Internet Speeds In The U.S. Have Tripled Since 2011

xorbe said:
AT&T dsl in California, huge increases here.
Mine: 1.5 -> 18 ($52)
Dad's: 3 -> 27 ($30)
They gave him some sort of old grouchy person discount that I can't wrangle out of customer service.
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They probably put you into the Uverse category, where they essentially move the CO to your neighborhood (in those boxes) so your distance (which is what limits speed in DSL) is almost non-existent. I thought about doing Uverse, as I've seen those boxes up for at least a year in the neighborhood, however it's not available here for some reason.
 
The speed has gone up yes, (hooray?) but the QUALITY of my fiber internet connection has gone to crap.

If there is nothing we can do about the infrastructure, I'd rather have my speed and everyone else cut in half if it means my connection works properly between 6pm and 11pm.
 
I'm pretty rural. Not much of a difference. We do have fiber everywhere around us. We're up to 5 data centers in my down (Amazon), and we still have shit DSL 25/2 for the max. Of course, no cable company. Just DSL and crap wireless. Fiber is just down the road. Just not for residential consumers.
 
It's not the speeds that bother me. It's the caps and the random throttling that seems to be going on. I have RCN at 50/10, far better than the 6/1 connection I had with Comcast in 2003. However, in my personal experience, the quality control has gotten progressively worse. I've found my internet throttled at random periods, even though RCN and Xfinity (which I had before switching to RCN) don't have data caps in Chicago.
 
From 2005 to 2009, I had the max available speed of 1.5Mb. In 2009, I was able to increase to 3.0. I am still on 3.0, with no future upgrades planned for the system in my area, per AT&T's engineers.

The bright side? Uverse arrived last year, after waiting for it for years. Downside?

I can sign up for the max speed available of 728kb. :rolleyes:


Hopefully, the family and I can move to Chattanooga in a year or 2. I will go in person to EPB and sign up for their gigabit up/down service that day....
 
Uvaman said:
I guess after stealing Billions from the government they had to do something other than just raising prices.,

http://newnetworks.com/ShortSCANDALSummary.htm
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I have seen different arguments on this from both sides ... my understanding of this is they didn't receive direct government subsidies they essentially levied a service fee to their users that was intended to fund the activities ... one can have a valid argument on whether they achieved their goals or not but unless there was a contractual requirement for them to do so they can't be in violation of anything that wasn't properly specified

The government wanted infrastructure and that is exactly what they got ... most homes in the urban environment have one or more cable providers ... one or more hardline providers ... one or more ISPs available ... and 3-5 mobile providers ... the government didn't really want competition or they wouldn't have approved all the mergers ... would we be better off if we had 100 million gigabit connections (maybe ... maybe not), but the arguments that we have hurt our economy because of it are dubious at best (Americans are a consumption based economy primarily and we still consume plenty)
 
Thank you Google, thank you. 100% success! I had 15mb back in 2011... I now have Gig fiber to my house. Time warner bumped it to 200 since google announced because they HAD TO to try and keep business.
 
Grimmda said:
Thank you Google, thank you. 100% success! I had 15mb back in 2011... I now have Gig fiber to my house. Time warner bumped it to 200 since google announced because they HAD TO to try and keep business.
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Same here. TWC and ATT got desperate in Kansas City. TWC upgraded almost immediately and ATT took over a year to catch up. It really makes me wonder how much TWC was holding back and how far behind ATT was.

Google could only wire houses, and would only wire apartment complexes if EVERY apartment was wired up due to legal issues with the landlords. Landlords typically didn't want to pay the hefty fees to wire up dozens of apartments, so most apartments didn't get Fiber.

I could not get Google Fiber in the last 2 apartments I've lived at since they announced Fiber rollout. I still reaped the benefits. TWC rolled out almost immediate speed increases. I went from 20mbps to 35mbps almost overnight of Google's announcement and they announced a new 100+ mbps tier for more money. Sometime last year they offered that top tier to me for FREE with Showtime with future upgrade to 200+ next year. Naturally, I jumped on it.
 
2010 - 10mbps/5mbps WISP

2013 - 1gb/1gb Fiber from my electric co-op
 
All fun and games until more people have data caps.

Fast doesn't mean shit if you can't use it
 
limitedaccess said:
I don't really understand why a lot of discussions (if not most) regarding internet speeds seem to leave out cost. It's only truly progressive if internet speeds went up 3x while cost remained the same (pegged to inflation).
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Yeah, back in the 90s, $20 a month got you dialup. Nowadays, $20 still gets you dialup. Meanwhile in Europe, you can get 5mbps broadband for $5 a month.
 
The fastest access I can get here is my current 10 meg Centurylink DSL. Suddenlink only offers 3 megs,pathetic for cable internet.
 
