[HN Gopher] Telecom Industry Is Mad Because the FCC Might Examin...
___________________________________________________________________
Telecom Industry Is Mad Because the FCC Might Examine High
Broadband Prices
Author : rntn
Score : 446 points
Date : 2023-12-12 15:39 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.techdirt.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.techdirt.com)
| NickC25 wrote:
| The same telecom industry that got hundreds of billions to build
| out Fiber Optic networks around the country? The same telecom
| industry that took those hundreds of billions and spent them on
| lawsuits against the government, on wooing lobbyists and padding
| executive salaries instead of actually doing the work they told
| the government they would do?
|
| Now they are mad because their blatant price gouging and shitty
| service is going to be laid bare for all to see?
|
| Oh gee, my heart breaks for them.
| praptak wrote:
| _" And the principle of really existing free market theory is:
| free markets are fine for you, but not for me. That's, again,
| near a universal. So you -- whoever you may be -- you have to
| learn responsibility, and be subjected to market discipline,
| it's good for your character, it's tough love, and so on, and
| so forth. But me, I need the nanny State, to protect me from
| market discipline, so that I'll be able to rant and rave about
| the marvels of the free market, while I'm getting properly
| subsidized and defended by everyone else, through the nanny
| State._"
|
| Chomsky, "Free Market Fantasies"
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| There is absolutely nothing free about utility markets. They
| are much closer to Chomsky's nanny state than any free market
| ideology.
| thedanbob wrote:
| AT&T recently (edit: actually almost 2 years ago) laid a new
| fiber line that runs right under our driveway. They put fliers
| in all the local mailboxes advertising fiber. But if you go on
| their site and put in any of the addresses on our street, oops,
| fiber isn't available.
|
| Our Cox cable service went down for two days last week. When
| the guy finally came out to fix it, he confirmed what I had
| already guessed: our line was literally just unplugged at the
| junction box.
|
| I'm so sick of all their crap I'm tempted to switch to a local
| fixed wireless company. On paper it's a worse deal than I have
| now, but if as I've heard they don't give you any BS, that's a
| strong selling point.
| all2 wrote:
| Our internet was out for a week recently, so I bought
| Starlink. It's cheaper and faster than anything else
| available out here.
| toast0 wrote:
| > AT&T recently laid a new fiber line that runs right under
| our driveway. They put fliers in all the local mailboxes
| advertising fiber. But if you go on their site and put in any
| of the addresses on our street, oops, fiber isn't available.
|
| When ATT ran fiber on my street, it took about 3-4 months
| before you could order. IIRC, they ran the bulk fiber before
| all the rest of the outside equipment was installed. It'd be
| nice if they didn't do fliers until they're ready to take
| orders though.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| As long as it costs tens of thousands of dollars to trench
| to a single home; and as long as aerial utilities remain
| the least regulated, but somehow still not sensibly
| regulated, you cannot deliver fiber cheaply to
| Californians.
| toast0 wrote:
| It's not _that_ expensive if you only deliver to
| customers served by aerial utilities, and you have access
| to poles and understand how to get easements for outside
| equipment. And you expect to serve a significant fraction
| of dwellings passed.
|
| I don't think AT&T was secretly planning for years and
| years to rewire my neighborhood for fiber; they were just
| well prepared with then information and expertise to get
| it done. I think they saw Google announce service
| upcoming in 15 cities or whatever, and figured they would
| need fiber in those cities as well, then they took their
| existing maps to figure out where they needed outside
| equipment, set their lawyers ro getting or expanding
| easements, and once those were set, they sent an order to
| Corning for GPON cables with drops at measured lengths
| for each pole. Easy and cheap for ATT. Unless you have
| underground utilities.
|
| It's not easy and cheap for upstarts because you don't
| have access to the poles, and you don't have field maps,
| and you're unlikely to serve a significant number of
| customers that you pass.
|
| It's not easy and cheap for anyone if utilities are
| undergrounded, because encapsulating your infrastructure
| makes costs start at about 3x the cost of aerial
| buildouts, and it gets much worse if you hit other
| utilities when you dig. Best case, a lot of manual
| digging; worse case, you need to call out another utility
| to do an emergency repair; worst case, you cause an
| explosion. Plus your burried utilities are at risk of
| being damaged and needing repair during other utility
| work. Wires on poles are at risk too, but at least it's
| easy to access them for repairs.
|
| One day maybe, they'll tear down their copper that's
| rotting on the same poles. Maybe when copper scrap value
| is high.
| inversetelecine wrote:
| Frontier (ex-verizon fios) did this. They buried the fiber
| in the community but no one got mailings until it was ready
| to "pre-order". Time from pre-order to live service was
| roughly 3 months and it was stated on the flyer that it was
| a pre-order and service activation dates were not
| guaranteed.
| thedanbob wrote:
| I guess I shouldn't have said "recently", just checked and
| it was actually almost 2 years ago.
| toast0 wrote:
| Yeah, 2 years is too long. Something is fishy there.
| Sorry about that :(
| leecb wrote:
| AT&T ran fiber to my house (and everybody else on my
| street). 15 months later, the highest speed option we have
| is still 50/10 Mbps DSL from AT&T.
|
| I wonder why they put it in if they aren't going to bother
| offering service with it?
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| So they can activate it in a down quarter or if Comcast
| threatens to move into the area.
| njovin wrote:
| I'll pile on and point out that Cox is a horrible ISP for a
| variety of reasons. My primary issue with them is that they
| will continue slowly adding fees and raising prices until
| your bill is almost double what you initially agreed to.
|
| At this point you call them, threaten to leave, and they find
| a new "promotion" that resets you to baseline and the process
| starts anew. I've gone through this with them for the past
| 10+ years. Their latest trick is charging for any usage over
| 1.5TB (which is criminally low if you have kids streaming,
| playing, and talking to friends all day IMO), but instead of
| tacking on one of their overagew bundles (which are somewhat
| resonably priced) they charge a huge per-GB fee.
|
| I'm about 2 blocks outside the primary service area of a
| large suburb so they're my only wired option that provides at
| least 100MB down speed so I'm stuck with them.
| RajT88 wrote:
| Comcast (aka XFinity) does this too. You have to yearly re-
| subscribe for a "promotion".
|
| The long game is of course to lure you with a lower price
| and hope you do not notice the price going up so they can
| gouge you to their heart's content.
|
| As soon as I can get Metronet fiber, I am out. (I am hoping
| they do not play similar games with promotions)
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > Comcast (aka XFinity) does this too. You have to yearly
| re-subscribe for a "promotion".
|
| They won't even let me do that when I call them. :(
| RajT88 wrote:
| You must have no other ISP's in your area.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Starlink
| ryandrake wrote:
| Yea, last time I tried the "threaten to leave" bluff,
| they put me on hold for a bit, leaving me with my
| thoughts: "Allright--I'll be getting that sweet
| promotional deal again!" And then the rep came back onto
| the call saying "OK, sir, we have canceled your service
| as you requested. Is there anything else I can do for
| you?" Doh.
|
| It sounds like the Cable ISPs might be catching on to the
| game and stopping it.
| vel0city wrote:
| So then wait a few hours and call back and now you're a
| new customer!
| aidenn0 wrote:
| The only thing Cox gets right here is that they are reliable.
| I'm still paying an exorbitant monthly fee with a crazy low
| data cap, but the alternative here is Frontier; everyone I
| know with that experiences at least one outage a month during
| business hours.
| brewdad wrote:
| I've been reasonably happy with my fiber provider (Ziply). My
| town is building out a municipal fiber network that is
| considerably cheaper however. They just finished a phase that
| stopped 50 yards south of my home. They'll be back to finish
| the north half of my street in another 4 years if they stay
| on schedule.
|
| Sigh.
| JoshTko wrote:
| Classic wealth transfer from everyone to the wealthy.
| lstodd wrote:
| Well, here is hope that this will be a first step in bringing US
| internet access to at least something comparable to Balkans. Of
| course, to reach the likes of Netherlands or Russia even of now,
| not to mention as of five years ago would take another 20 years
| or so.
| MrRadar wrote:
| Large broadband providers in the US are allergic to policy and
| price transparency. They preposterously told the FCC they would
| not be able to list taxes and fees on proposed consumer broadband
| labels![1][2]
|
| [1] https://www.fcc.gov/broadbandlabels
|
| [2] https://www.pcmag.com/news/isps-to-fcc-listing-every-
| governm...
| oogali wrote:
| Not necessarily defending them, but taxes vary depending on
| state, county, city, and/or taxing district, against a matrix
| of what type of service is being sold and what revenue limits,
| if any.
|
| Then add another level as you're not being sold service by
| Spectrum but Spectrum of New York, and variable tax/fee
| contributions depend on total revenue of that subsidiary (e.g.
| Universal Service Fund[1]).
|
| It can be fairly complicated in a static state, but then add in
| new/pending legislature and it's something that needs to be
| updated monthly.
|
| Yes, they already do that work internally (and if they get it
| wrong, the government taxing entities tell them they are
| miscalculating the amount and assesses penalties and fees) but
| publishing it adds a new dimension.
|
| 1: https://sourceadvisors.com/blogs/salt/what-is-the-federal-
| un....
| freedomben wrote:
| Exactly. It's not a valid excuse for the ISP, but it is a
| legitimate beef. The ridiculous array of taxes really are a
| giant PITA for them and for consumers.
| nottorp wrote:
| US ISPs don't have computers and databases? :)
| freedomben wrote:
| Sure they do, but even with a computer and a database,
| keeping track of exactly which taxes apply and which
| don't to who, from 3,143 counties and 19,495 cities isn't
| a trivial thing to do.
|
| Again it's not a defense of the big companies, but it is
| a legitimate beef.
| alistairSH wrote:
| They manage to get it right on my bill, so it's not like
| they don't have the information handy, they just don't
| want to disclose it until as late as legally possible.
| freedomben wrote:
| not trying to unload on you because it's many different
| people, but Ok, I give up trying to say "it's not a
| defense of the ISPs" because clearly people aren't
| capable of separating threads of thought. I guess the
| limbic system response to "evil ISP" is just too
| overpowering for the frontal lobe and logic falls by the
| wayside.
|
| It's simply not possible that two different things can
| both be true? That ISPs already have to do it so should
| disclose what they're charging, but that also the number
| of taxes and fees are ridiculous? Why is that so hard to
| separate in people's minds?
|
| If a Comcast president said that ham sandwiches are
| better when they're grilled, and I said "he's got a good
| point there" would that also be misconstrued as a defense
| of their billing practices?
| alistairSH wrote:
| Taxes and fees are complicated, no question.
|
| But it's completely ridiculous for ISPs (or anybody else)
| to use that as a justification for dark patterns during
| the sales cycle.
|
| Now, if the taxes and fees were so complicated, the
| company simply couldn't comply at all, at any point in
| the customer lifecycle, then sure, that's a good excuse.
| But that's not the case - ISPs manage to figure this
| stuff out eventually.
| avianlyric wrote:
| > but that also the number of taxes and fees are
| ridiculous?
