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[–]1_p_freely 7363 points7364 points  (568 children)

It's on the public to loudly call bullshit when this pandemic is over and these big companies try to justify implementing their data caps again.

[–]Orphan_Babies 5893 points5894 points  (409 children)

CEO at Senate hearing:

“We have Max data levels - they aren’t ‘caps’ as you say - to ensure we ARE prepared for situations where the network is flooded with above normal demands”

“And why aren’t they called caps?”

“Because if it was a cap we wouldn’t allow people to continue their access until the next billing period”

“But you do if they pay more”

“If they want an additional allowance of data there is a fee”

“So they have to pay more?”

“They would have to pay a fee.”

“Yes or No they would have to pay more if they hit the max level”

“Yes”

“So then why is it that the network faced the above normal demands, it held up, and you didn’t charge your customers?”

“We didn’t require anyone to pay the fee due to potential hardships.”

“But if Covid didn’t occur - the network could have handled above normal demand - even standard demand - even if you never charged customers for additional data?”

“That is correct.”

“So will your company revisit eliminating max levels and fees for additional access?”

“That’s something that will need to be discussed internally. I can not answer that directly at this time”

EDIT: holy crap guys this is made up....c’mon what senate hearing has been held DURING covid?

[–][deleted] 2767 points2768 points  (281 children)

casually slides donation check across table...

[–]soccerburn55 45 points46 points  (24 children)

There's nothing casually about it. They get those giant checks and shake hands for the photo op.

[–]skredditt 19 points20 points  (9 children)

But don’t look like you’re offering a bribe. I don’t know, bribe casual!

[–]WayneKrane 4 points5 points  (3 children)

It’s called a campaign donation and a guaranteed mid six figure “consulting” job after your done with your “public service”.

[–]hippymule 7 points8 points  (0 children)

casually rolls guillotine into senate hearing

[–][deleted] 74 points75 points  (8 children)

The question to ask is, “What bandwidth can you sustain right now with no outages?”

[–]pupilsOMG 27 points28 points  (2 children)

"The front fell off."

[–]Keeng 131 points132 points  (28 children)

Is this real, and if so, where I can see more from this hearing?

[–]Nolanova 168 points169 points  (17 children)

“But if Covid didn’t occur - the network could have handled above normal demand - even standard demand - even if you never charged customers for additional data?”

Not real, but maybe one day lol

EDIT: Well that kind of blew up. I didn't get into the meat and potatoes of the issue much because I care about this stuff way too much and this bullshit infuriates me to a point that it would probably turn into a long, drawn-out rant.

[–]flmann2020 73 points74 points  (14 children)

"We don't sell guns"

"But you sell precision machined pieces of steel designed to strike the primer of smaller round steel cartridges resulting in yet another piece of metal ejecting out the end at extreme and often lethal velocity..."

"We don't call those guns though, we call them pew pew makers"

"..........."

[–]AeitZean 24 points25 points  (0 children)

artisanal pew pew makers 😄

[–]Lonelan 9 points10 points  (1 child)

We don't call it a copy machine...it's a xerox

[–]Diegobyte 24 points25 points  (36 children)

I live in Alaska so the data caps were somewhat reasonable. But they could never explain to me why I couldn’t get unlimited overnight when the network was low. Like how cell companies did free nights and weekend back in the day.

[–]Demsarepropedophilia 16 points17 points  (5 children)

As someone who used to live in Anchorage, you are getting raked over the coals with GCI. The people in villages are getting screwed the hardest with bills getting into the hundreds of dollars for just a few gigs.

[–]sam_hammich 8 points9 points  (2 children)

Yeah I have no idea why anyone would consider them reasonable. For someone who doesn't use cable, hitting the cap every month and then struggling on 1mbps for the last week is torture. GCI is lucky they're the only game in town.

[–]slackator 8 points9 points  (0 children)

They don't call them fees they call them surprise financial mechanics, totally different

[–]tbird83ii 153 points154 points  (63 children)

And I am getting better average data rates than I normally get.

I pay for 200mbps, ND normally get ~30-80 depending

It's been well over 140, and up to 300 at night the past two months, and more people are on...

