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FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]

docs.fcc.gov

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Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]

#321

Post by msmith »

Fatnino wrote: post #299
vladslav wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]

#322

Post by linsomniac »

bscphil wrote: post #133
jwells89 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Upload being low is frustrating. In my area Comcast sells “gigabit” service that’s 1000Mbps/20Mbps which seems like it’s explicitly designed to hook less technically aware customers who know “gigabit” is good but not exactly how. Thankfully there are alternative ISPs here that sell symmetrical gigabit, but that’s definitely not the case everywhere.

In my case Comcast is 800/20 or 1000/35, but they refuse to even advertise the upload rate so you don't know when you're signing up. There's a somewhat outdated, very hard to find page that lists these [1] but many tiers (including mine) don't seem to be shown. [1] https://www.xfinity.com/networkmanagement

ISTR, and this was ~3+ years ago now, that Xfinity/Comcast is quite hard to even find out what the upload speed of the different offerings is. I even was chatting with their support and asking and they were cagey, like "why do you want to know?"

Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]

#323

Post by joemi »

freedomben wrote: post #217
hipadev23 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit cards almost always side with the consumer if you have meaningful spend and very few issues/chargebacks/claims. If you never use the card, and then chargeback, they'll just deny your claim and drop your ass. It's not about the money of the individual charge (for small stuff like this anyway), it's about keeping you happy and spending on the card. I highly doubt the argument itself was relevant whatsoever.

Hasn't worked for me. Chargebacks are pretty much non-existent. The bank will just contact the vendor, ask them if they delivered "the product" and if they just say "yes" (no proof needed, and they always say yes) they deny my claim. I barely even got it back when my kid stole my credit card and gave it to a scammer selling "minecraft accounts." Maybe I need to find a different bank?

That's not how chargebacks work at all in my experience, from the point of view of the company getting charged-back. I worked for a indie small retail store that also sells online, and I was the guy the owner would give the chargeback notices to and was told to "figure it out". No matter whether a chargeback for an in-store charge or an online order, the credit card company never once granted it the store's favor in all the times I tried. Further they require a lot of proof, more proof than we could actually provide. For weborders, simply showing them the weborder and the tracking info was not enough. They needed _proof_ that what was ordered was what was sent, which we couldn't provide because we weren't taking photos/video of us packing the products. For chargebacks on in-store purchases, it was just as burdensome to present proof. I even had one time when the customer emailed saying she did a chargeback by accident, and I provided that email and what records of the sale I had from the POS system, and the chargeback still went through.

(Also, a bit of a side-point: The chargeback notices always had a VERY short window during which you were allowed to contest them. In most cases we had about 5 days to respond, but sometimes the notice wasn't delivered until after the respond-by date.)

Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]

#324

Post by Sohcahtoa82 »

entropicdrifter wrote: post #7
endisneigh wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why shouldn’t there be a cap? Bandwidth isn’t free. It’s sad seeing people on a forum called hacker news having no idea how networking infrastructure works.

Because it's next to free (no additional cost to run the infrastructure we're already running) and we're nowhere near the limits of our existing infrastructure's overall bandwidth limits right now, as evidenced by the lack of caps not affecting quality of internet service for the entirety of 2020, when more people were online per hour than at any previous point in history.

> Because it's next to free (no additional cost to run the infrastructure we're already running)

Aren't we effectively arguing CapEx versus OpEx?

Sure, an ISP's OpEx is tiny. But CapEx is huge, especially when you've got an old neighborhood that's all wired up with copper and you gotta replace it all with fiber going into the house.

Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]

#325

Post by vel0city »

guhidalg wrote: post #174
spiznnx wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If ISPs were like an electric utility, we'd see something like a cost per GB transferred in cents, with a minimum charge reflecting the cost of maintaining a connection of a certain speed to the network. Which is algebraically identical to a monthly charge and data cap with overage charge. The main issue is the overage charge is too high, it should be like 1 cent per GB (Comcast is charging 20x that).

1c/GB would be a decent rate for home data transfer in 2023, but where would you set the free limit? For reference, at my house I have a 1Gbps line and it looks like in 48 hours I have downloaded 1TB of data (looking at the number of received bytes my AT&T device is reporting). Am I normal? I don't know, but AT&T does...

1TB in 48 hours is absolutely not a normal residential connection usage.

The average US residential customer uses a bit over 500GB/mo in data. You're doing 2x that in 1/15th the time.

https://www.allconnect.com/blog/report-internet-use-over-hal...

Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]

#328

Post by kstrauser »

andrewmunsell wrote: post #3

This is nice, but with increased speed, they should also require ISPs do not impose a data cap to be considered broadband.

I wish ISPs were required to advertise the number of seconds you're allowed to use their service at full speed. Ooh, a gigabit pipe with a terabyte cap? You're allowed to use it for 3 hours per month before throttling or extra charges kick in.

I believe it's false advertising when ISPs claim their price is $X per month if it's only for 1/240th of a month. I understand and support the idea of overprovisioning, but a 240x ratio is insanity.

Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]

#329

Post by lifeisstillgood »

isilofi wrote: post #300
Workaccount2 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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…

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

Re: FCC launches inquiry to increase minimum broadband speed [pdf]

#330

Post by doh »

freedomben wrote: post #217
hipadev23 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit cards almost always side with the consumer if you have meaningful spend and very few issues/chargebacks/claims. If you never use the card, and then chargeback, they'll just deny your claim and drop your ass. It's not about the money of the individual charge (for small stuff like this anyway), it's about keeping you happy and spending on the card. I highly doubt the argument itself was relevant whatsoever.

Hasn't worked for me. Chargebacks are pretty much non-existent. The bank will just contact the vendor, ask them if they delivered "the product" and if they just say "yes" (no proof needed, and they always say yes) they deny my claim. I barely even got it back when my kid stole my credit card and gave it to a scammer selling "minecraft accounts." Maybe I need to find a different bank?

This is why I pay almost exclusively with Amex. They do contact a vendor and sometimes the vendor tries to fight it, but if I reopen the dispute, I always get my money back (and I dispute a lot of transactions).

I have the opposite experience with Mastercard. Of the dozen or so disputes across 5 cards I had over the years I essentially lost them all. Visa is somewhere in the middle. They tend to side with customer but also will investigate thoroughly.

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