|
| You know ISPs go out of their way to artificially inflate
| the number of taxes and fees they charge you, right?
|
| If every company took the approach ISPs took, then every
| recipe in the U.S. would be the length of a CVS receipt,
| listing out every minor and incidental tax and fee the
| company happened to pay as part of its operating
| procedures. You don't see stores passing on "electricity
| fees", and "union negotiations taxes" etc etc, because
| only ISPs take affront at the idea that they should pay
| for their business expenses, rather that passing them on
| a additional itemised billing items to their customers.
| mulmen wrote:
| Calling it a "legitimate beef" crosses the line from
| considering a thread of thought into defending the ISP
| because it's only true from their perspective.
| benja810 wrote:
| > keeping track of exactly which taxes apply and which
| don't to who, from 3,143 counties and 19,495 cities isn't
| a trivial thing to do.
|
| I don't see this isn't a legitimate beef. If you can't
| comply with local regulations because you serve too many
| municipalities it sounds like you aren't a good fit to
| serve those customers. Perhaps the solution is to sell
| your infrastructure off to smaller, local companies who
| can comply. Or heck even just other equally big companies
| who are well run enough to manage such a problem.
| thechao wrote:
| If they can bill me, they can tell me how much it'll cost.
| They know my address.
| MrRadar wrote:
| If it is genuinely too complex ISPs could always take the
| approach of making the advertised price tax/fee-inclusive,
| like T-Mobile did.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > taxes vary depending on state, county, city, and/or taxing
| district, against a matrix of what type of service is being
| sold and what revenue limits, if any.
|
| Ow well, if yhey cant figure out all these complexities, how
| do they know they are charging me the rifht amount?
|
| US is really a wild place, if I demanded a random,
| unexplainable and higher than expected amount of money from
| my customers, I would be accused of fraud and no court would
| uphold my demands
| malfist wrote:
| Every other business can list taxes and fees, no reason ISPs
| can't.
|
| And you can't tell me that metro net's mandatory "technology
| fee" of $10 to every customer can't be disclosed before you
| get to a buy page
| adrr wrote:
| How do they know what to charge you? There is some billing
| system that has all the taxes and fees in it to apply to your
| bill and there are 3rd parties SaaS companies that solve
| taxes for business like Avalara that will give a break down
| of all the taxes it applied to a given address.
| bluish29 wrote:
| They provide you with a form to check if your address is
| supported which is linked to one system that do the check.
| I think it is possible to link the two systems together to
| give you the price for your particular address. I don't
| think taxes and fees here has to do with anything other
| than your physical address (They are not the IRS after all)
| jcranmer wrote:
| At the point where I'm querying about internet service, they
| need to know my address to ascertain that they can in fact
| have(/can run) a cable into my house. And when they know my
| address, they know all of the relevant jurisdictions imposing
| taxes on that and the relevant tax rates.
|
| The two things that are going to be difficult are if you want
| to promote, say, a nationwide "$60/month plan", or if you've
| got some corporate tax that's hard to calculate on a marginal
| basis that you're trying to pass onto consumers. Neither of
| those things are motivating to me. If it's too hard to
| compute the accurate tax fee per person, just roll that into
| your base plan calculation and budget accordingly. We don't
| expect to have to pay a corporation's corporate tax as a
| separate line item on the bill, so why should we expect that
| consumers have to pay an industry-specific corporate tax as a
| separate line item?
|
| At the end of the day, the reality is that this is an
| industry that is trying to advertise plans that are at wildly
| different rates from those the consumer has to pay, and
| they're upset that some truth-in-advertising laws is starting
| to be enforced. It's not even _outlawing_ the wildly
| different rates; it 's merely requiring transparency in the
| differences!
| mulakosag wrote:
| If they can show me the price at checkout then why cannot
| show the price in listing.
| mulmen wrote:
| Because they need additional information like your address
| which is not available to them in the listing.
| avianlyric wrote:
| They only need to publish the taxes and fees if they're not
| part of the advertised service price. The FCC has made it
| very clear that if ISP don't want to publish the minutiae of
| all the various taxes and fees, then those ISP are welcome to
| charge a single flat, advertised, price, and not inflate
| bills beyond that price with spurious taxes and "fees".
|
| Of course that would require ISPs to be honest and upfront
| with their advertising and billing practices, something US
| ISP seem to be incapable of.
| mattmcknight wrote:
| It doesn't seem preposterous to me at all. If the goal is to
| show the price breakdown on marketing materials, it's going to
| be tough for AT&T to fit 29,000 different permutations of tax
| regimes in a banner ad.
|
| "the company "would have to create over 29,000 separate
| labels"" from your source 2.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| Chattanoogan, here -- providing perspective as a user of city-
| supplied fiber internet:
|
| Our local ISP, EPB Fiber (available to every. single.
| electricity. customer), is incredible. Synchronus 300/300,
| 1gps/1gps, 20gps/20gps... plus they just released the first
| qubit-capable fiber connections [I don't know/use this].
|
| When they say "$57.99 per month," that's EXACTLY what appears on
| monthly invoices -- including all taxes! And the product is
| revered for good reason(s).
|
| It's SO GOOD that our state (Tennessee) has actually blocked
| other municipalities from implementing similar municipal fiber
| ISPs -- and prevents EPB from offering fiber to customers outside
| of their electricity-supplying jurisdiction.
|
| Asking new arrivals "Why'd you move here," you'll often find
| tech-types listing "The Internets" within Top5 reasons.
| reactordev wrote:
| This is why I'm looking for a place in the area... :D Not only
| for the beautiful scenery and wonderful people, but for the
| blazingly fast internets.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| Here is a link to EPB's entire service territory (crosses
| into Georgia, briefly, and a bit into nearby Tennessee
| counties):
|
| https://epb.com/outage-and-storm-center/energy-outages/
|
| If you get your power via Chattanooga's Electric Power Board
| (even out in the sticks!) you can get 1gps+ synchronous
| fiber.
|
| I am currently looking for land (to build upon) and without
| EPBfiber, I will not even consider purchasing.
|
| Welcome, new neighbor(s).
| tbyehl wrote:
| Much of the neighboring areas of north Georgia and western
| North Carolina also have widely available fiber from the
| local electric and telephone co-ops. Obama's broadband
| stimulus paid for much of a fiber backbone that connects
| them running from north of Atlanta through the Tennessee
| Valley to Asheville and beyond.
|
| My place in WNC is, sadly, just outside Blue Ridge EMC's
| footprint. Pay $100/m for 100/4 cable. The billboard on
| US-129 proclaiming "Big City Speeds & Performance, Small-
| Town Personal Service" irks me every time I pass by because
| the service is every bit as shitty as that slogan made me
| expect.
| Agingcoder wrote:
| How can they block municipal fiber isps ? Or prevent epb from
| selling services ?
| jzb wrote:
| Many states have laws blocking municipal broadband [1] --
| basically regulatory capture in its most blatant.
|
| [1] https://broadbandnow.com/report/municipal-broadband-
| roadbloc...
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| I'm sure it's within their regulatory laws to determine what
| can be rolled out where. Of course, the real question is
| where are all those free market Republicans in Tennessee when
| it comes time for the market to compete with their donors?
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| >where are all those free market Republicans in Tennessee
| when it comes time for the market to compete with their
| donors?
|
| "Privatize profits, subsidize losses." --My neighbor
| Tennesseans (when I used to live on Lookout).
| freedomben wrote:
| I've lived in a lot of red states, and the same thing
| repeatedly happens. I've given up trying to change things.
| For every 1 person who will care, there are 25 who just
| check that there is an "R" next to the name of the person.
| Ignorant votes make educated votes irrelevant.
| Spivak wrote:
| > the real question is where are all those free market
| Republicans
|
| Blocking public services that naturally have a pricing
| advantage over private businesses because they're supported
| by tax dollars. Like if you're gonna drag Republicans for
| not living up to their free market ideals this really isn't
| what you should point to.
|
| People said the same thing when they opposed the public
| option in the '00's and the rationale was the same.
| "Competing" with government services is just roundabout
| price controls. I'm zero percent opposed to such things
| when the market fails to sort itself out but I can see why
| strict free market adherents wouldn't be on board.
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| ISPs and Pharma companies get subsidies from the
| government, I don't think your argument holds up here.
| Just another area that Republicans are happy to be
| hypocrites on. I would love to see Republicans set out
| "small government" legislation that removes subsidies to
| the core businesses in their states but you and I both
| know that will never happen. A child getting food stamps
| is an example of our 'welfare state' but it's never the
| billions that go to agriculture or pharma companies.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| I laugh often knowing that WalMart is the largest single
| recipient of "corporate welfare" in this fine
| state/country. What a term/fact. When my black nephew
| started working there, they walked him through "applying
| for foodstamps" as part of his training/onboarding.
| p_j_w wrote:
| >Blocking public services that naturally have a pricing
| advantage over private businesses because they're
| supported by tax dollars.
|
| That's the stated rationale. The actual reason is that
| the entirety of Republican economic ideology revolves
| around the idea that the government isn't capable of
| providing better service than private companies and
| municipal broadband shows this to be a complete lie.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Well, firstly, we should acknowledge that municipal
| broadband isn't a story of completely unmitigated success
| - there are cases of tremendous failure as well.
|
| I'm also _fairly_ sure that most Republicans would not
| mind if municipal broadband were run - and competed on -
| commercial terms.
|
| However, if it's funded by municipal bonds that are
| backed by general obligation (i.e. all taxpayers
| subsidize, whether they use the service or not) then that
| seems obviously a problem to me. Even if they're revenue
| bonds, they're still implicitly subsidized by tax
| treatment.
| plagiarist wrote:
| The real trick is them being able to claim that with a
| straight face and then turn around and give subsidies and
| handouts to the private services.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| I have always been terrible at the [empathy-lacking]
| trick.
|
| Oh'shucks, meself. /s
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| If you think Democrats aren't just as corrupt and willing
| to pass bills that are bad for the people but good for
| their donors, I have a bridge in Arizona to sell you. The
| problem here is that the vast majority of public officials
| are corrupt, not which party they happen to run with.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| >THE PROBLEM HERE IS THAT THE VAST MAJORITY OF PUBLIC
| OFFICIALS ARE CORRUPT
|
| Again, for the people in the back!
|
| BRING BACK RANK-CHOICE VOTING (To Tennessee,
| specifically!)
| thinkingtoilet wrote:
| Did I say that? The conversation here was about municipal
| broadband in Tennessee. Whataboutism isn't helpful for
| any discussion.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| The reason Chattanooga is even allowed to offer fiber
| internet service is that TECHNICALLY it is for monitoring
| their power delivery infrastructure, down to each household.
| Customer internet is just an "additional benefit."
|
| When your power disconnect here (without explanation),
| somebody from the power company shows up within the hour (to
| figure out why, then replace any broken hardware). But this
| is rare, as the "auto switchers" can typically reroute
| blackouts, restoring service usually within seconds.
| smelendez wrote:
| US states typically can organize their municipalities, school
| districts, fire departments, public power agencies, etc.