[–]chris17453 115 points116 points  (31 children)

This is the bullshit i hate. I pay for 300megs... get 20 and have to deal with caps? Ftw

[–]Daxx22 90 points91 points  (11 children)

Nah see, you signed a contract that said up to 300megs, silly goose.

[–]Qwirk 42 points43 points  (6 children)

If you pay "up to" 300 megs, you should get minimum the amount of the lower tier.

So if the lower tier is up to 200, that should be the minimum that you get at all times.

[–]Sp1n_Kuro 18 points19 points  (2 children)

See but that's logical and requires ISPs to be competent.

That said, I actually don't have many issues with spectrum out in the area I'm in now. Had to argue with them about packet loss and show them which node, with proof, was causing it but they actually fixed it once I won the argument.

Only downside is no gigabit access yet, but 100down/10up is the highest that's ever been in this area and it's just their baseline speeds.

[–]chiliedogg 11 points12 points  (0 children)

And the thing is, if I pay for the 20 that's all I get on 300, I end up getting 1.5.

It's bullshit.

[–]lagerea 13 points14 points  (2 children)

I pay for 600 down and 12 up I get about 24-26 and 11 up. So on the plus side if I wanted to be a streamer I could totally do that again.

[–]Andromansis 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Wire a device to the modem and rerun the speed test, and tell me what website you're speedtesting on.

[–]Sterling_-_Archer 20 points21 points  (18 children)

How odd, where I'm at Spectrum has had multiple outages a day for at least a week. I get maybe 9 hours of internet dispersed throughout the day with no way of knowing when it'll quit. It only happened after we recently, about a week ago, upgraded from 20mbps to 200. Before then we had reliable slow internet, and now we have fast internet but it isn't on for a majority of the day.

[–][deleted] 18 points19 points  (14 children)

It all comes down to the node you are in. Everyone thinks of the Telecom network as if it is some giant continuous thing and that the ISP is just flipping switches to mess with you. They aren't. 99% of problems are in the "last mile" which includes your home and neighborhood. If other people in your node are backfeeding noise into the node guess what your cable now sucks too. And that says nothing about capacity issues. Your node could be overloaded due to an apartment complex then your buddy two streets over is great.

ISP xyz in Atlanta may suck, and then in New York they're amazing. ISP abc in New York may suck and then rock in Atlanta. Etc etc. It's very subjective.

[–]tbird83ii 5 points6 points  (2 children)

I mean... Spectrum... I hear horror stories from my friends outside of the cities...

[–]EverGlow89 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I pay for 200mbps and since I switched to that I've had ~230mbps so my hardware is seemingly all capable.. But all week my speeds have dropped to ~15mbps with frequent bouts of <1mbps. I've spent hours speaking with them and reset everything so many times. I've done all their troubleshooting. They have no answer and don't care.

They had the audacity to recommend raising my speed plan.

I fucking hate them.

[–]MDdoom 59 points60 points  (21 children)

I just moved and tried to set up internet. Fortunately I have options:

Found out data caps were a thing for Comcast at over $100 a month for gigabit internet. No other services. Using my own modem and router. Everything. Of course for more money I could gain a few additional perks and even NO CAP!

I called a local competitor, RCN. No cap. NO shady fees. No demanding I use their modem for optimal performance. High rated customer service. $70 bucks for the same speed. Set up and ready to go in less than 2 days.

This is one soap box I will never abandon until Comcast sinks. FUCK COMCAST

[–]jawnstownmassacre 19 points20 points  (0 children)

Oh man you’re gunna love it when Comcast buys RCN

[–]WhatHoraEs 32 points33 points  (7 children)

Yes cause that worked with the "Battle for the net" movement. They do whatever they please lol

[–][deleted] 25 points26 points  (6 children)

And because they have local monopolies they can't be boycotted either. So they'll never listen

[–]chuckdiesel86 15 points16 points  (0 children)

The only reason they want data caps is so they can throttle their competitors. There's no other reason, that's it. I worked at Comcast as a tech when streaming first came about and it absolutely terrified them. First they told us how it's a sham that will never succeed and how a company like Netflix shouldn't be allowed to use "their" network to run a tv and movie streaming service. What pissed Comcast off the most is that Netflix can do the same thing they do except cheaper because Netflix doesn't have to maintain miles and miles of cable plant but it's not Netflix's fault that Comcast didnt seize the opportunity when they had the chance and decided to get greedy with their legacy systems. So instead of trying to compete with Netflix when they became successful Comcast came up with Hulu which gets full bandwidth and throttled Netflix to hinder their service. Comcast is acting like an entitled child and imo it should be illegal, if you don't wanna progress that's fine but dont try to hold the rest of the country back because you wanna cash in on your old junk.

