[RANT] I pay $70/mo for this privilege
[RANT] I pay $70/mo for this privilege
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.
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.
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 $95/mo for BETTER service.
The longstanding ISP cartels should seriously be punished for the abuse of their market positions and failure to appropriately use government funding they've been given.
lol uncapped 500mbps fiber (actual fiber directly to your house) connection is 10-12$/month in Ukraine
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.
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!
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters AP WiFi Access Point DNS Domain Name Service/System IP Internet Protocol IoT Internet of Things for device controllers Plex Brand of media server package VPN Virtual Private Network
6 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 8 acronyms.
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Our local fiber (1000/1000) is truly unlimited and just had a price decrease from $120 to $100. Never had an ISP do that before!
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.
Oh boy, you're still lucky with your data cap 🙂
Mine's ~90 Mbps down, ~35 Mbps up, 10 GB open access + 8 GB site-specific of your choice, you reload it weekly for $2.
There's also a 1 GB "Metaverse Go" bandwidth as well, I have no idea which sites are included in that because when I download updates for my Fedora laptop and download apps from Flathub, it uses that bandwidth.
just out of interest .. somebody here on satellite? I am interested to know the prices for sat services out there?
1000/300 unlimited FTTH for ~20$ 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$... We have "bent capitalism" here which resembles to communism...
Paying less than 10$ 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.
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Northeast US here. Fairly healthy competition in my area, the fiber at my home is about $50/mo
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.
I feel your problem on a spiritual level.
The FCC is still to my knowledge taking public comments about data caps:
https://consumercomplaints.fcc.gov/hc/en-us/requests
May be worth people here commenting about how they are ridiculous
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)_/¯
You have a datacap? Damn
I pay about $80/mo and have a 1200 GB cap.
It used to be $50 a month with no cap. But "that plan is no longer available" in my area.
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 in the UK, for reference :-)
I live in the southwest. They're garbage. It's them or CenturyLink on, wait for it, COPPER WIRE!
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 $84/month. Before that I also had Mediacom, and the data cap was infuriating. So glad I could switch!
I'm paying 12$ a month for 300 mbps symmetric in India... Though not fair to directly convert into dollars
Edit: no caps on bandwidth
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.
Remember the net neutrality regulations that douchebag scrapped then opted to make a shitty YouTube video about? I do.
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.
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!
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'm in Eugene, OR, on the I-5 corridor, and am capped at 1200MB a month. It's bullshit. And for $70.
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!
India - $8/mo, symmetrical 150Mbps, unlimited.
I know i'm privileged paying 70 PLN (~17 USD) for symmetrical gigabit link, but holy shit man, that picture hurts.
Meanwhile I'm paying $150 for less than that.
I pay 150 a month for 20/10mbps (actual is more like 10/5) with a 1.5tb cap. I would stab a baby to get yours.
Bud, I pay $60/mo for 30 down, 1.5 up 🙃
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.
Not that you will read 300+comments, but cancel and go with starlink. They probably call you back and offer you an uncapped plan :D
Rural area in Latvia, LTE home internet 100 megs down 30 up, unlimited, 19.99€
Same here, no data cap but upload speeds of 10Mbps is absolutely brutal.
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'm with the only uncapped service in my area, it's $90/mo for 10mb/s and it's unreliable as all fuck.
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!
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 have to have Cox Business just so I don't have to pay $50 /mo extra for unlimited Internet. It's a scam.
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)
Here in Sri Lanka I'm paying ~20 USD for FTTH 100 Mbps. Monthly bandwidth is limited to 155 GB lol.
I pay more for 200/20, but no limits. That sucks!
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!
lmfao its 40usd for 50/20 in australia
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.
Let’s be real here, for a gas station Casey’s has damn good pizza.
Consider yourself lucky, I pay around 100 euros for a 100Mb wich does not even reach 40 in download at times. (Italy)
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.
20€ a month for 200/20 on cable with unlimited data. Im expecting 500/200 after I move to fiber this month and hope <30€. Damn some of you pay a lot 😮
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)
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.
This makes me seethe and rage and turns my piss to vinegar.
Aussie chiming in 50/20mbps for $90/m. I wanted 50mbps upload but it would have bumped the cost to $130/m.
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.
Man, the US is weird sometimes. I don't think I've ever had a data cap on my home internet.
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.
EU - 30 USD 400/200 MBbs fiber no data cap here :)
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.
300Mbps symmetric, no cap, for $55.32 (Northern California).
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.
I pay about $ 25 for unlimited 300 MBit/s, I also get 50 GB of data in all of the EU, 100 MB world wide roaming and 100 minutes world wide calling.
Oh, and it’s on my phone.
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.
I am very thankful that I do not live in the United States. Even in Canada where telecommunications services are notoriously expensive, data caps on cellphone plans are rapidly becoming a thing of the past. Carriers like Freedom Mobile will simply throttle your speed instead of charging you a boatload of money once you pass your monthly data "limit".
I pay 40€ /month for 20 Down & 10 Mbit/s but unlimited Traffic...
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.
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.
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)
I forget how lucky I am to live in a large city sometimes. 2Gb down, 1gbps up, $50 all in.
Casey’s
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.
Check how much business internet would cost, there's usually no data caps.
Takeaway. Never go to an apartment (if it can be helped)
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.
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 $70/month for 300/300. At least the first year was cheaper as a new customer and the faster upload speed is helpful for work from home.
jesus. in germany i currently have 1gbit docsis for 40€, and a local company will install FTTH in my flat til end of this year
Im considering 5g home Internet because it's cheaper than cable, 50 vs 80
U should come to australia. Our internet is worse than most 3rd world countries. And u need a business plan to get symmetric upload thats so slow i doubt u could hit a 1tb cap if u tried.
I had the 1.25 TB a month cap all the time till earlier this year when all of a sudden they ran a symmetric fiber here. Eastern us, not rural at all. I went with 500mbps/50$ a month - dont really need more for myself, but the lack of a cap is just amazing as I ran against the limit so many times before.
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Check with your local city council or municipality. The laws preventing municipally owned Internet are being fought and overturned with Internet As A Utility.
Even in Texas, the City of Mont Belvieu was getting the shaft by local incumbents that wouldn’t invest in the network. The city took them to court and sidestepped the law, setting precedent. Fiber to the home is now a reality there.
I’m working on getting the same thing done in other towns and cities in this state. Might be a great challenge if you’re up for that sort of thing.
Datacaps? On Home PC? I don't even datacaps on my phone and I leave in bumfuck nowhere North Carolina
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 pay $50 / mo for 100 down, 5 up 1.25tb cap. I feel ya. It's another $50 just for no cap.
Wrong, but better than what we get in the UK
What are you, bragging?
Yikes. Only 20mbps upload (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
I pay 95 for 400/12 and 1.2 TB. Count your blessings.
Everyone Here Thinking Ookla is what speed their internet really is at. 'why are my steam games only downloading at 20mbs when i have 1gb internet?" well. your ISP charges for download and has to pay for upload. thats why you always get dog shit upload compared to down. but then steam has millions of people downloading from them so that's billed to them, they arent going to give every mfer a 1gb download cap, hell no. there would be download whales and data hoarders clogging up the bandwidth more than they already do...tldr, your connection is always metered.
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.
