8mo ago

We're never going to have better internet in the USA, are we?

I'm an unfortunate captive of the oligopoly of the internet industry in the USA. In many places, you have 2-3 choices of internet, and all of them suck ass. I'm in this situation. All internet providers in my area have a 1-1.5 terabyte data cap. So when I download Call of Duty for 250 gb and it fails and has to update or reinstall, I've wasted 500 gb, and have now reached 50% of my data cap in just 1 day. There are crazy fees, for example, Cox Cable says:

If you go over, we’ll automatically add 50 gigabytes of data for $10 to your next bill. That's enough for about 15 hours of streaming HD video. If you use that 50 gigabytes, we automatically add another 50 gigabytes for $10 and so on until you reach our $100 limit of data overage charges or until your next usage cycle begins.

So your $90 a month internet can easily become $190 a month, which is fuckin criminal, like that is so scummy and asinine how that can even be legal. But it is perfectly legal. The FCC is also looking into these data caps but now that we have a new anti-federal government president elect... This is probably toast.... Nothing will change now that most federal agencies are about to be deleted.

From a technology standpoint too, nothing is really getting better

Comcast is still using Coax instead of Fiber Optic and desperately trying to convince people that somehow, someway coax can be just as good. Do with that info what you will, I have no opinions on it. There was a Federal program started recently to expand rural internet access, which will probably be gutted in 2025 leaving many without suitable internet again. Fiber Optic is fast, but still, not new technology, and doesn't solve a critical issue.... It doesn't matter if you have 2 Gigabit internet if no one in the world is uploading even half that fast. A single download on Steam is like 450 Mbps, Epic Games launcher is horrifically slow. I get like 120 Mbps max when downloading Fortnite updates even with 1500 Mbps internet hard wired to my router with top tier hardware

It's just sad to think about the future of internet in the USA, and knowing we'll be imprisoned by these data caps for the foreseeable future.

173 comments

- I normally don't like to admit this but you're right. OP needs to move.
  
  OP needs to move.
  Unfortunately, most counties don’t want us Americans (and I don’t blame them).
  Edit: Unless you’re rich that is.
- France reporting, same price and that's because I'm using the more expensive provider that is the most reliable in my rural area.
  Our politicians are completely useless though.
  
  Yeah, but yall are actually cool and bust out the guillotines every once in a while.
- I pay $70 a month for google fiber and it's legit a thing that keeps me in the city I'm in because better is absolutely fucking rare.
  This isn't me trying to flex, this is me crying because I'd rather be in Scotland.
- Turkey (Asia Minor) reporting, it’s 1 Gbps unlimited for $25.
  Hardcore capitalism bangs you hardcore for even human-right level things. Health, education and infrastructure should be the State’s responsibility, subventions doesn’t cut it.
- that's one hell of a free burn
- I think you just described the US as a whole.
- I pay $79 AUD for 250Mb download / 20Mb upload.
- And yet here I am in the USA with 8/8 Gbps fiber with no caps. Though I do pay $185 a month. I live in a Red state, and in a metro area, but not near the metro core, in unincorporated county land.
  last 30 days stats to prove no caps:
  
  I've never had caps here in the US, and while my current internet is kinda slow (50/25), it's because I deliberately chose a lower tier because we don't actually need more. I could get gigabit (1000/500) for $75/month or 10G for $200/month, and my city is working w/ an org to build out muni fiber, which will probably cut costs a bit (and hopefully improve reliability, ours goes out like once/month for 15 min or so).
  
  What do you have for network equipment? I have 1G symmetrical unlimited, but anything faster seems to require a jump to much more expensive networking. And even then, most user equipment can’t support that
It doesn't matter if you have 2 Gigabit internet if no one in the world is uploading even half that fast.
Just to point out something, yes, there may not be many services online (except torrents perhaps) that will max out your gigabit connection, but you are looking at it from the perspective of a single user. I'm in a family of four, also with a roommate in the house, and with everyone gaming and streaming and doing their thing, it can easily saturate it. We had to pay extra for no caps though or we'd be toast. They at least did offer that. Dicks.
Anyway the point of a high speed connection is to be able to do many things simultaneously, not really one giant thing by itself.
- there may not be many services online (except torrents perhaps)
  Hmm... arr, matey
  
