This is literally every/any ISP that maintains last-mile infrastructure or anything in between. Cable MSO's are (still it seems) the worst, and having worked for various of them in a network engineering capacity, including @home networks the pioneer of cable modems and service, I've seen it for 25+ years after now first or second hand from others that still do. Eventually it's cheaper to pay a call center agent to take their calls and abuse than fix the actual issue in the ground, which is simply business mantra for the 21st century for anything.
A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure
321–330 of 361 posts
Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure
#322This is literally every/any ISP that maintains last-mile infrastructure or anything in between. Cable MSO's are (still it seems) the worst, and having worked for various of them in a network engineering capacity, including @home networks the pioneer of cable modems and service, I've seen it for 25+ years after now first or second hand from others that still do. Eventually it's cheaper to pay a call center agent to ta…
I have pretty good success with a regional provider. I have the option of a national (Verizon) provider, but since switching to fiber on the regional I've had a ~two disconnects, a few minutes of down time in two years. Fiber just seems more reliable.
Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure
#323Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I wonder why we cant mandate Optical Fibre as standard as well. The incumbents have been lobbying against this heavily, winning state laws banning municipalities from setting up their own fiber in some places.
Why should optical fiber be standard? I want reliable, speedy network connectivity. It’s up to my network provider to determine the best means to do that. I don’t care if it’s tin can and string if it provides the service I need.
So municipal networks are a classic example of a natural monopoly, where it's more efficient to just have a single utility network vs redundant infrastructure.
Fiber is good for this because it's both cheap and effectively future proof vs consumer needs. Also, thanks to how IP works, a municipality can build out the physical network, then offer competitive options among ISPs delivering service on it if they like.
This generally results in much better service for consumers at lower cost, which is why Comcast, Century Link, etc, have been doing all the political maneuvering they can to pre-empt voters from choosing that path.
Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure
#324I had a similar problem with a different ISP, Optimum, in Northern NJ. It wasn't as regular as the author's problem -- my cable modem would desync intermittently throughout the day despite the signal strength numbers being in spec. I replaced everything downstream of the drop from the street, all new wiring inside, a new modem/router/etc. All signs pointed to the problem being outside the house. I went so far as to c…
> if you can get a message in that way, it's possible to circumvent the useless consumer-level support Another option is to simply withhold payment for services non-rendered until the issue is fixed. This is totally fine as long as you've got documentation of the issue and a good-faith effort to resolve it with them beforehand. What they want is to get paid; as long as they get paid they have no reason to bother actu…
This is a fantasy. They will disconnect your service and send your unpaid bills to collections. They hold all the cards.
Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure
#325Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its not like it is some monumental task. Fiber is cheaper than copper, and we managed to lay copper telephone lines and power lines to everybody. Where I live right now didn't even have DSL available at any point in time, the local telecomm didn't want to spend money on replacing some of the poorly functioning 60 year old copper lines despite everyone clamoring for any kind of wired connection. And yet a startup ISP…
It reminds of this book https://www.amazon.com/Zero-Sum-Society-Distribution-Possibi... which has a case study of US Steel used lobbying as a weapon against the rest of us by getting protectionism against steel imports because they felt entitled to keep making steel with pre-WWII open health furnaces that had been paid for long ago but produced more expensive and lower quality steel than international competitors who…
Nice turn!
>makes decisions on its own
Somehow, society making decisions on its own is a Stephen King story.. maybe direct democrats should just not use that name that always triggers. How about "civilianism"?
https://jacobin.com/2025/11/mamdani-chavez-torres-municipal-...
A participatory budget, which gave residents binding control over the full municipal investment budget.
Current day examples (which are a bit more nuanced than in Thurow's day, but I'd argue the Gresham bug picture is roughly the same as what you said. "First-mover foot-gun"?)
-Tesla vs BYD (even though Tesla's factories in China are most productive)
-NVIDIA infra (note the optical fiber history repeating itself )
Literary case study: The villain in Snow Crash is a missing element of to-day's oligarch periodic table (Evangelical sham-futurist)
Good names are the first hard quest. To ward off Lasch's alt-institutionism
Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure
#326Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I wonder why we cant mandate Optical Fibre as standard as well. The incumbents have been lobbying against this heavily, winning state laws banning municipalities from setting up their own fiber in some places.
Why should optical fiber be standard? I want reliable, speedy network connectivity. It’s up to my network provider to determine the best means to do that. I don’t care if it’s tin can and string if it provides the service I need.
Fiber is cheaper, faster, and far more reliable. You've already constrained the problem such that fiber is the only possible solution, and there's nothing wrong with that.
Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure
#327I had a problem with Comcast that was that native IPv6 traffic was slower than IPv6 over my Hurricane Electric IPv6 tunnel. Support was no use (no surprise). But I happened to meet someone who worked in Comcast's backbone network. He figured it out and I got 10ms knocked of my native IPv6 ping times. (See https://n1dq.blogspot.com/2015/03/ipv6-comparing-hurricane-e... for the story).
The moral of the story is to find someone who works at Comcast who has Engineer in their job title and reach out directly. Linkedin is your friend here.
Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure
#328Yep, I knew this was Comcast/Xfinity just seeing the title. I had the exact same problem, for years. Intermittent disconnects for a few minutes at a time, multiple times a day. I must have had upwards of 50 technicians come to my house, all insisting there was some problem with the wiring in my house (there wasn’t) or the router or whatever (hardware all replaced multiple times including the wiring). Eventually after…
The government wasted its time harassing Google when it should've been persecuting Comcast.
Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure
#329Had very similar dropouts with Comcast. Fired them years ago. Can't be happier than with the 10G Sonic Fiber. Yes we are lucky.
Re: A monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure
#330Yep, I knew this was Comcast/Xfinity just seeing the title. I had the exact same problem, for years. Intermittent disconnects for a few minutes at a time, multiple times a day. I must have had upwards of 50 technicians come to my house, all insisting there was some problem with the wiring in my house (there wasn’t) or the router or whatever (hardware all replaced multiple times including the wiring). Eventually after…
> The bank instantly ruled in my favor and closed the case, issuing a permanent credit. I have never seen that before. They must be getting tons of Comcast chargebacks to do that.
I did the same thing, except I disputed a collections record on my Credit Report from either AT&T or Comcast. They also ruled in my favor quickly, and I was quite surprised that it wasn't a more difficult process.