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Comment by gnicholas | Hacker News Reader

I started with Comcast with 12Mbps service. Over time, they increased the base speed they offer to 20, 25, 50, and now 75. They have done this because they want to have x% of their customers on "broadband", per the federal definition.

This is all well and good, but they keep increasing the price, and refuse to offer lower-tier service. I probably wouldn't want 12Mbps anymore, but 20 or 25 would suffice. I wish I could pay a fraction of what I'm paying for 75Mbps and get a lower tier of service. It should suffice that x% of customers are offered "broadband" for a reasonable price, even if some choose a lower speed.

Ultimately, this comes down to competition. There are no other wired options where I live (in the heart of Silicon Valley). I have considered using a cellular hotspot, but it's not competitive in terms of pricing.

I'm all for prodding companies to move to faster speeds, but there should still be room for consumer choice.

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>This is all well and good, but they keep increasing the price, and refuse to offer lower-tier service. I probably wouldn't want 12Mbps anymore, but 20 or 25 would suffice. I wish I could pay a fraction of what I'm paying for 75Mbps and get a lower tier of service. It should suffice that x% of customers are offered "broadband" for a reasonable price, even if some choose a lower speed.

The problem is that most of the costs of providing broadband are fixed costs. To run a coaxial cable from their headend to your house, and to provide employees and crews to repair it and install it all costs the same whether you buy 10 megabits or 2 gigabits

The variable costs--things like backbone bandwidth, paying for transit, doing node splits, etc are a smaller part of the overall cost than you might expect

This lower end of the market, though, is being taken up by Fixed Wireless (T-Mobile and Verizon primarily) for example you can get Verizon home wireless internet for as low as $25. My mom has it, and it's decent 50 megabit service for a low price

> you can get Verizon home wireless internet for as low as $25.

I hope this leads to wired ISP price reductions, or at least slower price growth. I happen to live in a VZW dead zone, so unfortunately it won't work for me...

There also is a step between DSL and cable and fiber. I have a fiber to the node situation that gives consistent and reliable 20 Mbps down and I have two of those with load balancer. With VDSL they could sell 100Mbps service to a few houses close to the node.

A real upgrade for me would involve running a cable through a beaver meadow. There is an electric line and crews do go in there to limb up trees and they are planning to replace a pole, if there was some rational coordination of services and a commitment to universal service they’d get the fiber in when they do a maintenance cycle on the power line.

I mean, the beavers would probably also appreciate an upgrade.

I think they moved out. They're like any other lumberjacks, they cut down all the trees in an area, complain that the environmentalists shut them down, then go somewhere else.

We used to go out every day to take apart unwanted dams near our driveway. If you go at it in a disciplined way, taking out the sticks from downstream, then digging out the mud, and never letting the water level to get high enough that they can easily float materials to the dam site, it's not that hard. It was awful, however, if they dammed 3/4 of the culvert pipe in which case you had to work inside the pipe with low clearance and (I think) high CO2 levels and no really good place to put the debris. At least they would never reuse materials that they used once.

I don't think anyone has done that in the last year, I certainly haven't.

what is VDSL and how is it different from ADSL

The actual problem is that this is infrastructure owned by a private, international for-profit corporation. Of course it's a fixed cost and a limited number of profitable customers (get fucked if you live anywhere that isn't profitable), yet your profits need to go up forever. I'm always curious because most people intuitively understand why for example it makes no sense to privatize streets and roads, there is only one going to your home. Even most people who have faith in capitalism, understand how monopolies are bad for society, privatized infrastructure is one of the more obvious contradictions of liberalism.

> it makes no sense to privatize streets and roads, there is only one going to your home.

Where I live roads are private (part of the lot) with reciprocal easement to all other lot owners to travel on the easement. It's not a toll and it's not 'public' or 'government'. No worries about government making crazy rules on their roads, when we own it.

Closer to topic, I want to get neighbors and everyone onboard with installing fiber in road and leasing to ISPs. Way too many hassles, so we remain dependent on Comcast.

> The problem is that most of the costs of providing broadband are fixed costs. To run a coaxial cable from their headend to your house, and to provide employees and crews to repair it and install it all costs the same whether you buy 10 megabits or 2 gigabits

Not sure if this is completely the case when it comes to older networks that might need upgrades because lots of folk are sharing the same coax line. In an HFC[1] network, bandwidth is shared on the coax branches, and a variable number of units can be sharing the same fiber link, which can serve a neighborhood, block, or even unit. And, so upgrades can make a network more "fiber-rich."

