough. When I move out next year, we'll see which hardware can get me the best speeds. [1] http://idnet.net http://idnet.net

cdr 13y ago
That was supposed to be how it worked in the US, at least in the late 90s/early 00s - phone (and cable too, I think?) telco network operators were legally obligated to let other ISP companies lease their lines and deliver service to customers. There was no real enforcement though, and network operators just waged guerrilla warfare on independent ISPs - inexplicable "delays" connecting lines for customers that disappeared if the customer got impatient and signed up for the telco instead, service limitations and outages that telco customers on the same lines didn't notice, etc - until most/all of the independent ISPs went bankrupt or gave up.
davidgerard 13y ago
Yes. OpenReach - the bit that actually runs the network - is legally part of the private company BT, but, through several reorganisations and a privatisation, is still functionally the GPO of the 1970s: a highly-regulated bit of public social functionality. Except a new phone line now takes three weeks instead of six months.
Spittie 13y ago
Sadly this doesn't always work. We have a similar system here in Italy (Telecom Italia own pretty much the whole phone network, and it's forced to rent it to other ISP, at a low price because it's considered a monopoly). Fine, yes? No. The other ISP just rent less bandwidth than they'd really need, so they can't offer a decent service (during peak hour it's very easy to get less speed than what you'd get with a 56k). It doesn't help that we don't have a cable network too, so we're stuck with the phone one. This mean low theoretical max speed (20mb down and 1mb up, with adsl2+), and the signal get really bad as soon as you get a bit far from the central. Now, this is (very slowly) changing, the bigger ISP are starting to get their own infrastructure and some big cities are starting to get cabled in FTTC (no FTTH because "or copper network is good enough" [sic]). I've also the feeling that I won't see FTTC anytime soon, even if I live ~10km from Milan. There's also to say that there isn't really any interests for high-speed internet. Last I've heard, only 15% of the people reached by a 20/1 connection buy it (preferring the slower 10/1 or 7/480k, which cost respectively 1€/month and 5€/month less).

salient 13y ago

If you want competition, stop letting local governments make "deals" with the ISP's to bring such and such Internet or service to that area. Almost always that ensures the company will get a monopoly in that area. It's precisely for this reason why I'm against states making deals with ISP's even if it means bringing gigabit fiber to their areas. Will it still be fast enough 10-15 years later? Because you can bet they aren't going to upgrade it anymore after they get their local monopoly. I'm sure 1-10 Mbps seemed super-fast 10 years ago, too, when they made the first deals from which they got their current monopolies.

jessaustin 13y ago
In addition to the predictable obsolescence you cite, a problem with making deals with USA telcos is that they seldom stick to the terms of those deals. Even if some stick-in-the-mud with an excess of conscience won't play ball at the local or state level, they can always overrule that with the commissioners they've bought at the next higher level. http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_0026... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/billions-in-customer-overcharging_b_1958875.html http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-kushnick/billions-in-cus...
mindslight 13y ago
> I'm sure 1-10 Mbps seemed super-fast 10 years ago It's plenty fast now, too. Good-quality 1080p H.264 video is 3Mbps. 6Mbps is 50GB/day. If this is not enough, you most likely have a software problem. Not that we shouldn't strive for progress, but most of the complains in these comments are completely different from the rural horror stories of the article - they're taking for granted development that isn't actually there. Signing up for the cable company because it has the highest advertised speeds and then complaining about the implications of a shared medium provided by an unregulated monopoly is myopic entitled whining. Look into competing DSL options, really. Your new provider may even have warm-blooded people answering the phone.
- Jtsummers 13y ago
  So we can saturate our internet connections with one video stream. That means it's not fast enough. Presently living alone so this is mostly a nonissue for me, but what about people with 2+ users at home? One wants to watch the latest Doctor Who, the other wants to check their email and browse the web, someone is losing out.

coldcode 13y ago

Funny how efficient electric service is now in Texas. There is one outfit that installs and maintains the lines, and dozens of competing service companies that just handle billing (and oddly enough all use the same third party billing software). Compare that with the ISP situation where each town has a cable company and a phone company and that's it. Except where an older phone company had a presence years ago where those lucky folks can also get FIOS as an option. My town, the 50th largest city in the US, has TWC and AT&T and no FIOS. So I have an option of Dumb or Dumber. The laws in this country to allow monopolies are a joke, but both political parties could care less.

ahlatimer 13y ago
Depends on where in Texas you're talking about. In Austin, we have the City of Austin Utilities (though the suburbs do seem to have options). El Paso only had one option when I lived there, too.

lemonsrsour 13y ago

We have a lot of competing ISPs here in Lithuania. Just for comparison, I pay <15$ for 100mbps connection and in the 10 years I had maybe one or two outages that were fixed within few hours.

stuff4ben 13y ago

Makes me think twice about changing my Internet from Earthlink (provided by TWC) to a faster offering from TWC. It works now and I don't think I've ever had an outage in the almost 10 years I've had it in 2 separate houses. Only problem is it's slow as dirt. They advertise 15/3 but I rarely get over 380Kbps upstream which makes working from home all but impossible for me. I'd love to get 30 or 50Mbps down, but I'm afraid of what might happen if I switch...