  Yo ho ho.
- We had to pay extra for no caps
  fr fr
This is the USA, it's all a pay-as-you-go country. You will be required to work yourself to death to be able to have anything nice at all. That's the model. Corporations make the rules, the government will not help us. Economy, corporate profits and giving money to the wealthy are the priorities. Nothing else matters.
- Some places have banned data caps, I live in one such place... And I think the FCC was looking for feedback on the hate of data caps... If you want change go out and make it
  
  the FCC was looking for feedback on the hate of data caps
  A Republican lead FCC (Ajit Pai or some other smug fuck) will never mobilize the FCC to curb unfair and unreasonable data caps.
- Should be grateful for that and not something like Russia, with that level of political idiocy.
No, once the FTC is gutted, the isps will resume their stronghold. Data caps, overages, slower speeds, etc.
- All of our FTC investigations and antitrust suits will disappear.
- Also get ready of net neutrality disappearing, and you'll have sites blocked just because of ISPs not liking them.
  
  Good time to invest in VPN companies
Data caps are insane in 2024
Yeah, pretty much. The way the rest of the world deals with it is by splitting the infrastructure maintenance and retail sides to eliminate the profit incentive to not do maintenance.
You have a company who owns a/the fibre network in an area and is obligated by anti-monopoly rules to sell access to the network at the same rate and terms to anyone who wants it. They have a profit incentive to maintain the network to a reasonable standard because having a functioning network is how they make money. In a lot of places this wholesale provider will be at least part government owned given that the government usually pays a good chunk of the cost to build out large national infrastructure projects like fibre networks.
Separately, you have retail ISPs who buy access to the fibre network (or 4g, satellite, ...) and sell it to the public along with value adds like tech support, IP addresses, peering agreement etc.
It's never work in the US because holding private companies accountable for how they spend public money and maintaining well regulated competitive markets is communism or something.
- It's never work in the US because holding private companies accountable for how they spend public money and maintaining well regulated competitive markets is communism or something
  It did work in the US for many years. During the 90's the Internet was regulated like that. Phone lines, t1's etc were infrastructure that the ilec was required to provide at the same cost to isps they used internally to sell service to consumers.
  Then Bush came in and ruled that fiber and cable were immune from those common carrier laws.
  
  Internet in NZ used to work a bit like the US does now with one large ISP that is also the network operator and gave exactly zero shits about quality of connections or internationally competitive pricing, except they got greedy and charged their retail arm half what they charged their competitors. Anti-monopoly folks got very pissy about this and managed to get the largest fine permitted by law, forced them to split their wholesale arm off into a separate company, banned them from tendering on the government-funded fibre network (which cost them literally billions of dollars) and then changed the law so that if they did it again there wouldn't be a cap on the penalty they could impose.
  In 20 years we went from ~35th of the 38 OECD countries in internet speed and accessibility to 9th. Markets only work long-term if you actually regulate them
- This is exactly how my local municipal fiber network works. The the county owns, and builds put, the fiber network and maintains it, selling network access to local ISPs who sell to customers.
  Only shitty part is that if you want to have a connection built out that isn't on their plan, you have to fund the fiber run to you from wherever the nearest spot is, and that can be many thousands of dollars.
  I imagine if we expanded the program like you're talking about in the rest of the world, we could actually run it fine, like, we have the ability to... It's just that the people in power are fucking awful.
1.5Tb data cap, jeez. I regularly push 6tb of monthly traffic by myself. This feels like mobile internet all over again, but now with wired...
Well, maybe now with a republican FCC
lol, no
- Well, maybe now with a republican FCC
  I'd be surprised if it even exists a year from now
  