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_fiber-coaxial

The UK fixes this by forcing the companies who own the lines to rent and share them with other providers. ISPs in the US vehemently oppose this, of course.

> ISPs in the US vehemently oppose this, of course.

But is it still required though? Isn't this how Sonic uses AT&T lines? Perhaps it only applies to DSL, which is basically obsolete now?

This happened with copper lines for telephony providers. Incumbent Local Exchange Carriers have to provide access for Competitive Local Exchange Carriers to enter the market and break up their monopoly. This effectively made DSL and T1s available via CLECs as they could acquire access to a copper circuit directly.

Internet has yet to be regulated that way and fiber lines aren't considered the same as those copper lines.

Also, fiber to the home is done using most often a PON system purchased from a specific vendor and is a time shared medium. You might only get 1Gbps service but you also aren't getting 100% of the fiber to yourself. The home side device will filter information from your neighbors for instance.

There's always ways to do this of course but, it wouldn't be as straightforward as patch the fiber from your home in the same way that they did with copper lines.

The trouble goes back to a 1910's telegraph bill. The US created a de facto monopoly on each carrier for each zone of land. On a particular parcel of land, there is only 1 carrier for any telecom tech, with those parcels as tradable on a market. M&A has allowed it to become a bit of a duopoly (e.g., Verizon + ATT).

It did make sense at the time of the law: carriers kept clustering around the major metro areas and wouldn't expand to the boonies. Nowadays, that law has outlived its purpose.

The US has something like this already with cellular with MVNOs, driven by the free market.

The TL;DR is that the cost of cell towers is mostly the same irrespective of bandwidth (e.g., hiring a technician to break-fix as parts fail from weather conditions), so carriers figured out they could "rent" their leftover bandwidth.

Most of the "cheap" carriers are simply slinging together MVNOs from all the carriers (e.g., Boost Mobile, MetroPCS). It creates a weird situation where you get plenty of signal on off-peak hours and (often) the middle of nowhere, but at the expense of having no signal in larger metro areas at peak hours.

> you can get Verizon home wireless internet for as low as $25

I just checked the Verizon wireless page:

https://www.verizon.com/home/internet/5g/

It says $35/mo "with AutoPay and 5G Mobile plans". So to get this price, you have to have Verizon 5G Mobile.

My current cell phone plan is $22/mo. Verizon's cheapest plan is the "Unlimited Welcome" plan, which is $40/mo. Adding Home Wireless Internet to that plan is $40; to get the $25 price you have to have a more expensive mobile plan.

And of course, all of these are introductory prices. They are much higher after the 2-year introductory period.

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

My friends in third-world countries get faster and less expensive service than me in Silicon Valley. On top of that, there is no fiber connection in my neighborhood, and they've been on fiber for over 5 years. And there is a data cap also. It's just crazy and sad.

Are they in geographic region that is more densely populated? Or an area that was built out more recently? In my last house (also in SV) the choices were between Comcast and AT&T copper. The latter went up to 6/1, so was effectively useless. I'm sure it was laid down decades ago.

Yes. Providers in India offer far more speed at far cheaper prices than US. The key to this is competition. There are many providers available in each major city which helps consumer. It's sad that in many US' major cities there is usually one or two providers only for a building or neighborhood. My building in SF only has comcast, so they have a monopoly and can charge whatever they want.

You can find fiber connection in some remote vilage in slovakia.

Consolidation is the cause - US had 2-se as many listed companies 30 yeats ago.

Now US capital is buying up independant businesses across easterm Europe and developing countries, killing competition and the local economy.

They are in a densely populated area. The city had issues with internet service for quite a while. The government started to invest heavily in fiber tech around the 2010s, and fast forward to now, almost everyone in the city can get a fiber connection to their home or apartment building. The cost is around ~28$ for 300Mbs and $80 for 1Gbs.

Much of residential silicon valley was built very quickly in the 50s

Check this out:

> Broadband penetration as of June 2017: 23.5 broadband connections for every 100 people. > Distribution of broadband connections by type, as reported by Ancom, is as follows 94% FTTx (FTTH/FTTB/FTTC/FTTN) internet access connections, 4.8% Coaxial cable, 0.2% other.

Now guess the country. Answer in ROT13 at [1]. Hint: it ain't a first world country. Another hint: Latine loquitur. Oh and it ain't a recent development either. They've been at it like forever.

