[RANT] I pay $70/mo for this privilege

itellyouhwhat@lemm.ee to Selfhosted@lemmy.world – 1030 points –
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I thought data caps for home internet were a thing of the past…

I’ve somewhat recently moved back to a very rural area of the Midwest. Small town. No stop lights. Biggest businesses other than the bars are Casey’s, Subway, and Dollar General.

And we have one ISP (not counting DSL) — Mediacom. When we first signed up, I had to go with the second service tier. But not because of speeds, but so I could have a reasonable 1 TB/mo data cap.

Lucky me, they increased the cap to 1.5 TB. 🙄

I hope that in my lifetime I can see ISPs regulated as a public utility.

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In Switzerland you get unlimited 10 Gbit/s for 50 bucks.

I hate you, congrats!

In Canada we have to give our firstborn to a telecommunication monopoly for somewhat OK internet.

Somewhat OK internet on the infrastructure our taxes paid for and the government handed over to Bell and Rogers, but don't worry, they'll stop all the other evil corporations from coming in and giving us cheaper internet.

I pay 90 ish Canadian pesos for 1gb/1gb for Bell fibre. It's not too bad depending on your location, though that price is still too high. I'm at least making good use of it. 12tb of total transfers this month.

I pay 80$ for 1gb/750mb with bell. I could upgrade to 3/3 for 120$ but then they'd change my modem and the homehub 3000 was the last one I could remove the transceiver and plug fiber directly in my server opnsense router.

Wait, how'd you get that with Bell? I'm pretty sure my plan is the same speeds for like... double that amount

I have a permanent $30 discount from when I signed up. Also, apologies, I mixed up the price with my cell plan. 90 not 60.

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Is it actually 10Gbit/s or just marketing? And how's the latency?

The latency for 1Gbit/s is amazing, and i seem to get that speed. But i really don't have the hardware for more anyways.

Yeah, but those are metric bits so they are a little bit smaller.

And for 80$/month you can get 25Gbps!

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Data caps on home internet services should be illegal. They should also be much higher on mobile, but that's a whole other topic.

I have 940/940 Unlimited FTTH for $93.45(Canadian).

And France gets 5Gbps for €30 per month or 8Gbps for €40 per month. I’m in the US now and really miss free.fr as my ISP

I'm suddenly more motivated to do my French lessons on Duolingo now.

I know right! Free.fr was a real disruptor. They fought the government to open telecom to private companies (it used to be France Telecom only which is gov owned) then they worked with the gov to create a fiber network that can be used my multiple ISP. So no running parallel lines from separate companies, they all create, maintain and share the same network all over the country. Before that, they started as the first free dialup internet service. You would call a number, and connect. You were paying with ads. They also were the first DSL speed, first TV over DSL, first FTTH, first VoIP, and they also have a cell phone network. And the prices are forcing all the other companies to align. We seriously need free.for in the US.

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Data caps on home internet services should be illegal. They should also be much higher on mobile, but that’s a whole other topic.

I'm not convinced mobile deserves to have caps at all, either!

As far as I'm concerned, there's no reason to limit the amount of data transfer except in times of congestion, and I also don't see any reason the amount of data transferred during un-congested times should have any bearing on who gets throttled.

You're way overpaying. I pay $40 for 1.5 Gbps with Bell FTTH. Give them a call and say it's too expensive and see what they can do for you. Or tell them Rogers (if they're in your area) offered you 1.5gbps for $60 and ask if they can beat that.

As for mobile, you should look at new plans. $39 gets you 20 GB $50 gets you 40 GB. Seems like plenty of data imo https://www.koodomobile.com/en/rate-plans?INTCMP=KM_HDD_2023_Plans_RatePlans_40gbfor45_ROC_MBSK

Best time to get a mobile plan is Black Friday, should be even better deals by then.

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Home internet data caps WERE a thing of the past when Obama appointed Tom Wheeler as FCC chairman, who then pushed rulings to classify ISPs as a public utility and started enforcing net neutrality. Companies that didn't play ball started getting fined until they fell in line. Being a former executive for a major ISP, he was very familiar with the anti-competitive practices and underhanded tricks those companies had been using for years; and he used those practices against them to finally make some pro-consumer progress for internet access in the US.

Then, Trump came in and put Ajit Pai in charge of the FCC (no joke, my phone kept auto correcting his name to Shit Pie). Anyways, Shit Pie tore down those rulings and undid all those years of progress as part of the Trump administration's anti-Obama initiative. Even though it was proven time and again that what he did was directly against public opinion, and that ISPs were flooding the public commentary with bot posts(some even made by dead people); Shit Pie continued to meme about himself and drink from an obnoxiously large Reese's coffee mug while doing so. At this point, every provider of internet services has added back data caps in the US, and they have continued to increase their prices to maintain that 99.9% profit margin. They've also locked down more areas to prevent municipal broadband services from forming, and they're even pushing for legislation to prevent them from ever happening.

The current administration has done absolutely nothing. In fact, they've been so unremarkable, I have no idea who is in charge of the FCC, and I don't feel like looking it up.

Ajit Pai used to be a lawyer for AT&T, just like the previous guy was an executive for the ISPs. However Ajit Pai was nominated by Obama originally. Trump made him head, but don't get it twisted - there is a bipartisan concerted effort to fuck you. Tom Wheeler was just as bad as Pai - they were considering getting rid of net neutrality already in 2014 under him.

They basically just wait for the right moment to strike. If they fail they wait a few years and try again. They have a lot more patience persistence and attention than the public. They will always win.

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USAGE ALLOWANCE?!?!

Laughs in Scandinavian

I have luckily never heard about data caps in Scandinavia except for mobile broadband.

Do they even exist at all, here?