At my "main" residence I used Charter Business until Feb. 2013 (same speeds in 2011) which was 60 down / 4 up, but generally ran upper 60s and 5.5 up $69.99 - the internet portion was . I ran into a slew of health issues and have been recuperating at our family cabin so I had Charter disconnected and was using a WISP at the cabin at 10 down / 2 up for $60. Now that I am semi-close to normal health wise and staying at home much more, I am going back to Charter Business shortly. They have lowered prices a little, as a semi-local fiber ISP has started selling service. It is advertised as 100 / 7, but the 100 meg customers generally are seeing 130 / 10+.
 
had 50/? at Comcast a few years ago. Moved to the country and best I can get is 4G LTE(no DSL, cable etc...) which averages about 14/10 for $90/mo grandfathered unlimited plan(how long will this last ????). Sad my tax $ went to improving our infrastructure for all, yet the telcom/cable co's decided to abscond with the $ instead
 
Local DSL went from 3/1 to 6/1. 88 dollars a month with required phone connection. Can get 10/2 for another 20 a month but screw them. Only game in town.
 
kbrickley said:
I have seen different arguments on this from both sides ... my understanding of this is they didn't receive direct government subsidies they essentially levied a service fee to their users that was intended to fund the activities ... one can have a valid argument on whether they achieved their goals or not but unless there was a contractual requirement for them to do so they can't be in violation of anything that wasn't properly specified
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That's actually what the law was about. It most certainly did give a subsidy to ISPs. You can't charge something to someone and give them nothing in return. We have a term called fraud for a reason. They were allowed to charge us for expansion, and in return we got a really half assed solution, with many people still using DSL.

kbrickley said:
The government wanted infrastructure and that is exactly what they got ... most homes in the urban environment have one or more cable providers
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In what city? One, sure. More than one? I know many places up and down the east cost with only 1 hard line choice.

kbrickley said:
and 3-5 mobile providers
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Good luck cashing in those Steam gift cards using a mobile broadband solution. You can't download a Sonic the Hedgehog game on a mobile plan. I guess if Candy Crush is your idea of gaming, then mobile should be just fine.

kbrickley said:
... the government didn't really want competition or they wouldn't have approved all the mergers
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The people who approve them are usually from the private sector. Antitrust is one of the areas were we have plenty of laws governing it but they are rarely enforced. The only exception that I can really recently is the Comcast merger. That one was so obviously horrible that if it had gone through then the reason for having antitrust at all would have been moot.

kbrickley said:
... would we be better off if we had 100 million gigabit connections (maybe ... maybe not), but the arguments that we have hurt our economy because of it are dubious at best (Americans are a consumption based economy primarily and we still consume plenty)
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Not dubious at all. Any one who had extra money in their pocket would have spent the money on something else. We pay more for less here when there isn't a real need to. We pay it in our taxes, we pay it on our bills, and we pay it through inferior service. All of that would add up to some serious extra money country-wide that could have been spent elsewhere on other things, or saved. In addition to that if the cable company gets its way and starts charging by the byte on hard line services you can kiss Netflix and Steam goodbye.

I remember very clearly not too long ago we had people on here saying this stupid shit. " 100 GB per month is more than enough. I download shit all of the time and never go over that." Yeah uh huh. My ass burned through that cashing in my Steam cards in one damn day. GTFO
 
kac77 said:
The people who approve them are usually from the private sector. Antitrust is one of the areas were we have plenty of laws governing it but they are rarely enforced. The only exception that I can really recently is the Comcast merger. That one was so obviously horrible that if it had gone through then the reason for having antitrust at all would have been moot.
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It's called regulatory capture. Most of the time the government and corporations are all on the same side, with what's good for the average person having no voice at all.
 
As much as I hate Comcast, they did boost me from 25Mbps to 100Mbps. Sure, I don't get the full 100Mbps a lot, but it is usually way over 50Mbps, so it was a nice boost.
 
In rural areas the internet will stay slow fore awhile due to high costs involved with low gain.
 
Yet, the telcom/cable monopolies have taken billions in subsidies to build out. They consider 4G LTE at >$10/GB to be "satisfactory". Try having a house with 4 kids on a budget like that.
 
I was at 15 down, 5 up on a fiber-to-the-home provider when we lived in Colorado Springs. We moved to the country in Peyton in 2012, and the best we could get from DSL was 12 down, 768k up. The upload speed was killing me, so I did some research on the DSL Reports site. The guys there helped me figure out what to ask for from CenturyLink. After months of educating their poor engineers, we finally came up with a plan. I now have two G.998 compatible DSL modems that have two 10/1 lines going to each. A load-balancing router then takes the two bonded pairs and gives me a net speed of 40/4. Pretty happy, despite the near $200 a month I pay for the custom business package they gave me.
 
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