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.
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.
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.
What kind of rube works in the same country they live in?
I met a lot of WFH workers when I visited Thailand, and not a single one of them was working for a company in Thailand.
We had 1gb to download per month. This cap disappeared when more competitors showed up though (i had that cap around ... 2001)
I havnt seen a data cap for internet connections since. I am not aware of any either. Except for mobile phones. Though, they also have unlimited data for those , if you want. (I have. Just so i never have to worry about it ever again)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Data caps do exist in Europe, but they're generally reserved for ultra cheap data plans. Something like €5 for 100mbit speeds. So you get a decent connection, but limited in traffic instead. Which makes sense.
While it's stupid that ISPs are using their monopolies to screw consumers, the concept of data caps is not as stupid as you might think.
You're not just paying for the connection between you and the ISP, but also all the other data links that get your internet traffic to its destination. For example, those cables across the ocean are owned third parties and they charge money for every byte that goes through. It wouldn't be unreasonable for ISPs to pass that cost to users.
Furthermore, most links are overprovisioned in order to keep costs down. For example, if you assume that users only use 10% of their bandwidth on average, that means you can fit 10x as many people on a connection (or maybe 8x to account for peaks). This does mean that users should be discouraged from using their full bandwidth for long durations, otherwise the network operators can't overprovision as much and have to invest more in infrastructure.
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.
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.
I have to use O2's 5G (using a landline would be much slower) and there's no data cap on it. Costs €35/month, around the same as a regular landline contract. I think they'd cry foul if I tried using that SIM in a phone though.
I know ppl does this because of the crappy infrastructure in our beautiful country. I am in Berlin with 60 Mbit/s, fiber cable alread installed into my house but somethings missing yet to activate the line lol
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.
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.
(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
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.
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.
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.
I'm in the US and get 1Gbps for about £30, because my city forced ISPs to sell portions of their networks to third party competitions to break up monopolies.
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 the north-west but I'm limited to BT because nobody else has cables down yet. A different company claims to be fitting FttP round here in a few months though.
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
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Mine's ~90 Mbps down, ~35 Mbps up, 10 GB open access + 8 GB site-specific of your choice, you reload it weekly for $2.
There's also a 1 GB "Metaverse Go" bandwidth as well, I have no idea which sites are included in that because when I download updates for my Fedora laptop and download apps from Flathub, it uses that bandwidth.
Mediacom is the worst, data caps and low speeds for high prices, straight highway robbery. I'm lucky to have a local ISP with no data caps and a mostly reasonable price, cheaper than Mediacom at least. And soon to be fiber when they make it over to my neighborhood. They're currently in the process of running fiber to every neighborhood in my city.
Paying less than 10$ 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...
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 $75 per month. We pay too much for our Internet.
The sad thing is you only need one company to enter the market with aggressive prices so the others are forced to react (and admit they were abusing their clients).
That’s what happened in France with Free, and now everyone can have 15 to 30€ good internet. Caps are something never heard of. Later they did the same thing with mobile networks and now most of Europe have cheap unlimited no roaming etc.
Zero company went bankrupt, they just had to learn how to reduce their margins.
As a result I have a 10Gb/10Gb fiber with tv for 40$
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.
You mentioned the US, so please look up the FCC rules regarding limiting tenants from putting up antennas and dishes. It might be illegal for them to restrict that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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!
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)_/¯
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.
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.
If I where to move that would certainly be a factor in the future. I've been here since 2006 when the fastest offering was a lot less than it is now. Mostly I'd just like to get the speeds more balanced, I don't really need 1G down but with all the self hosting I've taken to in the last few years it would be nice to boost the upload and their next tier down at 500/50 cuts the cap in at least half because '"f'ck you, we can".
The CenturyLink fiber plan is pretty nice, me and my brother in law are on it and it runs as advertised and I've had maybe 2 outages in the 3 years I've had it, unlike my previous provider where it would be like 1 per quarter
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!
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.
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 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.
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!
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.
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.
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!
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.
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)
In the Netherlands we complain a lot about gas prizes, costs of groceries. et cetera.
Sorry, moest ik even fixen :)
On topic, I'm in NZ and we tend to be behind in things, but Internet here is awesome. NZ$95 for unlimited 900/500mbps.
They are starting to roll out 2.5 gbps.
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'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 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.
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.
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’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.
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 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'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
That's rough... No idea how I'd cope with that. I don't think I've ever had a datacap on any residential connection here in the Netherlands. Currently got 1gbps fiber up and down for 50 euros I think.
TV however is still a huge scam. I just want to watch football but have to have a billion other channels too I think. (Ima see if I can change this now lol)
As many others have already given their specs, I'll add mine: 1/1G fibre 55€/month, no data cap in rural Finland. And I can get the advertised speeds whenever (plus a bit more due to how they do the limit, but that's heavily load dependent). 10G plan is available too, but I don't have hardware or real need for that, so I don't know about pricing, but I'd quess less than a 100€/m. Only dynamic IPv4, I've been waiting for them to upgrade to IPv6 so I could have some real world experience with it.