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Dude... The US is doing it wrong. SE Asia. 1Gbps symmetrical, unlimited, unrestricted. ~14US$.

Australia looks like an interesting case. Iknow that in some countries, ISPs have to provide service to both urban and rural customers at the same price, which means that urban customers actually subsidize people living in rural areas. In some other cases, the gouvernements help pay for this.

Isn't there a project in Australia that the federal gouvernement is subsidizing the role-out of fibre?

I have no idea, but that idea didn't work out all that well in the US. The gov provided funding for expansion to the countryside for all the major telecoms...and they just pocketed without actually implementing anything.

Idk but pricing in Australia is fucked. The fibre network isn't that large to begin with afaik, and even if you do have fibre you have to pay an arm and a leg for good speeds.

E.g. I pay like $70 USD a month for 100/40.

Symmetric gigabit costs several hundred a month, they're not intended for residential customers.

Yeah, the ISP cartels sucks. I've been stuck paying $170/mo for uncapped 1000/35mbps connection.

Thankfully, before the end of the year, a local ISP is moving into my area. They offer uncapped symmetrical gigabit, for $75/mo... I'll be saving $95/mo for BETTER service.

The longstanding ISP cartels should seriously be punished for the abuse of their market positions and failure to appropriately use government funding they've been given.

1000/35mbps

That download/upload dichotomy should be illegal in and of itself!

Yeah that's abysmal, but it's a result of the fact that docsis has always been an asymmetrical standard in which upload speeds are lower than download. I recently moved house and my old ISP was fiber to prem, we had symmetrical gigabit. New house is cable ISP that only offers 1000/50... While docsis 3.0 supports up to 200mbps up. Bunch of greedy bastards.

Oh they appropriated it all right, straight into their yachts and mansions.

Same boat here… and then the “default cap” is nothing. Between work and family, we hit the data cap of 1.25TB within three weeks.

Any place I can find more info about the “end of the year” timeframe you mentioned? A new ISP is also rolling in my area, but their site has been vague on time.

The main street into our house currently has it available, but our actual address not yet… driving me a little crazy.

Hope the new one is available for you soon.

$40 for 2 Gbps unlimited in Singapore. Caps on home broadband are frankly nonsensical.

I'm paying $40 CAD/mo for 1.5 Gbps down and 940 Mbps up here in Canada. Unlimited bandwidth, of course.

In Germany we pay lots of money for 5G data volume. For me I got 20 Gigs for about 40 bucks, this is mostly Not a thing in the rest of Europe. But data plans on landlines are really dumb.

Pretty sure europe doesn’t have caps on landlines because of European wide regulation. If you really think about it, caps on mobile data are also fairly stupid

Well mobile data is very different. With fibre optic you can generally keep provisioning more cables and a single cable already carries a huge amount already.

Radio has an absolute efficiency limit for the bandwidth of a signal and we're pretty damn close to that now.

5g uses wider bandwidth channels, with more cells closer together and uses things like beamforming. But there's still always going to be an upper limit that is considerably lower than fibre.

This is why they likely want to discourage 5g becoming a full alternative to wired, because there's just not the capacity to do it on the same scale.

If you really think about it, caps on mobile data are also fairly stupid

Mobile is a shared medium and can only support a certain amount of bandwidth per phone mast (in a certain area). A mobile phone network heavily relies on most users not using their data plans most of the time.

In France at least I doubt it.

The only time I remember caps on landlines was when 56k modem were still the norm. Once ADSL was rolled out there was pretty much no caps anymore.

I think the fact that we had some healthy competition for landlines from the get go in my country meant the ISPs couldn't get that much greedy and put caps in place. So it never ended being common where I live.

And when it was old school modems, well you were already paying for the phone communications anyway when connected to the internet so it wasn't really unlimited anyway.

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Agreed. In the past you would pay for calling and text messages and data was often unlimited at the higher tiers, but since nobody pays extra for calling and texting anymore, they’re now charging for data. Luckily they can’t charge extra for EU roaming anymore.

Data caps on landlines is something that I haven’t seen for a very long time in my EU country. The last time I had a subscription with a data cap must have been with a 56k modem, if at all. Cable and DSL might have had fair use policies back in the day (or maybe they still do, who knows), but no hard cap. Or at least not that I can remember.

Internet nowadays is way too important to have data caps, especially at home. 5G should definitely be next. Differentiate in speed all you want, but ditch the caps.

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In Denmark, I pay ~19€ (~$21) for 1000GB of mobile data (they call it 'unlimited', but the small text says they may cut you off at 1000GB). Of course, I rarely use more than 50GB a month on my phone.

weint auf deutsch

I'm moving to another provider next month to increase from 8GB@€30 to 15GB€25... Those are per month...

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This is what I am talking about … Most countries in Europe just gives you kinda unlimited data plans… look at this crap I rarely need mobile data because I work from home but if my landline has an interruption I can barely work 1 or 2 days with that if I tweak data consumption on my work laptop.

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I'm reading all the comments and I'm shocked... In France, with uncapped access and 1Gbps down/600Mbps up (theorical) I pay 40€/mo (30€ every six month when I call to complain that it's too expensive). And it's definitely not the cheapest provider.

That's insane !

1Gbps down/700Mbps up here, 35€/month (another french provider), no data caps - for 5 bucks/month more I could have 5Gbps down/1Gbps up, but... well, my home network is still using 1Gbps switches - but all the cabling was built with 10Gbps in mind.

Data caps are pure robbery. We run a non-profit ISP/hosting platform and a non-profit IXP with friends in West France, the only thing you pay (and the only thing end users should have to pay) is goddamn bandwidth.

Interesting that they give you more up than down. Are you on a server plan or something like that?

Edit: lol just noticed what community this is, server plan makes more sense now.