chimeracoder 13y ago

It's time to make Internet access a public utility, just like water and electricity. In this day and age, Internet access is as much an essential part of life as both of the above. Remember that the cables that they use were paid for with public tax money. The private companies are selling back to us the infrastructure that we already paid to build. This is one issue on which neither progressives (who tend to favor government utilities/services) nor libertarians (who tend to favor the free market) are happy, because we have the worst of both worlds: a government-sanctioned, unregulated monopoly, using infrastructure built with public tax dollars, and re-sold to the original payers (the public) at monopolistic prices. Unfortunately, recent efforts in this direction have completely failed. A North Carolina town dissatisfied with Time Warner banded together to create a municipal ISP, and Time Warner sued, on the basis that they "couldn't compete[0]" with the superior speeds and lower prices that the municipal ISP provided. In the end, Time Warner won[1]. I, like 80% of people in the US, have no choice as to my broadband provider. I don't have a landline. I don't have cable TV. All I need is Internet access, and for that, my only option is paying Time Warner Cable, at whatever price they decide to charge, for whatever service they decide to give me[2]. [0] read: "didn't want to compete" == "it's cheaper for us to sue you than to lower our prices to market rate" [1] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/11/the-price-of-muni-broadband-eternal-war-with-time-warner-cable/ http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/11/the-price-of-muni... [2] Pro-tip: If you're stuck with TWC as well, don't pay for the higher speed levels. That's just the maximum possible speed, and they don't guarantee you anything close to that, for any portion of your monthly service. If you live in a congested area, you're likely to get the same speed regardless of which tier you purchase, so just pick the cheapest one.

Jtsummers 13y ago
I lived in Wilson before that hooplah. It was fantastic. My job moved back into the Raleigh area so I moved with it (cheaper than a 70mile+commute every day, especially at 15mpg). Ended up on TWC where I got 10Mbit/second at $60/month versus the 20Mbit/second at $40/month (I recall paying less, but that's the currently listed price on the Greenlight site).
aroch 13y ago
RE: #2 I can't find the relevant FCC directive at the moment (It may in fact be a state law for me, I can no longer remember), but it's illegal for them to sell '30mbit' service as "30mbit is the highest theoretical speed". Essentially a floating average of your max speed has to be at +/-5% of the sold bandwidth.

caiob 13y ago

Lately, I don't mind connection speeds as much as I care about absurd data caps. It's almost 2014, for god sake. Are we still having to fight for our data usage?

drcube 13y ago
Because anyone who uses more than 5GB a month is a pirate, don't you know?
- hfsktr 13y ago
  It's ridiculous considering the variety of activities that require internet. According to the usage chart for the last few months when I log into TWC our house uses more than 5GB a day (we have 3 adults and a kid in the house).
- ieatdots 13y ago
  Used to more or less be the case, until Netflix. =)
Joeri 13y ago
My cable provider finally got rid of data caps, only to reinstate them when netflix started making waves about coming to my country. I suspect the only reason data caps exist at all at this point is to avoid online vod services from completely replacing traditional cable tv.

adriancooney 13y ago

I've had a similiar horror story with Eircom, one of Ireland's main providers. We were paying for 3mb/s at €40/month but only receiving around 0.4mb/s. I gave customer service a ring and they said they could downgrade the line to 1mb/s which would improve the actual signal but we'd still have to pay for the 3mb/s. I really wish it was nationalized like electricity but I don't think our government is technically competent yet.

drcube 13y ago

>Of course, not everyone's home Internet is terrible. I dispute this. Is Google Fiber all right? Do you Silicon Valley folks get decent service? Because out here in the real world, ISPs are uniformly horrible. I haven't met or talked to anyone on the entire Internet who is satisfied, or simply not constantly enraged, by their ISP. It seems every single one is corrupt and incompetent at the same time.

Tyr42 13y ago
I don't hate my ISP. But I've got no cap, and good speeds.
- alongenemylines 13y ago
  Ditto. My only complaint is the price. I pay for 10 mbit service from TWC, and regularly have speeds of 18 mbit. Also, my external ip hasn't changed since I installed my modem, and I don't pay for a static IP.
mintplant 13y ago
Comcast in San Jose provides decent speeds, but the connection can be spotty and drops out at times. Also, despite claims to the contrary, torrent traffic appears to be very heavily throttled. Whenever I try downloading a Linux ISO via torrent, download rates will often start out high, then sharply drop to somewhere under 100 kbps. On a related note, for whatever reason, no traffic on ports 6660-6669 (IRC) can get through, but I haven't seen this problem reported anywhere else. Combing through the settings on the router they provide, there doesn't seem to be anything blocking it on my end.
dankoss 13y ago
I've had no trouble with Comcast in my area in service or support. My problem with them is that they're colluding with AT&T to keep internet prices high and upsell everyone onto bundled plans, when all I need is internet (not home phone and TV service). Thus they charge $20/mo for 3Mbps, $50 for 6Mbps and $65 for 25Mbps unbundled internet, and AT&T charges roughly the same.
13y ago

protomyth 13y ago

Is there some law that keeps power and gas companies[1] from doing internet? 1) they have right of way to the home

forkrulassail 13y ago

I've been kicked from 7 South African ISPs as a top 2% or 'abuse' user, after paying for uncapped access. Things seriously need to change this side.