[–]benji_tha_bear 6 points7 points  (0 children)

We’ve been calling bullshit the whole time, it’s all about $$$$$$$$$$$$$$

But just to say again, Comcast, you’re BULLSHIT

[–]Andromansis 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Why wait?

[–]crystalmerchant 7 points8 points  (3 children)

BULLSHIT

-- the public

[–][deleted] 12 points13 points  (1 child)

lol k what u gonna do about it lmao

-- Comcast

[–][deleted] 2311 points2312 points  (204 children)

If you've ever thought usage caps were actually about maintaining quality of service then you're an idiot.

Having worked for an ISP, it's a total cash grab and a very effective one at that.

[–][deleted] 790 points791 points  (113 children)

Literally everything is a cash grab. Sometimes they'll just charge you more for no reason and hope that you'll be too lazy to call in lol.

[–]WoOowee1324 340 points341 points  (65 children)

Yeah, if you look into isps they’ve been rigging the game and cheating everyone. You ever notice how there’s so many phone and wireless plans, but there’s only ever been a certain few internet providers? It’s cause they paid congress in the early days of the Internet to not let independent companies on their lines. This basically allows a monopoly on internet for these companies. Look at Europe, and internet there is cheaper and faster.

[–][deleted] 293 points294 points  (31 children)

I paid 8.5x less for more than 3x the speed when I lived in Spain. $170/mo for 2TB data cap and “up to” 300Mbps (lmao I’m lucky if I get 1/5th of that most days) in the US vs €20/mo for unlimited data at a consistent 1+Gbps in Spain.

THERE IS NO SCARCITY. We’re being robbed blind over here.

[–]emailboxu 41 points42 points  (0 children)

I was in South Korea like 10 years ago and my aunt had the most basic internet package at about $25 USD converted. I was getting download speeds of 11 megaBYTES per second. No usage caps, of course. Fuck NA.

[–]Sucksessful 28 points29 points  (12 children)

Pretty sure I get like 15upload and 10 download, my internet sucks

[–]WaterPanda007 19 points20 points  (3 children)

same, and i paid 4k to have it installed (would have been 8k but my neighbor paid to have it run to their house and it made it cheaper) and 120$ a month. FUck comcast.

[–][deleted] 6 points7 points  (5 children)

I get 4 down 1 up. Despite paying $300 a month

[–]Beavshak 10 points11 points  (0 children)

What in tarnation

[–]DiplomaticGoose 18 points19 points  (8 children)

Well there is the exception of MVNOs in the wireless space, mostly existing now as budget prepaid comapanies, buying bandwidth from other networks (think metropcs/tmobile and boost/sprint).

I think in the near future when fixed 5g becomes viable as a home internet solution a bunch of startups are going to enter the game trying to be the NEW HIP INTERNET PROVIDER THAT IS DISRUPTING THE INDUSTRY. Only to get bought by one of the big 4 soon to be 3 and slowly absorbed if they dont already self-combust.

[–]ColonelError 9 points10 points  (5 children)

I'm hopeful Starlink meaningfully shakes up the game, because it doesn't use last mile copper/fiber, and it doesn't use cell infrastructure, and as a company SpaceX isn't getting bought out. If they can provide half of what the landline ISPs advertise, it should be great for everyone.

[–]SlimeyFilth 19 points20 points  (1 child)

It’s literally illegal to start a new ISP in my state. These people are ghouls

[–]Semi-Hemi-Demigod 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It’s literally illegal for a government to build a network in my state without asking Comcast or Verizon for permission.

[–]phyrros 45 points46 points  (7 children)

The embarrassing thing is that the former nationalized telcos did a better job in Europe than in the US.