  Oh I expect it to. The FCC censors airwave transmissions
  
  Damn that's a spectre that I hadn't even thought of yet.
No. And I'm sorry to say, this administration is coming for social media as well. I hate watching the orange potato talk, and I dislike the individual who posted this, but unless you want to sit through a double long "reaction" vid by a youtuber who makes their living "reacting", this is the shortest one.
He wants to gut moderation and make it so it requires a court order to remove any account from social media. There's a lot to unpack here. It's a scripted speech, illustrating the thinkers behind his administration this go. It talks about 1A, says everything in the speech is for 1A, including dumping the Hatch Act (keeps us safe at polling sites and makes buying votes illegal), but you should really listen to what he says about moderation of social media.
To me, it reads as a way of removing any anti-establishment, anti-MAGA spaces to talk without actually removing the spaces.
Echo chambering helps no one folks, I hate hearing him speak too, but you need to hear this one. https://youtu.be/xJfUXVOoFBo?si=pqphBah-_0YwW11V
Not only aren't we going to get better internet, the internet in the united states you're using right now, is going to be unrecognizable in the next 12 months, all free services will charge, cost for access will increase, vpn usage will be curtailed, and pirate sites will be blocked. Better? We just re-elected a fascist tyrant who wants to close as many avenues of free speech against him as he possibly can, as well as funnel as much cash to media and tech oligarchs as he can to keep them onside, and now he's got both the house and senate with which to do just that.
Better? dude.
- VPNs and piracy aren't going anywhere. Unfortunately, data caps won't be going away either.
  
  VPNs and piracy aren’t going anywhere.
  That's not true at all.
  They'll both be going on my next PC!
It's totally possible! I live in CO and Comcast had a legal monopoly per state law. Nobody else is allowed to compete with their cable service. But you know what isn't cable? Fiber! A local broadband company just installed fiber in my neighborhood this spring. I signed up for $89/mo gigabit service, no data cap, no installation fees at all. Between when I signed up and when they turned on service, they upgraded my service to 1.2 gigabit, same monthly price, no cap, no commitment, no upsell (their only other service is rural satellite Internet).
I talked to the technician installing it and he said they aren't getting any subsidies from anyone. Not the city, state, or fed. It's simply economically viable to run new gigabit fiber for $89/mo. All it takes is a company that can make the initial infrastructure investment.
It doesn't matter if you have 2 Gigabit internet if no one in the world is uploading even half that fast. A single download on Steam is like 450 Mbps
This sounds more like the infrastructure in your area just isn't up to delivering those speeds, regardless what the last mile to the home is.
I promise you Steam's CDN absolutely can deliver more than 450Mbps. It regularly maxes out my 1.5 Gbps at home, and I have no doubt that it could potentially go even faster than that if I had a better connection.
Like plugging a 10Gbps network switch into a 100Mbps gateway, it sounds like a fast final link to the home is being choked out by poor infrastructure in the region and can't be fully utilized.
They probably kill off any agency who would protect your consumer rights, anyway. And redefine "broadband" as "you've got modem access, so stop whining". And let the companies keep the subsidies they got for making the former broadband definition happen.
- Based on Ajit Pai last time, there will be a significant rollback on consumer rights and protections. You can bet Starlink will get greenlit for anything they want though.
Things are getting better. A new fiber-only network provider is expanding across my region so I got it installed a few months ago. No data caps, 500 Mbps up+down for $50/month.
- Speaking of fiber and things that are not fiber, asymmetric connections are one of the most predatory internet practices in existence, only a small distance behind data caps. Oh, you want our super expensive 1gbps plan? How about 3mbps upload?
  
  There used to be very real hardware reasons that upload had much lower bandwidth. I have no idea if there still are.
Rural island off the coast of a european country:
10g fiber for $65/mo (I don't even think they cared, I asked for more and I think they made up a number).
House literally down the street from google in silicon valley:
Comcrap $100 for shit cable, I'm paying $250 for actual upload speed.
This country is ruled by the corrupt.
- In my country unlimited fiber was $6/mo. Imagine the shock when I moved to the US (also in Mountain View initially). Eventually I got AT&T fiber for "just" $40/month, but now I moved to an area outside their coverage and it's back to Comcast :(
Comcast is still using Coax instead of Fiber Optic and desperately trying to convince people that somehow, someway coax can be just as good.
Comcast are starting to offer 2Gbps symmetric (same speed up and down) via DOCSIS 4.0 in some areas.
- Yep. It’s pretty nuts how much they can push over copper. And remember that just having a coax cable at your house doesn’t mean it’s copper the whole way back to the ISP.
  