| however they want.
|
| If the state constitution doesn't say otherwise, the
| legislature can just pass a law saying municipalities can't
| get into the internet business and that's that. This comes up
| a lot with liberal cities in conservative states.
| codeslave13 wrote:
| Our county did basically same thing in rural va. Our coop who
| the county partnered with is now expanding to 5 other counties.
| 1gb 75 mo. Its been down once in 4 years
| mountainofdeath wrote:
| I've actually seen this elsewhere as well. The local rural
| telephone cooperatives tend to have better service and better
| support if the customer base decides it and can afford it.
| latentcall wrote:
| Same in Fort Collins CO. I think the director of EPB broadband
| headed the Connexion service here at the start. Also in
| Loveland, Estes Park. Incredibly good service for cheap.
| foobarian wrote:
| Wonder how we can reward people like this for being awesome.
| Or force them to take jobs leading FCC or similar govt orgs
| :D
| rpmisms wrote:
| Also in TN, my fiber is bundled with my electric and is
| absurdly good. TN has good infra, it's nice to feel the
| benefits.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Is this one of those situations where it went from
| practically non-existent to holybejeebusfast? I had friends
| that lived in an upper mountain valley that barely had POTs,
| no cable (not enough customers for provider to feel
| construction was worth it) all the way until ~2014. Finally,
| the utility strung fiber along the existing POTs poles, and
| they now had 1Gbps up/down as well as TV service. Being in a
| valley, the broadcast reception left a lot to be desired, so
| pretty much everyone had a satellite dish of some sort.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| 2016 - 2023, I lived inside a national forest in a 100+
| year old cabin... not even within the city limits of
| Chattanooga.
|
| BUT, since I received electricity from the city's Electric
| Power Board... 20gbs syncronous internets was available for
| $299/month (all taxes included). Being a mere mortal, I
| settled for the 0.3gbs (300mb, synchronous, exactly
| $57.99/mo.) fiber, which allowed me to run a bitcoin node
| maintaining 100+ <9ms connections.
|
| In the middle of a national forest, "out in the sticks."
| dylan604 wrote:
| This sounds heavenly. I think this will now be added to
| my list of potential retirement options.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Tennessee is a wonderful place, and I'd recommend it.
| Keep in mind that it's a brutally conservative place, and
| the typical Californian will likely be uncomfortable
| outside of Nashville. The people are lovely, just a note.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm currently in Texas. Your brutally conservative will
| probably feel like a loosening of the belt.
| rpmisms wrote:
| No, I compared when I moved from a blue state, chose here
| because it's much more conservative. Texas is almost a
| swing state at this point. I'm friends with our former
| lieutenant governor, and I can assure you that it's not
| all show, either.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Bwahahaha! Texas? A swing state? Thanks, you literally
| made me LOL. We clearly have different concepts of a
| swing state.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Compared to us, absolutely.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Pretty much, yeah. Went from dial-up to better than I've
| ever had in my life.
| flutas wrote:
| > providing perspective as a user of city-supplied fiber
| internet:
|
| Yup, I live in another city that has a setup like this (Conway,
| AR of all places). Ours even goes a little further than EPB
| though.
|
| Electricity, Water, Sewer, Trash, Cable, Phone, Internet
| (already fiber for recent builds, upgrading all to it
| currently) all through one company that's owned by the
| city...it's amazing.
|
| One bill a month, and my bill is ~300/mo for all services
| including 1Gb/s fiber. Plus the other aspects of it. Tech
| support is someone sitting downtown, power outages are fixed in
| record time... just so much is right with the model.
|
| https://conwaycorp.com/
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| Sound "dreamy..." our Scenic City still pays American Water
| for their monthly extortions =D
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I wish we could get a setup like that going where I live, but
| sadly I live in the flyover states and this would NEVER play
| with our voter base, they'd be screaming socialism at the top
| of their lungs until they turned blue in the face.
|
| At least we got fiber, finally. It isn't state-run but it is
| a local telecom, the price is reasonable, the service is
| incredible and the uptime is great. I still get letters
| occasionally from Spectrum begging me to come back and their
| _PROMOTIONAL PRICE_ is $10 more per month than my 600
| parallel, for slower service. Absolutely brain-dead, I 'm not
| entirely sure the marketing people for cable companies are
| still living in our reality. Why would you even bother
| sending these out? Who in their right mind is going to pay
| more money for worse service to possibly the single greatest
| and most widely known avatar for corporate avarice, the cable
| company?
|
| I don't know a single person in my area who still has cable
| internet if fiber is available to them. Spectrum must be
| hemorrhaging customers.
|
| Edit: and if it isn't obvious, yeah I'm a cord cutter too,
| though tbh there was never a cord in my life to cut. I
| haven't had cable since I moved out of my parents house, and
| if not for semi-frequent hotel stays for work, I'd not be
| exposed to television at all. And said minimal exposure lets
| me verify that I'm missing absolutely nothing by not having
| the idiot box in my home. I cannot comprehend people who pay
| up to the range of hundreds of dollars a month to have a
| firehose of ads and mediocre bullshit pointed at their faces
| as a recreational activity. Not gonna yuck someones yum, you
| like what you like, but it ain't for me and I truly cannot
| understand why anyone wants it _at all,_ certainly not enough
| to spend that kind of money on it.
| jghn wrote:
| > I live in the flyover states and this would NEVER play
| with our voter base
|
| GP said they live in Arkansas.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| Oh yeah, look at that. Damn. I wonder how they pulled
| that off. Any time anything like that is suggested around
| here the culture warriors come in red faced and
| screaming.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| >the culture warriors come in red faced and screaming.
|
| I enjoy reminding these typically-babyboomers that
| Medicaid Part D (subsidized prescriptions) is "about as
| socialist as it gets" -- they get low-priced medications,
| after largely having paid [relatively] nothing in to this
| "entitlement." Why have they paid almost nothing in to
| Part D? Because Part D is relatively new, thus passing
| the costs of medicine on to younger
| generations/taxpayers.
|
| I highly recommend, for better understanding your
| neighbors (of any age), that you read "A Generation of
| Sociopaths" -- chocked full of statistics to help
| everybody see why we commoners need "socialism," or
| whatever they want to call it... BECAUSE IT MAKES LIVING
| BEARABLE, LESS EXPENSIVE, AND GD you cannot make up their
| lifetimes of hypocrasies.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| I'm about 2/3 the way through it actually! It's a good
| read.
|
| That said, what do they say when you point this stuff
| out? I've been attending local city meetings for a bit
| now, and when confronted with this stuff, they don't
| change their minds, they just double and triple down, get
| even angrier, and screech even louder about MUH FREEDOM.
|
| I don't even get angry, I'm just like, explaining how
| society works (pooling of resources so people can get
| what they need) and they absolutely melt the fuck down!
| It's crazy!
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| >what do they say when you point this stuff out?
|
| My best local friend is twice my age (late-30's VS
| late-70's); former landlord, he married a rich girl from
| The Mountain, and is himself a blue-collar-raised Veteran
| [drafted, no less]; he is essentially the only
| "receptive" elderly person I've met, his wife vitriolic
| at the idea/concept of providing any of the same benefits
| as her own generation (The Silent Generation) received.
|
| I will just quote Her, instead of trying to generalize:
|
| "Nobody wants to be 'the last one' at the party -- then
| you have to clean up all the mess!" --80's, female member
| of local Patriarchy(tm).
|
| Also her: "What should we last few members of my
| generation do, then; just DIE?!?" Me: "Well, you could
| start by not complaining about the minimal taxes you pay
| on ownership of hundreds of acres of undeveloped land.
| Or, stop cashing your social security checks, which you
| clearly do not need." Her: "but I EARNED that."
|
| Narrator: No, she did not. She inherited it from Daddy,
| over sixty years ago.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| >Absolutely brain-dead, I'm not entirely sure the marketing
| people for cable companies are still living in our reality.
| Why would you even bother sending these out?
|
| I actually submitted a ticket/request to Spectrum, with
| essentially the exact same question once. Surprisingly,
| they called me back and interviewed me about "What it would
| take to sign up for their service?"
|
| When I described what I get from my local city fiber
| service, they acted like "price" and "reliability" and
| "decent customer service" were all impossible requests --
| as if EPB didn't exist. I'm not sure if feigned, or actual,
| ignorance was at play.
|
| Regardless, I did not switch over, and they didn't lower
| their prices. Still get advertising, and am often left
| wondering "why do they even bother?!"
|
| I do know a few elderly folks, despite also having EPBfiber
| (local city-supplied), maintain other services as "backup"
| or "for the email address they've always used from
| @comcast." No amount of reasoning will resolve this, so the
| cable internet lines still get maintained along city-
| provided-fiber routes.
| ToucanLoucan wrote:
| > When I described what I get from my local city fiber
| service, they acted like "price" and "reliability" and
| "decent customer service" were all impossible requests --
| as if EPB didn't exist. I'm not sure if feigned, or
| actual, ignorance was at play.
|
| I mean, I'm sure the calls are monitored and them openly
| acknowledging that their service sucks ass and is more
| expensive than their competitors would have them fired
| more or less immediately, but I am shocked they were
| ready to even send one of their reps your way knowing
| damn well they had no leg to stand on to actually make a
| sale. Like why even waste the time?
|
| Idk man, these dinosaur companies are a trip and their
| internal machinations are endlessly fascinating.
| Corporate bureaucracy (at least when it isn't actively
| making my life worse) is always an interesting topic to
| discuss.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| I felt SOOO bad for the sweet-sounding (sincere? I'll
| never actually know) woman interviewing me -- like a
| lamb-to-slaughter, I think the corporate intention was to
| make me feel bad for "believing such nonsense ISP could
| actually exist."
|
| My last semi-corporate gig, a performance review
| indicated "[ProllyInfamous] uses too much profanity." I
| responded verbally by informing them that "from now on
| I'll stop 'giving a shit,' and instead will start 'giving
| a hoot'." The owner's complaining wife was NOT thrilled.
| [I know "I AM fucking difficult"].
| chang1 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure Spectrum corporate culture is
| incentivized by only one thing: SELL!
|
| I canceled my service after several years due to a
| negative customer service experience, which I explained
| was the primary reason I was cancelling. Never was I
| asked about the incident... only more offers and
| promotions.
| jdmichal wrote:
| I called Spectrum before I canceled to specifically ask
| if they could get me faster internet without changing my
| TV package. They said no -- I was on a grandfathered plan
| from a prior company they had bought, and they would have
| to recreate the account to do anything. So I got Fios +
| YouTube TV instead. And when I called to cancel Spectrum,
| the guys says he wishes I had called before getting Fios.
|
| It's very clear that the only time they care is when your
| actual money is on the line. Before that, everyone is
| shackled by whatever chains management puts on them.
|
| This was also shortly after they sent me a new modem and
| told me to install it or risk losing connectivity within
| like a week. And then on my next bill is a charge for
| updating the modem...
