Why has internet service gotten so expensive?

M

munkle

[H]F Junkie
Joined
Jan 16, 2005
Messages
11,799
Comcast just upped the monthly fee for internet by $10. I was checking prices for service around me and century link wants $65 a month for 12mb internet. :eek: We get 30mb right now from comcast for $63. A year ago 1.5mb service was just $25 from qwest (centurylink) and from comcast as well. It wasn't some 6 month special price that was the normal price now its up to $45 for both those services from each company. Is there any logical reason to why prices have gone up so much that I am missing?
 
Because there is no price regulation and the internet companies can fuck you as hard as they want.

$15/month for 20mbit cable in France according to a co-worker.
 
A lot depends on your location, competitors and what they are offering, etc... As an example I'm paying $75/month for 100mb/15mb.
 
You have to break it down to what you're getting.

First....remember the dial up days? Back in the Windows 95 days? Dial up averaged 20-25 bucks a month...for dial up. Yeah there were cheaper packages now 'n then...here and there...guess some would argue that they paid 12 bucks or 14.95/month for their dial up. But most of the good, unlimited packages that I remember were around 20 bucks/month.

If you wanted fancier stuff....ISDN...or Colt or Multi-link....you paid more..way way more. If I recall, 1/2 ISDN was about 68 bucks/month, full ISDN was around 125/month.

Phone company was/is usually the cheapest.

So now..current times...your basic DSL service is...oh..look..still about 20-25 bucks a month. I even see a basic package right now for 14.95/month. Hmmm...seems similar to 15 years ago. Except you get quite a bit more for that same money...a lot faster than dial up, can even have multiple computers on that.

Cable Internet....was always more than DSL. Makes sense too..it's multiple times faster than DSL.

Any that did online gaming back in the dial up days would dream of having a T-1 or something that fast in their house...but hell if they'd pay over 800 bucks/month for one. Now look at the size of that fat pipe you can get for less than 1/10th of that 800/month price tag......12, 18, 20 meg pipes.

Seems to me like we get a heck of a lot more for our dollar now..than we did back then.
 
$60/mo for 30/5 from TWC

However TWC has direct competition from ATT's Uverse in my area. More competition means more price wars. Otherwise they will just go, ha we're the only game in town so fuck you. :)
 
$65 a month for 24/3.5 with Basic T.V service - no extra fees such as Modem Rental, Insurance and the need for an Technician to come out to my home.
 
Crap try paying for FTTH for 7/7 for 40 dollars from a local company when I can get docsis 30/5 for same price from twc and if I wanted 15/7 ftth its going to cost me 70 dollars from a local company when I can get 50/5 wideband for 100 dollars from twc and yes I am in rural parts of mercer county ohio which is noting but farming land.

For wireless around here you can pay 1mb by 512kbps for 45 dollars for 3meg by 2meg for 65 dollars which I am working on fixing that problem around here with my start up wisp.
 
I'm paying $70/mo for 25/3 Uverse.

Expensive? Maybe, but they still aren't capping / throttling me, compared to the DSL customers @ 150gb/mo.

So, I'll take it. My max usage was around 110GB anyway so a 250GB cap wouldn't kill me anyway, but its nice to know if I need it, it won't cost me anything to get there.
 
I paid $29.99 for 1m/256k in 2000, then $29.99 for 4m/512k in 2004 which got bumped to 8/1 in 2007 with no cost increase. Moved out of town in 2010 and got stuck with 8m/512k with an 80GB cap for $55 until Uverse rolled out here and now I'm paying $53 for 18/1.5.

I'd have to say that internet isn't all that expensive at all. Just for 14.4k dial-up in the early 90's, we paid $75 a month ($30 to the ISP and $45 to the telco for a second phone line so we could talk on the phone while on the Internet).
 
But you also forget also people also will go find the cheapest internet they can find also. So ISP's would have to back down on the pricing in the future if they want to stay in business. Because if you look at japan they have 1GB for half the cost what we pay for standard connection.
 
The pricing varies a lot depending on location. Bigger cities are a bit closer but urban areas vary widely.
 