(30€ every six month when I call to complain that it's too expensive)

Sounds like a Liberty Global owned telecom company... they love their annual price increases ugh, but they are usually the fastest option in most areas

I was very close to closing on a house in rural midwest but I checked isp's and every one available had caps so I just stayed away.

It's why you just get a business line, usually just slightly more expensive, and you get 99.9% SLA uptime and unlimited cap.

You shouldn't need a business line to get reliable, fast, unlimited internet.

O %100 agreed. Just suggesting a way around the bullshit cap they impose.

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Great internet is also a deciding factor for us while looking for our next rural midwest home! I use the FCC Broadband Map and availability searches on local ISP websites to confirm available speeds and no data caps. We passed on some great homes because of slow/no internet or data caps.

Our current rural midwest home has 940x35 w/o data caps from a cable-based (DOCSIS 3.1) ISP for $34.99/month. I'm sure they will increase the price after 12 months. When the time comes, I'll call them again to complain and get a decent price again.

Good choice. I live in the rural midwest and the only thing that'll reach (even though we're in the flatlands) is a WISP we pay $170 a month for 12/6. No data caps, but it's slow as shit. At least it's not satellite so we can still play games online fairly reliably but damn.

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lol uncapped 500mbps fiber (actual fiber directly to your house) connection is 10-12$/month in Ukraine

Looking at all you guys with your gigabit connections, meanwhile I'm in Aus and lucky to get 30 down and 15 up

Not eligible yet for the fttp upgrade? Hang in there mate.

I got upgraded from fttn to fttp at the start of this year.

Wish i had 15 up, im getting 40 down 3 up. They started putting fiber down my street but not active yet, cant wait to go to 1 gig

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Where I am, there was only one provider of internet for a long time, and I was paying for a plan that's more or less what you have right now. Then another company came in and laid fiber, and both companies slashed prices and now I get over double my download speed, no data cap, and something crazy like 50x the old upload speed all for like 20 dollars less a month! Before I switched to the fiber company, the first company even increased my download speeds without increasing the price! Anyone who says competition doesn't change things is crazy.

I live in the UK and currently have copper cable at about 60mbps for £60 per month. I thought what I had was bad because I have a friend who gets 1gbps for £30 a few miles away.

Where the hell in the UK are you? I'm in the North and pay £26 for 60mbps but get more like 70 due to how close I am to the street cabinet though I haven't even got copper cable here, just crappy aluminium that is so old I think Alexander Graham Bell himself fitted them.

I'm in leeds and pay £30 a month for 1gig with virgin. You sould move house. Get better broadband.

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Lol Germany here checking in 500/50 for 29.99

What?! That's so cheap! Mine is 1000/50 (cable) for €60. Also Germany.

Confused American here, I thought third-world countries all had gigabit for $20/mo!

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Well, the internet companies have successfully bribed politicians to avoid competition. This is just the normal result of everyday corruption.

Hey! I'll have you know that Comcast and Time Warner are in the fiercest of competitions. They are practically bankrupting themselves while slashing each other's throats. /s

I had uncapped 500/50Mbps for €10 but now I moved to a village and I'm stuck with 100/10Mbps for €20 :(

You're lucky, I'm on 25/2Mbps and I pay £32 per month for the privilege.

I'm slightly baffled by all this. I'm scheduled to get my line upgraded to be able to handle 100mbps in 2025 and I'm currently able to get 48mbps which costs me about USD55/mo. I only got the upgrade from 8mbps in 2019 (stupid conservative govt). While I'm looking forward to the better connection, I don't really find a problem with 50 at the moment. I work from home, I stream multiple instances of media, I torrent things sometimes. I think I'm on an cap of 1tb but tbh I'd have to check if that's what it still is, I haven't looked for a long time.

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I've got 1000/1000 fiber for €32, which I think is a pretty good deal in the Netherlands at the moment. I will go back to 100/100 for probably a similar amount after my contract is up as 1000/1000 is simply overkill for our use case. But who knows, maybe I'll find another deal.

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In Brazil I pay 20 USD for 500mb. There are plans in my area that sells 1gb for 30 USD. Thay can't put data caps due to legislation, only on mobile data (which I pay 6usd for 20gb cap, 5g)

I believe some have data caps even for landline internet, they get around legislation saying you get slower Internet after you reach the cap but yeah, I pay like 25 USD for 600 mps down and 300 mps up

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About to move to a new house, pretty much had to harass Verizon for a week to add the address to their database so I could move our service.

$70/mo for 1Gig up/down with no cap. The alternative was Xfinity.

I was not going to Xfinity.

I have Comcast now and it's okay in my area (no data cap scam in my area), but probably only because Verizon is available across the street. I had Verizon before I moved and it was faster but they completely forgot that they needed to implement IPv6.

Xfinity also lied and told me there wouldn’t be a cancellation fee since I wasn’t under contract (so I thought) and I was moving to an area that they didn’t serve.

Turns out when I had called in a year prior with a question they “renewed” the contract without my approval and there WAS a cancellation fee. But never told me. Never sent me a bill.

Didn’t know anything until I got a collections letter for $400. Called them up and they had the notes on my account from the three different reps I spoke to over the phone to confirm there was no fee. Because there were so many conflicting reports online I wanted to be sure. They did not give a fuck and pretty much admitted their reps lied.

So fuck Xfinity.

OP, check out the websites about grants ISPs are getting to put fiber in rural areas and see if your area is on the list somewhere (I would try and link you to some, but I'm on mobile and for some reason I have a hell of a time finding those sites while on mobile). You can see below what I've had to deal with for about 20 years, until my area finally got covered by one of those grants a few months ago. I am super rural - like, I am literally surrounded by nationally protected forest and nothing else; it'snot a place I thought would ever be included in those grant locations. It was, though, and I now have Gigabyte internet with no cap, with VOIP, for $74.98 a month. If I'm not using WiFi, I get an actual gig of download speed. If I'm on wifi, it's usually between 600-900MB.

