Comcast doubled speeds on most of their plans in certain areas of the west.

[Arbiter]

Let me make sure I'm hearing this right, Comcast forces you to share your internet with the public? Or are you just saying that's enabled by default?

[Asmekiel]

Let me make sure I'm hearing this right, Comcast forces you to share your internet with the public? Or are you just saying that's enabled by default?

http://www.comcast.com/wifi/hotspots.html

[Arbiter]

http://www.comcast.com/wifi/hotspots.html

Whaaat, and that directly effects your latency/bandwidth and supposed data cap?

I mean...it's a cool idea, but if it effects either one of those then it's completely bullshit.

[Asmekiel]

Whaaat, and that directly effects your latency/bandwidth and supposed data cap?

I mean...it's a cool idea, but if it effects either one of those then it's completely bullshit.

I don't know how it works at Comcast, don't even live in the US. We do have the same service over here too, so I hope this is a bit accurate. Other Comcast clients can log in on the separated public channel with their own info. It doesn't affect your download cap (if there is any), but I assume it affects your latency because they're effectively using the same line. It shouldn't affect your bandwidth either, since it's supposed to use "spare" bandwidth. As in, when you can get up to 50Mb/s, but only pay for 30Mb/s, then the extra 20Mb/s that you can't even use, is available for the hotspot.

[lloose]

There are only a handful of areas that Comcast has a cap for. I haven't had a cap in 4-5 years.

[Gentlepenguin]

cannot confirm. pay for 50 down/20up, get 22 down/5 up. thank them for ass ram every month because no competition and customer service designed to make people hang up, which i sit through every 2-3 months because it likes to "flare up" with disconnects every so often.

[Arbiter]

There are only a handful of areas that Comcast has a cap for. I haven't had a cap in 4-5 years.

Well that's good. I think it's insane that companies are starting to cap home user bandwidth after already overcharging for so long. I currently live in Georgia, but across the river in Alabama (literally about a minute and a half from where I currently live) it costs almost $100 for 8Mb/s internet while I'm currently getting 50Mb/s for $70, which is still a ripoff when you think about it but hey better than the alternative. Luckily no cap for me, but a friend of mine in the same city with a different ISP has a cap of 250GB (and pays around $100) and he seems to be hitting it every single month by a good margin thanks to his brother and it's just crazy to think that companies think it's ok to cap usage at those prices.

Comcast is only really available in Atlanta around here so I don't have to deal with them, but I often have raid members with Comcast and they always have lag and DC issues.

[Nevakanezah]

Despite evidence to the contrary, arceuid and I are actually different people.

I've heard speculation that comcast doubles people's speed when they need to choke out someone trying to provide competing service in the area.
Basically:

- Comcast is majority/sole provider for an area, offers speed X at price Y
- Newcomer shows up, offers speed 1.5X for Y-1
- Comcast's network suddenly undergoes "upgrades!" and "New rates!", now offers speed 2X for 0.5Y
- Use massive cash bank to float less profitable (but still exorbitantly profitable) service until competitor dies
- Gradually return to status quo

[Asmekiel]

I've heard speculation that comcast doubles people's speed when they need to choke out someone trying to provide competing service in the area.
Basically:

After reading so many horror stories about the state of ISPs in the USA, it baffles me the government does nothing to prevent this. Are companies so important that abusing monopoly positions is seen as a game?

[Arbiter]

After reading so many horror stories about the state of ISPs in the USA, it baffles me the government does nothing to prevent this. Are companies so important that abusing monopoly positions is seen as a game?

It's just called greed. Have you heard about the latest with ATT bitching and moaning about trying to get fiber optics pushed out of a town?
http://www.slashgear.com/att-wants-t...lity-12355233/

All because it's being shown that there's no need to pay so much for so little.

