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Cable Holding Back Superfast Broadband?

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Is cable holding back superfast broadband adoption on purpose? Without having to even think about it, I am going to go ahead and just say "yes."

The cable industry says it is more than ready to compete with Google Fiber, but adds that consumers are nowhere near ready for gigabit speeds. Is it cable's pricing schemes that are holding back adoption?
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We're ready for the speed, the cable companies just aren't ready to provide it at a low cost to the consumer. So long as Google Fiber keep spreading, and hopefully some smaller fiber start-ups pop up, cable will be scrambling to keep up.

IOW, fuck cable.
 
Cable companies suck, but I have no other option. The forced bundling and pricing are awful.
 
They (Cable/Telecom companies) are obviously milking it for all it's worth; especially their 100x paid over copper infrastructures.
 
No, fk dial-up, DSL, and T-1.

At least cable is fast.

And yes, there are HUGE regions in the US where cellphone bandwidth is faster than any other option. I know, I was in a building in the middle of a city of 160,000, in the middle of Southern California.

Fastest land based internet was 6 mbps (T-1) for $1100 a month. DSL was 256k ($90/m) as was satellite.

Now I have cable. It's 55 mbps for $60/m
 
IMO I don't got anything against cable's speed offerings. It's plenty fast, but could be faster. I do however got a problem with AT&T uVerse. When competitors are able to offer 50 down / 5 up and you still offer only 24 / 3 at about the same price, then there is a speed deficiency.
 
Yeah it's the norm. Squeeze the last drops from your existing infrastructure.

I remember back at the turn of the century the telecoms monopoly in the UK BT didn't want to roll out ADSL to the nation as it felt the mega expensive and terminally slow 128k ISDN was still perfectly adequate. It only started begrudgingly rolling it out after pressure from elsewhere.
 
I actually like the speed/price that my cable company provides well enough, but I would ditch them in a hot second for Google fiber.
 
Nothing wrong with Cable.

50mbit for $50, cant complain.

Now, the $100 for 200 channels of CRAP is the problem.
 
The article put it nicely, google vs cable are a matter of two different business models:

Google's trying to offer high speed internet at an affordable price.

Cable companies are trying to offer internet at the lowest cost and highest price the market can handle.

Monopolies for ya.
 
Put it this way...last week my old man was complaining about his transfer rates, and that the speed was awful. My folks are paying $50/month for 6-down/0.5-up DSL. Did a speedtest, they were getting rated upload but getting 0.5megabit down, at 3PM local on a weekday. They used to get full rated bandwidth. They call the ISP tech support who do a whole bunch of non-helpful troubleshooting tips....finally they reboot the DSL modem, and magically the down is boosted to 3megabit down and still rated up. ISP tech support is surprised and happy that he's now getting half of what the customer is paying for.

When I told my folks that what happened is the ISP oversold their bandwidth (severely) in his neighborhood and there's nothing they can do about it apart from switching ISPs...they weren't amused.
 
I don't really understand how Cable is holding anything back. Comcast already offers 100+Mbps speed tiers in my area.

If anything it's DSL/UVerse that is holding things back. Their fastest tier is about 25% as fast as Comcast's fastest tier, and their download caps are stricter also. Comcast has always been wishy-washy about caps, and the worse you'll get is maybe a phone call from them. AT&T just happily starts charging you more when you go over your cap, cellphone style.

Speaking of cellphones, they have succeeded in implanting the idea into people's heads that bandwidth caps are acceptable, even at pathetically low amounts like 2-5GB. That almost make's the ~250G Cap for DSL/UVerse seem generous - except that it's not.

Sure I'd love it if Cable offered 100Mbps or even gigabit speeds for <$60/month, but the reason they don't has more to due with lack of competition from DSL & UVerse providers than Fiber.
 
My father-in-law has Comcast with 50Mb down. Installed a fresh copy of World of Warcraft in just over an hour
 
Consumers are nowhere near ready for gigabit speeds? Who the FUCK came up with that conclusion and whom was asked if they were ready for it or not? I have never once received a phone or email survey by my cable company's broadband ISP division asking if I was in the 15 years that cable broadband has been in my city.

YES, DICKHEADS, I AM READY FOR GIGABIT BROADBAND ISP SPEEDS.

That clear enough for you?
 