Up until recently, we paid Centurylink about $150 a month for two lines into the house. Each line maxed out at 0.75MB download speed and 0.23 MB upload speed. We needed two lines to even be able to function. Almost 20 years of this, with no other options besides Hughesnet. We tried them for a little while; their equipment cost a fortune, it was about$150 a month, the speed was nearly as bad and they had a 200MB A MONTH CAP. We had to turn off images for websites in order to not go over the cap. Previous to 2004, I lived in a very rural part of NY. We had high speed internet for $69 a month, no cap. I can't remember the speed, but I remember that it took 3 minutes to download a full sized movie. 20 YEARS AGO the internet was better, and cheaper!

Shit dude, I pay €20 for synchronous 1Gb/s.

Scandinavia or east Asia?

Since they are paying in € it's probably Scandinavia.

No country in Scandinavia uses the Euro, they're all out of the Eurozone- unless you count Finland.

God, and I pay 45€ for 250 Mbit down and 50 up... Germany is so expensive in this regard. Could get 1Gb down and I think 250 up but that would cost like 90€..

Yeah I remember having really shit speeds when I lived in Berlin (10mpbs). Not only that, but the data allowances and price on 4g were absurd.

Yeah it's crazy, I live in a more rural area around Hamburg but have to commute to Hamburg from time to time. It's always weird, as soon I enter the city the 4 / 5G just becomes super slow...

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
AP WiFi Access Point
DNS Domain Name Service/System
IP Internet Protocol
IoT Internet of Things for device controllers
Plex Brand of media server package
VPN Virtual Private Network

6 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 12 acronyms.

[Thread #68 for this sub, first seen 19th Aug 2023, 15:35] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

Yea while we were in alaska we were capped. we were in fairbanks as well, which isn't that rural. I lived in the high desert of california. drive 20 min from hesperia to phelan and you could probably get meth easier than consistent internet.

Gotta love the GCI monopoly in Alaska. So glad I left that god forbidden State

Mediacom is the worst, data caps and low speeds for high prices, straight highway robbery. I'm lucky to have a local ISP with no data caps and a mostly reasonable price, cheaper than Mediacom at least. And soon to be fiber when they make it over to my neighborhood. They're currently in the process of running fiber to every neighborhood in my city.

Oh boy, you're still lucky with your data cap 🙂

Mine's ~90 Mbps down, ~35 Mbps up, 10 GB open access + 8 GB site-specific of your choice, you reload it weekly for $2.

There's also a 1 GB "Metaverse Go" bandwidth as well, I have no idea which sites are included in that because when I download updates for my Fedora laptop and download apps from Flathub, it uses that bandwidth.

Our local fiber (1000/1000) is truly unlimited and just had a price decrease from $120 to $100. Never had an ISP do that before!

Paying less than 10$ a month for mobile data with unlimited 4g (5g unlimited in this plan for the testing phase). Living in a third world country. Wifi connection is unlimited at 100mbps speed at almost the same amount.

1000/300 unlimited FTTH for ~20$ in hungary, however this company (digi) was killed by the government, and bought under price by a company (4ig) which is very close to the goverment, and the stateparty, and they did 2 subscription price ups, so 2 years ago it was about 10$... We have "bent capitalism" here which resembles to communism...

$70? In Australia I pay $85 for 75/20 unlimited.

In Sweden I pay $23 for 100/100 unlimited. My phone even has 100 down unlimited for $30/month

Fellow Swede here; may I please ask what mobile operator you use? I pay around $25 for 16 gigabytes from Vimla

Tele2. I was able to get the price reduced by calling them and asking them for an upgrade.

This is almost started price in Canada

In my rural town where the cottage is, XPloreNet finally brought fiber. I used to pay $140 for SpaceX (and because of the trees, I got at most 100 mbs of throughput). Now, with XPloreNet, I get consistent 100 mbs and my bill has been reduced to $75 per month. We pay too much for our Internet.

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My parents in rural Washington pay $70/month for 10Mbps down. I'm not sure the ISP bothers with a cap.

I have CenturyLink 940/940 here in Seattle with no cap for $65. The alternative is Wave which has a cap and you have to deal with introductory price bullshit.

Down in Oregon, I get either 100mbps through CenturyLink for $65 or 1.2gbps down/30mbps up from Comcast for $130 (with the $30 extra to remove the data cap). I would kill for a symmettical connection even if it were only 500/500.

I'm stuck with Comcast 1200/30 with a 1.2TB cap for $100/mo, it's this or DSL

neither will give me fiber; wave offered adsl :(

stuck with comcast, which I despise.

In the same exact boat as you. We have Mediacom or one DSL. They gave me a really good deal for the first year on my 1gig, but after that it's going to be about $140 a month. To make matters worse too, the wiring in my apartment building is REALLY old, so the service cuts out randomly sometimes (All tenants in the building are on splitters sharing one cable with the apartment across the hall.) And of course the landlord said that Mediacom was trying to trick me into spending more money and he would absolutely not run new cable. Internet in rural areas of the US is a total shit show. My connection is somewhat stable now, but I can't wait for something else to come to my area.

And yes I looked into Starlink, my building has a strict NO PUTTING UP ANTENNA policy.

And yes I looked into Mobile Carrier Routers and the fastest I can get is 50mb download with a data cap.

I feel your problem on a spiritual level.

