5 ms·

I pay X/s, I want X/s. I don't understand how in Bolivia I can pay that, and have exactly that with minimal fuss. Meanwhile I hear absolutely insane stuff comi

I pay X/s, I want X/s. I don't understand how in Bolivia I can pay that, and have exactly that with minimal fuss. Meanwhile I hear absolutely insane stuff coming from my friends ISPs in the US. I pay $90/month for a 2MB connection, and get precisely that, either for torrents, Netflix, PS4 online or plain old http downloads. I can even call tech support here and have a live-person helping me figure out why my internet is not working immediately. No robots, no telephone-software redirects. You guys don't have that level of quality because Comcast is bribing all of your appointed officials. There is no competition! My father in Boston just got internet and had to sign up with Comcast because there was literally no other choice where he lived. He paid for the service, and guess what 5 hours after the installation technician left the internet didn't work. He called them up, which was a 3 hour hold, and they wanted to charge him $80 for a technician visit. $80 FOR A TECHNICIAN VISIT, they didn't even want to check his internet remotely, like they do here in Bolivia. It's all nickle and diming, and you can't do shit about it. The FCC is working for Comcast, not for the people. Don't you get that?

jeremyt 12y ago
Well, I suspect one of the reasons why they can do that is because they're charging you $90 per month for a 2 Mb connection. I pay $27 per month here in the state for a 25/5 connection that routinely gets about 8/3.
k-mcgrady 12y ago
>> I don't understand how in Bolivia I can pay that, and have exactly that with minimal fuss. Exactly! Anyone who thinks fast lanes are necessary must not have looked at how the internet works in the rest of the world where we don't have such huge problems with net neutrality.
whoopdedo 12y ago
> I pay X/s, I want X/s. If you don't have a SLA, you're not paying for X/s. The cheap consumer plans only advertise the speed as a potential maximum with no guarantee. Moreover, they explicitly state that overuse will result in slower speeds. So if you want X/s, then you'll need a stricter contract, and will have to pay a lot more than what you're doing now. Or, the ISP can request that upstream services subsidize the bandwidth for downstream customers and that way you won't have to pay more.
- Karunamon 12y ago
  Completely ignoring the fact that in sane places, this isn't a problem, but this is false advertising at the very least and should be prosecuted as such. A bare minimum standard is that a line advertised as X meg downstream should be able to reach that speed more often than not. I don't care what the ISPs think about this. Their sales concerns are their own.
- sergiotapia 12y ago
  >If you don't have a SLA, you're not paying for X/s. The cheap consumer plans only advertise the speed as a potential maximum with no guarantee. In the backwards-as-fuck US maybe - here they advertise that speed for at least 90% of the time of your monthly contract. Any time under in credited towards you with no fuss. One time I had a week of crap service, and they acknowledged it and gave me two weeks of free internet with no problems. So yes, we do get a SLA.
  - thomaskcr 12y ago
    That's basically the same situation in the USA -- the only time the internet in a lot of places is really congested is during peak hours. Around 6 or 7 I notice a slowdown and then by 10 everything is fine again. Unless you have a business plan or a leased line I highly doubt you have an SLA, probably just good customer service and one of those "guarantees". I think consumers that want that are being stupid, I'd much rather be able to work at higher speeds at night than have a network wide SLA that says we all get 5 M/s. I'd also much rather pay 20-30/mo for my internet than 60. Think about the ridiculous expense if they needed to engineer highways just to avoid the 2 hours of traffic every day. Would you really be rallying for a 12 lane highway that sits essentially empty most of the day? You're basically paying for a massive amount of stuff that goes unused 90+% of the time.

jeremyt 12y ago

Well, I suspect one of the reasons why they can do that is because they're charging you $90 per month for a 2 Mb connection. I pay $27 per month here in the state for a 25/5 connection that routinely gets about 8/3.

k-mcgrady 12y ago

>> I don't understand how in Bolivia I can pay that, and have exactly that with minimal fuss. Exactly! Anyone who thinks fast lanes are necessary must not have looked at how the internet works in the rest of the world where we don't have such huge problems with net neutrality.

whoopdedo 12y ago

> I pay X/s, I want X/s. If you don't have a SLA, you're not paying for X/s. The cheap consumer plans only advertise the speed as a potential maximum with no guarantee. Moreover, they explicitly state that overuse will result in slower speeds. So if you want X/s, then you'll need a stricter contract, and will have to pay a lot more than what you're doing now. Or, the ISP can request that upstream services subsidize the bandwidth for downstream customers and that way you won't have to pay more.

Karunamon 12y ago
Completely ignoring the fact that in sane places, this isn't a problem, but this is false advertising at the very least and should be prosecuted as such. A bare minimum standard is that a line advertised as X meg downstream should be able to reach that speed more often than not. I don't care what the ISPs think about this. Their sales concerns are their own.
sergiotapia 12y ago
>If you don't have a SLA, you're not paying for X/s. The cheap consumer plans only advertise the speed as a potential maximum with no guarantee. In the backwards-as-fuck US maybe - here they advertise that speed for at least 90% of the time of your monthly contract. Any time under in credited towards you with no fuss. One time I had a week of crap service, and they acknowledged it and gave me two weeks of free internet with no problems. So yes, we do get a SLA.
- thomaskcr 12y ago
  That's basically the same situation in the USA -- the only time the internet in a lot of places is really congested is during peak hours. Around 6 or 7 I notice a slowdown and then by 10 everything is fine again. Unless you have a business plan or a leased line I highly doubt you have an SLA, probably just good customer service and one of those "guarantees". I think consumers that want that are being stupid, I'd much rather be able to work at higher speeds at night than have a network wide SLA that says we all get 5 M/s. I'd also much rather pay 20-30/mo for my internet than 60. Think about the ridiculous expense if they needed to engineer highways just to avoid the 2 hours of traffic every day. Would you really be rallying for a 12 lane highway that sits essentially empty most of the day? You're basically paying for a massive amount of stuff that goes unused 90+% of the time.