Last edited:
10/10 M 24,90 €/mo.
50/10 M 32,90 €/mo.
100/10 M 42,90 €/mo.
250/50 M* 59,90 €/mo.
(opening/additional fees) 0 €

The * is saying if your area/neighborhood is in certain areas (most major towns in the country)

By reference this is the pricing by my home:
1.5Mbps $15
7 Mbps $20
12 Mbps $25
20 Mbps $35
40 Mbps $45
These prices were full of disclaimers such as MAXIMUM burst speed, and if the sun shines brightly while raining etc. :) and probably exclusive of fees and taxes etc. Between my 2 places of residence there is a huge difference.
 
Last edited:
timreichhart said:
But you also forget also people also will go find the cheapest internet they can find also. So ISP's would have to back down on the pricing in the future if they want to stay in business. Because if you look at japan they have 1GB for half the cost what we pay for standard connection.
Click to expand...

Well..there are a LOT of reasons that internet in some regions of the globe are vastly different than here in the US. I can sit here for hours and write pages and pages on the subject. But I gotta deploy some ethernet for a new Datto backup system at the current client...so I'll keep that brief, you can Google the rest.

In the US...lets think about how our infrastructure is setup across the country. Think about how old our infrastructure is. Think about the logistics of how the backbones are setup, the vast distances they have to carry. Think about...if you're a packet of data...how many ISPs you have to hump across to get from the east coast to the west coast. Think about trying to get allllllll the various different ISPs we have in our country together so they can agree upon and upgrade our infrastructure from one coast to the other. Think about how spread apart our population is.

Now...lets go to a relatively small country that people often compare our internet against. Notice that the countries people try to use as examples...they're very small countries? With like...95% of the population is mostly focused in a few dense cities? (pretty damn easy to spread gigabit across a wicked dense city where everyone lives on top of one another in closely crammed skyscrapers) They're often countries that had their infrastructure completely overhauled from the ground up in the past 50 years? Oh yeah..here's a major point... it's a "government subsidized ISP". Meaning.."Paid for by taxes". So when people see how low the costs are..they conveniently forget that the citizen of that country has already paid for a large portion of that bill through taxes. Wonder what the actual cost is to the citizen once you factor in those taxes......
 
YeOldeStonecat said:
Well..there are a LOT of reasons that internet in some regions of the globe are vastly different than here in the US. I can sit here for hours and write pages and pages on the subject. But I gotta deploy some ethernet for a new Datto backup system at the current client...so I'll keep that brief, you can Google the rest.

In the US...lets think about how our infrastructure is setup across the country. Think about how old our infrastructure is. Think about the logistics of how the backbones are setup, the vast distances they have to carry. Think about...if you're a packet of data...how many ISPs you have to hump across to get from the east coast to the west coast. Think about trying to get allllllll the various different ISPs we have in our country together so they can agree upon and upgrade our infrastructure from one coast to the other. Think about how spread apart our population is.

Now...lets go to a relatively small country that people often compare our internet against. Notice that the countries people try to use as examples...they're very small countries? With like...95% of the population is mostly focused in a few dense cities? (pretty damn easy to spread gigabit across a wicked dense city where everyone lives on top of one another in closely crammed skyscrapers) They're often countries that had their infrastructure completely overhauled from the ground up in the past 50 years? Oh yeah..here's a major point... it's a "government subsidized ISP". Meaning.."Paid for by taxes". So when people see how low the costs are..they conveniently forget that the citizen of that country has already paid for a large portion of that bill through taxes. Wonder what the actual cost is to the citizen once you factor in those taxes......
Click to expand...

While I partially agree with the density thing, if you look across Europe the speeds/pricing are very similarly cheap and the whole EU spreads out across a significant land area. (They had to offer backbones across the whole continent as well!).

As for the taxation, I'd be interested in links. I don't actually know the full details but would always like sources. The US has actually provided a ton of subsidies but they don't seem to bear fruit.