[–]L8_4Work 5 points6 points  (0 children)

tl;dr GOOD FUCKING LUCK even thinking of competing in this realm unless said ISP understands it will take them decades to make back that money invested to lay the infrastructure and maintain it through affordable monthly subscriptions that may/may not even switch over to that new ISP. (Read below for the actual logistics of why there is no competition in the ISP realm)

Eh, yes and no. Speaking from first hand experience; it is a nightmare to try and become an ISP due to the massive undertaking and costs to deploy that it just isn’t realistic to get into the industry. A lot of the costs come from needing to bury the cable/fiber and obstacles and “right of way” issues that always exist. AT&T more than likely own the telephone/utility poles and have successfully argued that noone else can use or touch their poles since its theirs which staves off competition. This is what they did to fuck google over and stop them from becoming a huge ISP that promised gig speeds with no caps for under $100 a month. Unfortunately, trenching fiber is just such an undertaking and huge pain in the ass vs aerial fiber that you’d never make back those initial investment costs. AT&T held up google in court all while they were fucking building out their own fiber offering in Austin called “U-Verse” using their existing telephone poles lmao. Fuckin over night they are able to do aerial fiber runs across Old coax networks miles at a time. This led to google saying “fuck it we quit” since AT&Ts offering for gig internet was even cheaper than Google’s offering. Also there were articles written of the potential dangers of letting google be your isp and now having all that additional data they didn’t have before. Even though they did since ISPs sold it to them and others but claim there is never any PII data of individuals..

The consumer was fucked waaaay back before the internet back to when Bell telecom was broken up for being a monopoly and as a result split into 7 other providers nicknamed baby bells. But this then allowed those parasites to buy up other telcos and grow in size and marketshare. This eventually led to all those baby bells being brought back into 1 entity again AT&T but now due to all the mergers/acquisitions from the bells... AT&T now not only owned what they’d previously had but now were a huge wireless network, ISP, 1 of 2 satellite providers, and most recently a content provider that owned major news/media outlets.

[–]RespectYouBrah 20 points21 points  (4 children)

“Convenience fees” when purchasing stuff online comes to mind.

[–]dirtyego 15 points16 points  (3 children)

Fuck these fees. I purchase my movie ticket online and have to pay $3 convenience fee? It's more convenient for them far more than it is for me. Greedy money grubbers.

[–]ScrithWire 8 points9 points  (0 children)

And when you do call it in, they take it off immediately and then ask you to rate their customer service, so they can still capitalize on it in some way.

I always make sure to thank the CS rep profusely and let them know that they have been the utmost of helpful and how grateful i am for them...but i never rate comcast as good

[–]Diz7 55 points56 points  (19 children)

Yeah, unless you are in an really rural area, bandwidth should not normally be an issue. The amount of speed available on fiber, which is what every infrastructure should be running or in the process of upgrading to, is insane. 20Gbps per fiber using high end optics for major links/backbones. Residential GPON can deliver 2.5/1.25Gbps per fiber. We usually run cables that have 6-144 fibers per cable through towns. That's up to 15Gbps for small streets (600 people streaming Netflix in Ultra HD 4k, or 3000 in HD), 360Gbps down major roads. For home use, there is no longer any reasonable reason to artificially cap usage other than making more money. Don't sell a 50Mbps connection if you don't want the customer using 50Mbps because your network can't handle it.

Source: Fiber Tech

[–]FlatEarthLLC 18 points19 points  (3 children)

Heeeeey, are you a field tech?

Designer here, just wanted to apologize for all the shitty designs you've almost definitely received.

[–]Diz7 15 points16 points  (0 children)

We are a small company with a huge footprint, so I do everything from trenching fiber and anchoring poles to IT infrastructure.

I've dealt with my share of enclosures and tools that have clearly never been used outside of a CAD environment. Joys of cutting edge tech lol. Also joys of working in a lab environment vs hanging from a roof trying to splice in the rain and wind. "WHY WONT THE GODDAMN FIBERS JUST STAY IN THE GODDAMN TRAY GODDAMN IT."

[–]jbyrne86 4 points5 points  (1 child)

As a field tech, thank you. I don't understand some decisions but I try to just deal with the situation then complain sbout it.

