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A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

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Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#241

Post by raw_anon_1111 »

j2kun wrote: post #42

The US gov't broke up AT&T and killed Bell Labs for this, so at least they owe us to bust this monopoly

I hate this meme that “government banning monopolies will solve everything”. It’s especially non sensical in this case or in the AT&T analogy. The baby bells still had a local monopoly in their region and cities only had one phone provider - the baby bell.

The case is the same here. Even if you broke up the cable monopoly so they all became regional companies, you still won’t have a choice but for one cable/internet provider in that same location unless the local phone company decides to compete and lay fiber.

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#242

Post by runjake »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #204
ct0 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Contacting the Board of Public Utilities in NJ would have probably been your best bet. By law they need to start addressing issues within a week or so. I had some downed comms cable on my property that they took very seriously after contacting the BPU. Fixed within 2 weeks and the ISP support is local and senior.

No idea about NJ, but here in NM, the PUC (Public Utilities Commission) says that they have authority over telephone service only and can do nothing about internet service (even if it is the same company and same wire bundle).

The key is to look up your local city or county franchise agreements for ISP right-of-ways and then contact those people and that agency. They should be Google-able because they’re public record. In the US, anyway.

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#243

Post by Nextgrid »

neilv wrote: post #231

Comcast/Xfinity did a major upgrade of my neighborhood a few weeks ago, and now I'm getting similar-sounding intermittent outages multiple times a day... but that's not what infuriated me, and not what they will regret. As a technologist, I could understand there are a variety of possible causes, some not their fault, but then they had to go and be unambiguously jerky... My mistake was contacting support, about what…

Edit: apologies, missed the "a few weeks ago" and didn't realize it was still an ongoing matter. Please disregard.

---

Original comment:

> then I got the fraudulent bill, and they autopaid themselves the fraudulent bill.

And yet you let them do it, didn't recall the payment, and seemingly didn't even follow up on the threat?

Looks like mission accomplished for them, of course the customer service monkey is going to do this again and everyone else will also happily look the other way while it's happening.

Yes, corporation-on-consumer-fraud becoming de-facto legal is a major problem (that is unlikely to be something the current US government will address), but it mostly relies on fear/apathy and 90% of people caving in and paying (like you did); disputing the payment is easy and then the ball goes into their court and they must prove you agreed to this new contract/upgrade (which they can't) if they want to get paid.

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#244

Post by light_hue_1 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #219
ksec wrote: post #173

I am reading this and thinking why does it sound familiar. And then only learned Xfinity means Cable / DOCSIS. Edit: I wish the title could be edited as Cable ISP. It is a common problem with DOCSIS! And has been the case since 1.0 era. DO NOT use Cable if you can. It happens when it is over subscribed, as well as other radio interference. Although common cause is over subscription. You may actually try downgrading y…

> mandate electricity and water as well as telephone line as standard. I wonder why we cant mandate Optical Fibre as standard as well Electricity and water was mandated at the time the government mostly did right by the people and wasn't yet (fully) captured by corporate interests. By the time the internet arrived this was no longer the case.

If people actually read history books we'd make much better decisions as a society.

No. Water and electricity were not mandated in a magical past where the government was awesome. The government has been captured by corporations and special interests forever. The level of corruption in the 1800s was astronomical compared to today.

People fought for those rights. Often literally. And they still don't exist in some places.

Arkansas just passed a law that you need a working roof, electricity, heat and water, in 2021.

So no. Sitting around lamenting a past that never existed won't get us anywhere.

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#245

Post by Workaccount2 »

terminalshort wrote: post #38
mh- wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was merely pretty sure that the comment was AI generated as I read it. After reading it, I became a lot more confident when I noticed the username above the comment: Gemini 3 . Is this a Wordpress plugin the blog author is using?

Amazing that we now live in a world where AI can instantly an accurately diagnose a network infrastructure problem, but you are still forced to talk to CS drones who tell you again and again "have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in?"

Going off on a tangent now, but man, I wish when you called support you could go through a quick technical competency test, and your results dictated who you got support from.

Nailing dense questions about network infrastructure? You get to the engineering team.

Failing to know what the "G" in 2.4GHz means? You probably just need someone to tell you to restart your router.

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#246

Post by runjake »

bob1029 wrote: post #86

Infrastructure is difficult. I have to run 2 ISPs these days. FTTP and DOCSIS. The fiber line is obviously my primary and it's completely flawless when it's working. The problem is that about once or twice a year a utility contractor will break the fiber in my neighborhood and it can go out for up to 2 days. Cellular service is not sufficient to cover. The cable connection is what I use when the fiber goes down hard…

What caveats? It sounds like Starlink would be a perfect backup and likely save you a lot of money.

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#247

Post by Workaccount2 »

qingcharles wrote: post #235
joezydeco wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days you get a lot better result from any company if you take a few minutes, find the email of a few VPs in the target company, and write the execs directly. Exec fowards the email to the correct underling with "WTF?" added to it. You get phone calls the next day.

This can work. I have mixed results these days, usually down to issues of finding the right email addresses. I've been using SignalHire, but I need to use one with a deeper, more accurate database.

Yeah, the trick is just getting to the other side of the "support wall". They go to great lengths to keep customers from wasting all their time (which frankly would indeed happen), but if you can get through (err, around) with a legitimate issue, the person on the other side usually cares about getting it fixed.

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#248

Post by anon7000 »

This story is so relatable it hurts. The amount of my time ISP executives have wasted by their malicious decision to absolutely gut “technical” support… It should be illegal to run a “support” department where most agents don’t understand the bare minimum of basics about how the internet works.

I’ve had issues like this with all 3 of my past 3 ISPs, which included Comcast, Astound (WaveG), and CenturyLink. The last two are even gigabit fiber…

Astound had an issue where their upstream device wouldn’t let me get an IPv6 address (despite allegedly supporting it) and some packet sniffing revealed a specific issue that of course no support could help with. So any customer in this building will continue having that problem. Anyways, I ultimately canceled service after they had a 36 hour outage in the summer with no storms. And this was in downtown Seattle — the two closest buildings are a god damned datacenter and Amazon offices.

CenturyLink was slightly better… but I noticed after signing up for the service that the fiber line going to their ONT had a bad kink in it which obviously breaks fiber. It took me like 5 chats and a couple phone calls to get them to send a technician, and even then, the technician said I was lucky they sent the only person who had and knew how to use the fiber splicer thing… That shouldn’t be fucking lucky! Every single person I talked to knew I needed my fiber line to be spliced because I told them exactly what the problem and fix was. Absolutely absurd.

Executives should be punished for making customer service categorically awful, and yet they simply get promotions and bonuses for making it cheaper. I hope every exec who decided to make customer support useless could have these stories shoved down their throats for the rest of their lives.

Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

#250

Post by Nextgrid »

immibis wrote: post #121

It's way easier than you'd think to start an ISP - at least if you're content to only provide internet to datacenter servers. That's a competitive market. You can buy switches and routers and servers, rent colo space, rent leased lines between DCs, pay for internet access from some upstreams and IXes and sell internet access to others in the same DCs. It's still difficult but it's possible, even for an individual. An…

Hosting and connectivity by itself is a really efficient cash incinerator - the only way out is to use it as a loss leader and then upsell the customers on other services, or sell them the connectivity as part of a greater package (you're no longer selling "connectivity" you're selling "we maintain and make sure your web service stays online and reachable").
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