100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say • Hacker News Board

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#241

Post by croutonwagon » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 8:24 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #182

Panino wrote: post #3

> The funding is going to a mix of cable, fiber, and fixed wireless providers, plus SpaceX's Starlink satellite network. I think cable providers should be left out. They were already gifted many billions of dollars in the past for this same basic purpose but they pocketed the money. They can just use the free money they've already been given. Instead, the funding should go to existing munipical fiber ISPs to expand t…

With Starlink I think the competition will get more real for them. In the rare markets with actual competition the shitty cable companies provide at least okay service. In Palo Alto I can get 1gbps down/35mbps up on Comcast for $89 (with 1TB data cap I have to pay $50 extra to remove). That's not too bad. They also offer a 2gbps down and up service called gigabit pro, but it requires installation and it's pretty expe…

>They also offer a 2gbps down and up service called gigabit pro, but it requires installation and it's pretty expensive: https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/comments/fs6un2/comc.... It's also hard to get because the reps on the phone are not well trained and don't know about it.

This is how you know they arent really concerned about competition. This level of service is probably not quite a profitable because they likely cant oversubscribe their GPON nodes as aggressively with customers on that tier. The only other explanation is they dont care they are leaving money on the table.

In my area comcast is $89 for 200/10. And I live in an area with a significantly lower COL than Palo Alto.

I have to monitor my network for bandwidth usage and recently had to revert back to sneakernet for offsite backups because i was routinely approaching the data cap.

The only other option is CenturyLink DSL at like 5Mbps/768Kbps...

Starlink is available and frankly im considering it out of spite. I canceled cable and have the rare unbundled comcast plan. I could easily run dual ISP's for a while and be around what I was paying for cable TV and if starlink pan's out....i can just axe comcast.

But a 40ms first hop may not be tenable. Not sure.

I definitely dont live in a large city. But its not really the boonies either.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#242

Post by gonehome » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 8:57 PM UTC

croutonwagon wrote: post #241

gonehome wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With Starlink I think the competition will get more real for them. In the rare markets with actual competition the shitty cable companies provide at least okay service. In Palo Alto I can get 1gbps down/35mbps up on Comcast for $89 (with 1TB data cap I have to pay $50 extra to remove). That's not too bad. They also offer a 2gbps down and up service called gigabit pro, but it requires installation and it's pretty expe…

>They also offer a 2gbps down and up service called gigabit pro, but it requires installation and it's pretty expensive: https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/comments/fs6un2/comc .... It's also hard to get because the reps on the phone are not well trained and don't know about it. This is how you know they arent really concerned about competition. This level of service is probably not quite a profitable because th…

Yeah - even regular 1gbps down/35mbps up gigabit was hard to get when I first signed up.

I called and asked the guy if it was available, he said not in my area and they'd contact me when it was. This seemed wrong since I'd read it was available (and I guess he was just lying about contacting me?).

I called back and got a new guy, he said it was available but 'installation' was $300. This seemed wrong.

I tried a third time, this guy said I was confused and the word 'gigabit' didn't exist - I must be talking about the 'gigabyte data cap'. I begged him to click around his screen and look for gigabit service. He did and finally found it, "first I've seen this". I asked this guy about gigabit pro and he said it didn't exist.

I'd since switched to using comcast twitter to get someone at least moderately competent when I want something (they know about gigabit pro). Thankfully now I don't have to use them at all.

They are insanely difficult to buy stuff from.

During all those calls they keep pushing TV packages and get upset when I say no thank you. When I called to cancel they kept pushing promotional rates and asking me not to cancel. Even though my new service is less than half price, uncapped and has 30x more upload.

All that said, when the service itself is running it at least works pretty much all the time without issue.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#243

Post by croutonwagon » Fri, Mar 05, 2021, 10:50 PM UTC

gonehome wrote: post #242

croutonwagon wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>They also offer a 2gbps down and up service called gigabit pro, but it requires installation and it's pretty expensive: https://www.reddit.com/r/HomeNetworking/comments/fs6un2/comc .... It's also hard to get because the reps on the phone are not well trained and don't know about it. This is how you know they arent really concerned about competition. This level of service is probably not quite a profitable because th…

Yeah - even regular 1gbps down/35mbps up gigabit was hard to get when I first signed up. I called and asked the guy if it was available, he said not in my area and they'd contact me when it was. This seemed wrong since I'd read it was available (and I guess he was just lying about contacting me?). I called back and got a new guy, he said it was available but 'installation' was $300. This seemed wrong. I tried a third…

That’s my experience as well. Uptime is decent. Just hope an outage is widespread and not at your ground block.

Because god help you if you need to reach out. It will be frustrating and painful and there is no escalation option.

Honestly I get better results just going through the Better Business Bureau. It literally solved my last line down issue faster that way that the empty promises from their call center robots

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#244

Post by pottertheotter » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 4:30 AM UTC

martin_bech wrote: post #183

pottertheotter wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is that way in some areas that have competition, but not many. I'm curious where you are at? And how much is 1000/1000 per month?

Denmark, my isp is 40usd pr month 1000/1000Mpbs.

Thanks for the response! I'm quite jealous. The lowest I've seen for symmetrical 1Gbps here is ~$65, and that's rare.

Any chance I could ask you a few questions about internet access in Denmark? I'm working towards some local improvements here in the U.S. and curious to get some more data points.

If you email me at hnPotterTheOtter ~ gmail it will go to my normal email address.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#245

Post by pottertheotter » Mon, Mar 08, 2021, 4:34 AM UTC

Scandiravian wrote: post #217

pottertheotter wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is that way in some areas that have competition, but not many. I'm curious where you are at? And how much is 1000/1000 per month?

Also from DK. I have a 1000/1000 connection for approximately 20$ per month There was talks about upgrading to 10gbit/10gbit for 30$, since the infrastructure can deliver that, but since consumer hardware is still stuck at 1gbit it was postponed until there's actually a market for it

Thanks for the response! I'm quite jealous. The lowest I've seen in the U.S. for symmetrical 1Gbps is ~$65, and that's rare. Even more rare is 10Gbps, and the cheapest I've seen is $250. The best I can get is 940/35, for $120/month :(

Any chance I could ask you a few questions about internet access in Denmark? I'm working towards some local improvements here in the U.S. and curious to get some more data points.

If you email me at hnPotterTheOtter ~ gmail it will go to my normal email address.

Re: 100Mbps uploads and downloads should be US broadband standard, senators say

#246

Post by morpheos137 » Tue, Mar 09, 2021, 8:34 PM UTC

fomine3 wrote: post #184

morpheos137 wrote: post #147

I would say very few residential customers need more than 10Mbps upload. For 100Mbps you could run about 50 Zooms simultaneously. Who does that? Unless you are massively uploading (likely illegal content) who needs greater than 10Mbps upstream at home?

Then we lose ability to develop new services that requires uplink bandwidth. Even now, there are services that need such bandwidth like cloud storages, YouTube.

This is kind of the whole problem with the world right now in multiple areas. We have a delusion that we are in a post scarcity age. I watch modern youtube videos on my 14 year old thinkpad on 802.11b wifi without issue. It works fine, seriously.