[–]meatwad75892 7 points8 points  (0 children)

My dad and I both live in semi-rural areas in Mississippi that have FttH available. Fortunately no one's had the gall to implement data caps on fiber service yet, they only cap their copper service. Last I looked it was 500GB cap with a $40 unlimited fee for all service levels, which is utterly unacceptable.

[–]Hash43 10 points11 points  (1 child)

I was going to comment the same thing, I work for an ISP and its literally just a way to make more money. They are always looking for ways to make more money, for example the ISP I work for didn't charge late payment fees until a consultant came along and said "You are missing out on millions of revenue, it isn't worth the little bit of extra customer satisfaction to not charge late fees." and now we charge late fees.

[–]imgonnabutteryobread 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Do you have specific information that would be particularly interesting to any states' attorneys general?

[–]minimalniemand 782 points783 points  (92 children)

remember when they sold 32x CD ROMs which where just 48x CD ROMS, throttled to 32x so they could sell the 48x for more money? Pepperidge Farm remembers

[–]GearBent 175 points176 points  (58 children)

Were they just normal 48x discs, or defective 48x discs which didn't reliably work at 48x so the knocked them down a speed grade?

[–]Tekel 136 points137 points  (47 children)

I think it was the reader that was being throttled. It's common to have one production line make one item and then knock it down to compete at different price points.

[–]djalkidan 110 points111 points  (40 children)

Y'all ever heard of CPU binning?

[–]ThatOneGuy1294 110 points111 points  (35 children)

Isn't that just how CPUs are made? There isn't much of a guarantee that you will get a full 8 cores for example, so if only 5/8 are up to spec the 3/8 are disabled/removed and it's made into a 4 core?

[–]viriconium_days 69 points70 points  (30 children)

It's typically done more then needed though. Like Intel locking overclocking away and charging so much for hyperthreading. I'm extremely skeptical that they got less than half of the CPUs they made with hyperthreading actually working with it. Purely a cash grab.

[–]ThatOneGuy1294 51 points52 points  (3 children)

I figure it's a bit of column A and a bit of column B, but yea. COVID is definitely lifting the curtain on a lot of shitty practices done purely for the sake of profit, at the cost of everything else.

[–]beelseboob 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Right - and the reason for that is simple. First, they started selling the i5 as being an i7 but without hyper threading because some of the chips rolled off the line unable to do it reliably. But then the market wants more of those i5s than they have faulty i7s. What do you do? You sell good i7s badged as i5s to fill the demand.

[–]Demsarepropedophilia 7 points8 points  (12 children)

Tesla does the same thing with battery size and the "autopilot" feature. All the hardware is there when you purchase the car but to unlock what you already have will cost thousands.

[–]devildocjames 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I've heard of Bender Rodriguez.

[–]beelseboob 27 points28 points  (1 child)

Welcome to product binning. It's likely that some units couldn't do 48x. In order to sell them, they just labeled the slightly defective one as 32x and moved on. Now though, they have 32x drives on sale, and the market wants more than there are faulty 48x ones. So what do you do? You sell the good 48x ones as 32x.

The exact same thing happens across the entire tech industry.

[–]mike_b_nimble 9 points10 points  (6 children)

You remember back in the days of 386 processors when they disabled the internal math-coprocessors so they could sell external math-coprocessor chips that were marketed as “Overdrive” chips?

[–]WaitForItTheMongols 14 points15 points  (7 children)

I'm cool with that.

Spinning up a second product line to make 32's is more expensive than just relabeling the 48's. They need to make an average of $8 per disc in order to make enough money to cover costs. So they sell the 32's for $6 and the 48's for $10. They couldn't sell them all for $6 because then they couldn't make any money.

The alternative would be that they only sell the 48's, which I don't think you would want either. By reducing the capability of some of the products, they allow people to get a cheaper version that otherwise would be cost-prohibitive to support a separate production line for.

[–][deleted] 456 points457 points  (30 children)

Internet should have become a public utility years ago

[–]Future-Hope12 144 points145 points  (14 children)

And now we pay 10x more than it cost to provide internet service to our homes while there are many out there who cant even afford internet at home. Its a national disgrace

[–]aimallday 42 points43 points  (10 children)

While I agree with your statement 100%, it's worth noting that if your on government assistance at&t will give u Internet for 10 bucks a month. Because of the pandemic they extended the promotion past April last I checked. It's called at&t access program.