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Northeast US here. Fairly healthy competition in my area, the fiber at my home is about $50/mo

Hot damn, where can I sign up?!?! I get the same except for a 1.2 TB data cap and pay $130/mo. Xfinity in the Denver metro area. Finally getting fiber this winter, symmetrical gigabit for $90.

$140 for 30 meg that's usually about 8, unless the neighbors are using it, then I'm lucky to get a 480p stream...

just out of interest .. somebody here on satellite? I am interested to know the prices for sat services out there?

I get unlimited 10Gbps symmetric fiber for $40/month. One of the only affordable things in the San Francisco Bay Area, lol

2Gbps symmetric fiber, $70/month, flyover state. Could go up to 5Gbps for another like $20. No data caps. I may never move again.

I get half that speed from a plan that costs more, though at least I don't have data caps and it's better than other plans I've seen

Off topic: I see that there is "9 more replies" and I am unable to expand the thread... could someone please offer guidance?

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You must have Sonic.net like I do. I was so glad the home I bought was in their coverage area. Fuck Comcast.

Yes!! They're the best. I switched to Sonic as soon as they rolled out in my area. Availability (or future availability) of Sonic was one of the things I looked for when buying a house.

H O W Can I buy your home please? It would probably be cheaper to do that then keep paying for internet

Nice houses are over $1.8 million here. Expensive area, but at least the internet is a good deal.

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Maybe you should organise a community run ISP instead?

They're quite common where I live, although I don't use one myself. I still only pay 400sek for unlimited 500/500.

Unless the big ISPs made competition like that illegal.

It's easier to do in more rural or remote areas but cities and suburbs make it a bit harder. US prices are also fucked. I'm currently paying $62/month for 100 down and 10 up and that's the cheapest option around us.

Dont worry, the market will simply regulate itself.

It's ok. Compeition will drive down prices! I have so many options with internet such as Comcast and Company that pretends to compete with Comcast.

I think the "invisible hand of the market" swats more people than it helps.

Damn. Our symmetrical 500 mbps plan, with no caps, is USD 14 per month

You're taking about 3rd world countries internet right? Cuz in piracy subreddit comments I've seen that only 1st world countries still have data cap on wired internet

third world countries are keeping up. My ISP reserves the right to throttle my bandwidth once use a certain amount of data. I have to say I haven't noticed it do it yet. Yet being the keyword here.

If it makes you feel better, I has a similar cap when I lived in Silicon Valley

I know Google isn't well liked on Lemmy but I have to say, WebPass is pretty sweet. I was lucky enough to live in a place that was supported by WebPass and the internet was the best I've ever had in the US. 600$/yr (50$/mo) for 1Gbps up/down. I had it for ~2 years and my internet service got interrupted like twice in those 2 years. I worked at home too so I was online pretty much all the time.

Denmark: 1gbps up/down with static IPv4 and IPv6 address for 105dkk ($15).

I can reliably get the offered speeds and the connection is unlimited. Pretty happy with that.

Where we lived in Florida we has Spectrum and they didn’t even offer Ethernet. Apartment only had WiFi with router access…

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I pay about $80/mo and have a 1200 GB cap.

It used to be $50 a month with no cap. But "that plan is no longer available" in my area.

2000/2000 Mbit fiber without a cap for $95/mo. in Maine, US.

This does feel a bit surreal though as prior to this my options were 3/.5 Mbit DSL for $75/mo. (bonding wasn't an option, no plans by ISP to upgrade), then 25/10 Mbit fixed wireless for $95 /mo. from a local provider (which worked when it felt like it and then was undergoing "maintenance" for weeks at a time making it unusable), then paying Spectrum a $5500+ ransom to run Cable down my driveway and then ultimately pay $115/mo. for 300/20 Mbit. Spectrum didn't have a cap due to the Charter -> TWC acquisition consent decree but I'm sure it was coming after that expired.

When fiber came to town everything else suddenly got cheaper but screw them, they kept raising the rates and fees when there wasn't any meaningful competition. Fidium didn't even charge me an install fee and I'm not under a contract. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

So do your router/switches/access points/cabling etc support 2000? What about the devices' lan ports? Curious as to to how 2000 works for home network infrastructure

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What country are you in the midwest of? That really sucks, I emphasise :-(

I know they have a lot of data aps like that in developing nations still, like those in Africa, but generally in the western world we moved past those around 15 years ago at least, thank the gods. I've not even had a date limit on my phone since 2014, so handy for tethering the laptop when I'm on the move!

I'm in the UK, for reference :-)

Mediacom is an American telco.

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India - $8/mo, symmetrical 150Mbps, unlimited.

Sweden: 50 Usd 1gb up/down fiber directly pulled to a media converter located in my house. Not like I had, living in UK, fiber to a telecom box on the street and then Lan cable to my property...

The UK has two modes of "fibre" FTTC fibre to cabinet. Then copper to your property. Or FTTP, fibre to premise, which is as you describe fibre right to your property.

I'm lucky - I'm in a Midwest town as well (between 1500 to 3000 people) in the US. A couple of years ago, fiber got installed. I'm getting about 900Mbps down and 99 up, no data cap, for $84/month. Before that I also had Mediacom, and the data cap was infuriating. So glad I could switch!

I had been on Mediacom since I moved back to my hometown in 2003. In the beginning it was a nice service other than terrible phone support. Occasionally you'd need to call if the modem took a shit, wiring issues, billing issues, or provision new hardware. I don't know when, let's say 2013, they introduced data caps, tiered plans, and overage fees. Let me just say, fuck you Mediacom, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you! Every year in December and January we'd go over because the kids would get new games for Christmas. They slowed us down, limited usage, and charged us more. Mediacom fucking sucks!