nathanb 13y ago
I visited SA a few months ago, with an eye toward possibly moving there and working remotely (I'm a software developer for a large software engineering corporation that's relatively friendly toward remote workers). My opinion was that it would be very difficult to be a remote software worker in SA because the network infrastructure was so poor. Everyone I talked to just used USB cellular modems to get online, and the load would actually cause the cell tower near my friend's flat to crash sometimes at peak hours. The Internet was entirely unusable for good portions of the day. Meanwhile, if you're willing to pay a premium for installation and use of a wired connection, you wind up dealing with the sort of thing you faced or just flat out apathy toward whether or not the service should actually work consistently. In your own experience, is this an accurate assessment?

mnw21cam 13y ago

Largely I'm happy with my ISP. Except that somewhere in their core network they have a broken link, which means that 0.01% of the internet is inaccessible to me, as of a couple of weeks ago when they "upgraded" my connection. Unfortunately that 0.01% includes my friend's computer which runs my backup email servers. Tried explaining this on the phone to the ISP. The script the phone-jockey had basically took me through rebooting the router, trying a couple of different browsers, and then saying that they were pleased to have solved the problem.

crum 13y ago

Has anyone heard of: "Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age"

freeasinfree 13y ago

There are usually alternatives, but they're sometimes hard to find. MonkeyBrains in SF is top-notch. http://www.wispa.org/find-a-wisp http://www.wispa.org/find-a-wisp

Aloha 13y ago

I worked for a major ISP - Two of them, one being the largest suppliers of DSL nationwide and the other, their largest reseller. There are some horror stories out there - in truth, the majority of customers get what they pay for monthly without the plethora of stupids presented here. On the other hand, when I set up service with Comcast, my bill had 4-5 mystery charges monthly for 4 months, no one could explain what they were, and they got credited. But still, it was an hour of my time each time it happened.

jamestnz 13y ago

Interesting article for me, being that I have no experience with the ISP industry in America at all. "The best solution, I think, is to lay fiber in all the municipalities and have consumers choose their ISP, with service delivered on the municipal fiber lines..." This is exactly what has been happening where I live - Christchurch, New Zealand. A number of years ago, a city-owned LLC called Christchurch City Networks Limited (now known as Enable Networks[1]) began rolling out an extensive fibre network in the downtown/city-centre area. Initially, for about $700 (NZD) per month, you could lease a dark pair between your premises and your ISP of choice (or even directly between two arbitrary premises, plugging directly into your own equipment at each end, with no ISP involved). You'd then negotiate arbitrary speed/bandwidth/caps with your chosen ISP. We were paying something like $3000 per month for a 1000 mbit/sec internet connection with (IIRC) a 2TB cap. This was probably 8 years ago or something, it doesn't cost anything like this now. Latterly, they've been rolling out a GPON-based (passive) fibre network. If you are connected to this part of the network, there are highly standardised plans available from multiple ISPs. You can choose one of two speeds: 30 mbit/sec symmetric, or 100 mbit/sec symmetric. Different ISPs have different usage plans available. Any public (government-funded) school can sign up for a 30 mbit/sec plan, with unlimited traffic, for something like $200/month. Amongst home users, ADSL2+ and VDSL2 are both still popular choices (and our pricing there seems similar enough to the US, with stupidly low caps and high prices), but fibre continues to gain traction. [1] http://www.enable.net.nz http://www.enable.net.nz

sarah2079 13y ago

Talking with Comcast on the phone can seem like talking to someone from another planet. When I moved last year and needed to move my service with me, I was instructed to just bring the Comcast box to the new place myself, and then call a specific number when I had connected it to turn service on. Great! I thought, that sounds easy. Well it turns out the people answering at that number (the number they gave me, remember) were completely unfamiliar with the concept of moving. "You want to do what?" they asked incredulously, as if I was the first person they had ever encountered who had moved from one residence to another. "I have moved. My service has already been disconnected at the old address, and I would like to activate it at my new address" I repeated, thinking they had just misheard me. "Have you tried unplugging it and then plugging it back in?" they offered helpfully. After an hour on the phone and many, many transfers I was finally able to talk to someone who could handle this bizarre and complicated request. I hate to think how much time it will cost me if I ever have a real problem.

simoncion 13y ago
> I hate to think how much time it will cost me if I ever have a real problem. If you're a person with clue, get friendly with the folks at the local Comcast office, or one of the technicians. If you're technically inclined and can demonstrate that you're wise enough to only call them about issues with their network, you'll probably be able to get the support number for the local office.

TrainedMonkey 13y ago

I am surprised AOL is not mentioned. I remember story going around how subscription made by a person could not be cancelled even though that person passed away.