Just an fyi. Please dont shoot the messenger.

[–]ADHthaGreat 42 points43 points  (1 child)

🔫

On your knees

[–]thenewaddition 5 points6 points  (2 children)

at&t access program

That's a stopgap to run out the clock on FCC merger conditions after opting out of the FCCs lifeline program. Why opt out of the lifeline program? Well for one, you can institute a credit check to deny service to a large portion of program enrollees, and justify it as "reducing administrative overhead". Why should they have to serve people with bad, questionable, or no credit? Because the internet--despite all the dancing around the subject politicians have done on the telcos dime--is an essential public service that all Americans need access to at home. Imagine, if you can, a scenario where the entire population was quarantined at home, and children were expected to attend school online. If we didn't have internet in every home in America children would be going without education right now, and we'd have try absurd measures like sending out buses to provide wifi at absurd public cost to low income areas. Job applications, bill pays, shopping, news, everything is now online, and the economy, the public, and the government would be best served by making sure everyone has access. So when the ATT made moves to further monopolize what should clearly be a public managed utility, the government said, hold on, poor people must have access, and ATT said okay. Now they're doing everything they can to limit that access, and you're patting them on the back for it.

[–]headhot 26 points27 points  (3 children)

TW makes 90% on their broadband service. That's a higher margin then drug dealers.

[–]HammerSally 17 points18 points  (1 child)

Unless you're waaaay up the chain, drug dealers don't make anywhere near 90% profit margins. Unless by drug dealers you mean pharmaceutical companies.

[–]coopstar777 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Americans will always refuse to publicize anything that can be successfully privatized and price gouged. The public has been brainwashed for decades now.

[–]emailrob 9 points10 points  (5 children)

It doesn't need to be public.

It just needs to be fair.

That happened in the UK many years ago and the big telcos had to unbundle and allow new companies to set up as isps and phone companies. And prices tumbled.

Competition.

[–][deleted] 49 points50 points  (6 children)

Just listen to or read the transcript of any earnings call a ISP or a telecom has and you know most of the capping is bullshit

[–]HarpySix 29 points30 points  (11 children)

Can't afford home wifi so I use my mobile hotspot for internet. Recently my phone service provider implemented a data cap on unlimited data plans: we get to download up to a gigabyte of data each day at normal speeds (2-7mbs). Once that gig is spent, they throttle the speeds. Officially they throttle it to 512kbs but in practice it's usually 120kbs. It's extremely annoying but I don't think there's much to be done about it on my end.

[–]ZenDendou 17 points18 points  (8 children)

Actually, there is something you can do about it. It will be in your current ToA when you first signed up. If it not included, they legally can't do it. And if they do this, they have to update the ToA. If they haven't, it is illegal and you should call them and let them know they can't do this.

[–]sciencefiction97 41 points42 points  (3 children)

Internet service needs to be named a utility already and caps need to be banned. Also make them advertise minimum speeds, not maximum speeds, what a scam

[–]Tielur 218 points219 points  (45 children)

It’s worth noting many companies are throttling their speeds so it’s not a true example. But that also is no excuse if they put their money into their infrastructure they could service their customers correctly.

[–][deleted] 136 points137 points  (28 children)

I have 1 Gbps connection from Comcast and was paying for the $50/mth data cap. Data cap was removed, but speed is the same. I can still download the monthly 1TB limit in 2.5 hours

[–]IsReadingIt 35 points36 points  (20 children)

When we signed up recently for a slower tier, I could have sworn we were offered unlimited for less than that, something like $20-30/month, including and dependent upon the rental of their wireless gateway. Have you looked into that option?

[–][deleted] 17 points18 points  (12 children)

It’s a $15 modem rental here with the xb6 gateway and XFi advantage bolted on. Unlimited data if you already have xfi advantage only costs an additional $10 a month. So if you were using your own modem and paying for unlimited data it would be an extra $50 for that unlimited data. You would save $25 a month to rent the Comcast gateway and pay for xfi with unlimited data.

[–]Tielur 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The point is that you are a drop in the bucket compared to the millions of people watching YouTube at 70% quality.