[lloose]

I actually like Comcast. I haven't had any issues with my internet since I signed up with them 10 ish years ago. I live in the glorious land of Google fiber too, I just don't want to bother jumping through googles months and months of hoops to get service,
Probably not like the service anyways (lots of friends have it and it's spotty some times), and I don't want to pay +$130 for Internet and tv from Google when my hoa pays for my cable with Comcast and I get a deep discount for Internet. I pay $18 a month for 60mbits. Google fiber is their main competitor but it is a huge pain in the ass to get Google fiber. It took my neighbor over
5 months. I'll take a rock solid $18 60mb connection over that any day.

Neva, I will bet you anything you are using and old docsis 2.0 modem from them. Go exchange it for a docsis 3 modem or buy one and you will see the speeds you are supposed to.

[Vermicious]

Let me make sure I'm hearing this right, Comcast forces you to share your internet with the public? Or are you just saying that's enabled by default?

It's not shared with the public. Anyone using the 'public' hotspots has to be a comcast customer (username/login/password) to use it.

[Sephiracle]

Despite evidence to the contrary, arceuid and I are actually different people.

I've heard speculation that comcast doubles people's speed when they need to choke out someone trying to provide competing service in the area.
Basically:

- Comcast is majority/sole provider for an area, offers speed X at price Y
- Newcomer shows up, offers speed 1.5X for Y-1
- Comcast's network suddenly undergoes "upgrades!" and "New rates!", now offers speed 2X for 0.5Y
- Use massive cash bank to float less profitable (but still exorbitantly profitable) service until competitor dies
- Gradually return to status quo

Well, I'm biased since I work for Comcast, but, the speed tier's don't affect the price, they've actually increased the tier speeds pretty frequently considering the amount of infrastructure and work they need to do behind the scenes to improve stability in addition to improving the speeds. There's also a town in Colorado, Longmont, that is working on gigabit internet, which will still be faster than what Comcast offers in that area, but it's not expected to be city wide until like, 2017 or something.

People demand faster internet. Comcast works to do so. They do so. People claim its because others are starting to offer higher speeds too. I think you just want to be mad at a company.

[Cyanotical]

Well, I'm biased since I work for Comcast,

thats not something to be proud of. OT, but are you in the Comcast building on willow by orchard and i25?

but, the speed tier's don't affect the price,

Speed is the time it takes one packet to go from A to B, this is the speed of light minus resistance and processing time (aka latency)

Bandwidth is the amount of data you can transfer per second, you don't buy a fast connection, but a wide one

People demand faster internet. Comcast works to do so.

this may be true, but i don't think they work as hard as they can, i know the technology, so i know for a fact that Comcast does not offer the best available, they offer a bit of whats possible, but lack any real motivation to advance the connection, if they did, a 1Gps symmetric connection would be easy, coax has plenty of room for it

[bdecker12]

Where i live in maine, the only option is twc. Their top of the line package is 70 dollars a month for 50down 5 up

[Arbiter]

Based off many Comcast users I raid with I could argue that they need to spend more time worrying about reliability to their customers rather than just doubling the bandwidth. Double bandwidth doesn't help if you're still getting DCd and lagging in games.

I honestly can't say I've ever met one person who's ever said "man I love my comcast". But hey...you get what you pay for I guess. They offer it cheaper than most at the cost of reliability and steady performance.

- - - Updated - - -

Where i live in maine, the only option is twc. Their top of the line package is 70 dollars a month for 50down 5 up

That's right at what I'm paying for the exact same bandwidth with WideOpenWest! (formerly Knology). I'm not perfectly happy but compared to everything else available it's safe to say I'm doing good.

[Vermicious]

I honestly can't say I've ever met one person who's ever said "man I love my comcast".

I 'loved my Comcast' when I had it in Massachusetts. What you need to remember/know is that "Comcast" is made up of many formerly different providers who have merged or been bought out by Comcast, so they have different infrastructure depending on location.

I have Charter here in Long Beach, CA, and pay $40/mo for 60/4. Rarely any issues, maybe a few hours long outages per year. I hear their cable TV service is horrible, though.