| jsight wrote:
| I've lived in a place where a nice local company offered
| fiber. Up to 1gbps, symmetric and very reasonably priced
| lower tiers too (100-300mbps). They had a monopoly, and
| people loved to complain about issues that were... mostly
| their router. Though occasionally real issued happened too,
| of course.
|
| A cable company moved in with introductory rates that were
| about what the previous rate was, but for higher dl speeds
| and much lower ul speeds. It was cable based. They added
| eyesore boxes all over the neighborhood.
|
| Plenty of people building new houses bought cable, and some
| switched as well.
|
| I've also lived in a neighborhood with ATT fiber, and have
| seen the same phenomenon. The cable company is much worse,
| but people will still choose them sometimes.
|
| Why be competitive, when you'll get customers either way?
| :shrug
| bell-cot wrote:
| My experience: There are some people who are distrusting
| or hostile enough toward "socialism"/"politicians"/"the
| gov'ment" that they'll eagerly pay more for worse
| service.
|
| Or, just think of how many people keep buying bottles of
| drinking water.
| jsight wrote:
| I think there's also an element of competence. Why choose
| 300/300 over 500(*)! They don't know the difference
| between fiber and cable, didn't read the fine print
| showing the low upload speeds on the "500". :facepalm
| delecti wrote:
| I do think that most of it is ignorance, but
| realistically upload speed is irrelevant for most people
| most of the time.
| daemin wrote:
| If all they ever care about is sending a few emails and
| watching videos, possibly many at a time, then 500 down
| is better than 300 symmetric.
| bell-cot wrote:
| Point. And the muni service has ~no chance of out-
| glitzing the commercial ISP's slick marketing, celebrity
| endorsements, "Watch Star Wars for Free!*" offers, &
| such.
|
| *Star Wars Holiday Special only
| mikestew wrote:
| _but sadly I live in the flyover states and this would
| NEVER play with our voter base_
|
| What do you think the states of Arkansas and Tennessee (two
| states mentioned with municipal Internet) are? Coastal
| socialist paradises?
| ikiris wrote:
| TN state literally threw a fit and outlawed this as a
| result.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| >One bill a month, and my bill is ~300/mo for all services
| including 1Gb/s fiber.
|
| Send some of that to the Tulsa area, please! Here, it's the
| land of Cox Cable, reliable, but $$$.
| PH95VuimJjqBqy wrote:
| I hate Cox with the passion of a thousand burning suns, but
| fuck me if there's actually a competitor.
|
| When AT&T first started offering fiber I called them to ask
| about where was at because I was moving and wanted to
| factor it into my move. I was told they had an agreement
| with Cox not to reveal that information. You either
| happened to be in the right spot or you didn't.
|
| To this day you still cannot call them and get that
| information.
|
| fuck Cox.
| btilly wrote:
| Same opinion historically, but in the last 3 years
| they've done a lot of upgrading around where I am and
| actually seem to be doing a better job.
|
| We'll see how long that lasts. But at the moment they are
| being good.
| BatmansMom wrote:
| Is there a legitimate reason why TN blocks other municipalities
| from implementing similar service? Besides Regulatory capture
| or other forms of corruption as others suggest?
| Deprecate9151 wrote:
| Here's a link to the FCC attempt to preempt the law
| https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-releases-order-
| preempting-t...
|
| And the appeals decision overturning the preemption
| https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-
| courts/ca6/15...
|
| TN arguments were never really on why it would work besides
| claiming it would somehow protect TN residents from
| "mismanaged" municipal broadband. They mostly focus on how
| they can do it if they want to, no matter the reason.
| ikiris wrote:
| TN is the HN libertarian paradise. Vast majority of the
| state's people hate anything the government provides and want
| to kill it with fire. Especially if their neighbors could
| benefit from it.
|
| They literally had situations where people were upset that
| fire service was going to be paid for, then got upset they
| had to pay for it to get it when their house was burning.
| hirvi74 wrote:
| > It's SO GOOD that our state (Tennessee) has actually blocked
| other municipalities from implementing similar municipal fiber
| ISPs
|
| It makes me so frustrated too. Calling our state leadership
| incompetent would actually be a compliment considering how
| poorly ineffective and self-serving many of them are.
|
| About a decade ago, EPB called a friend of mine. The
| representative on the phone said, "Hello <insert name>, we
| noticed that your internet has been slower than what you are
| paying for. Do you mind if we send someone out to fix it for
| you?" We were both so surprised that a company would volunteer
| their services like that.
|
| EPB is all I ever had when I was there, and I still miss them
| everyday. Absolutely 10/10 company to work with. I worked at a
| place that had a 10gb connection and the hardware to handle it
| when it first was released. Nothing like downloading a full
| movie in mere seconds.
| MrBuddyCasino wrote:
| > _Calling our state leadership incompetent would actually be
| a compliment considering how poorly ineffective and self-
| serving many of them are._
|
| Its not incompetence, just corruption. The large and ever
| growing bureaucratic apparatus of modern democracies are very
| vulnerable to this covert form, because responsibilities are
| unclear and diluted and at the end of the day, you need
| campaign money to win an election.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| >Absolutely 10/10 company to work with.
|
| EPB's customer support is 24/7/365.25 (i.e. no holidays off).
| And the people working there, dealing with typically-grateful
| customer, aren't all burnt-TF-out. The rare call for support
| is thus pleasant and provides immediate resolution.
|
| If your house-mounted fiber/copper modem ever "burns out," a
| technician will typically respond within a few hours to
| replace the device (it is mounted outside, they don't even
| call first, they just fix it). I'm a retired electrician, and
| even when you "call in" a panel replacement, an ISP tech
| usually shows up to "fix" the "problem" (went offline because
| consumer meter/unit/main panel was being upgraded). It's
| actually kind of cute =P
| simfree wrote:
| That is an incredibly tightly run organization. It might be
| reactive, dispatching a technician as soon as the ONT goes
| offline, or the router plugged into the ONT stops pinging,
| but this is first class customer service.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| They'll also run ethernet lines in your house, typically
| just to the inside router and one computer -- FREE with
| installation (which is also FREE, just pay monthly no-
| contract bill). I am a retired electrician, and have
| worked along-side many techs in new-builds... never met
| an EPB worker who wasn't thrilled to work for their
| employer.
|
| I also know several of their backend techs, and despite
| hesitant gripes of "lower government pay," none of them
| apply for tech/opsec jobs at private companies.
| Smoosh wrote:
| My guess would be that it is being run/managed by
| engineers not MBAs.
| m463 wrote:
| > burnt-TF-out.
|
| It probably helps that they are working for a company
| popular with customers.
|
| Also profit margins on ISPs are extremely high. comcast,
| verizon, at&t, etc... all ~60% gross profit if you look at
| financials.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| > It makes me so frustrated too.
|
| Stop electing people who block it.
| mikestew wrote:
| Such an unhelpful answer. You assume parent is one of the
| ones casting votes for those politicians? You seem to
| assume that there's even a politician on the ticket that's
| worthy of the vote on this issue.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| >You seem to assume that there's even a politician on the
| ticket that's worthy of the vote on this issue.
|
| Tennessee also recently enacted legislation OUTLAWING
| RANKed-CHOICE VOTING [after Memphis attempted such
| voting], thus ensuring only two-party electorate; and for
| the foreseeable future.
|
| This state HATES its constituency, beyond anything more
| than their "fair" votes.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > This state HATES its constituency, beyond anything more
| than their "fair" votes.
|
| Before you can say that, I think first you have to show
| that most of the voters in TN want ranked choice voting.
| In my experience many people do not want it, because they
| feel it is unfair and that it amounts to getting multiple
| votes.
|
| And before anyone argues at me about "that isn't what RCV
| means", you're preaching to the choir. I am 100% for
| using some form of RCV instead of FPTP voting. But if it
| turns out most of the people in TN favor FPTP, then their
| representatives are simply doing their job on behalf of
| the people. I don't know if that's the case, but it
| wouldn't surprise me based on past experience.
| rpmisms wrote:
| That's a fair bit of rhetoric, but we're pretty much a
| single-party state. New York is about as hard blue as we
| are hard red, and they despise their citizens. At least
| here I have more freedom and less taxes.
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| _more freedom_ Unless you want to start a city-run ISP.
| rpmisms wrote:
| Yeah, mine is owned by the state instead, dirt cheap. I
| can do more things with fewer restrictions, I have more
| freedom. Anyway, I have to put together the gun I 3d
| printed, take my completely unregistered truck to church,
| then maybe go hunting without a license, then come home
| to my house where I pay $400 a year in property taxes.
| All legal.
| poulsbohemian wrote:
| I can't speak for Tennessee, but I bet it's like most
| parts of the country. In my county we have something on
| the order of 37000 voters. Roughly 6000 voted in the last
| election. I ran two different campaigns and that meant
| our win number was just north of 3000. We have a
| relatively small population under 50 -- and none of them
| vote. Almost every problem in my county - housing,
| limited job prospects, etc -- can be traced to the morons
| that are in office. So, I'm recruiting the heck out of
| candidates, rebuilding the infrastructure to get them
| elected, running campaigns, etc. So yeah, the parent
| poster isn't wrong - you gotta get people out to vote,
| but you are right to that you've got to be a force for
| change in the overall system too.
|
| EDIT: Realized I should have noted that while we have
| 37000 voters, our population is around 62000... so even
| getting people registered to vote is a major need.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| It got SO BAD [the corruption] recently that our
| city/county (Chatt/Hamilton Co.) elected mayors/DAs that
| only recently began gray-hairing. From memory, the ages
| went from averaging 60 to 45. I'm not even 40, and one of
| our best local judges is my age!
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Who should one elect instead? (I'd prefer a general answer,
| rather than a specific one; it's a widespread problem.)
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| Representative democracy as practiced in the U.S. does
| not usefully solve for single-issue politics outside of
| things like abortion / gun-control that also split along
| a pre-existing partisan divide.
|
| So, sadly, it doesn't matter who you vote for; you need
| to start earlier in the process.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| Ranked-choice voting, is a good start:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting
|
| But Tennessee outlawed this voting method, last
| legislative cycle. So all they needed to do was redefine
| "fair elections" and --presto-- they've saved their
| constituency from the nuissance of actual choice...
| [smell that, Mericuh'... it's the smell of "freedom"].
| plagiarist wrote:
| Score voting or proportional representation are the real
| fixes. We need to be able to vote for a different
| candidate without it being equivalent to burning the
| ballot.
|
| Right now one can case a meaningful vote only for
| legislators who serve corporations and the wealthy, or
| legislators who serve corporations and the wealthy even
| at the expense of democracy and human rights. Of the two,
| I think it is obvious one should choose the group that
| isn't supporting the leader of an actual insurrection.
| But the fact that's a controversial suggestion gives me
| no hope that we'll ever have a sane voting system.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| Honestly (and just a bit more than "pipe dream"), I'm a
| well-educated American that is actively planning exit to
| a former Balkan country... because the trajectory "seems
| better" / "more realistic" than attempting to die in what
| appears clear to me [at just-shy of forty]: unless I'm
| willing to shit all over my peers, I will die destitute
| in what this shithole is becoming.
|
| Perhaps I'll soon become one of the next few hundred
| annual American expat departures into the Balkans [if
| they'll have me -- 'Mercuh has prettymuch chewn me up and
| spat me out, the few decades I've been employed here].
|
| ::waves:flag:patrioticly::
| mulmen wrote:
| Apathy isn't constructive.
|
| In our lifetimes we have seen real improvements in voting
| systems. Washington has a successful vote by mail system
| as do other states.
|
| It's not hard to find examples in living memory of
| seismic shifts in law, even at a national level. Look at
| gay rights and weed legalization for example. The status
| quo would have been unthinkable in the 1990s.
|
| Change comes from the bottom. Municipalities across the
| nation are implementing ranked choice. Get involved
| locally and prove your ideas work. The rest of us _will_
| take notice.
| CoastalCoder wrote:
| Could you argue that California's proposition system
| addresses the single-issue problem?
|
| (I say "addresses" rather than "solves" because IIUC some
| people are very unhappy with it.)