[1] uggcf://ra.jvxvcrqvn.bet/jvxv/Vagrearg_va_Ebznavn

If you develop later you can leapfrog countries that ground through all the necessary phases for the development to happen for everyone globally. But that doesn't mean you can keep pace. Hopefully your area gets an upgrade, or a Starlink, soon.

I live in Perú, and I have 400Mbps internet FTTH with no data cap, and the price is 37 USD [1], the competition of the internet providers is incredibly good for the consumers.

The lowest plan that mi ISP offers is 100Mbps and is at 21 USD.

[1] https://www.movistar.com.pe/hogar/internet/solo-internet (Link in Spanish)

According to wikipedia the average monthly salary in Peru is $502 US. $37 per month doesn't seem that cheap to me.

As another point of comparison, a new ISP in my area of London is offering symmetric gigabit fiber for £25/month or around $30/month (USD).

Your country requires ISPs to share and rent lines. That does a great deal for competition and lowering prices

$30/month USD compared to the average salary in London is pretty good. We unfortunately don't have much competition among ISP's here in the US.

Palo Alto just unveiled another fiber to the home plan to be ready by Jan 2025 in one select neighborhood (that I live just outside of, dammit).

This plan will definitely come to fruition just like all the other ones since the 90s

It boggles my mind that Google Fiber has been available in Austin, TX for 10 years but is still not available in the communities next door to Google HQ.

Probably due to the extreme level of veto-ism in the Bay Area. Everyone wants internet, but if 5 people complaining about yards or roads being dug up can get work to stop indefinitely, costs are going through the roof. There's far more uncertainty in that political environment than anywhere else.

For reference, I live in a small town of ~6,000 people, and we're getting fiber laid. For the longest time we only had 25mbps, and then a new provider came in with coaxial and offered 200mbps (with a data cap), and now a third is laying fiber.

Our average income is $34k/year, so it's not because we have more money than the opulent Bay Area.

It could simply be that poor people don't complain about infrastructure projects like rich people too. Or they don't have the tools/connections to effectively stop it.

I imagine if you are renting a property, you are less likely to complain about things going on around the property because it's not your property to "defend." If you own (and especially if you are part of an HOA) you might be more likely to complain if there is construction going on for 3+ months in your neighborhood.

So it probably does fall into rich vs poor in the same way that renters may be less likely to be rich.

Google announced they would bring service to San Jose, along with about 20? other locations, and then later in the week, AT&T announced they would bring fiber to the listed communities in their ILEC territory and a couple more for good measure. And then a few months later, AT&T started rolling it out. Google hadn't figured out how to access poles or where they wanted equipment by the time AT&T was offering service, so they gave up. They did get some new service areas through aquisition, but I don't think they've announced any new construction service areas in a very long time now.

"faster" here is relative. unless you live in eastern USA or western Europe, you'd be lucky to see half the quoted "speed", since that is where the majority of the internet resides

Me too. I tell everyone who will listen that they should look at their actual bandwidth usage. I've looked at the detailed statistics on my Google Nest WiFi router, and my family's peak usage never exceeded about 30 Mbps. That's with me working from home as a CS PhD student and my wife homeschooling our kids during the day. I have 300 Mbps (down) because that's the lowest, cheapest tier that my ISP offers.

Maybe people are actually using their 1 Gbps bandwidth if they have multiple 4K TVs and do serious gaming? I don't know, I doubt it.

I tell everyone to look at their actual cellular data usage too. I think all middle class Americans just buy unlimited plans now, but I do just fine with 500 MB per month for $5.

I have 3 days left in my billing cycle on phone and I've used 8.5GB of data. I have WiFi everywhere I go too.

500 for $5 would cost me about $50 - unlimited makes perfect sense.

What do you do with all that, especially with WiFi everywhere? Are you continuously streaming video while on-the-go between WiFi networks? That's fine, it's just stunning.

I'm admittedly a minimal user of my phone. I average about 10 unlocks per day. Especially when I'm on-the-go, it's just calls and text messages, some driving directions, and maybe looking up a phone number or business hours. If I use it to listen to an audiobook or podcast, I download those ahead of time on WiFi. Using only 200 MB per month is normal.

> I'm admittedly a minimal user of my phone. I average about 10 unlocks per day.

That's about 5 - 10 times the amount of unlocks I do. Not what I'd consider minimal, at all. :D

Nice! I have a few days in the past month with only 1-2 unlocks, but those are outliers. At a minimum, my wife and I will exchange a couple messages per hour when I'm out of the house. I like to think that I could live as a total weirdo without a phone (just my Google Voice line from my laptop) if I were single.

