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Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users

arstechnica.com

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Re: Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users

#51

Post by dmunoz »

nucleardog wrote: post #41
drcube wrote: post #15

>Of course, not everyone's home Internet is terrible. I dispute this. Is Google Fiber all right? Do you Silicon Valley folks get decent service? Because out here in the real world, ISPs are uniformly horrible. I haven't met or talked to anyone on the entire Internet who is satisfied, or simply not constantly enraged, by their ISP. It seems every single one is corrupt and incompetent at the same time.

Our primary ISP is crown-owned (it's basically a public utility, just like our power, water, gas, etc). They also provide phone service and cellular service. Their prices are not the best in the world, but they're reasonable and the best around here. While every other ISP is trying to find ways to get people to use less data to avoid infrastructure upgrades, they're rolling out FTTH. $160/mo get's you 200/60. Everywh…

I'm only guessing here based on what you said and what little knowledge I have, but you're talking about SaskTel in Saskatchewan, right? Others who find it interesting might want to look into them.

From what I have heard about SaskTel's cellular service, I'm jealous that more provinces haven't adopted the model. Of course, crown corporations are not always so rosy; a few provinces over, we have the mess that is BC Ferries.

Re: Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users

#52

Post by Spittie »

tehwalrus wrote: post #3

In the UK, we have loads of broadband companies who sell service through BT phonelines. (catch: you have to pay BT for line rental, which at £13/month isn't too bad, and you do get a phone number for that.) This acts very much like the "municipal fiber network" proposed in the article - all your customer service is with who you pay your bill to, and they set your download limits and any throttling (and there are more…

Sadly this doesn't always work. We have a similar system here in Italy (Telecom Italia own pretty much the whole phone network, and it's forced to rent it to other ISP, at a low price because it's considered a monopoly).

Fine, yes? No. The other ISP just rent less bandwidth than they'd really need, so they can't offer a decent service (during peak hour it's very easy to get less speed than what you'd get with a 56k).

It doesn't help that we don't have a cable network too, so we're stuck with the phone one. This mean low theoretical max speed (20mb down and 1mb up, with adsl2+), and the signal get really bad as soon as you get a bit far from the central.

Now, this is (very slowly) changing, the bigger ISP are starting to get their own infrastructure and some big cities are starting to get cabled in FTTC (no FTTH because "or copper network is good enough" [sic]). I've also the feeling that I won't see FTTC anytime soon, even if I live ~10km from Milan.

There's also to say that there isn't really any interests for high-speed internet. Last I've heard, only 15% of the people reached by a 20/1 connection buy it (preferring the slower 10/1 or 7/480k, which cost respectively 1€/month and 5€/month less).

Re: Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users

#53

Post by crymer11 »

drcube wrote: post #15

>Of course, not everyone's home Internet is terrible. I dispute this. Is Google Fiber all right? Do you Silicon Valley folks get decent service? Because out here in the real world, ISPs are uniformly horrible. I haven't met or talked to anyone on the entire Internet who is satisfied, or simply not constantly enraged, by their ISP. It seems every single one is corrupt and incompetent at the same time.

I love the service I get from my ISP (EPB) - 1 Gb/s symmetrical fiber connection for ~$70/month with customer service that's been very pleasant and helpful every time I've dealt with them. FWIW, EPB is owned by the city of Chattanooga, so they aren't your typical ISP. My only complaint is that you have to be a business customer to be assigned a static IP address (which is reasonable), but they've mentioned they'll be re-evaluating that policy once they're switched over to IPv6 (and there's the fact that my address hasn't changed since switching to them over 3 years ago).

Re: Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users

#54

Post by km3k »

drcube wrote: post #15

>Of course, not everyone's home Internet is terrible. I dispute this. Is Google Fiber all right? Do you Silicon Valley folks get decent service? Because out here in the real world, ISPs are uniformly horrible. I haven't met or talked to anyone on the entire Internet who is satisfied, or simply not constantly enraged, by their ISP. It seems every single one is corrupt and incompetent at the same time.

I'm actually happy with my Verizon FIOS in Western New York. That said, I am in a grandfathered special plan where I get 25Mb up & down for $45 a month. I have no idea how long that will last.