Thankfully, we were lucky to get fiber wired up around town last summer. Many small towns are now running fiber in this area and I couldn't be happier. Service has been exceptional, I pay less than Mediacom ($85/mo), and no bullshit charges. Fast internet that just works. Check out Conxxus and see if they are near where you're living. Good luck!

I'm paying 12$ a month for 300 mbps symmetric in India... Though not fair to directly convert into dollars

Edit: no caps on bandwidth

No fiber available to my house, so I'm stuck with paying ~$85 for 50/2. Or switching ISPs and briefly getting a chair rate for faster speeds, but adding in a data cap and less reliability.

I know i'm privileged paying 70 PLN (~17 USD) for symmetrical gigabit link, but holy shit man, that picture hurts.

Where I live in Australia, 1 hour out of Sydney, I would pay that for 1/3 the data at 1/3 the speed. Went with starlink instead.

I would totally go with starlink, except I really don't want to support musk with my money.

Sure the idea is good, but if a competitor were to come out I'd rather go for that. Same thing with Tesla.

Plus where I live in Adelaide we have the ability to get FTTP if we paid them to run the fibre from the curb to the house, but our current 100/40 plan is adequate for our needs.

That said if it's the only option, I understand that.

I was really confused reading the OP at first, wondering what the problem was, then I realised it was just my Australia brain.

I was shocked when my friend from India told me that for 400 Mbps up and down, he pays only $14/month. Limit: 3.3 TB per month.

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Remember the net neutrality regulations that douchebag scrapped then opted to make a shitty YouTube video about? I do.

Yikes. I pay $80 a month for 1Gbps up and down with no data cap. It's amazing what happens when one company doesn't have a monopoly in an area. Prices go down and quality of service goes up.

Build your own ISP :)

This comes off as flippant, but it's viable at least on a small scale as a WISP. Point to point wifi has become both good and cheap, with a pair of devices from companies like tplink or ubiquiti running around $200.

You can "shoot" wifi over air for miles now with near pinpoint accuracy. If your area has a tall landmark(water tower, grain elevator, etc) or is willing to let you put up a tower, you can trench line to just that location and load it up with WAPS to shoot wifi to customers in the surrounding area. You can also often use this customers as repeaters to widen the coversge.

For a real life example, some folk living in the islands off the coast of Washington started their own from scratch.

Also theoretically you can co-pay with your neighbour. Both of you are unlikely to utilize full channel at the same time anyway.

Ideally, you would want to find 50-100 neighbors, or whatever your bandwidth/range could handle. Take a $1000 deposit or whatever seems sane to cover initial costs, giving them their first "X" months free. Maintain the system for that time period, then you are generating a profit and providing much better service.

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I have almost the same experience. I live in a small town in the Midwest, and the only ISP that goes to my house is Comcast/Xfinity. There's a 1.2TB cap no matter what level you pay for, though they give you the option of paying an extra $30/month for unlimited. I'm really growing to appreciate our local ISP, which provides symmetrical FTTH, unlimited data, a static (or at least rarely changing) IP, and generally non-predatory business practices, all for a lower price than Xfinity. Unfortunately, my house is on the fringe of the town, so they don't reach all the way here and I'm stuck with Xfinity.

Comcast unlimited data is an extra 50 for my area.

Evil bastards. I make sure to get my money's worth though

About 63€/68$ for 100/10mbps speed and a 150GB data cap. Including a cable tv subscription.

That's in Europe.

Where? That's horrific.

Belgium. The company is owned and ran by Liberty Global.

My mother has been connected to fiber recently (which she doesn't need at all...advised against it, but you know sales pushing...) She gets an eye-watering 500/500mbps no cap connection for 78$ (including tv and fixed phone)

I'm more 'rural' so minimum 5 years before any fiber is passing by...

Could get a speed bump to 300/20mbps and 'no cap' (fair use policy) for about 10$ extra.

You get a much better deal if you didn't include TV subscription which no one needs these days anyway because you can stream everything.

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100Mbps uncapped for £26 a month. Pretty happy with that.

£35 for symmetrical 1gbps. In practice, I get fairly stable ~850mbps either way but I reckon my router is the bottleneck rather than the actual line.

I personally feel hard done by if my connection drops below 500 Mbps I pay £50 a month for 1Gbps Which usually has about 300Mbps upload, but I don't really care about that

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Rural area in Latvia, LTE home internet 100 megs down 30 up, unlimited, 19.99€

I live in México and pay 1119 MXN (≈ 65 USD) per month for 600/100. It also includes TV channels and a phone line. I'm satisfied with my ISP. They've never had an outage and stuff just works!

Same boat here, I have what seems to be a legacy plan now for a 1G/50M with 6 or maybe 8 TB (it changed during the plauge years and I don't recall if they dropped it back down) for about $150/month. The only other options around are wireless or a 80/10 dsl through century link that interestingly enough has no cap. Supposedly century link is working on fiber sometime that will give a dymetric uncapped option for about $70 though.

Meanwhile, in the town of Moticello less than 50 miles away they have two high end fiber nets because the city decided to build their own and the local ISP decided it better do so to in order to not be extinct, after of course trying to sue the city saying they can't do that.

Holy crap everything you were saying was hitting word chords in me, so relatable, then you said Monticello. I just moved to Earl Park, was going to have to decide between Century Link and satellite, then Mainstream came through like a week before I closed on the house and installed cheap fast fiber.

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I have 1gbps symmetrical for €17.95 in the Netherlands.

Wow that's a good price. I pay 64.75 Swiss Franks for that.

But at least it's a cool little ISP serving me. they offer 10 and 25 Gbit/s for the same price, just a bit more setup fee, because the transceivers are obviously more expensive. I've just not taken the plunge to upgrade my router and switches.