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| If by "Calif.'s prop. sys. addresses..." you mean
| REFERENDUM (legistlation introduced by citizen
| initiative) then ABSOLUTELY YES this is what many redder
| states specifically DO NOT ALLOW -- allowing citizens to
| actually self-govern is DANGEROUS, in their opinions.
| NovemberWhiskey wrote:
| (cough, Proposition 13)
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Yeah, it seems like a good system for what to allow or
| not allow, but not so good as a way to decide general-
| purpose taxes.
| joemi wrote:
| > About a decade ago, EPB called a friend of mine. The
| representative on the phone said, "Hello <insert name>, we
| noticed that your internet has been slower than what you are
| paying for. Do you mind if we send someone out to fix it for
| you?" We were both so surprised that a company would
| volunteer their services like that.
|
| Something very similar to this recently happened to me with
| Spectrum (cable internet) in NYC, which is not a company
| known for being nice to customers. The tech who came out
| explained to me that they were seeing unusual performance
| profiles on their end and that's why they do this. In my
| case, it turns out there was a splitter somewhere outside
| where there shouldn't be instead of the line going directly
| to some junction box, and that's why they were seeing the odd
| profile. After he removed it and made the line be direct, our
| service was indeed better, but I guess whoever installed the
| splitter stopped getting free internet/cable. (I'm not mad
| about that.) So while the service call was framed as
| "improving my service" and it did indeed, it was also an
| investigation into something suspicious they detected. I
| wouldn't be surprised if it was a similar situation for your
| friend.
| ploxiln wrote:
| NYC is pretty good for internet, because there's Fios in
| many buildings, so the cable companies really try. There's
| competition here. I've lived here for about 11 years, and
| outside NYC for 20 years, and as a techy and heavy internet
| user my whole life, the difference in pricing, performance,
| and customer service _of the same company_ (actually a
| conglomerate which acquired other ISPs over the decades) is
| quite significant. I have an amazing deal on Fios right
| now, but had Time Warner for 6-ish years across 3
| apartments here, and it was way way better than Time Warner
| in California, or Comcast in Delaware ... where they really
| just DGAF
| dontlaugh wrote:
| Collective ownership works so well, especially for natural
| monopolies.
| Spivak wrote:
| Lines like this really ought to be public infrastructure like
| roads and power lines. At least where I live tax payers paid
| for them anyway.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| I lived in Austin (grew up there) until 2016.
|
| When Google Fiber began its rollouts, I remember the cable
| providers simply NOT ALLOWING GOOGLE ACCESS TO THEIR
| UTILITY POLES (they owned <10%, but in vital places this
| essentially crippled gFiber rollout for the first few years
| of litigation).
|
| I got google fiber (Austin) in 2015, and when I chose to
| leave The Violet Crown, fiber internet was an absolute
| requirement... which is how I found myself in Chattanooga,
| Tennessee (thank god)!
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| I would throw insurance into this mix too. At the end of
| the day, the government is on the hook for rolling out
| money when there are major disasters, so why not just start
| there instead of backstop there? How about we pool all our
| money in one big place (the government) instead of
| spreading it around in a bunch of smaller pools with
| different rules (private insurance).
|
| In 1945, the government of Saskatchewan (Canada) recognized
| this and has been handling province wide insurance since
| then (Health, Home, Auto, etc). This has meant drastically
| lower insurance rates, because they aim to operate with no
| profit, and you don't have insurance companies suing each
| other for damages because everyone has the same insurance
| company. It creates lots of jobs, and better service for
| the residents.
|
| States like Florida, California, North Carolina, and others
| have had to start their own insurance companies to handle
| residents who cannot get fire/flood/hurricane/etc insurance
| from a private insurance company because the private
| insurance companies have decided the risk is too high.
|
| It seems silly to maintain this broken patchwork system
| when there are several examples of governments creating
| entities to handle these ubiquitous needs in a better way.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| What a revelatory comparison, hidden entirely [from my
| Republican-led-state upbringing] in plain sight. Thank
| you [and please, go on...]:
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Another poster said that infra in general is good in TN. My
| municipality has significantly higher than average tax
| burdens, but the road, water, waste management and schools
| are all ignored and in terrible condition. Collective
| ownership requires the collective to hold its leadership
| accountable for misbehavior.
| nottorp wrote:
| Funny enough, if the state would offer internet service in my
| eastern european country, it will be expensive and shitty,
| while the private fiber offers are dirt cheap and compete with
| each other on price.
|
| I didn't think the Romanian competition authorities can do a
| better job than the US ones.
|
| [And they probably can't, see high natural gas and electricity
| prices.]
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > blocked other municipalities from implementing similar
| municipal fiber ISPs -- and prevents EPB from offering fiber to
| customers outside of their electricity-supplying jurisdiction.
|
| much freedom
| foobarian wrote:
| Huh. Is Chattanooga a posh locale? House prices don't look too
| far from New England.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| Our housing market typically "lags" national markets by a few
| years (up & downs); but the recent whiplash effect has made
| the median homesale about 2x what it was in 2020. Also,
| inventory is lagging massively, and NIMBYism has prevented
| recent citywide attempts at allowing ADU's / increased
| density (e.g. see St.Elmo Historic District, which even
| though part of Chattanooga, exempts itself from most density
| rules by "being historic" -- BS).
|
| Also, there is A LOT OF MONEY here, concentrated in such
| mountaintop locations as Lookout Mountain [cited in MLK's "I
| Have a Dream" speech, specifically as an example of
| wealth/cronyism].
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Similar to your last comment, here in the Boulder region, you
| will find a lot of techies actually living in Longmont, about
| 15 minutes north of Boulder, because they have a really good
| municipal fiber ISP.
| qmarchi wrote:
| I feel called out
|
| ...as I sit in my apartment connected to Nextlight (Longmont
| Power & Communications) at 2.5Gbps symmetrical for $150/m.
| rbax wrote:
| Having a techy wife has made internet access speed our #1
| qualifier for any moves over the past decade. Great
| neighborhood and price but it only has DSL or slow cable
| internet? Automatic veto.
|
| I can only hope this becomes more and more obvious to
| politicians that wonder why their constituency is stagnating.
| Even my less techy parents recently shared that they voted yes
| on their city's project to build a local fiber ISP.
| metal_am wrote:
| I wouldn't say it's blocked in Tennessee. KUB (the Knoxville
| utilities company) recently introduced fiber
| englishspot wrote:
| I pay 59.99 before tax with "500/500" that is more
| realistically 140/140 with cox. and that's after negotiating
| for a 2-year contract. :(
| deepspace wrote:
| Canadian here. I also live in a city with municipal fibre. No
| fancy additional services like some others here, but I pay
| around US$20 per month for Gigabit symmetric internet. The
| major national ISPs start at around 4x higher.
| boppo1 wrote:
| Can anyone explain why free market competition has so
| thoroughly failed while a state utility provides such a
| dramatically better product?
|
| I'm not being snarky, I'm usually a pretty strong 'let it be
| decided by markets' guy.
| warble wrote:
| I don't see any free markets?
| kevingadd wrote:
| The telecom market isn't free, that's why
| delecti wrote:
| ISPs largely don't compete. They're legalized regional
| monopolies. There was a single cable TV provider, and they
| became the single cable internet provider, and so they don't
| need to reduce prices or improve the service offering, at
| least not until an alternative competitor emerges.
| belthesar wrote:
| I imagine there's a handful of solid reasons for this.
|
| - Greenfield tech is simpler, and more stable. There's only 1
| or 2 CPEs, a handful of distribution gear types, and a much
| smaller network. As a result, the support cost is much
| cheaper, more stable, and less prone to failure from
| equipment damage. These networks aren't traversing over 40,
| 50, 60 year old coax or 80, 90, 100 year old copper, it's
| fiber all the way down.
|
| - Profit as a motive for the ISP is purely to pay for the
| costs of the service. Wages, equipment, investment in the
| service. Without a need to spread dividends to investors, and
| those investors leading a board to shift the motive of the
| service provider to generate revenue as a first priority,
| pricing priorities can be much more simple. This also
| mitigates choices to stay on existing infrastructure to
| squeeze more money purely for the purposes of paying more
| dividends. Those choices will happen, but they should be to
| buy time for the next upgrade that is planned.
|
| - Manufactured monopolies by virtue of connection agreements
| (Cable provider X is allowed to have a monopoly as a service
| provider for a municipality so long as they provide service
| to N% users) have turned out to be a poor incentive to
| provide up to date, quality, affordable service as the
| service matures. New fiber providers, whether muni or
| independent, seem to be taking a much more sustainable
| approach to buildout and growth. As a result, because they
| are capturing the market by virtue of a better product, at a
| better price, whenever these ISPs onboard a new neighborhood,
| they have to do what they do well to retain the subscriber
| base, because the alternatives may not be as good, but
| they're not awful.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| Some of these solutions may not work as well in "big
| government" cities - they layer on so many non-core
| requirements the underlying product can become somewhat
| expensive or challenging. I had to deal with government tech
| support on something 10 years ago and you'd NEVER want to
| experience something like that - an entire office (being paid
| for by the government) would be offline for one silly reason
| or another. It was always like for x, y and z reasons only Q
| can do that needful thing, and Q is on a protected leave of
| some sort.... and cost and disruption was irrelevant. Then
| put in compliance with McBride Principles for Northern
| Ireland, required virgin redwood purchasing evaluations,
| sweatshop evaluations, travel restrictions, purchasing
| restrictions, first source hiring, purchasing procedures that
| were both highly complex and product quality / price only a
| small part of eval and extend this list 20x - all worthy
| things of course, but tough to get stuff done at times.
| baq wrote:
| There's no free market in infrastructure. Never has been.
| Oligopolies are the best you can hope to get.
| saalweachter wrote:
| There's basically this whole category of things that
| function best as a monopoly. For insurance, you want the
| pool to be as large as possible to amortize risk over. For
| distribution networks, you don't want two networks covering
| the same area.