How many times a day do you unlock your laptop though?

Haha, once in the morning, and I then I'm looking at it all day long.

I don't actually like connecting to public WiFi spots. Ususally the connection is worse than my cellular and why send data through yet another third party network? At least I have a long established relationship with my service provider.

Continuously streaming video? Not at all, might watch something here or there but most of my device usage is text or just reading. I barely use the phone or texting or social media.

I think we forget just how data-hungry modern apps are. A 1080p "Full-HD" YouTube video will consume 4GB/hour of watch time. Even going down to 480p is still 1GB/hour.

> ...just how data-hungry modern apps are...

True. I really try to avoid using the browser for anything unless I'm on WiFi because a single page (really all the other crap that gets loaded besides the actual content that I'm looking for, even with uBlock Origin) might eat dozens of MB. For a while I used the NPR One app to stream podcasts, but I gave it up when it started using way, way more data than streaming audio should ever require.

not OP, but anyone who streams music regularly or watches videos on their commute, or does video calls on the go, will rack up pretty serious gigs. I'm with you on low bandwidth usage and certainly on the home bandwidth thing, but some people have a very mobile and streaming-centric lifestyle. It's a bit foreign to me but it's definitely common.

Netflix 4K streams seem to top out around 25Mbps and I'd guess other services are comparable, so 1Gbps is still a lot of bandwidth for even large multi-streamer households. I think a lot of families will reach the limits of cheap, basic wifi routers before they start actually pushing against their bandwidth caps in these situations.

My issue in the past with cable gigabit service was the relatively tiny upstream bandwidth of 20-50Mbps. This made for some challenges a few years ago when suddenly everybody in the house was on Zoom all day long.

Yep. We don’t need the gigabit down, we need the 100 up that comes with it. Openreach seem to sell about 10% of the download as the upload.

I strongly agree about upload bandwidth. In previous homes I've chosen higher tiers of service for exactly that reason. I think I could live happily with 20 or even 10 Mpbs down, but not 1 Mbps up when I'm using cloud storage for photos and need to be on some video calls. I shouldn't need to pay for an order-of-magnitude more download bandwidth to get reasonable upload bandwidth, but apparently I do.

> Me too. I tell everyone who will listen that they should look at their actual bandwidth usage.

I shouldn't have to look at my actual bandwidth usage. As I wrote in a different comment [1]:

> You are unknowingly accepting being ripped off. It's not reasonable for big ISPs like Comcast to offer me 300 megabits download 15 megabits upload for $70 a month (might've been $90, but assume $70) while EPB of Chattanooga [1] offers 1 gigabit symmetrical for $67.99 a month. What speed any individual actually needs doesn't have to come into the picture. In matters of consumer protection, the principle of the thing matters just as much as actual consumer needs.

> Today's internet technology (particularly optical fiber [2], paired with hardware implementing DOCSIS 3.1 or 4 [3]) is fully capable of providing 1 gigabit symmetrical for "the majority of people", even in rural areas. Moreover, in the long term, transitioning to fiber would be less expensive to the big ISPs like Comcast [4], but Comcast keeps raising prices on broadband over decades-old copper wires and committing subsidy fraud [5]. Don't let big ISPs define "good enough" to be much lower than technology and the price of the technology allow.

(The [] citations within my quotes refer to links in my other comment. I'm leaving them in for Ctrl-F purposes.)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38105873

Sure. I just mean, from a home economics perspective, that people should look at their actual bandwidth usage rather than blindly paying for 500 Mbps or 1 Gbps because they just want a fast connection and that's what the ISP marketing literature recommends for a family of four.

Non-techie notices "internet is slow" because their youtube video is blocky or pages load slowly. Non-techie goes to ISP to complain. ISP upsells to a more expensive plan.

The actual reason in almost all cases: non-techies are clueless about their slow and shitty WIFI. Picking empty or less busy channels, using 5GHz, using gasp cables, all black magic and never done.

Sometimes the upselling actually helps because the better plan comes with a maybe-better AP...

> their slow and shitty WIFI

I'm still embarrassed about the time I called my ISP and complained that the new Xmbs package they just installed is capped at only Ymbps only to realize I had run the speed test over wifi (back in the wireless-g,maybe n days)...