IDK, have had comcast cable (std speed level) and can't remember a time where speed was a huge issue. Games download in an hour or 2, Netflix streams are high quality and not to many hiccups.

While faster would be nice, to me it would be icing on the cake... everyone wants faster and when even more is on the cloud it will be needed but for right now the speeds are fine with me.

Maybe people forget about the ol'modem days where it would take 2min to see boobies on the news groups... worse when the top half of the pic was nothing but background as you impatiently watch the image slowly download and show from the top down. :)
 
I find 50mbits to be enough. I'm more interested in a promise of no god damn usage caps ever.
 
http://gigaom.com/2013/06/11/comcast-shows-off-a-3-gigabit-broadband-connection-thats-fast/

Just because they can do 3 gigabit broadband and 4k video does not mean that they should immediately roll it out everywhere. Upgrades like this cost money and it comes with a bandwidth cost. Do they want to dedicate 20 channels for broadband or do they want to provide 80 more television stations?

And enough about bandwidth caps. We aren't normal users. Do you know for example the average AT&T broadband customer uses 21GB a month? I'm sure Comcast is similar. Sitting here typing it out I just realized that we are the 2% complaining about we should get more when the other 98% is paying most of the cost.
 
What do they mean we're not ready for gigabit? Why does anyone think that's an acceptable answer? "Oh, crap, I am not downloading enough to saturate a gigabit pipe, damn I guess I can't get one then!"

What the f*** do they think we need to be ready for? The ridiculous prices they would charge us?

What a ridiculous answer.
 
Ryokurin said:
And enough about bandwidth caps. We aren't normal users. Do you know for example the average AT&T broadband customer uses 21GB a month? I'm sure Comcast is similar. Sitting here typing it out I just realized that we are the 2% complaining about we should get more when the other 98% is paying most of the cost.
Click to expand...

This thread is about "Superfast Broadband". Anyone who uses ~21GB or less per month probably doesn't have any issue with their current speeds either.
 
GotNoRice said:
This thread is about "Superfast Broadband". Anyone who uses ~21GB or less per month probably doesn't have any issue with their current speeds either.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Plus I have a problem wit the whole concept of "Most people don't really use the Internet they pay for therefore the people who use it heavily should just shut the fuck up."
 
Paying nearly $100/mo for 30/5 service because I didn't bundle it with $149.99 worth of cable, $12.99 of renting a DVR and $29.99 of phone service (don't forget the $39.99 "we'll get there when we get there" service contract), cuz then my internet would be about $40.

My company is TWC, and they recently released a statement talking about making more money from less subscribers. Good thing I have no choice in my neighborhood!
 
More speed is always good. Generally lower speeds should become cheaper then which would benefit even the non-hardcore users. Then again I expect ridiculous prices.
 
Im a tech for Mediacom cable and I can tell you with 100 positivity Mediacom is only using 4 of 8 channels for downstream and 1 of 4 channels for upstream channel bonding on docis 3. the fastest speed they offer is 50mb and 105mb in some city's and that's without using full channel bonding, there just isn't any competitors here in my city for them to offer anything faster, DSL here is only 12mb that's the only to choices right now.
 
Dregan73 said:
Im a tech for Mediacom cable and I can tell you with 100 positivity Mediacom is only using 4 of 8 channels for downstream and 1 of 4 channels for upstream channel bonding on docis 3. the fastest speed they offer is 50mb and 105mb in some city's and that's without using full channel bonding, there just isn't any competitors here in my city for them to offer anything faster, DSL here is only 12mb that's the only to choices right now.
Click to expand...

DSL there may be 12Mbps... if you live within 5 centimeters of a switching office...
 
I've got TWC in a town where a municipal fiber provider operates. So they try to match mbs/$ and that leads to a ~$56 for 35/5 speeds. Not bad... I would sure as hell go 1gb/1gb for ~70 though! Hell, I would have to drop a new switch and AP into the house to get the LAN up to par!
 
Wierdo said:
The article put it nicely, google vs cable are a matter of two different business models:

Google's trying to offer high speed internet at an affordable price.

Cable companies are trying to offer internet at the lowest cost and highest price the market can handle.

Monopolies for ya.
Click to expand...

Well your overlooking something very important here, the cable company needs to provide service in the entire area, as outlined in their service agreement with the locality, but Google can pick and choose where it wants it's highspeed service so can get away with only installing it in areas where they know it will be profitable.
 
dandragonrage said:
DSL there may be 12Mbps... if you live within 5 centimeters of a switching office...
Click to expand...