|
| When that happens, the most important thing is ensuring the
| monopoly is run _well_ , for which strict regulations are a
| must. You must define a mission independent of profit
| seeking, requirements that must be met, and be able to hold
| people responsible if they fail to meet the requirements or
| succumb to excessive greed.
|
| After that it's largely irrelevant whether the entity
| providing the monopoly service is private or public.
| minifyre wrote:
| My understanding (i.e., personal experience) is that many
| areas only have one or two providers (same with health
| insurance). Without competition, it's not a true free market
| as the companies have no incentive to improve since everyone
| just has to deal with their subpar product or forego it all
| together.
|
| Curiously, the city I'm currently living in will soon be
| rolling out it's own fiber and the existing providers are all
| scrambling to improve their infrastructure and "bribe"
| existing customers with free gadgets (e.g., Google home
| speakers, etc.) because they know that their current
| offerings are not competitive and that they would go out of
| business overnight if they stood by and did nothing in the
| meantime.
| aranchelk wrote:
| 1) It's difficult and very costly for new competitors to
| enter markets.
|
| 2) It's often impossible (without moving) for consumers to
| choose a competitive service.
| jp191919 wrote:
| Meanwhile in Tacoma,WA our mismanaged muni ISP turned over
| managment to a local private company, which was then bought by
| global company Palisade Infrastructure.
|
| https://www.thenewstribune.com/opinion/article270126722.html
| vluft wrote:
| 10gb & 25gb are the higher tiers. I have the 10, it's pretty
| great. :)
| topaz0 wrote:
| I have fiber provided by the city utility in Knoxville... is
| this an exception to that rule? (Moved here fairly recently).
| rconti wrote:
| Agreed. It's stunning how quickly I went from paying $100+ to
| Comcast for 250Mbps down / 20 up (or whatever), to $80 to AT&T
| for symmetric gigabit, to $50 to Sonic for symmetric 10gig. And
| presumably they're still making money!
|
| Comcast has insane economies of scale, the rip they must make
| every single month on customers who are stuck with them is just
| sick.
| taimurkazmi wrote:
| Or find out that the 100mbps download promise is only 60mbps.
| Zigurd wrote:
| Contents may have settled during shipping
| ForkMeOnTinder wrote:
| That I can at least understand. But imagine if cereal was
| advertised the same way as download speeds. "up to 16 oz per
| box"
| koolba wrote:
| More like they sell you an oversized spoon, claim it can
| scoop 1 cup per minute, in reality it's 1/4 cup per minute,
| and if you actually refill your bowl with said spoon, they
| say you're using too much cereal.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Have you handled the boxes recently? They are more than 50%
| air by volume.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| That's why they're generally sold by weight.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| But if you buy a 16oz box for $3 you actually get a pound
| of cereal for $3.
|
| Compare:
|
| "Up to 16oz for $3*"
|
| There's a $0.75 fee to pay for the new box art, a $1 fee
| for renting the milk jug, you actually get 14oz of cereal
| if you eat during peak hours, and if you eat a second
| bowl on the same day they charge you for excessive usage.
| brewdad wrote:
| True but while the box is the same size as when it was
| 20oz, at least if they say 12oz there's 12oz in there.
| wmf wrote:
| The FCC solved that years ago. https://www.fcc.gov/reports-
| research/reports/measuring-broad... (scroll down to charts 4
| and 5)
| tomwheeler wrote:
| They were not amused when I told them I'd pay "up to" the
| amount on my bill.
| diogenescynic wrote:
| Please do something about Comcast. They've ripped me off for over
| 20 years and I'm so sick of it. You sign up for a promotional
| offer then they just slowly raise prices and boil the frog. You
| have to cancel and go through all these negotiation tactics just
| to not get ripped off. Same thing with all their competitors too.
| And the speeds they offer are not the same speeds you actually
| get. You usually get 1/10th or 1/20th of the actual speed offered
| on average. It's a complete scam. Then you go abroad and see how
| every their developed country has better quality service for a
| fraction of the price.
| bluedino wrote:
| Over the last 8 years my Spectrum bill has almost doubled. I
| don't have any complaints about uptime or performance, speed has
| gone from 100 to 160mbs (kind of an odd number) during that time.
|
| I realize inflation, wages, etc. But how much of this increase is
| just because? I'm glad I'm not paying more, but who's preventing
| that?
|
| My other options are some real low-end local wireless providers,
| very slow DSL (7-12mbs with 1.5mb or less upload). We are just
| now starting to see Tmobile and Verizon offer home wireless. I've
| tried both and they are only around half the speed of my cable
| connection but they are a little cheaper (25% or so)
| inversetelecine wrote:
| Starlink isn't cheap from what I can see, but may be an option
| if cable keeps going the way it's been going.
|
| "Reliable high-speed internet, wherever you live. $120/mo in
| most locations & hardware cost of $599."
| orangepurple wrote:
| If you replace the hardware every 5 years just count on $120
| (service) + $10 (hw) a month.
| matwood wrote:
| I'm using StarLink now and it's pretty great. I was skeptical
| of satellite working very well, but zoom meetings and all
| work just fine. It's about as plug and play as internet can
| get. Speed doesn't match my 1gb at home, but it's only
| noticeable when downloading something large.
| Andrex wrote:
| I have done zero research, but my assumption is that
| ping/lag is far from where gamers would want it. Back in
| the day I would have said that wouldn't really tip the
| scales but it's more uncertain now...
| mulmen wrote:
| Starlink satellites are a couple orders of magnitude
| closer to Earth than legacy satellite internet. If you
| are in a remote area Starlink could actually be faster
| than ground connections because it's one hop to the base
| station which is likely to be near your desired servers.
| jzb wrote:
| I have Spectrum and AT&T because I work from home and need
| redundancy. Spectrum recently pushed my $100-ish a month
| package up to 2.5 Gbps for the same price I signed up with at 1
| Gbps.
|
| What's interesting is the arm-twisting I got when I signed up
| and the rep tried multiple times to persuade me to cancel
| AT&T's service _and_ how hard they pushed me to sign up for
| wireless as well.
|
| Basically - I assume the increase to 2.5 Gbps is because _gasp_
| there 's moderate competition in my neighborhood. If AT&T
| wasn't here, I doubt I'd have seen an increase without a bump
| in monthly cost.
| klabb3 wrote:
| > I realize inflation, wages, etc. But how much of this
| increase is just because?
|
| I can assure you with certainty that it's all in the because
| category. Their approach in my experience is raise prices until
| the customer complains.
|
| I had to quit spectrum due to _moving out of the country_
| (10Gbps symmetric now for EUR25 /mo thank you very much) and
| they still offered a reduced price "in case any roommates are
| staying behind". I was paying ~$100 and the "discount" was
| significant but I don't recall the exact number.
|
| I was too lazy to basically fight for a better price, but if
| you threaten to quit (or better quit it for a while) they'll
| 100% lower your bill. I'm sure there are more sophisticated
| "negotiation" tactics a search away.
| jpgvm wrote:
| I live out of town in southern Thailand, I have 500/500mbps
| internet that I pay 600THB/month for (around $17USD). Using the
| same equipment, same fibre and more expensive transit than a US
| ISP would pay (which could easily do entirely settlement free
| peering with every network that matters). Moreover I paid nothing
| for the install despite them needing to bring fibre down my alley
| off the main road.
|
| US ISPs are just price gouging. The fat salaries and bonuses
| their executives have received over the last 2 decades and the
| dividends they pay their shareholders all support this
| conclusion.
|
| There is intense competition here between a few major players all
| with their own networks. i.e real market forces that keep prices
| down, products continually improving and customer satisfaction
| high.
|
| The idea that there are "service areas" with only a single
| provider should tell you everything you need about collusion to
| maintain regional monopolies.
| missedthecue wrote:
| US telecoms certainly use sketchy tactics to push price
| increases on their monthly billed customers over time, but it's
| hard to say they are price gouging. Most are publicly traded
| and their operating and net margins can be found with a quick
| Google search. Spectrum for instance sits at 9.24% net margins
| currently. Wipe that out completely and your bill doesn't get
| much cheaper.
| bbayles wrote:
| The headline makes me raise my eyebrows. We're deriving "mad"
| from this anodyne statement?
|
| > The NOI's undue focus on affordability--or pricing--is
| particularly inappropriate.
|
| The linked ArsTechnica article describes this as a "tizzy."
|
| Nobody likes cable providers, sure, but I don't think this
| justifies all this editorializing and projection.
| andygeorge wrote:
| > all this editorializing and projection
|
| welcome to journalism
| sigspec wrote:
| I live 20 minutes outside of a major US city. The fastest I can
| get for home service is 20/1. It's terrible. I use my cell phone
| half the time.
|
| I hate what we've become. Maybe we were always this way.
| inversetelecine wrote:
| Starlink available? It's not cheap, but should offer at least
| faster download speeds most of the time and better than 1Mbps
| upload from what I've read.
| gruez wrote:
| "20 minutes outside of a major US city" is probably dense
| enough that starlink realistically won't work.
| madaxe_again wrote:
| Starlink _is_ cheap - where I am at least - and it just got
| cheaper. I get 300 /40 with it for EUR40/mo., which they just
| reduced from EUR65. I mean, dog slow fixed line fibre in the
| nearby village is EUR50 a month. If ISPs aren't careful
| starlink is going to eat their breakfast. It's also faster
| and cheaper than LTE.
| fragmede wrote:
| Have you looked into T-Mobile Home Internet?
| KerrAvon wrote:
| Cell-based internet in the US often doesn't work well in
| practice -- cell coverage tends to be incredibly spotty away
| from major roads. In populated areas, enough people are
| irrationally frightened of cell radiation to NIMBY additional
| cell towers required for coverage.
| freedomben wrote:
| why on earth would this comment be downvoted? This is
| absolutely true in some places, particularly in smaller
| states. To the downvoters, please go try using cell-based
| internet in nearly any big city in Wyoming and let us know
| how that goes. Idaho has a much higher population and even
| much of that is way too unreliable for home internet.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| It's irrelevant, and wrong. 20 minutes outside a major US
| city wouldn't be in Wyoming or Idaho; it would be in an
| area serviced by one of the newer 5G Internet offerings
| that gets 100-300 down. Or at least about to be.
|
| Complaining about rain and cloudy days doesn't matter
| when leaving a connection capped at 20/1. In practice it
| does work well from the perspective of someone leaving a
| bad wired service.
| Spivak wrote:
| I don't know why you're being downvoted. Cellular home
| internet isn't the same thing as your cell phone; you can
| be 20 miles from the nearest tower without it being an
| issue. Def not 300 down at that distance but when all you
| need to beat is 20 it's no issue.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| For starters, there aren't any big cities in Wyoming.
| COGlory wrote:
| Yeah, as a Montanan, I did a double-take at that comment.
| vel0city wrote:
| I didn't downvote the comment. Just wanting to address
| this idea:
|
| > in nearly any big city in Wyoming
|
| Every "big city" in Wyoming is smaller and way more
| remote than most "small cities" in the rest of the
| country. It is not really a good representation of the
| rest of the country. There are only four cities which
| break 30,000 people. There's 40 in Texas with over
| 100,000. Being 20 minutes out from a city of < 30,000
| people is pretty radically different from being 20
| minutes out from a city of > 1M people.