We (the US taxpayers) paid telecoms billions to offer cutting edge internet to everyone (90% or more of the population) but they haven't delivered anything for that. (trying to find a source, I read this several years ago.) That was to happen by 2000 or 2005 or something.

http://www.techworld.com.au/article/355857/us_agency_announces_1_2_billion_broadband_subsidies/

(granted this is a tiny subsidy of $50 million)
http://www.broadbandsatelliteinternet.org/hughesnet_recovery_act
 
Personally, what I am waiting for is google (and similar companies) to become an ISP. They have been discussing it a bit and I think they would offer a far better service / price point because they have other motives in becoming an ISP and profit from the connection itself would not be the focus.

That or the community ISPs. I have only read a few examples but the ISPs pricing doesn't even compare with what a community can do if they want to. Naturally, only if the entire community (90%) support this. I don't support taxation without representation (others making the decision/dictating.) unless the (by far) vast majority agrees.
 
wand3r3r said:
While I partially agree with the density thing, if you look across Europe the speeds/pricing are very similarly cheap and the whole EU spreads out across a significant land area. (They had to offer backbones across the whole continent as well!).

As for the taxation, I'd be interested in links. I don't actually know the full details but would always like sources. The US has actually provided a ton of subsidies but they don't seem to bear fruit.

We (the US taxpayers) paid telecoms billions to offer cutting edge internet to everyone (90% or more of the population) but they haven't delivered anything for that. (trying to find a source, I read this several years ago.) That was to happen by 2000 or 2005 or something.

http://www.techworld.com.au/article/355857/us_agency_announces_1_2_billion_broadband_subsidies/

(granted this is a tiny subsidy of $50 million)
http://www.broadbandsatelliteinternet.org/hughesnet_recovery_act
Click to expand...

The first link you posted was on RUS which is primarily for rural area's that have a low population density, that funding won't have anything to do with larger metro area's. You may be more interested in USF which is used to help pay for services that the government thinks everyone should have access to. Currently it's mostly giving to telco's (My previous employer was HEAVILY subsidized by this, ~75-80% of our revenues came from this program.) as phone service covered under this.

Currently it's undergoing a restructuring to give the money else where, however all signs point to a majority of the money going to wireless carriers for LTE implementations.

Just to add to it, here's pricing/speeds for some companies in my area - I live in a low pop/density area.

Company #1 - 3/1 = $40, 7/1.5 = $50, 15/1.5 = $70, 15/3 = $90, 25/5 = $130
Company #2 - 3/1 = $40, 5/1 = $60, 10/1 = $100
Company #3 - 4/1 = $55, 8/1 = $75, 12/1 = $95
Company #4 - 1.5/.5 = $32, 3/1 = $50, 5/1 = $70
Company #5 - .768k/512k = $33, 1.5/512k = $45 3/1 = $55, 5/1 = $65, 10/1 = $85

All 5 of these Companies have a mixed FTTH/DSL and should be pure FTTH in the next 5 years.
 
Last edited:
Macco said:
The first link you posted was on RUS which is primarily for rural area's that have a low population density, that funding won't have anything to do with larger metro area's. You may be more interested in USF which is used to help pay for services that the government thinks everyone should have access to. Currently it's mostly giving to telco's (My previous employer was HEAVILY subsidized by this, ~75-80% of our revenues came from this program.) as phone service covered under this.

Currently it's undergoing a restructuring to give the money else where, however all signs point to a majority of the money going to wireless carriers for LTE implementations.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I can't find my original link that I read several years ago. I'm not sure that's the same thing as the funding which I am referring to has *already* been paid and I don't recall the original terms but it was basically that they were going to offer speeds which many years later are still not available for the billions they lapped up.

Anyways, the poster above implied that subsidies in the EU account for their pricing, but I just want to point out (to my knowledge) it's occurring on both sides, but the gouging seems worse in the US.

It's such a joke, subsidizing LTE and they charge the prices they do! They are all making profits, what are we subsidizing successful corporations for? (I suppose subsidizing unsuccessful companies make even less sense, but they should have limits on what they can charge *if its taxpayer funded*)
 
LTE isn't being subsidized yet, but assuming it's done similarly to how PSTN is now the pricing on it will be regulated. They are still in the middle of the USF restructuring, currently the money is still going to telco's to provide landline services to customers.
 