I live with the shitty wifi because the yak-shaving that comes with "ok, I will set their router to be pass through, now I need to install openwrt on that 100$ recommended router, and run a cable behind my drywall upto the second floor, and install anothe openwrt and bang goes a weekend and really I am only do that once I order a second line because taking out my family's internet for the whole weekend because I will fuck it up at least once ..

ok.

Next month honest

Yeah, the Comcast sales reps spin ridiculous tales about how much speed you need. People who don't know better are fooled by this, and end up paying way too much for speeds they don't remotely need.

And some techies regret our choice to have both a Mikrotik AP and walls. You can have decent WiFi and one of those, but not all three.

That'll teach me to stay consistent.

When I had the fiber connection for my new internet run to my house, I told the tech I want the router/modem combo installed in the basement.

The guy strongly insisted I not do it, but then when I persisted I had to sign two waivers acknowledging that my wifi will probably be shit and the basement is a terrible spot.

I was just using their router/modem as a pass through, but man, they really don't want people putting routers in their basement. I can totally understand why too.

As someone who plays games a lot more than watches movies, I don't need much bandwidth, what I really want is low latency.

It might be that you’re informed enough to consider that 300 Mbps is more than enough.

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

Well, if there's not a cost difference, why do they keep trying to double my pricing when the base tier goes up?

My sense is there is some cost savings at these lower tiers, but more importantly it would prevent ISPs from jacking prices up while using higher speeds as the rationale ("Look, we just tripled your speed, and it only costs double!"). ISPs would be less likely to double prices without any service improvement. But since many people don't care about the service improvement, it's an illusory benefit for them.

They’ve already trained consumers that higher speeds cost more. They would need a compelling reason to keep costs the same after increasing speeds.

I've had many instances where ISPs increased my speeds without increasing prices.

If pricing stayed even close to fixed my gigabit internet would cost well over $10,000mo, considering back in the day I was paying SBC for less than a meg for more than I'm paying for a gigabit today. And that's before adjusting for inflation, those 90s dollars are worth way more than 2023 dollars.

In my area, a competitor just finished installing fiber to my neighborhood, and is offering symmetrical gigabit speeds for less (nearly half the price) than I was paying for 500/20 Mbps to the incumbent cable company before.

The cable company now needs to both increase speeds _and_ lower prices to even keep their existing customers. This is a good place to be, as a customer.

In the almost 20 years I've had Comcast they've increased speeds numerous times without increasing prices.

> Well, if there's not a cost difference, why do they keep trying to double my pricing when the base tier goes up?

Because you keep paying for it. It's not like you're going to not pay for internet, and you probably don't have many alternative options.

Yeah, like I said in my original post, it all comes down to competition.

>Well, if there's not a cost difference, why do they keep trying to double my pricing when the base tier goes up?

At least they're giving more speed instead of just doubling the cost with no increase in service

Because they can? Their goal is to maximize profit, if raising prices does that they'll raise prices.

What makes you think the price wouldn't double if the speed stayed the same? That's what cable prices have done.

Because they are for-profit organizations and thus greedy. Pretty easy.

Agreed, I suspect the cost is in providing the larger amount of bandwidth to the block or neighborhood (better cabling, cable modems, etc.) Once in place, the individual subscriber usage probably all costs the same for Comcast.

Nope, the big ongoing cost is in support. Humans.

The big upfront cost is trenching. The rest is potatoes. If you think the "big heroes" of an ISP are the router wizards, oh boy. It's the permit people. A ransomware gang has nothing on the uppity council of a town of 4000 people.

> I have considered using a cellular hotspot, but it's not competitive in terms of pricing.

I had the opposite experience. I was a very happy Comcast customer for a year or two (their curfew-for-kids-computers feature on their router was great, and the mobile app integration was very handy), but the 5G Verizon offering was cheaper and faster (where I live). I have never felt so bad canceling my account, as everything about the experience was great, but VZ had double (or more) the upload speed.

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

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

We don't need competition. We need to provide Internet access as a heavily-regulated utility, ideally as a municipal service. Competition for last-mile Internet actually makes very little sense because it's an overbuild.

Imagine it costs $2000 per household to connect a fiber network. With 70% of households signing up, that produces a certain cost. Now imagine there was a second fiber network that also cost $2000 per household that splits the customer base. By definition, this is going to be more expensive.

Capitalism created this problem. It won't solve it. This is capitalism working as intended: doing the absolute least possible for the highest possible price while lobbying to exclude competition (eg by making municipal broadband illegal).