|
| There's also a question of geography when it comes to
| places like Montana and Idaho compared to the rest of the
| country. I don't know if you looked out a window but the
| geography of Idaho and Montana looks pretty different
| than the geography of Kansas, Michigan, Florida, N+S
| Carolina, Illinois, Ohio, etc. Its way more difficult to
| operate cell infrastructure in such a place, and then on
| top of that each valley only has a few customers to try
| and cover the cost.
|
| All in all, the experience of cellular infrastructure in
| Montana and Idaho are massively different from the
| majority of the rest of US consumers.
|
| I've got family in the suburbs 20 minutes out from the
| deep urban areas of a large city. Their main home
| internet is T-Mobile 5G. It has stable and low enough
| latency for them to work remote a remote job with
| videocalling, they play regular online games and they
| even do Playstation cloud gaming on it without issue.
| I've seen it being demoed at county fairgrounds far
| outside the big cities where they offered free wifi, I
| was able to get pretty stable low latencies (~25ms) at
| several hundred megabits of throughput with a dozen+
| people using it at the same time.
|
| It might not work in every market. There's a lot of
| variables in place, even within a specific geographic
| area. But it is something viable for a large chunk of US
| households.
| freedomben wrote:
| > _I don 't know if you looked out a window but the
| geography of Idaho and Montana looks pretty different
| than the geography of Kansas, Michigan, Florida, N+S
| Carolina, Illinois, Ohio, etc._
|
| I can't downvote you since you replied to my comment, but
| that's a pretty patronizing thing to say, (it's also
| classic big city elitism). You know absolutely nothing
| about me, so assuming that I'm some backward uber dumbass
| who hasn't even "looked out a window" let alone travelled
| anywhere else is not a safe assumption, and that's before
| we even get into my experience designing/deploying
| wireless comm systems. Assumptions like that just make
| you sound like an asshole.
| vel0city wrote:
| You replied to a comment stating "Cell-based internet in
| the US often doesn't work well in practice", and your
| proof of why it often doesn't work was Wyoming and Idaho.
| Most of the country (population-weighted, at least) _in
| practice_ does not look like Wyoming and Idaho. You might
| as well argue cattle ranching is entirely impractical,
| just look at downtown San Francisco and NYC. How are
| herds of cattle supposed to graze there?
|
| Also my comment completely acknowledged I don't know you.
| It literally states "I don't know if you've looked out a
| window", so its entirely open to the idea that you have
| indeed. But then it really makes one wonder why you think
| Wyoming and Idaho are good examples as to why most US
| consumers wouldn't be able to get cellular home internet
| despite knowing the massive geographic and population
| differences and the challenges those would pose.
| throitallaway wrote:
| > There's also a question of geography when it comes to
| places like Montana and Idaho compared to the rest of the
| country.
|
| Duh. OP wasn't talking about cell service out in the
| boonies, they were talking about cell service in "big
| cities." Geography is not a concern in the case of cities
| in these states. The Bay area's geography is much more
| extreme than 99% of cities in WY/MT/ID. I've spent time
| in those states in the last few years (vanlife) and the
| cell service in cities is atrociously oversubscribed on
| Verizon. I have all three carriers, and surprisingly
| T-Mobile has great service (in the cities out there at
| least.)
| vel0city wrote:
| > OP wasn't talking about cell service out in the boonies
|
| Every location in Wyoming is what a lot of the country
| would consider "the boonies". That's kind of my point.
| Its a massive outlier compared to where the majority of
| the US population lives and not really a good place to
| point to when saying "see, cellular internet often
| doesn't work, it doesn't work in Wyoming!"
| ghaff wrote:
| Cellular internet doesn't really work at my house 50
| miles outside of Boston either. And, in fact, it goes out
| pretty predictably when I take the train in (presumably
| because the high-end closer-in suburbs where it goes out
| don't like cell towers).
| vel0city wrote:
| 50 miles outside of Boston is an hour away, not 20
| minutes. 50 miles outside of Boston it can get _really_
| rural.
|
| I'd also point out modern cellular home internet can give
| a pretty different experience than what you get on your
| cell phone. Antenna design and placement can be a lot
| better. You can place the antenna in a place where you're
| more likely to get good reception instead of deep inside
| your house. The frequencies and channels used can
| sometimes be pretty different. You're less power limited
| than your phone. In the apartment where my family lives
| their phone cell service isn't very great but as
| mentioned they get low latency several hundred megabit
| service through their router near a window.
| ghaff wrote:
| Fair enough. I'm probably more exurban than rural
| although I'm in the middle of land with a lot more forest
| than houses. Cellular around Concord/Lincoln on the train
| is pretty awful though, but it's perhaps not universal.
|
| Also fair that hot spots can be better than phones. My
| brother had one up in Maine but it went to Starlink and,
| more recently, to fiber.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I have no idea where you got that information from. I've
| been using T-Mobile for about half a year now, and it's
| leaps and bounds better than the ATT DSL I was using
| beforehand. I went from 30 Mbps down to 200, and even
| during high usage periods it's well over 100. Their
| customer service is also far less of a pain in the ass than
| ATT or Charter.
| hamandcheese wrote:
| I switched my mother over to T-Mobile 5G home internet. She
| lives in a suburb in West Virginia. It works great!
| overstay8930 wrote:
| If you don't even have 5G FWA as an option then you are on
| copium if you think you live near a major US city
| cooper_ganglia wrote:
| Wow, I live more than 2 hours from a major city and even my
| internet is 500/50.
| barrkel wrote:
| 25Gbps FTTH is available here in Switzerland, about $75/month
| (billed annually, 777 CHF).
|
| And Switzerland is a country with very high labor prices.
| orangepurple wrote:
| I thought Switzerland has some of the highest ISP transit
| charges on the continent?
| AviationAtom wrote:
| I do believe Switzerland has the highest everything
| Lev1a wrote:
| Rule of thumb I once heard as a German:
|
| "Compared to us the Swiss pay double but earn triple the
| money".
| AviationAtom wrote:
| I could see that. They are consistently ranked as
| enjoying among the happiest of lifestyles.
| orangepurple wrote:
| Germans have a ultra-wealthy upper class which own
| everything and skew net wealth figures massively. The
| bottom 50% of German residents by net wealth have nearly
| nothing compared to those in a similar situation in
| neighboring EU countries.
|
| PDF Page 6
|
| Table A3 Net wealth medians - breakdowns
|
| EUR thousands
|
| https://www.ecb.europa.eu/home/pdf/research/hfcn/HFCS_Sta
| tis...
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| And this is several times more expensive than FTTH in the
| neighboring countries.
|
| (Sure, maybe not as fast FTTH, but it doesn't matter much
| when everyone _else_ is still lagging way behind, so over,
| say, 10 Mo /s you quickly get into diminishing returns.)
| randunel wrote:
| I'll just leave these here:
|
| - https://www.digi.ro/servicii/internet/internet-fix
|
| - https://www.digi.ro/servicii/internet/internet-
| fix/fiberlink...
|
| - https://www.orange.ro/internet/
|
| - https://www.vodafone.ro/serviciifixe/internet
|
| - https://www.next-gen.ro/abonamente-personal.html
|
| - https://www.gemenii.ro/internet-in-sectorul-2/
|
| The prices include VAT and are final, $8-$12/month for gigabit
| bandwidth.
| a_gnostic wrote:
| I'm sure, local monopolies, granted by municipalities, have
| nothing to do with these high prices...
| oogali wrote:
| It varies city-to-city, ISP-to-ISP.
|
| When I lived in NYC, I paid $65/month for 200Mbps down, 20Mbps up
| (Spectrum).
|
| I moved 50 miles south into NJ and I now pay $99/month for 1Gbps
| down, 1Gbps up (Verizon).
|
| An acquaintance lives in Houston, TX and pays ~$300/month for 5
| Gbps down, 5 Gbps up (Comcast).
|
| That said, you will find people who have happy stories about
| Spectrum/Charter/Cox, and terrible stories about Verizon/Comcast
| all across the US.
| andygeorge wrote:
| I've had charter and comcast over the years and they're both
| pretty equally awful
| test6554 wrote:
| I signed up for AT&T internet. They told me I could get a phone
| line at no charge. (Why not, I thought). Several months later
| of daily spam calls and junk to the point where I just left my
| phone unplugged, they added a charge for the phone line. I
| called to cancel the phone line and just go internet only. I
| was then informed that they no longer offered internet-only
| plans. (Chris Farley pissed off face)
|
| I called them with great joy a few months later letting them
| know I was moving and to cancel my service. Never going back to
| them.
| tristor wrote:
| The thing that annoys me about the FCC, besides that they are
| generally impotent here or at least unwilling to actually do
| their job, is that the focus is always on speed as structured by
| maximum throughput for the link. I pay for a gigabit cable
| connection, not because I need gigabit, but because of how tiered
| connections and QoS are implemented by cable / broadband ISPs,
| and this is the only way I can reasonably guarantee that my
| traffic will experience low latency during business hours for
| things like video conferencing.
|
| Also, from a service quality perspective, broadband ISPs have
| horrible problems with small amounts of persistent packet loss,
| largely due to physical issues because the actual physical
| infrastructure is old/shit and they do nothing to
| maintain/improve it.
|
| Internet performance and digital experience is about a lot more
| than just how much maximum throughput you get for X dollars, it's
| about service reliability, QoS, transit quality, and and loss,
| latency, jitter, all of which have heavy impacts on specifically
| video and voice calls which are common for those of us working
| from home.
| buu700 wrote:
| It sounds like bandwidth is somewhat analogous to the way
| MHz/GHz used to be treated.
| tristor wrote:
| Technically speaking, wired connections use physical RF
| bandwidth on the wire, rated in MHz/GHz to specify channel
| width, and bond these channels together (usually some
| variation of QAM) to provide you the ability to serve a
| particular amount of throughput (rated in bits per
| second/Mbps).
| freedomben wrote:
| Yep, and they don't see a difference between a company that
| provides a simple straightforward connection, and one that does
| all sorts of ridiculous traffic shaping, throttling, multiple
| levels of NAT, and things that make it hard to run your own
| router.
| brigade wrote:
| > because of how tiered connections and QoS are implemented by
| cable / broadband ISPs
|
| It took months and multiple visits before one of techs
| unintentionally gave me the hint that with node congestion,
| Comcast will throttle all connected subscribers to the same X%
| of their rated speed. Annoying that the only way to reliably
| get even a 500kbps uplink out of them during peak
| videoconferencing hours was to pay for an 800/20mbps
| connection, but even more annoying that it took months of them
| blaming my cables and equipment.
| tristor wrote:
| I have Comcast, and this is exactly why I have the highest
| tier of service, so I can guarantee that most of the time my
| video calls are fine, since I am permanent WFH.
| ectospheno wrote:
| Yeah. I pay for 1200/35mbps from comcast just for the 35.
