Technology

Hahahahahaha.

Fuck. It's so fake it makes me feel sick, I hate large corporations, especially ones with monopolies. It's disgusting.

Stares in local duopoly

We have 1 choice or nothing. If my ham sandwich suddenly provided bandwidth, id drop my isp in a heartbeat

Not in NYC. Spectrum is my only option and they are flaky as hell

I have spectrum or 500kbs DSL. That's it. That's such a a blatant lie anyone that has Internet will confirm.

Unfortunately the next administration will likely agree with the ISPs on this. To an extent T-Mobile and Verizon 5G home internet has genuinely shaken up the industry. As long as low latency isn't a requirement of yours they're quite good. For me they offer higher upload speeds than my local ISP monopoly with similar download speeds.

Well, that is true for me in Canada with Teksavvy.

Fuck that shit. I switched to Starlink while flipping them off. Going back? Not even once

Honestly, I can't even complain about my cable ISP. It's super stable. I have multiple game consoles, streaming devices in every room, and connected phones and/or tablets for every member of the family. And I'm in a VERY rural part of PA. Service Electric Cablevision, first cable company in the US. It's not WY level rural, but seriously. I don't know how much more I should expect. I can count on one hand with fingers left over if I wanted to count the number of times i had to call for tech support over the last 10 years.

Are ISPs transitioning to comedy now?

Ya, and the reason I've never been in a car accident is cause I'm a fantastic driver, not because I've never owned a car...

"excellent customer service" is a really weird to state "monopolistic practices"

Welp, the gig is up. After all of these years we've been publicly pretending otherwise... these companies have finally seen through our charade. We no longer need to excitedly whisper to eachother in basements and bars, and other locals in the shadows, tales of how our local Internet service providers always go above and beyond for each and every one of us. Now they know we think of them not only as a part of our family, but also as one of our children, as kin, and with more esteem than our elders. Truly we are a blessed people. The future is bright my brothers, we can now rejoice openly in the sun the ISPs shine down unto us.

USTelecom, which represents telcos such as AT&T and Verizon, said that "the competitive broadband marketplace leaves providers of broadband and other communications services no choice but to provide their customers with not only high-quality broadband, but also high-quality customer service."

That's so much bullshit in so little space that I'm surprised it didn't become a black hole.

I work for an ISP, we have 10 second to 3 minutes hold times before you're speaking to a real rep, we have had downtime 5 times since I started working for them 4 years ago for maintenance (upgrading hardware to support larger bandwidth in different areas), we sell 1Gbps symmetrical speeds with unlimited data for $50/mo, we have 50k customers (in a specific area) and 5 customer service reps. Customer service quality is definitely important, but providing a service with minimal issues and great prices, that's why the ISP I work for can get away with such a minimum amount of representatives and continue to get a 4.7 star rating on Google as an ISP.

It's fun working for a company like this because you get to see how 50k customers paying for 1Gbps only use 70-85Gbps at any given time on average lol, people think they need a lot of bandwidth when in reality they just need a better router for their local network's bandwidth. WiFi hasn't been a great tech so far honestly, Wi-Fi 6 made a lot of improvements, maybe with WiFi7/8 that changes though. Big name consumer routers like Netgear have been dropping the ball with quality for years, but they still rake in the cash because at one point they made really great hardware.

I've learned a lot about networking because of this job, and it's given me a really great perspective of how awful Comcast/Xfinity/spectrum and CenturyLink/QuantumFiber really are, how much they try to get in the pockets of the people who make the decisions for infrastructure in our cities, there were so many hate ads against the ISP I work for during an election season all paid for by Comcast and CenturyLink.

Anyways, customer service is great, but quality of service is much more important. Having both is a win all around.

I'm contractually obligated to take it in the ass from the only ISP in town.

The only reason I take their customer service up my ass is because it always sucks no matter what ISP I use.

if you want to listen to 35 minutes of annoying music, press 1. If you want to get insulted personally by an operator stay on the line

I audibly laughed.

shoutout to Andrews & Arnold, best ISP in the uk. I called to stop using them because I was leaving the country forever and they were like "good, what else do you want?" MFs gave zero shits and gave great high speed service.

https://www.aa.net.uk/

In Algeria no one switches because there's only one ISP.

My ISP's customer service is spectacular. It's literally THE reason I've stuck with my ISP the entire time I've lived here. Well, that and the fact that they're the only option.

All infrastructure should be owned by the government

The reason I haven't switched is because I have no real alternatives. I could try a wireless service, but it would likely be a downgrade as signal is not the greatest in my area.

The reason i don't switch is because the price is fair enough and i have less connection issues compared the all the others we have available.

I'm gonna have to sue whoever said that to deal with the whiplash from my doubletake

I was lucky enough to have options after I moved a few years ago, and went with the smaller semi-local isp that offers better speeds for better prices, and no bullshit. The customer service is actually pretty good too. I hope more people get options like that, it felt so good to leave the big guys.

Bluntly: If you're fortunate, you'll have two options for internet. DSL and cable. Sometimes there's other "options" like a WISP or starlink, or even a dual up provider, but the speed comparison is not even close, so I usually discard most of those as viable either on ping time or bandwidth.

It's extremely likely that only one provider services your residence with DSL, and one provider does cable. Two providers. All other options are basically a wholesale or resale of these two providers, meaning you still get service from one of those two.

If you're extremely lucky, you'll also have the option of fiber. And IMO, that is the only time you really get three options.

If you go with a third party ISP, the last mile is still one of the two that actually come into your residence.

So the only real options you have are: do you want to buy internet direct from the ISP that owns the line to your house, or do you want to buy internet from someone who will contact that company to give you internet? If you don't like the DSL provider, and you don't like the cable provider, you're completely fucked. Gg everyone.

ISPs are generally all equally as bad (except for Spectrum. They're probably the worst.). I stay with my ISP because they've never once complained about any of the torrenting I've done.

I live where there's 1 isp and 10 mobile/satellite providers