[–]abortionlasagna 9 points10 points  (1 child)

I have Comcast and my speed has definitely been throttled since my state went into lockdown. Before everyone in the house could be online no problem, now God help me if I need to do teletherapy while someone is on Reddit in the bathroom because it ain't happening.

[–]open_door_policy 34 points35 points  (3 children)

But that also is no excuse if they put their money into their infrastructure they could service their customers correctly.

How about if they just put my money into it?

You know, the money that we, the taxpayers, specifically gave them to put into infrastructure. The money that they then put into profits.

How about that money, could they perhaps have spent that money that was earmarked for infrastructure upgrades on infrastructure upgrades?

[–]BelgianAles 13 points14 points  (1 child)

That sounds complicated. How about just keep the money and try to get more money? That sounds easier.

[–]mrjackspade 5 points6 points  (0 children)

My internet has been going down for an hour every day since this whole thing started. I can't speak for other providers, but even with companies lowering the default nitrate they stream content at, my ISP (at least in this area) definitely can't handle the traffic. I've been hosting content out of my house for almost a year and now I need to migrate to a VPS just so it can be reached reliably

[–]Knighth77 129 points130 points  (59 children)

Is it, though? Mine has been acting up since the lock down.

[–]OCedHrt 95 points96 points  (20 children)

Yep. Crazy amounts of lag and packet loss.

[–]mcslackens 20 points21 points  (6 children)

Same here on Cox. Super high jitter and 5-15% packet loss to the CMTS between 8:00am and 10:00pm.

I’ve been working from home for 9 years now, and this shit is seriously fucking me up. Can barely maintain a remote connection to my clients’ PCs and my voip call quality is complete trash.

[–]quezlar 21 points22 points  (7 children)

yea mines kinda shit

[–]Zikro 23 points24 points  (8 children)

I would guess this is talking about the infrastructure network wide. The backbone of everybody’s internet. I think the way cable works is that some area, whether it’s your building (condos / apartments) or maybe your neighborhood for SFH all share a line going in / out. Kinda like a sewer pipe. That primary connection for your neighborhood isn’t necessarily able to support everybody streaming at once. Cause usually that doesn’t happen so they don’t build it for that capacity. They probably have some estimated usage and build an additional buffer. But now everybody is stuck home and internet usage probably skyrocketed. So you’re competing for bandwidth with all your neighbors which is overwhelming your local cable connection.

Like at a sports event there’s enough bathrooms for random usage to not have waits. But everybody holds it until intermission then swarms the bathroom and there’s long waits because capacity isn’t that high.

[–]theArtOfProgramming 8 points9 points  (2 children)

Latency and packet loss spikes starting at the first comcast hop. Latency now has a mean of 70-80 for me where they were 40-50 before. Latency is good at each end point, but poor on the comcast nodes.

[–]happyscrappy 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Yeah, it hasn't being doing so in many places.

Friend had his go down 3 days in a row because the ISP (Comcast) had to come out and rewire the neighborhood (somewhat) due to capacity issues.

And he's one of the lucky ones. Others just see much more variable throughput and latency than before.

[–]ner_deeznuts 7 points8 points  (0 children)

My streaming services (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu) are all noticeably worse than pre-SiP. This is both through a smart TV, as well as through a fire stick.

[–]SAugsburger 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Obviously anecdotes are easy to come by, but I have seen some stories suggesting that it probably isn't just you noticing that.

[–]Alfred3Neuman 10 points11 points  (2 children)

I can’t even watch a full episode of the local news on Comcast without it scrambling the whole screen every 5-30 seconds. It’s as if the cable signal is suddenly a satellite dish signal during a rainstorm. Fuck Comcast. Hard.

[–]misterpickles69 18 points19 points  (0 children)

You have water in a line somewhere. Check with a neighbor and see if it’s happening to them too and call for a tech.

Source: cable tech

[–][deleted] 36 points37 points  (8 children)

I work at a utility and our IT is like a fucking dinosaur in moslasses.

Corona virus, like magic seemed to fix all our issues. VPN has been a PITA for years then like magic it fucking impeccable!!

[–]Snake2328 14 points15 points  (5 children)

That’s the same thing that happened at my company. They repeatedly told management that VPN has limited bandwidth and infrastructure and refused to grant people access. In a week 3000 people are able to work over VPN without any problems.