  You're right - upstream connections are usually fiber. In fact there's a name for this type of network: HFC (hybrid fiber + coax)
- Is it on coax or fiber? And do you still share that bandwidth with your neighbors?
  
  Docsis 4.0 is still cable, idk about other things
  
  The 2Gbps symmetric though Comcast is still cable. In theory, DOCSIS 4.0 supports up to 10Gbps down and 6Gbps up over cable, although real-world speeds are always lower than theoretical speeds.
  You share bandwidth with your neighbours regardless of whether it's coax or fiber. A common contention ratio for residential connections is between 40:1 and 50:1, meaning the bandwidth is shared between 40 and 50 people (i.e. 1Gbps of upstream bandwidth per 40-50 people with a 1Gbps connection). This is usually fine as it's very unlikely that every customer will be using the full bandwidth at the same time. Residential usage is usually very spiky with only brief periods of high speed usage.
The solution is pretty obvious.
Be rich
Step 2 is for poor people
Why do all these poor people want to kill me?
Nope.
Wait until net neutrality is completely dead. I predict 1.5 years.
- Damn, you're an optimist.
- You can't just blame 18-26 year-olds. This was a failure across all age groups. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/interactive-how-key-groups-of-americans-voted-in-2024-according-to-ap-votecast
  
  And isn't signing over the country to corporations something that's been going on since the 1970s or something? I mean that comment is wrong on any level.
- The younger age brackets broke slightly in favor of Harris. It was the folks between mid-life crisis and retirement that broke hard for Trump.
  
  She somehow managed to perform worse with women than Biden did (53% vs 55%.)
  
  Harris did not out perform Biden in ANY category.
- No, the Democratic party ran a candidate that wanted to keep the status quo in a period the whole country needed change.
  And during the last 4 years the sitting president was actually sleepy Joe. He should have arrested trump and his co conspirators and throw away the key after a very public trial.
  But instead, they did nothing to stem the tide of fascism. If you want to blame people, blame the technocrats Trump was projecting on during his campaign. As if he is a small portion of who he says he is, he will show everyone what the Dems should have done.
  