ISP 1 (cable):

tier1internetmatrix911.jpg


ISP 2 (DSL):

Code: 
High-Speed Internet Bundles
DSL + Local + Long Distance (100 Mins) 
Maximum Download/Upload Speed* Bundle Price* 
3 Mbps / 512 Kbps  $89.00 
1 Mbps / 320 Kbps  $69.00 
320 Kbps / 240 Kbps  $49.00

Only 2 ISPs, short of Clearwire (if they're even still around)
 
Because companies like Comcast and Verizon have monopolies over specific areas, therefore there is no competition. Plus, these companies like to not upgrade until it's too late, and then still don't go with state of the art stuff, they rather pocket the profits instead of reinvesting it into building up their networks. So since they have a shitty infrastructure, they can then cry and complain and set a bandwidth cap and terminate your service whenever they feel like it. Since these monopolies own the areas where lines are run, local companies simply can't lay their own lines to your house, so if you want a local company, they are still expensive because they have to pay the monopolies to use their lines.
 
timreichhart said:
But you also forget also people also will go find the cheapest internet they can find also. So ISP's would have to back down on the pricing in the future if they want to stay in business. Because if you look at japan they have 1GB for half the cost what we pay for standard connection.
Click to expand...

and their entire country is also fiber....


$120 here for 4Mb / 1Mb in Costa rica, what are all you complaining about, i would actually love to see what people's avg througput is in a month for those with high speed fiber and such to your house........
 
stiltner said:
I'm paying $70/mo for 25/3 Uverse.

Expensive? Maybe, but they still aren't capping / throttling me, compared to the DSL customers @ 150gb/mo.

So, I'll take it. My max usage was around 110GB anyway so a 250GB cap wouldn't kill me anyway, but its nice to know if I need it, it won't cost me anything to get there.
Click to expand...

You can bet At&t will keep there promise when it comes to those caps and they probably won't even bother telling you when they actually will start generating accurate meters either. Personally I feel what they are going to charge for 50GB is just downright insane for a land line connection.

You can blame corruption for reasons why internet service has only gotten more expensive. All of the franchise deals , city deals and sometimes even state wide deals just completely cripple anyone but the biggest ISPs from total dominate .. the worst part is that they get away with it completely and entirely. If the DOJ ever decided to do a proper investigation on Comcast then they would be in deep shit for all the shady things they've done to entirely halt things like community fiber or small town ISPs. And please stop offering the vast "speed difference from now and then" , they pack more users on to the same lines and if you don't have fiber right up to the curb then your getting varying speed results all day long.. hardly the same as paying for a completely dedicated business line like a T1 that isn't being routed anywhere else except from your location.

What's going on in the US in terms of broadband service is just one monopoly after another , small ISPs simply don't even stand a remote snowball's chance in hell of doing anything but folding over time. The only places small ISPs seem to be thriving is where the big boy's haven't laid out fiber in very rural area's around the country , it seems like a ton of small Wifi or WiMAX ISPs are popping up and taking up the task. I feel bad for people that are forced to use satellite , I would probably quit using the internet outside of my smart phone is this was my only option.
 
15M/3M cable is $35/mo where I live, however for DSL 3M/512K is $55. And, the DSL service requires local phone, while the cable doesn't require any other service or fees.

Cost really varies a lot from one place to the next.
 
wand3r3r said:
10/10 M 24,90 €/mo.
50/10 M 32,90 €/mo.
100/10 M 42,90 €/mo.
250/50 M* 59,90 €/mo.
(opening/additional fees) 0 €

The * is saying if your area/neighborhood is in certain areas (most major towns in the country)

By reference this is the pricing by my home:
1.5Mbps $15
7 Mbps $20
12 Mbps $25
20 Mbps $35
40 Mbps $45
These prices were full of disclaimers such as MAXIMUM burst speed, and if the sun shines brightly while raining etc. :) and probably exclusive of fees and taxes etc. Between my 2 places of residence there is a huge difference.
Click to expand...

$60 for 16/2 here. *edit, that's for Just internet. It would be probably another 60 for 16/2 + expanded basic and for that they require a box. more rental $.

Something else I didn't see in here, with the digital requirement ala carte channels should be no more complicated than a button click these days. Yet it never happens. It's them charging as much as they can get away with for the smallest output. Simple.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top