I haven't had many problems with their service except that once or twice a year the DHCP lease on their server gets stuck where it won't give me an IP and I need to call them to break the DHCP lease so I can get an IP address. The last couple times I broke the DHCP lease via their Twitter support ( https://twitter.com/VerizonSupport ) and it was faster than calling on the phone. I also use OpenDNS so I don't know if their DNS servers are bad.

I use OpenDNS because I used to have Time Warner Cable and their DNS servers went down several times per week.

Re: Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users

#55

Post by carlospaulino »

drcube wrote: post #15

>Of course, not everyone's home Internet is terrible. I dispute this. Is Google Fiber all right? Do you Silicon Valley folks get decent service? Because out here in the real world, ISPs are uniformly horrible. I haven't met or talked to anyone on the entire Internet who is satisfied, or simply not constantly enraged, by their ISP. It seems every single one is corrupt and incompetent at the same time.

It's true that TWC and Comcast are the worst of all. But I have to disagree, not all providers suck.

In my current town (Clifton, NJ) we can get Verizon FIOS and Optimum. Both providers are fighting fiercely for customers.

I used FIOS for a year and it was great, no caps,full speeds and good support. I later switched to Optimum and it is fantastic, I've never been so happy with a service provider, they upgraded most users from 50mbit to 100mbit for free, and they are actually giving me a true 100mbit connection, not to mention an outstanding customer support.

Re: Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users

#56

Post by ahlatimer »

coldcode wrote: post #5

Funny how efficient electric service is now in Texas. There is one outfit that installs and maintains the lines, and dozens of competing service companies that just handle billing (and oddly enough all use the same third party billing software). Compare that with the ISP situation where each town has a cable company and a phone company and that's it. Except where an older phone company had a presence years ago where…

Depends on where in Texas you're talking about. In Austin, we have the City of Austin Utilities (though the suburbs do seem to have options). El Paso only had one option when I lived there, too.

Re: Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users

#57

Post by sarah2079 »

Talking with Comcast on the phone can seem like talking to someone from another planet. When I moved last year and needed to move my service with me, I was instructed to just bring the Comcast box to the new place myself, and then call a specific number when I had connected it to turn service on. Great! I thought, that sounds easy.

Well it turns out the people answering at that number (the number they gave me, remember) were completely unfamiliar with the concept of moving. "You want to do what?" they asked incredulously, as if I was the first person they had ever encountered who had moved from one residence to another.

"I have moved. My service has already been disconnected at the old address, and I would like to activate it at my new address" I repeated, thinking they had just misheard me.

"Have you tried unplugging it and then plugging it back in?" they offered helpfully.

After an hour on the phone and many, many transfers I was finally able to talk to someone who could handle this bizarre and complicated request. I hate to think how much time it will cost me if I ever have a real problem.

Re: Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users

#58

Post by Joeri »

caiob wrote: post #12

Lately, I don't mind connection speeds as much as I care about absurd data caps. It's almost 2014, for god sake. Are we still having to fight for our data usage?

My cable provider finally got rid of data caps, only to reinstate them when netflix started making waves about coming to my country. I suspect the only reason data caps exist at all at this point is to avoid online vod services from completely replacing traditional cable tv.

Re: Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users

#59

Post by wtallis »

humanrebar wrote: post #43
MichaelGG wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would regulation freeze technical expectations? IP transit pretty much boils down to cables and switches. A regulatory model that mandates specific speeds could probably even specify allowed tariffs. In theory it should be fine. I'm not sure there's a whole lot of "business models" for such a simple thing as transit. Most of those models are just trying to find breakage so you can market services you hopefully do…

I don't think transit is an apt analog to data provider services. I also don't think transit is regulated to the degree that you would like to regulate data. We don't have omnibus shipping/commuting/travelling utilities, and many of the constituent parts of this hypothetical megautility (USPS, AmTrak) are money pits that fail to adapt to the changing needs of the population. In other words, I don't think transit is a…

He's not talking about DOT road/rail/air transit. He's talking about IP transit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_transit

It's the most basic and fundamental service provided by an ISP, and should be the only service ISPs can provide, to prevent the conflicts of interest that make net neutrality regulations a necessity. When ISPs are an endpoint for traffic rather than just a conduit for it, they have a financial incentive to try to force their customers to use their content services over external content providers.

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