  No, the Democratic party ran a candidate that wanted to keep the status quo in a period the whole country needed change.
  Name a time in history that "voting for change" isn't what's "needed". The term has lost all meaning for how overused it is. Just like "think of the children" or "save the whales".
  If change is needed every 4 years, then that means 4 years ago you either voted the wrong guy in, or he didn't do what he promised.
  I've always been of the belief that campaign promises need to have more importance. If the American people vote for a candidate based on their promises, as they always do, then those promises damn well better happen.
  If I campaign, and promise everyone free chocolate pudding. Then by 4 years later, everybody in this country damn well better have chocolate pudding.
  Once voted in, it should be a federal crime to stand in the way of delivering campaign promises. So if I contact a pudding company, and they refuse to accept the contract to produce pudding, then the CEO is arrested, and the plant is seized by the government. The staff will be kept on, paid by the government. Anyone who quits will face criminal charges. Long story short, hell or high water, we're delivering that pudding.
  Because what happens if I don't? Then on re-election day, not only am I barred from running, I'm also publically humiliated, and executed. Live on tv. Broadcast on every channel.
  Which means you can't campaign on vague promises, because then it's easy to argue that you failed. You have to promise cut and dry easy to prove obligations. And if you fail, you die. If anyone stands in your way, it's a federal offense.
  The underlying problem with this country is that nothing means anything. Nobody stands for anything. Courts have no consequence. Explain to me how a 34x convicted criminal was even allowed to run for office, much less win? Explain how he's not facing a court date. Explain how he won't be in jail for his court ordered convictions.
  The answer is, this all means nothing. Money rules this country. Fuck you. Fuck the citizens. Fuck justice. Fuck equality. Fuck everybody besides the rich. They fuck you. Not the other way around. I am an American, but I am NOT a patriot. I am ashamed of my country. I am embarrassed by my fellow citizens, and my government alike. You can't blame one without the other. The citizens voted for fascism. They wanted this. They're fine with the system being toothless and slanted. I'm just caught up in the crossfire. I'm not the worst affected. I can only feel empathy for those affected. And feel disgust for anyone wearing a red hat with white text.
- Boomers and the owner class gutted the country...
  Some clown online blames gen z for voting +2 for trump after Harris and DNC botched a campaign 🤡
  Pathetic, try again
nope
I had to sign up for a business account because of Cox's data cap. Sadly they're my only option and they suck ass.
I'm in EU and I have 2 different internet connections without a data cap, because I work from home and don't want to commute to the office if one type is down. Both have bandwith caps tho (that way they are cheaper and it's still good enough for me).
However, I want to suggest you use traffic shaping. In Linux, I used "trickle" many years ago, so I could download things without disturbing my family streaming or video calling. Idk how it works in other OSes, but the idea is to send a big download through a special network filter that slows it down to your configured bandwith, delaying it so much that you don't reach your bandwidth cap. (The dowload will take months.) Also, I think I have seen something like this built into Steam and Filezilla. If I remember correctly Steam also had the option to pause downloads manually, but you have to remember to keep an eye on it, if you do that.
- Qbittorrent has the option to set limits for both upstream and downstream bandwidth. I believe this works on any platform. Not sure if Mac or Windows have system level bandwidth settings.
I feel your pain, I was stuck with Cox for many years and was paying $170 a month for one gig down, 30 megs up. Unlimited data. But the unlimited data was a lie because they called and threatened me once because I was uploading too much, apparently uploading doesn't count for the unlimited data. Stupid assholes.
I was fortunate enough to move recently to a house that actually had fiber. My fiber provider just raised the price of their lowest plan, which is the one I'm on, 500 Mbps symmetrical for $65 a month. It used to be $50 a month. However, they lowered the price of all their faster plans. If I wanted, I could get 8 gigs symmetrical for $150 a month. That's less than I was paying for Cox just a year ago for 1 gig fake unlimited.
At my current provider, all their plans are truly unlimited, even the lowest tier one like the one I'm on.
- $170 is fucking insane for internet. 😡
  
  Ya their top tier plan was $150 for 1 Gig down 30 Mbps up, 1.25 TB data cap. You could pay an extra $20 a month for"unlimited " but they only allowed you to pay for "unlimited" on their top speed plan. Like I said their unlimited was also a straight up lie.
  To be fair at that house I had roomates so we were all splitting it 4 ways.
Pretty sure it depends on where you live. My CenturyLink gigabit internet in Seattle is superb, symmetrical up/down, $75/mo. Haven't had significant problems in 10 or 15 years.
- Yeah, it all still depends on how close you are to the fiber, whether pushed over twisted-pair or coax. In some areas, for digital over twisted-pair, it may even still depend on how close you are to a central office. It varies wildly across the country.
  I support people who work from home all over the country. People in the boonies are using mobile data and satellite. Those who aren’t suffer terrible DSL connections.
  I have coax, and 2 gigabit is an option for me because the fiber Xfinity uses runs right along my neighborhood.
Not a chance.
It's just bizzare to me that there's data caps on your internet plans. Especially since you're already paying 5x more than I'm for unlimited connection. I assume there must be some other reasons for this too than just greed. Perhaps the size of your country? I mean even Texas alone is almost as big as entire Europe.
- Texas alone is almost as big as entire Europe.
  There has been a fad recently for fake size comparison maps about this, presumably made by insecure Texans with giant trucks and tiny penises
  Texas is slightly bigger than France, and about the same size as France and Switzerland combined
  
  And while the USA are roughly double the area of the European Union, the whole continent of Europe is larger than the US.
- Some cities have municipal internet service, which they are able to provide at a much, much lower rate than commercial options. Here's one example of a resident in Lafayette, La. They would on average pay $73.10 annually on the municipal network, versus $690.87 annually on a private network. The same article also shows much lower average rates for commercial networks when they have to compete with public services.
  So yeah, it's just greed.
It’s definitely not going to happen in the next 4.5 years. Paying the extra for unlimited data is basically a must these days.
To make myself feel better about it, I try to use as much data as possible every month. Not because there’s actually a good reason for the data caps, but because I’m spending the money, so I might as well. My personal best so far is 7TB in a month 😂
- Wow, 7 TB in a month?
  Slaps roof of internet router
  You can fit a lot of Linux ISOs in that data cap!
  