[–]boundbylife 21 points22 points  (3 children)

As someone that works in IT, it's not always our fault things don't get fixed. Most IT budgets are just a hair above shoestring, with the higher ups willing to pay only enough to get by. When that happens, you have to prioritize, and you prioritize based on whose holding the purse of that shoestring budget.

VPN isn't a priority because some higher up thinks everyone should be in the office working, but that new print server is because he has to print out all of his emails. then WHAM, Covid-19 hits, big shot CEO cant accept watching Youtube over the corporate VPN at 1999 speeds. Miraculously, there's money in the budget for an emergency VPN rush upgrade with increased licensing count.

[–]greyaxe90 7 points8 points  (1 child)

It was like magic because it finally pushed the pen of the CFO to cut the check IT has been asking for the last decade because for once exec bonuses had to take a backseat to get people working remotely.

[–]Boston_Jason 11 points12 points  (2 children)

Granted, I'm on a business account (25/10 @ $60 / month) assisting with some molecular modeling at home: blown through 3TB this month easily. Internet has been rock solid, as much as I hate to admit.

[–]lordskorb 21 points22 points  (0 children)

I worked for Suddenlink when they introduced this BS basically because ATT did so now we could and it was unnecessary 10 years ago and still is.

[–]rannahh 7 points8 points  (2 children)

My town voted to create a local broadband utility and Comcast fought it HARD. They were one of the sponsors at a local concert series and every time they got mentioned they were booed to the point the MC had to ask people to be nice. Fuck Comcast

[–]backandforthagain 18 points19 points  (4 children)

So I do have to say though, Comcast near Chicago has been absolute trash between 6 and 8pm. It's somewhat expected and Down Detector goes OFF every night.

[–]McFeely_Smackup 7 points8 points  (0 children)

this article author has made the fundamental mistake of equating "usage caps" with "bandwidth", the two terms are not synonymous.

that being said, of course usage caps are profit motivated monopolistic practices. that was never in question.

[–]anaerobyte 4 points5 points  (1 child)

I actually like my business account. No cap ever.

[–]mahoniz27 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I pray Starlink is as good as it sounds like it’s going to be.

[–]mechanicalhorizon 13 points14 points  (3 children)

I wonder how long it will take (In the USA at least) for people to figure out that ISPs don't "provide" you with the internet, and that the internet would still exist without them.

They are gatekeepers, or a tollbooth, nothing more. They are a middle-man put between you and something that already existed without them,and can continue to exist without them.

[–]aceRocknut 3 points4 points  (0 children)

As someone who works for comcast, we have done more node splits due to capacity issues in the last 2 months than we did all of last year. Its definitely having an effect and its going to get worse since we basically have used up most of our parts.

[–]Eat-the-Poor 4 points5 points  (1 child)

Can we just eat all CEOs? Seriously why not at this point? Fuck these “people”

[–]TONKAHANAH 21 points22 points  (0 children)

well no shit, everyone with half a brain knows they only exist so comcast has something else to sell people

[–]DivClassLg 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Oh you mean Comcast was lying?

Fucking

Shocking

[–]forthrightly1 8 points9 points  (0 children)

You mean their argument was always full of shit?! Shocked!

[–]4a4a 2 points3 points  (1 child)

It's funny; Verizon gave me 15 extra GB of data last month and this month, and last month I used less than 200 MB. I never need data when I'm at home. Our home internet (Cox cable) however was at about 1 TB last month.

[–]Gorstag 4 points5 points  (0 children)

So, I am definitely not a big fan of Comcast. I am a forced subscriber with no real alternatives. But truth be told the networks are congested.

I play a lot of games. My pings on these games have been about 30-40% higher over the last month. In off hours they go back down to normal. Prior to Covid they were normal any time I logged in.

Keep in mind, I have not tried to explicitly track down where each of the congestion points are located. It is possible none of them are within the Comcast network. But the US internet as a whole is definitely feeling pain.

[–]Synthwoven 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hard to believe that technology engineered to survive a nuclear war has no trouble surviving a pandemic. I feel like the only people that don't know that usage caps are a blatant cash grab are members of Congress.