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Comment by superkuh | Hacker News Reader

> Most consumers have now long since spent the savings they built up during the pandemic.

Is this supposed to be comedy? Most people did not become more well off during the early years of the pandemic.

I wish we could exercise the same choice (branded vs generic) in the ISP utility we chose to pay for. For me it's either 56k or Comcast cable. I'm on the same comcast plan as I signed up for in 2012 (80/5 for $78/mo total with modem rental then) and it's not only gone up in price by over 1/3 but the service has decreased in quality too. When I signed up I had unlimited data transfer. Now I'm repeatedly paying $10/50GB "overage fees" on my 1.2 TB/mo allowed data transfer. And my speed has not increased at all, still 80/5. Only now I pay $106/mo (w/modem rental).

You could argue internet is not essential to live like food. It really isn't. But it sure is hard to live without.

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Where does the leverage lie with breaking down ISP monopolies? Is it a product of regulation at the municipal level, or state laws, or federal regulations?

It doesn't seem like a situation that's going to be improved by consumers complaining about the ISPs. For example, Comcast is consistently derided for poor service and has ranked as one of the most unpopular brands in the US as early as 2010.

Is there even a prospect of competition if the regulatory picture changed, or is it just too capital-intensive to roll out new infrastructure and bring a competing service to market?

Voting in better representatives. Almost all of our problems stem from money in politics.

> Now I'm repeatedly paying $10/50GB "overage fees" on my 1.2 TB/mo allowed data transfer. And my speed has not increased at all, still 80/5. Only now I pay $106/mo (w/modem rental).

If you aren't using your own modem it is usually worth adding unlimited data if you are repeatedly going over your cap.

It's normally $30/month, but if you rent their modem it is only $10/month more to add unlimited [1].

[1] https://www.xfinity.com/learn/internet-service/xfi-complete

I can't seem to figure out the angle? Whats the scam they are running? There is always a scam.

Is the modem collecting data? Are they hoping you'll use their streaming service and then gouge you later once you are addicted?

It can't just be that they give you unlimited bandwidth just to get you to pay a bit more for their modem. They could make so much more money by just charging for the 50GB like what OP pays.

Their modem is also a (semi-) public hotspot for other Xfinity customers (the "xfinitywifi" SSID, that they've made something of a "mesh-ish" network). It's separated out, I believe by VLAN at least. But yeah, the incentive is "use our modem so we can increase that network footprint" (and it's not the case any more or actually probably more on the Business side, but it used to be that even with their modem, you could opt out of providing the hotspot network, but if you did so, you were unable to use the hotspot network).

> same comcast plan as I signed up for in 2012 (80/5 for $78/mo total with modem rental then)

> Only now I pay $106/mo (w/modem rental).

The price you're paying today has merely tracked nominal inflation relative to the price you were paying 12 years ago[1].

[1] https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=78&year1=20120...

Tech should get cheaper and faster every year.

Except GPUs, you’re paying Jensen’s constant – 25 bucks per TFLOP – until further notice.

In competitive markets prices have collapsed. US domestic internet appears to be very uncompetitive.

I feel lucky to live in a CenturyLink market. I got in at $70/mo. for gigabit fiber, unlimited, lifetime rate that never goes up. I think it's still only $75/mo. for the same plan now. There's some initial setup and modem fee. It's a great deal all told.

And in this CenturyLink market (now split off as Brightspeed) the available speeds went from 10Mbps DSL to 3Mbps in the last couple years.

Because it has nothing to do with CenturyLink and everything to do with fiber to the home infrastructure.

What are you doing that you're using more than 1.2TB/mo, and at only 80MB/sec no less?

I set Netflix to a lower resolution to save on bandwidth. As a secondary effect I don't think I ever go over 250GB per month, even downloading games, datasets, etc.

I use a lot of bandwidth backing up photos and videos to the cloud.

As ordinary subscribers, not crippling Netflix or Youtube resolution, torrenting a moderate amount of movies, downloading games etc, my partner and I regularly go over 1TB a month. I don't think that's particularly unusual. But our internet isn't metered (nor of course should it be, considering large ISPs all have peering arrangements and fixed cost leased lines).

I wouldn't exactly call 720p crippling compared to 1080p (I don't have any hardware above that anyways).

I downgraded my Netflix subscription to the 720p basic one once they started cracking up on password sharing. Considering the shitty bitrate they use, there’s no reason to pay for 1080p and 2+ screens if my parents & in-laws can’t also use it.

Those streaming services should take a lesson or two on video encoding from the scene people.

Just a note, I'm op, and I mostly only download stuff at 720p. But I never stream entertainment unless it's live.

Video/audio media is only a healthy fraction of my data transfer though. Most is participating in p2p networks like tor and i2p, hosting my website from home, torrenting, downloading large language models, and other random stuff.

Ah,that makes sense. I forgot about Tor. I used to run a node years ago. I don't remember how much traffic it would get. Probably not as much as the NSA/CIA nodes did lol.

Well maybe they don't want a lower resolution.

One person leaving a twitch stream on during working hours would use up more than half that budget.

> and at only 80MB/sec

1.2TB is only 5% utilization of the connection on average.

"Well maybe they don't want a lower resolution."

That's fine. It's also possible they don't want to pay the overage charges even more. It's up to them.

It's more that you shouldn't need to ask "what you doing...no less"

Video quality is a choice but it's a pretty obvious thing for people to want, and video easily eats a terabyte.

Also your sibling comment says none of your hardware is over 720p? If you have normal-ish eyesight then I feel bad for you, even just considering text clarity.

"It's more that you shouldn't need to ask "what you doing"

Are you really trying to tell someone on HN not to be curious? I am genuinely wondering what cool thing they might be doing with that.

"and video easily eats a terabyte."

It doesn't for me. We stream quite at bit at 720p, gaming, etc. we don't get even close to that.

I mean none of my hardware goes over 1080p, and that my difference between 720p and 1080p is not big. My eyes are slightly better that the standard 20/20. I'm not aure why you say you would feel bad for me as your entire comment is meant to antagonize me.

> Are you really trying to tell someone on HN not to be curious? I am genuinely wondering what cool thing they might be doing with that.

No, I'm not saying not to be curious. I'm saying your wording implied it was excessive for ordinary use, while it's very easy to reach.

> I mean none of my hardware goes over 1080p, and that my difference between 720p and 1080p is not big. My eyes are slightly better that the standard 20/20.

Okay then.

> I'm not aure why you say you would feel bad for me as your entire comment is meant to antagonize me.

I would feel bad for you if you were stuck with a 720p screen, and think you very much were missing something. How is that antagonizing? You're reading into things much more than I did.

Now that you clarify it's 1080, I'm not sure why you brought that up.

"Now that you clarify it's 1080, I'm not sure why you brought that up."

Because I stream at 720p and not 1080p.

>and at only 80MB/sec no less?

Lol, I wish I had 80MB/s. No, cable ratings are given in megabits. I get 10MB/s max. But that's not the only relevant number. I'm always uploading. And re: download, those 25GB large language models I've been testing this last year have been eating a lot.

But really I'm just constantly using a small amounts because I participate in the internet rather than use centralized services (and even host my dot com from home). 1.2 TB both up/down + comcast internal overhead goes fast. That only about 400KB/s average.

> And re: download, those 25GB large language models I've been testing this last year have been eating a lot.

That's like almost 1/day for over a year?

Its 2024. Google Fi is serving some cities with 8Gb/s symmetrical. The internet has been around long enough that OP should be able to saturate the connection for anything he/she wants no questions asked. Its literally pulses of light going through a strand of fiber. It is not even matter just photons! They are paying for photons!

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