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Holy fucking shit dude... Sorry for you but in a weird way I'm a bit relieved to see this being the case in the US as well. The village I grew up in (Germany) still has a price of ~50€ for speeds of 50-100MBit/s However, there is at least no data cap in that case. My 1000 Mbit/s contract was capped to 1TB/month as well until four years ago (40€/month). I really hope this improves for all of us soon!

I pay 150 a month for 20/10mbps (actual is more like 10/5) with a 1.5tb cap. I would stab a baby to get yours.

Not that you will read 300+comments, but cancel and go with starlink. They probably call you back and offer you an uncapped plan :D

Thats rough, i live in what the rural small town folks that live around us call a “that liberal shit hole” while they are here shopping and working. I have unlimited municipal Fiber internet that just got upgraded for free!

I've lived In rural areas in the U.S. all my life. Internet is always atrocious because the only ones that provide services out those ways know that they have no competition.

Luckily, I've had a great company come in and now have fantastic internet after they set up the infrastructure, but I still think about those days I had to use Windstream.

I pay $60 for 600d 10u And I'm in a "major" east coast city. I have access to ONE broadband provider. The only difference is I currently don't have a hard cap, although it I started using more than 1-2TB a month they'd drop me or find a way to force me into a higher tier.

Yeah Comcast has been doing it for a while.

They really started pushing it right before COVID. Then backed off a bit and now again are really pushing it.

In the Netherlands we complain a lot about gas prizes, costs of groceries. et cetera.

But regarding internet we have come a long way. Fiber is available to approximately 50% of the households currently (and they are expanding fast)

Mobile data is really seen as a commodity. 5G with unlimited data is €25/€30 a month (depending on the carrier). Although 5G in the Netherlands is not yet up to speed (3,5GHz will become available soon), the realistic speeds achieved are more then decent. (Benefit of having a crowded, flat country)

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Lobbying captured local states' law (by ISP's) and so some places can petition to have their own internet at cities and have, but these laws sometimes prevent that. But we should still try to petition to get a city based internet. It's worth it.

I don't think we've had data limits for wired internet since moving on from dial-up/ISDN. But I'm still waiting for unmetered mobile data. Here all the supposedly competing providers are advertising 100 GB as unlimited. I'd rather pay for a reasonable specific speed with no metering, than have a connection that is so fast it can use up its monthly quota in an hour.

Here in Sri Lanka I'm paying ~20 USD for FTTH 100 Mbps. Monthly bandwidth is limited to 155 GB lol.

Let’s be real here, for a gas station Casey’s has damn good pizza.

I'm with the only uncapped service in my area, it's $90/mo for 10mb/s and it's unreliable as all fuck.

lmfao its 40usd for 50/20 in australia

I pay more for 200/20, but no limits. That sucks!

Germany calling. Shot internet here. On my village (close to Ulm) telecom will give you a maximum 16mb dsl which in reality is around 8 down for 40€ a month.

Installed Starlink and get 150 to 250 down and 30 up for 65 a month.

I’m paying $115/mo for 1G down 30M up, no data cap.

I WAS paying $150 for the same until I called and bitched that new subscribers were getting the same for $89. So, still getting fucked, but at least they’re using lube now.

There’s fiber literally on the next street over from me. Come the fuck on guys - fiber in my neighborhood. Let’s fucking gooooooooooo already. You’ve been teasing me for years. Quit pulling my hair and fuck me already damn.

20€ a month for 200/20 on cable with unlimited data. Im expecting 500/200 after I move to fiber this month and hope <30€. Damn some of you pay a lot 😮

Thanks god I have unlimited 150/50 4g internet at home for around 42€ per month. This month we downloaded around 5.5 TB of data. Also small town, countryside, no stop lights, no businesses other than bars and shops. There is only one stop light in whole region. And whole region is getting fiber optic. We had DSL, but speeds were terrible.

I'd be so screwed on that plan. According to my router, I've downloaded 5311 GB in the last 30 days, and uploaded 399 GB. Sure doesn't feel like it in hindsight, but some family members are on YouTube all day every day, others constantly downloading new games on Steam, and my Plex media Server and *arr apps just chews through data.

I have mediacom as well, but in a larger city of the midwest. They have datacaps here too, and i was paying about $100 for exactly this same plan up until a couple years ago. They started upgrading our speeds/caps because a new fiber company (metronet) is building in the area. Now i'm on 1 gbps down and a 4 TB cap. I still plan to switch to metronet when they finally light up my area, as its cheaper for the same speeds (plus no data caps)

I thought data caps for home internet were a thing of the past…

For the past 15 years I've had a data cap on home internet, but never had a data cap prior to that.

That's led me to believe the exact opposite of your observation; unlimited data is a thing of the past and data caps are a thing of the present and future.

I'll jump on the specs bandwagon. I really can't complain much about Spectrum or AT&T. I currently have symmetrical gigabit with no cap for $80 a month. I just signed up for "straight forward pricing" which is supposed to lock in my rate for as long as I have it.

I'm outside of Charlotte, NC.

How many ISP choices do you have?

I’m outside of Milwaukee. Was paying Spectrum $75 for 300/20 (I think), no cap. Only other option is DSL. They finally buried fiber in the back yard earlier this summer, but haven’t turned it on yet. Got a great deal for T-mobile home internet, $25 for about 300/75, no cap.

Just checked on the FCC Broadband Map, and I saw options for AT&T (symmetrical gigabit), Spectrum (1000, 35 wtf), HughesNet (25,3), Starlink (50,10), Verizon (300,10) and I think T-Mobile even though they weren't listed.

Friend of mine lives in bumfuck nowhere here in the US (like, no access to running water if it goes without raining for a few weeks - that kind of rural) and has gigabit up/down for $60 somehow. Meanwhile, there's 2 or 3 ISPs in my area who will gladly take $60 for half that speed and dog shit upload. I pay for both a resi and biz line and the latter is the same speed for $15 more. Criminal.

