Technology

Data caps are insane in 2024

1.5Tb data cap, jeez. I regularly push 6tb of monthly traffic by myself. This feels like mobile internet all over again, but now with wired...

Unlimited full fibre here in the rural nothern Highlands of Scotland for £35 per month.

Your internet seems similar to your politicians: useless and expensive.

No, once the FTC is gutted, the isps will resume their stronghold. Data caps, overages, slower speeds, etc.

They probably kill off any agency who would protect your consumer rights, anyway. And redefine "broadband" as "you've got modem access, so stop whining". And let the companies keep the subsidies they got for making the former broadband definition happen.

Things are getting better. A new fiber-only network provider is expanding across my region so I got it installed a few months ago. No data caps, 500 Mbps up+down for $50/month.

No. And I'm sorry to say, this administration is coming for social media as well. I hate watching the orange potato talk, and I dislike the individual who posted this, but unless you want to sit through a double long "reaction" vid by a youtuber who makes their living "reacting", this is the shortest one.

He wants to gut moderation and make it so it requires a court order to remove any account from social media. There's a lot to unpack here. It's a scripted speech, illustrating the thinkers behind his administration this go. It talks about 1A, says everything in the speech is for 1A, including dumping the Hatch Act (keeps us safe at polling sites and makes buying votes illegal), but you should really listen to what he says about moderation of social media.

To me, it reads as a way of removing any anti-establishment, anti-MAGA spaces to talk without actually removing the spaces.

Echo chambering helps no one folks, I hate hearing him speak too, but you need to hear this one. https://youtu.be/xJfUXVOoFBo?si=pqphBah-_0YwW11V

It doesn't matter if you have 2 Gigabit internet if no one in the world is uploading even half that fast.

Just to point out something, yes, there may not be many services online (except torrents perhaps) that will max out your gigabit connection, but you are looking at it from the perspective of a single user. I'm in a family of four, also with a roommate in the house, and with everyone gaming and streaming and doing their thing, it can easily saturate it. We had to pay extra for no caps though or we'd be toast. They at least did offer that. Dicks.

Anyway the point of a high speed connection is to be able to do many things simultaneously, not really one giant thing by itself.

Well, maybe now with a republican FCC

lol, no

This is the USA, it's all a pay-as-you-go country. You will be required to work yourself to death to be able to have anything nice at all. That's the model. Corporations make the rules, the government will not help us. Economy, corporate profits and giving money to the wealthy are the priorities. Nothing else matters.

Comcast is still using Coax instead of Fiber Optic and desperately trying to convince people that somehow, someway coax can be just as good.

Comcast are starting to offer 2Gbps symmetric (same speed up and down) via DOCSIS 4.0 in some areas.

It's totally possible! I live in CO and Comcast had a legal monopoly per state law. Nobody else is allowed to compete with their cable service. But you know what isn't cable? Fiber! A local broadband company just installed fiber in my neighborhood this spring. I signed up for $89/mo gigabit service, no data cap, no installation fees at all. Between when I signed up and when they turned on service, they upgraded my service to 1.2 gigabit, same monthly price, no cap, no commitment, no upsell (their only other service is rural satellite Internet).

I talked to the technician installing it and he said they aren't getting any subsidies from anyone. Not the city, state, or fed. It's simply economically viable to run new gigabit fiber for $89/mo. All it takes is a company that can make the initial infrastructure investment.

Yeah, pretty much. The way the rest of the world deals with it is by splitting the infrastructure maintenance and retail sides to eliminate the profit incentive to not do maintenance.

You have a company who owns a/the fibre network in an area and is obligated by anti-monopoly rules to sell access to the network at the same rate and terms to anyone who wants it. They have a profit incentive to maintain the network to a reasonable standard because having a functioning network is how they make money. In a lot of places this wholesale provider will be at least part government owned given that the government usually pays a good chunk of the cost to build out large national infrastructure projects like fibre networks.

Separately, you have retail ISPs who buy access to the fibre network (or 4g, satellite, ...) and sell it to the public along with value adds like tech support, IP addresses, peering agreement etc.

It's never work in the US because holding private companies accountable for how they spend public money and maintaining well regulated competitive markets is communism or something.

I feel your pain, I was stuck with Cox for many years and was paying $170 a month for one gig down, 30 megs up. Unlimited data. But the unlimited data was a lie because they called and threatened me once because I was uploading too much, apparently uploading doesn't count for the unlimited data. Stupid assholes.

I was fortunate enough to move recently to a house that actually had fiber. My fiber provider just raised the price of their lowest plan, which is the one I'm on, 500 Mbps symmetrical for $65 a month. It used to be $50 a month. However, they lowered the price of all their faster plans. If I wanted, I could get 8 gigs symmetrical for $150 a month. That's less than I was paying for Cox just a year ago for 1 gig fake unlimited.

At my current provider, all their plans are truly unlimited, even the lowest tier one like the one I'm on.

No. And we're going to have even more tech-illiterate old buffoons in offices where they'll understand even less technology but they're great at destroying things. So, they'll happily line the pockets of ComCast, AT&T, Verizon and they'll do fuck all to improve customer experience. In fact, if things go their way, they'll bring back the idea of forcing you to choose whether you want to pay premium for high speed internet including the ridiculous limits already in place. That or they'll give you the slow-lane subscription while talking down to you about having to pay so little to get so little and their data caps is even more restrictive, never mind how little you'll be able to actually do on the slow lane.

Isn't it wonderful?! /s

It doesn't matter if you have 2 Gigabit internet if no one in the world is uploading even half that fast. A single download on Steam is like 450 Mbps

This sounds more like the infrastructure in your area just isn't up to delivering those speeds, regardless what the last mile to the home is.

I promise you Steam's CDN absolutely can deliver more than 450Mbps. It regularly maxes out my 1.5 Gbps at home, and I have no doubt that it could potentially go even faster than that if I had a better connection.

Like plugging a 10Gbps network switch into a 100Mbps gateway, it sounds like a fast final link to the home is being choked out by poor infrastructure in the region and can't be fully utilized.