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.
I live in a large city and as of last year I have two choices for high speed home internet. I was paying $70/month for 300/20 with cable, now I have fiber and pay $70/month for 300/300. At least the first year was cheaper as a new customer and the faster upload speed is helpful for work from home.
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.
I'm in a very small town, we only have a bar. $100/mo for 500mb/s up and down, at least I actually get that though. Rarely is it less, but they also hooked us all up with fiber when they ran the fiber thru the center of the city. Price is also largely because they are literally the only internet provider unless you go with satellite -- which I was considering but with the weather here...probably not ideal.
U should come to australia. Our internet is worse than most 3rd world countries. And u need a business plan to get symmetric upload thats so slow i doubt u could hit a 1tb cap if u tried.
Perhaps unpopular opinion but I don’t know why people are saying they want ISPs to be treated like a utility. Most utilities charge based on how much you use… I don’t have a data cap at the moment but I’d much rather have a cap than a charge per GB used…
For most utilities (water, electricity), there's a relatively linear relationship between the tangible value provided (energy used, water dispensed) and the cost to provide it (coal burned, water sourced/treated). Even for wind- or hydro-powered electricity, the amount that everybody uses has a proportional amount of wear on the system and consequent required maintenance.
But not so much for ISPs. Instead, you're basically paying for a "fictional" amount (speed) of a non-tangible product. Granted, there is a linear relationship to the amount of electricity the ISP uses to provide each bit, but it's negligible.
Instead, what you're paying for with internet is essentially to recoup the fixed costs of the provider's equipment. They do need to upgrade every so often to accommodate more capacity and faster speeds, but this is proportional to speeds provided and not data volume used.
Data caps are everywhere, I'm not sure why you'd think they're a thing of the past. I believe the scenario is more like "you're lucky if your plan doesn't have caps" instead.
1.5T/month is uncomfortable though. One of my VPN services has a 1T/month softcap (speed drastically reduces after that) and it's usually fine for my household, but one person going crazy on YouTube rabbit holes or us binging something on Netflix, pushes that limit fast.
Terrible scenario, but unfortunately I think there's too much money involved for the right thing to be done and this kind of service getting the treatment it should have.
TF you smoking? I pay 25€/ mo. For gigabit connection with no data caps. The US is getting hosed because it’s a corporatocracy and the ISPs have acted like robber barons for the past three decades. Don’t normalize this blatantly anti consumer bullshit.
To add to this, my country has been rolling out 10Gbps U/D FTTH for 35€/Month for a while, and even rural areas usually have at least 500Mbps U/D, all of it uncapped.
Gotta say, more than a decade ago ISP's tried to implement data caps on home internet, and it failed spectacularly.
I weep for our American brethren, may they find a way out of the hole they're in...
The problem with the US is even if we had a consumer lobby, which I don’t think we do, we would be overrun by the big corporate lobbies in a matter of seconds.
The only people that get listened to by our government are those who have the big money to control members of congress. We are supposed to have a government for the people by the people but instead we have a government for the rich by the rich.
Those of us that don’t have billions of dollars don’t have a voice, even though they claim to listen, they don’t unless you can line their pockets with a few $100,000 thousand dollars a month.
Our government official don’t care about us, they care about money and how to get more of it.
Sorry if this is nitpicking but as far as I know, there is no such thing as unlimited mobile data plans.
In most contracts they will say that you have to use reasonably the data plan and you cannot for example constantly max out your connection. Like 24/7 constant max bandwidth used.
In most case it doesn't really matter but I really don't like the fact that ISPs get to say it's unlimited when it definitely isn't.
Here in Australia, while speeda are not amazing (gigabit is kind of the max for now) we have no contracts, no data caps, hundreds of ISPs and some even allow people to pay per day.
I can change ISP tomorrow and the switch over will take 10 minutes, because the physical network is common to all of them.
It's sort of sad to see how americans have only the freedom to get their kids shot and ass fucked by corporations.
Mate “speeds are not amazing” is a massive understatement. I pay $80 a month for 46Mbps down, 12Mbps up. Unlimited data thankfully, although realistically the most I’m going to be able to download is 5TB a month unless I leave devices on all day and night (and given our electricity prices that’s a whole different kettle of fish).
Everywhere on mobile sure but fiber then it's not a thing in the Nordics. Unsure about the rest of the EU but I'd be surprised if it was common.
Speeds can be iffy though. It's very much up to the landlord in the cities what fiber to install and when so there are large discrepancies. Some are still stuck on sub 100 MB/s though it's getting very rare. I'm rural as fuck and will get 1 GB/s in two weeks, have 300 MB/s currently.