[Arbiter]

Charter is the competitor to my current ISP in my area. At home I have WideOpenWest! but at work they switched to Charter. Let's just say big mistake >.>. They're customer service here is pretty terrible and it goes out every other day, which would be fine as it doesn't happen long, but it's a business and when you pay for the premium for business you expect it to be more reliable.

I've tried constantly to get them out here to fix the issues but they always just blame our hardware and try to charge us for it when the problems have been happening since the day we switched and nothing has changed with our personal hardware. Only their modem.

[Nevakanezah]

People demand faster internet. Comcast works to do so. They do so. People claim its because others are starting to offer higher speeds too. I think you just want to be mad at a company.

I will readily grant you the following points:
- My bias definitely leans against existing major ISPs
- My previous post stems from evidence that would barely qualify as anecdotal.
My intent wasn't to sound adversarial though, moreso explaining some speculation i'd heard.

That said, I'll do my due diligence and address your points:

Well, I'm biased since I work for Comcast, but, the speed tier's don't affect the price, they've actually increased the tier speeds pretty frequently considering the amount of infrastructure and work they need to do behind the scenes to improve stability in addition to improving the speeds.

If i were to judge based on your signature alone, i'd wager you were some kind of hardware support staff, but I'll make the assumption you're fairly technically well-read anyway.
My main issue with ISPs (and as a result, comcast) is that they're a profit-motivated (essentially) single stakeholder in an industry where cost of service actually decreases with the ownership of market share. Unlike a business like a hot dog stand, or walmart, where each sale you make entails a certain cost of production, services like internet access and electricity have a one-time cost for implementation, but providing the service itself doesn't really cost anything. Selling someone a hundred hot dogs means you have to have originally bought 100 hot dogs to give them, but providing another day's worth of electricity costs you the same amount it did yesterday.

I may not have done the example justice, but what happens is that comcast actually gets an exponentially increasing return on investment for having more subscribers, while a typical business sees a linear increase. This sort of system tends very naturally toward monopoly, as the person with the most subs can afford to offer better service and pricing than competitors. My issue then, is that ISPs are allowed to exist in this environment as players that are contractually bound to focus on profit first. This ends up meaning that the quality of service is depressed below the levels tolerable by the market, while prices are often higher than they would be for an even better QoS.

There's also a town in Colorado, Longmont, that is working on gigabit internet, which will still be faster than what Comcast offers in that area, but it's not expected to be city wide until like, 2017 or something.

You may also have noticed that there's only two groups that can really offer incumbent ISPs a challenge are the following:
1) Google fiber
2) Local government
3) Other incumbent ISPs

In the case of Google, they are rolling out this service at a comparatively glacial pace. They have the cash reserves to float this potentially unprofitable venture, but they're not interested in rousing the ire of their existing competition by coming out strong.

Local governments on the other hand have a vested interest in quality network infrastructure, as they are more immediately answerable to their populations. Where ISPs don't actually serve large parts of the US because it's not profitable, cities like Longmont in your example have the capital to implement a system that people want, but corporate infrastructure is either poorly served, or doesnt exist. You'll notice that some ISPs have taken up lawsuits against cities who have done this, not because they're losing that city's market share, but because allowing public infrastructure of any sort sets legal precedent for a nationwide public carrier, and by possible extension, regulation as a title II service.

While i admit i'm inclined to suspect the worst of any ISP, It's hard to deny that the service provided presently is well below what they are capable of, both in terms of actual internet access, as well as customer service and pricing. And the monopoly-friendly nature of the industry leads to a number of fairly suspect operations, like some of my local ISPs who are soon going to implement a 10-15% price increase for all service tiers, while each tier can expect an actual speed increase of roughly 5%.

Where i live in maine, the only option is twc. Their top of the line package is 70 dollars a month for 50down 5 up

Currently paying 72 (soon to be 90) for 12D 4U (Soon to be 14D ??U)

[subert]

Mine is 25mbit and 1.5 upload .. Finally get upload on two channel