  So many Linux ISOs 😅 definitely not anything else.
- 1.9TB is our high and that’s with 2 adults and 3 data hungry kids. 7TB!? Good lord!
- My personal best so far is 7TB in a month 😂
  This is just my past month... I have no idea what my record is... but would likely be significantly higher as I slowed down on some stuff recently. I need more harddrive bays/harddrives... Stupid ebay doesn't have what I want.
  Edit: here's past 90 days as well
Well, we've just crossed into what will be a third-phase Corporatocracy, and a Monopoly gamed service industry.
You have other options now that are not the usual players, but then you're giving money to Starlink.
You have the option of organizing to create a local fiber concern as a public utility, but in a few months they'll pass laws preventing that from ever happening.
Your best option on the Internet between is an unlimited cell plan and a hotspot, and it's not a great option, but the competition is still so heavy that your bill won't change. Higher latency, but probably decent throughput.
You can't feign growth without suppressing growth first
Yeah, you guys are screwed.
Crappy (30-40mbit/sec) but uncapped FTTC here, plus 5G FVA at 300mbit/sec but 1Tb monthly cap here.
Combining both and separating heavy traffic (fucking fortnite and many steam big games) on the crappy uncapoed, and arr'ing too, leaves tons of data for high speed anything.
Total cost? 22€ + 24€ = 46€/month, no surprises. A lot more expensive than having fiber indeed, but I am deep into the woods, so.
Ah, and when i go over my 1Tb data cap on the FVA, I get throttled to 6mbit/sec, nothing extra to pay.
- So I’m familiar with the Fiber to the Cabinet/Curb (FTTC), but the only FVA I’m familiar with is an attenuator and I know you’re not talking about checking light levels through fiber. What’s FVA in this context?
  
  I'm guessing here, but the only thing that makes sense in context is Fixed Wireless Access, FWA.
  Maybe some error with the initialism snuck in because Shimitar is from Italy. I could see myself doing something similar, since in German we read W as "vee".
  
  Yes, my typo.. FWA ;)
I don't know where you are or what other ISPs are involved, but skimming some discussion online, it looks like these Cox guys -- at least in the several locations I see being discussed, if not everywhere -- have data limits on all of their residential plans, though they have business plans that do not.
https://www.reddit.com/r/CoxCommunications/comments/hf6zwf/cox_resumes_unnecessary_data_caps/
I get 200 down and 20 up for $85. I came from $100 for 3Mbps DSL, so this is winning for me. I use 4 or 5 TB a month without a problem on Cox.
That particular snippit was four years back, so I suppose prices and speeds might have changed.
So might be worth looking into that in your area if that's what you're after.
Consider WISPs like Verizon/T-Mobile. They absolutely will kick you off for excessive usage, but 1.5 terabytes would not be considered excessive usage.
- That’s not a WISP, just fyi. That’s just a cellular hot spot. Cellular hot spots operate on frequencies in the RF spectrum, the same frequencies that your cell phone connects to.
  A WISP is an ISP that serves internet over microwave radios, which operate not in RF frequencies but in microwave frequencies. They might use point to multi point radios, where a radio on a mountain top feeds signal to many smaller radios at each subscribers house in a valley below. They might also have fiber to an apartment building, with fiber to each unit, then use a point to point radio as a wireless backhaul to connect another apartment building across a river that can’t have fiber run directly to it. They’ll still have fiber running to each unit in that second building though.
  TLDR; cellular providers are not WISPs.
  
  I think your splitting hairs there a bit as a cellular internet service provider is a wireless internet service provider because the thing you put in your window does not connect to anything except for electricity. Also, 2.5 gigahertz and 3.7 gigahertz are both higher frequencies than what your microwave uses to cook your food. The only difference is the power and the range.
- I switched to the Tmo 5G internet a few months ago and it has been great. It’s not symmetric, DL is faster than UL, but it almost always matches or beats the 500D/50U cable service I had previously.
  Looks like I did hit 1.2 TB one month but am usually half that.
  