| shmerl wrote:
| Good, their pricing is often so skewed and totally reflective of
| their monopolistic capture of certain regions. They act like
| monopoly but aren't regulated as one.
| mountainofdeath wrote:
| FWIW, I have Verizon FiOS in NYC at a reasonable price. The city
| of NY and the state do their best to keep Verizon and Spectrum at
| arms length.
|
| By way of contrast, my parents live in the mid-west and were
| plagued between a choice of slow AT&T DSL or expensive but
| slightly faster Comcast/Spectrum/Consolidated (A terrible
| overbuild provider) cable internet.
|
| The game changed entirely when Google Fiber started rolling out.
| First in the inner city, then to inner suburbs and just recently
| to the outer suburbs after spending the better part of decade
| fighting city councils that obviously preferred Spectrum and
| AT&T.
|
| Since then 1. Prices have stabilized and declined somewhat from
| the incumbent carriers. 2. Spectrum did an in-place upgrade and
| now 500 Mbps down is standard for a reasonable price. AT&T turned
| around and built it's own GPON network ahead of Google fiber in
| areas where Google didn't have service.
|
| Isn't competition wonderful?
| freedomben wrote:
| City councils and planning commissions are the worst. They are
| so captured by people in the real estate business that you
| can't do anything without consulting them (agents, brokers,
| developers, investors, even flippers, mortgage people, and
| lawyers). Non-real estate people that run and make it will find
| that 95% of the donors are real-estate industry people, so good
| luck if you have positions that they don't find agreeable. Oh
| and the same people own the state politicians too, so even if
| you do manage to get the city council, state law is going to
| tie your hands pretty dramatically.
| thrillgore wrote:
| Tell me you're a cartel without saying you're a cartel.
| ProllyInfamous wrote:
| "I'm here from the government, to help [my corporate friends
| get rich]." --Prez.Reagan
| dirtybirdnj wrote:
| Ah, regulatory capture. An American pastime as old as apple pie,
| baseball, and tax loopholes.
|
| Telecoms took ENORMOUS sums of money to upgrade their systems and
| did nothing. Now they want to pass the upgrade costs onto
| consumers.
|
| These corporate shitlords have enormous legal slush funds to
| muddy the waters and throw dirt in the air any time reasonable
| accountability comes their way.
|
| There is no equal power protecting the consumers interest.
| Claiming that its "inappropriate" to investigate costs is lazy
| class warfare.
| ryandrake wrote:
| > Telecoms took ENORMOUS sums of money to upgrade their systems
| and did nothing. Now they want to pass the upgrade costs onto
| consumers.
|
| Well that's not fair--they did do _something_ : They handed all
| that taxpayer money right over to wealthy shareholders. The
| only thing corporations can be relied upon to do consistently
| and competently.
| disillusioned wrote:
| I'm fortunate to live in an area of downtown Phoenix served by
| CenturyLink FTTH. They offer symmetric 1 Gbps for $65, priced for
| life (I think it's $70 now for newcomers), with no caps, and
| that's inclusive of all fees and taxes.
|
| Symmetric gigabit feels like a dream.
|
| Cox, on the other hand, lacking literally any survival instinct
| or competitive sense, charged me $110 per month before taxes, and
| for only 1.25TB of data. For unlimited data, it was another $50.
| So I'm in to them for $160+ per month, for vastly inferior
| service. I hope CL stays healthy enough to keep our deal going
| because it's the best internet I've ever had. (CL's old DSL
| product, in contrast, sucks immensely.)
| quicksnap wrote:
| I used to be so pleased with CenturyLink myself. symmetric
| 1Gbps as well, and it was dreamy.
|
| Then I began to exhibit packet loss. For gaming/discord, it's a
| death knell. I isolated the source of packet loss to be within
| the CenturyLink network, basically between me and the first
| traceroute hop. (Also retroactively verified by switching ISPs)
|
| CenturyLink as an _offering_ is great, but their company
| operations and customer support is... kafkaesque and absurd.
| They are beyond incompetent and seem to have neither the
| capacity nor desire to fix any real problems.
|
| When talking with some of the technicians and support people,
| the insight into their world was sad and disappointing. What a
| ramshackle company.
|
| I really hope nothing ever goes wrong in your network segment
| :)
| bastard_op wrote:
| You are right, CenturyLink support is apparently non-existent
| these days. My aunt recently had issues for weeks before
| finally giving up trying to get any real engineering support,
| and eventually it resolved itself, presuming some monkey
| noticed a rampant trend for problems in the area. Cox wasn't
| much better at times unless you knew exactly how to deal with
| support (I for a time ran part of their engineering and do),
| but it's still volumes better than the worse than nothing you
| get with CenturyLink now.
|
| That said I've been lucky, in the 6-7 years I've been on CL
| moving from Cox I've had 0 problems with my DSL, where I'll
| say there's something to be said for the old legacy 2-wire
| stuff. At least every 3-4 years, I'd have to have cox out to
| fix my cable terminations for suck-out (center conductor
| eventually contracts itself to lose contact with hot/cold
| over time) with the extreme heat in Phoenix, so it's been
| almost a nice change.
| bastard_op wrote:
| Living in Phoenix too, I moved off Cox when they instituted
| their bandwidth caps to CenturyLink, but I can only get DSL
| here in Peoria, and will likely never get their fiber with the
| lazy US telco mentality. Still, even with "only" 140mbps down
| and I think like 3mbps up, I can live with it vs. Cox sending
| me hate emails and a bill for bandwidth overages every month.
|
| One of my best friends is an engineer at Cox in town, and still
| quip at him about their silly bandwidth caps. He says it's a
| topic at every all-hands meeting that even employees are tired
| of hearing from their friends and family that they hate their
| bandwidth caps. Cox was one of the last Cable MSO's to actually
| implement bandwidth caps, but eventually they realized every
| other scumbag Cable ISP in the country was doing so, that they
| were leaving too much money on the table. Everyone else is
| doing it, so why not them too.
|
| It's cool providers have gig speeds now, but if you use all you
| bandwidth for a month in 3 days to start getting overage
| charges every month, it isn't cool for long. It took Google
| Fiber threatening Cox and CL in Phoenix to actually get them to
| start rolling out FTTH years ago, so at least Google was good
| for something.
| EternalUsenet wrote:
| Does anyone know if there is a quality map for where AT&T,
| Google Fiber, or Quantum Fiber services are available for the
| Phoenix Metro area? I'm trying desperately to get off of Cox,
| and am assessing my options on where to relocate to in the
| Valley (I currently live in East Mesa) but it seems like a real
| pain in the butt finding actual service easily. Any
| recommendations aside from searching one mailing address at a
| time?
| rogerthis wrote:
| Wasted hours of services/softwares with negative ROI in consumer
| telecom is scary.
| stillwithit wrote:
| Funny how this topic blew up in the late 00s and early 10s.
| Google Fiber popped up looking to push the issue
|
| It's sad how we're perpetually fighting the same battles with the
| professional managerial class who tacitly understands their only
| job is block progress, thus they are miserable from it and to
| work with
| whaleofatw2022 wrote:
| If comcast did data caps where all the senators and staff live
| (they dont) comcast would have been broken up years ago.
| bityard wrote:
| What I want the FCC to look into is the practice of what I call
| "price bumping." Where they increase speeds and features of a
| plan "for free" and then raise your bill accordingly a few months
| later and hope you're too busy to notice.
|
| This happened to me. In the beginning, I was paying $35 for 25/5
| through Comcast. It was fine, did everything I needed. But then,
| roughly once a year, for a few years in a row, they would
| announce a speed increase on my plan, complete with a flyer in
| the mail congratulating me on being a loyal customer while
| patting themselves for being such a fine, generous company.
|
| A few months later, like clockwork, a plain black-and-white
| letter would be attached to my bill informing me of a change in
| the price of my plan due to unspecified business and economic
| factors.
|
| I am literally on their lowest plan, and still pay over $60 a
| month. That's more than what I pay for 3 cell phones.
|
| It's fucking sleazy and I would gladly switch ISPs yesterday if
| they didn't have a government-granted monopoly in my area. (And
| no, Starlink and T-mobile are not options for reasons I don't
| have time to get into right now.)
| throitallaway wrote:
| Starlink is roughly double what you're paying right now anyway.
| I consider it a "last resort" ISP that should only be used if
| you "need" it (don't have adequate land line options available
| to you.) It's not really a first choice provider, and it
| doesn't intend to be.
| test6554 wrote:
| I have a couple hundred acres of farm land with hills between
| it and the closest cell towers. There's no internet or cell
| service, so I got StarLink. It was easy to set up and works
| great, but I don't go out there enough to justify the
| $110/120 per month. So after a while, I cancelled it.
| marcrosoft wrote:
| CenturyLink advertises that they don't raise the rate and they
| STILL do it. Mine went from $50->$60 with no speed change. I
| don't have the energy anymore to fight it. My alternative is
| xfinity which is far worse.
| jmyeet wrote:
| It astounds me we have some blatant examples of a broken system
| (ie nationalISPs) juxtaposed with many working examples (ie
| municipal broadband) and yet the FCC and the government just
| scratch their heads in confusion. More accurately, national ISPs
| have used their profits to erect legislative and regulatory
| barriers to competition such as states banning municipal
| broadband.
|
| All of this is textbook capitalism: Enclosures and wealth
| extraction from workers to capital owners. Municipal broadband is
| a textbook example of the workers (ie the town residents) owning
| the means of production being better for everyone except the
| capital owners.
|
| Yet as soon as you mention "capitalism" in a negative light
| people just shut down and reject any argument to defend a system
| they don't really understand that is exploiting them for profit.
|
| In the very least, ISPs should be regulated as utilities. But
| that's still a bandaid solution.
| 60Vhipx7b4JL wrote:
| Meanwhile in Switzerland: here is 25gbit symmetrical for like 75
| USD a month
| sylware wrote:
| I did work for a ISP which bought another one, in an
| international context.
|
| They had to dismantle obviously too expensive transits... which
| where actually used to move money from one country to another
| (and probably do some kind of tax evasion).
| diob wrote:
| I pay roughly 160 for a gig each month, but the connection is
| never actually that. Always spotty as well. :(
| sheepybloke wrote:
| My biggest issue is that there's not really competition for
| internet providers in many locations. I've only had Comcast not
| because they are good, but because they are the only provider
| that has the speeds I want. For example, in one area Comcast's
| speed was 100/25, but AT&T had 25/10 for the same price. It felt
| like they were just there to say there were options, when really
| they colluded to split the city up.
| revlolz wrote:
| I will provide you a brief glimpse into the future. The FCC
| investigates and opens up the issue to comments. Despite pleas
| from an overwhelming majority of the population, those comments
| are ignored or deleted and the FCC resolves the issue as
| "reviewed." At the very most they hold a closed door vote where 2
| of 3 or 3 of 5 of the panel side with the telecoms where they
| have cushy jobs lined up.
|
| The FCC doesn't just tolerate these cable Crooks, they enable
| their existance.
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