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.
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.
> 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
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)
This plan will definitely come to fruition just like all the other ones since the 90s
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.
So it probably does fall into rich vs poor in the same way that renters may be less likely to be rich.
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.
500 for $5 would cost me about $50 - unlimited makes perfect sense.
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.
That's about 5 - 10 times the amount of unlocks I do. Not what I'd consider minimal, at all. :D
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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...
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)...
ok.
Next month honest
That'll teach me to stay consistent.
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.