  It is definitely very area dependent because I used to live in a super rural area where the wired ISP only gave like 10 down by like one or two up and T-Mobile was doing 70 down by like 20 up. Either way, it was absolutely fast enough and had no issues.
There is an alternative that I wish I could think of the name of that communities have been using for a number of years now to set up cheap, small-scale satellite internet networks. I looked into it once as an alternative for my neighborhood to dealing with the bullshit that is Comcast and Verizon, and ended up getting an ad for milsec strategic level network infrastructure from Boeing or something. Regardless, it's a known and proven alternative that's cheaper than the big guys and has hit a point where some places have set it up as a part of local government run infrastructure.
Idk about data caps, but I used to get 3MB/s and I had to be happy for it. Things are better.
I think because of recent programs new ISPs have popped up all over the USA. The IIJA invested in infrastructure and startups to increase number of servicers to areas with few to no providers.
So I guess it depends on which representatives we send to Congress and the White House.
"I get like 120 Mbps max" Literally 5-10x faster than most internet in the UK, no datacaps here though.
- are you sure youre not confusing Mbps and MB/s
  
  Nah the UK uses megabits too, because inflating your percieved speeds eightfold is good marketing everywhere.
  
  Lol we have 50 mbps/6MBs down right now with DSL.
  In theory we could go higher but the allocation is already exhausted for the provider and we don't feel like changing.
We used to have it terrible in the UK in the 90s and 2000s. Basic ADSL was trialled in 1999 and available in maybe late 2000 I think. But it stagnated for a while.
When it came to fibre, interesting things are happening. As well as the "national" (although privatised) telco installing it, there are many independent companies fitting it. Where I live I have the option of the official telco (1000/110) and a private company (1000/1000). Of course I chose the latter :P
Some people have 3 or more options.
Yeah in the future there might well be a handful of overall winners that vacuum up the losers and carve up the territory. But right now, it's a good time for the normal people... At least for internet.
EDIT: Just to add, some are ISPs and will only sell their own product. Some are wholesale, so even if they're the only company in your area, you can often buy from multiple ISPs through them.
- There are places on the US that have a similar thing going on. I can get my fiber from 2 ISPs, same line. I can also turn it off or on when I want and I can pay month to month on either. However, this is super rare here.
  The real problem is that the US has allowed corporations to make laws and basically run the infrastructure. We need some serious lobbying overhaul or outright ban and lawmakers and judges to have a damn backbone to those with $. It’s ridiculous.
That's more c/usa tho (politics) and less c/technology.
- Yes. This is neither news nor an article. Report it.
I have quantum fiber. 1 Gb up+down. No data cap. $80/mo "price for life."
The only downside is it's still IPv6 Rapid Deployment.
- I only have 1Gb/700Mb (for 30€ a month) :-/
  The next tier is 10€ more but I don't think I need that 10Gb/10Gb just yet.
  What is this "data cap" you Americans are talking about so frequently, is that some super hero like Data Captain America?
  ;-)
- The only downside is it’s still IPv6 Rapid Deployment.
  And no static IP addresses yet... Even though it was supposed to be rolled out Q2.
  
  Interesting. I was told I could purchase a static IP from my technician. But I just decided to use Cloudflare DDNS.
No, it's going to get worse with the Trump administration.
Ziply fiber is awesome. Longshot, but you might want to check.
At this point, I wonder why people aren't simply laying down cable between eachothers homes to create communitary networks.
- Because thats not the internet, thats LAN
  
  Make a large enough LAN and you get a small internet hub.
  
  Well, the idea would be for one of them to get a business class connection, then they all split the price.
  People have done this. That was a story I read maybe 6 months ago about a guy that couldn't get FiOS at his location. They kept jerking him around on getting the business class connection then the fiber contractors kept drinking around it's kind of hard to pull this off in a way where the companies don't jack you around.
…is starlink an option for you?
- Do I have to say it? Starlink is much worse in every metric compared to fiber. It's a decent option for people that don't have access to fiber or need internet in remote places.
  
  We got one for our camper. Works really well though we only use it in the summer months. What are your complaints?
Starlink?

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