Consider yourself lucky, I pay around 100 euros for a 100Mb wich does not even reach 40 in download at times. (Italy)

Look into fixed wireless or 4G/5G home internet. Fixed wireless is sometimes exactly what you need in spots like that. It is not 4G or 5G, sometimes it is just long range WiFi or other lax spectrum.

Aussie chiming in 50/20mbps for $90/m. I wanted 50mbps upload but it would have bumped the cost to $130/m.

Man, the US is weird sometimes. I don't think I've ever had a data cap on my home internet.

I pay about $ 25 for unlimited 300 MBit/s, I also get 50 GB of data in all of the EU, 100 MB world wide roaming and 100 minutes world wide calling.

Oh, and it’s on my phone.

pay $180/month for 1gbit down/100mbit up and it is unlimited... It would be $130 for 1.75TB, but I wanted unlimited and that is an extra $50/month

Sorry for bumping this, but why do you have such a big difference in upload and download speeds? Here in Norway the difference is 1-2 mbps. Why 900mbps?

So unless you live in an area with fiber, asymmetrical speeds are pretty typical… I’m not sure if it is because it’s all coax so there are infrastructure limitations? But it’s actually gotten faster because 6 months ago my upload was only 30 mbit/s.

Once fiber is in my area I’ll switch to that, but symmetrical will add more cost…but of course it will lol

I hope that in my lifetime I can see ISPs regulated as a public utility.

From an Aussie where our Internet is somewhat considered a "public utility" (NBNCo), it's not the best. I'm paying $130/mo (Aussie bucks) for 250/100 fibre.

Our NTDs are capable of gigabit symmetrical, but thanks to our Lord and Saviour, Rupert Murdoch, it was essentially limited speed wise and the network was built with ridiculous complexity, such as the CVC constraints (Connectivity Virtual Circuit), which means ISPs have to buy additional bandwidth and hope and pray that every user doesn't max out their connections at the same time.

For example, the POI (Point of Interconnect) I'm connected to has a total of 1.5Gbps with the ISP I'm with. Based on their stats which they make public to customers, I'm guesstimating that there's approximately ~50 other households in my POI area connected with this ISP. We all have to share that bandwidth otherwise it slows to a crawl.

ETA: I'm purely talking about the FTTP network here, not the other part of the mess that is NBNCo and FTTN/C/B, Fixed Wireless, Satellite & HFC... the NBN is a complete mess.

Wow, that's pretty terrible. I can't remember the last time I've seen data caps on home Internet (edit: there were some a while ago, but those were basically cellular-at-home for places that are hard to reach with copper or optic fibre); must've been early 2000s. Right now I get 600 Mbps d/400 Mbps u at home and 10 Mbps d/u cellular (no data cap) for a total of under 30 EUR/mo.

In North America, it's overprice. I pay 50 CAD/mo for 20 giga of 4G Internet on my phone. Like we say in my country, on se fait fourrer solide (we get totally fuck)

Casey’s

you're in the sticks when your quicky-mart 7/11 option is Casey’s lol. Missouri?

If it's any slight consolation, I pay ridiculous prices for comcast 100mb in Seattle, and my only other option is shitty adsl that's even worse garbage.

Datacaps? On Home PC? I don't even datacaps on my phone and I leave in bumfuck nowhere North Carolina

jesus. in germany i currently have 1gbit docsis for 40€, and a local company will install FTTH in my flat til end of this year

Check with your local city council or municipality. The laws preventing municipally owned Internet are being fought and overturned with Internet As A Utility.

Even in Texas, the City of Mont Belvieu was getting the shaft by local incumbents that wouldn’t invest in the network. The city took them to court and sidestepped the law, setting precedent. Fiber to the home is now a reality there.

I’m working on getting the same thing done in other towns and cities in this state. Might be a great challenge if you’re up for that sort of thing.

Okay I might sound like an idiot, but what's the difference between a phone plan's minutes/messages quota and internet usage quota? Aren't they both selling a predetermined amount of usage for a predetermined amount of money?

I think the issue is that these service providers are more than capable of providing "unlimited" data, but choose not to because they can make a lot more when people inevitably go over their limit. The salt on the wound is the fact that ISPs usually have no competition. They usually have a monopoly on the area in which they operate.

Where I live, we have unlimited data that only gets throttled if you use a truly absurd amount (like if you're constantly pirating large amounts of 4k movies or something). No caps or unexpected fees. Overall, I always felt like I had it pretty good, and I still think that...mostly.

The funny part is that my ISP had competition move to town recently. I kid you not, the week before the competition officially started up their service, my ISP sent a letter saying they were doubling my Internet speed for no extra charge.

They were trying to show how awesome they were but really it was the biggest slap in the fucking face. You're telling me you were overcharging me that much for years?

Another issue is that advertising, which you never asked for, makes up part of your monthly data usage, as do routine and unavoidable downloads like security updates, video game patches, etc.

There isn't much difference at all. Neither should have a cap.

Data moving across a network doesn't have any per-unit cost to the people operating the network. Whether you use 5TB or 5GB doesn't impact the bottom line of the ISPs at all.

The only justification for a data cap would be if they've overprovisioned their network and sold too many people plans that are too fast for their network to support, so they need to disincentivise people from actually using it. Even then that's pretty shaky justification.

Yikes! I pay a couple bucks more for uncapped gigabit. I'm fortunate in that there's two competing providers in my area that aren't in cahoots (that I can tell.) I much prefer the more expensive one and was able to get them to match the other's price.

My wife has been dropping hints she wants to move to another state though and I'm low key dreading dealing with a new ISP/losing my current plan.