Expecting markets to solve this problem is neoliberal brain rot. Let's imagine that you do get 2 or even 3 ISPs in an area similar to Comcat, Spectrum, AT&T or Verizon. Now what? They just collude to keep speeds low and prices high [1].

Build municipal broadband. Failing that, regulate ISPs like utilities. And this would include unbundling TV services.

[1]: https://www.legitreviews.com/american-isps-collude-to-keep-b...

I'm a Comcast customer and bundle my services. Every two years, once the introductory rate expires, I call to get a new "promo" rate or just say they can cancel me right then and there. They've never taken me up on the cancellation. As a result I have a full 1GIG service at my house and feel like I pay a reasonable amount.

I'm just not a big fan of their "security" features. Other than that, I haven't had many issues here in Oregon.

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

> I'm all for prodding companies to move to faster speeds, but there should still be room for consumer choice.

There certainly should be consumer choice, but in your case another problem is that the amount you pay Comcast for 75 Mbps download now should be no more than what you paid for 12 Mbps before. As I wrote in a different comment [1]:

> It's not reasonable for big ISPs like Comcast to offer me 300 megabits download 15 megabits upload for $70 a month (might've been $90, but assume $70) while EPB of Chattanooga [1] offers 1 gigabit symmetrical for $67.99 a month. What speed any individual actually needs doesn't have to come into the picture. In matters of consumer protection, the principle of the thing matters just as much as actual consumer needs.

(Ignore the [1] inside the quoted paragraph above. I'm leaving it in for Ctrl-F purposes.)

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38105873

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

What? I wasn’t even aware consumer speeds got that high. No caps I hope?

Sonic in the Bay Area offers 10Gb symmetric at that price, no cap. I upgraded from their 1Gb plan to 10Gb with no change in price.

Unfortunately, I’ve since moved to another part of the country, with much less enlightened ISP options.

Started seeing consumer 10Gbps back in 2018 (in Sweden). The problem was there wasn't many consumer router devices around back then to support that kind of link. It might have even been unheard of, so one ISP solved it by designing their own custom device to specification - just so they could offer 10Gbps asap.

That would be my problem... my router has 2.5gbps ports, and I've only got 2 devices on my network supporting 10gb (nas and my desktop)... everything else is 1gb or 2.5gb. I'm not sure what the hardware costs would be to support that.

No caps, no cap :P

I even made my own router because I didn't like the consumer options available: https://danangell.com/blog/posts/10gbps-router-for-fun/

I have 5gbps available at my house, but what would I use it for? Symmetric 1gbps is fine for me.

Yeah that's Comcast's regular price for their lowest tier (75Mbps) where I am.

AT&T finally started offering fiber in my neighborhood this summer while Spectrum raised their minimum tier another $5. Needless to said I've seen a lot of AT&T vans around.

Unlike most folks my experience with fiber has been dreadful but at least I'm not paying out the nose for a connection with less upload speed than phone.

I’ve only ever heard good things about fiber. High bandwidth, relatively low cost and next to no outages because they are buried. What’s dreadful about it?

I always assumed fiber either worked or didn't, but that's not the case. My connection would drop several times a day and be down for around two minutes before the fiber gateway rebooted itself to correct the problem. I had countless service techs out, had the gateway replaced twice, and it still continued. It wasn't until I filed an FCC complaint that AT&T took me seriously and sent out a properly educated network engineer out with special equipment who was able to fix it.

I actually wrote something up about it, though I haven't updated the page since it was fixed. https://duffyjp.github.io/2023/08/02/Log-ATT-Router-Status.h...

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

> There are no other wired options where I live (in the heart of Silicon Valley)

This reads like a joke.

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

Well, they seem to be able to offer incentives based on how many customers are on "broadband", so presumably they could offer incentives related to offering lower tiers/pricing, or to ISPs entering a market that only has one provider.

> But is there anything FCC can do to increase it? Is it in their jurisdiction?

Sure. They could apply the line sharing rules from the 1996 Telecom Act. Afaik, that's still law, but when courts said the FCC couldn't apply it to telephone companies and not cable companies, the FCC opted to declare the market was competitive and end mandatory line sharing.

Help from congress would be great, though. There was a lot of shenanigans under the line sharing regime, like ILECs pricing retail internet lower than wholesale prices. After a transition period, the line owners shouldn't offer retail service at all, make them restructure it into actually separate companies providing the internet service vs the lines.

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

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