And in there lies the problem. Vast areas are too far from a hub for fast DSL. That was our issue.

Even heavily populated areas can be too far, and the phone co doesn't want to upgrade hardware.

Now, when we moved into the new building, at first I had to set up DSL to get the building ready for moving in.

AT&T said 6 mbps down. We were right on top of a hub. However, even at 1 am, it always topped EXACTLY at 5 mbps. 24/7 it was always 5.0 mb. So I got cable and never looked back.

If you pump 6 gallons of gas, there should be 6 gallons in your tank. AT&T said, "We never guarantee your speed. Read your contract." They never had any intention of selling us what we paid for. It was not distance, or traffic. It was dishonesty.
 
But T-1 knocked out our phones, and screwed up some neighboring buildings, so we had to shut it off.
 
I think its them saying we are not ready for the rape pricing they want us to pay. But honestly cable internet is the best thing in my area. Verizon never rolled out FiOS in my area or within a 20 mile radius of me. So all we have is windstream, verizon, and att and cable. Which phone company depends on which neighborhood. They dont even have to compete with each other here. My sister who lives 5 miles away from me gets AT&T uverse 14 down and 2 up for 25 a month. My only dsl option is Verizon, $1.5 down and .5 up for $40 a month or cable which I have now 50/5 $60 a month. Cable recently upgraded me to that speed to and I actually get that. I had verizon dsl 6 years ago and they were at that speed then for the same price. DSL is the worse here, and its not like I dont live in/near a big ass city.
 
Sometimes it's good when the government intervenes and forces companies to get off their ***. I'd love to see a forced break up of many of these cable AND cellular companies like the old AT&T.
 
Eh, I can't really complain about my 100/20 cable connection. 50/10 is only $50-60 a month, and that really is plenty for most people. 100/20 is kind of overkill for me, but I haven't gotten around to downgrading it since they changed it. The only thing that takes advantage of it is steam downloads.
 
Time/Warner just bought my ISP, Insight Broad Band. They swapped over the system and introduced new software. It crashed the system and I haven't had steady internet for almost 2 months now. I've been screaming the whole time, and JUST now got a TWENTY FUCKING DOLLAR credit.. my internet is $70 a month.

There is no fucking way in hell they are going to give customers better service and tech, as customers wouldn't pay more then they are, and ISP's will NOT take a loss on anything (making less of a profit to them is considered a loss).. so no.. we aren't getting any upgrades until they get sued hard enough to force the issue
 
Qinsp said:
And in there lies the problem. Vast areas are too far from a hub for fast DSL. That was our issue.

Even heavily populated areas can be too far, and the phone co doesn't want to upgrade hardware.

Now, when we moved into the new building, at first I had to set up DSL to get the building ready for moving in.

AT&T said 6 mbps down. We were right on top of a hub. However, even at 1 am, it always topped EXACTLY at 5 mbps. 24/7 it was always 5.0 mb. So I got cable and never looked back.

If you pump 6 gallons of gas, there should be 6 gallons in your tank. AT&T said, "We never guarantee your speed. Read your contract." They never had any intention of selling us what we paid for. It was not distance, or traffic. It was dishonesty.
Click to expand...

Sometimes the lines aren't even new enough to support "fast" DSL. Once upon a time recently I lived in Seattle, two blocks north of the Space needle, which is maybe 1.5 miles from Century Link's Seattle HQ. They could not offer me anything faster than 5mbps and Comcast wanted $80 per month for 12 Mbps. So I managed to live without internet at my place, until I got the hell out of that city.

San Francisco wasn't much better, in 2010. I dunno if things have changed.since then, But Comcast wanted $80+ for 12mbps+
 
chameleoneel said:
Sometimes the lines aren't even new enough to support "fast" DSL. Once upon a time recently I lived in Seattle, two blocks north of the Space needle, which is maybe 1.5 miles from Century Link's Seattle HQ. They could not offer me anything faster than 5mbps and Comcast wanted $80 per month for 12 Mbps. So I managed to live without internet at my place, until I got the hell out of that city.

San Francisco wasn't much better, in 2010. I dunno if things have changed.since then, But Comcast wanted $80+ for 12mbps+
Click to expand...

When did TCI stop handling the Bay Area?
 
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