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

[Sephiracle]

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

Despite the generic viritol by your statement, I'm actually pretty proud of my job and its accomplishments. Comcast treats me well for my work. I don't work at that location, but I also wouldn't identify my specific location to anyone here either anyways.

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

If they worked harder, what would there be to gain? People already are angry at their poor customer service(which is pretty poor, but the same is true for every massive company), if they had an overwhelmingly stronger and faster internet, then people would be even louder with their 'monopoly' talk.

Let's say the following, Comcast operated at a faster pace. You now decide between Comcast, providing somewhere around a 250Mbps connection rate, while the other providers are going to be either Satelite, which I shouldn't need to go into detail on, or A/DSL, which is still at it's current limits, because they, too, are not improving their speeds. With all the talk of Comcast being a monopoly, how does the landscape change if you have to choose between absolute shitty internet, and an awesome alternative?

A lot of infrustructure improvement is needed to accomplish the goals people request. It's not a simple upgrade of internal hardware and efficiency. Comcast started up on the east coast and bought up companies as it grew, taking over those companies infrastructure in the meantime. Is Comcast a perfect company? Of course not. I don't agree with a lot of the politics, net neutrality, and the like, but I do know that I work to provide the best of the services we have available for people, and in a lot of areas we are the best. And for that I am proud of.

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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.

I guess I would ask what your solution is. Reclassify as a utilty? Ok, stability improves, but now you're charged based on usage. Is that your solution? If you want fast internet with unlimited usage then that's not going to exist in America, we're a country based on providing services and charging based on the quantity of them. Supply and demand.

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.

Or maybe it takes a fuck ton of time to build appropriate infrastructure to provide it to the masses. You can't just dig up entire cities to provide it overnight.

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.

As a company, I wouldn't spend the money to provide services to a small population either if it's not going to make the money back in returns. Many of those areas are already serviced by other cable companies too like Charter, Cox, etc. In that case, then I'm not sure what the problem is, people are already fighting the Comcast buying TWC, and they don't even compete in the same markets.

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%.

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

I'm almost curious who your provider is then. Stability could always be improved, but there's a lot that goes into it. While currently a multimedia corporation like Comcast focuses a substantial amount on innovation for all of their services, that would shift from that to stability, which would cost them more in the long run, despite if they reclassified as a utility and charged on usage.

[lloose]

Despite the generic viritol by your statement, I'm actually pretty proud of my job and its accomplishments. Comcast treats me well for my work. I don't work at that location, but I also wouldn't identify my specific location to anyone here either anyways.

And you should be proud. Hard work is hard work. I'm sure the person who said you shouldn't probably works for a non profit humanitarian aid group and donates his entire paycheck to save puppies in those commercials with Sarah McLachlan. :P

a 1Gps symmetric connection would be easy, coax has plenty of room for it

They actually showed off their 3Gps connection at a tech show last year. Its not something they can do with their current copper though. Copper is extremely expensive so the only practical upgrade right now is fiber. Google Fiber isn't all rainbows and unicorns though (read my other posts about them). I wont even get into how people forget that they are a data mining advertising company and that anything they offer as a company is to profit off of your information.

[Bytch]

It's not free. Their prices went up and are going up again beginning in Jan 2015. you shoul'dve gotten a letter in from them alerting you to all this.

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BTW, if you want to test your speeds. Use some meat. http://testmy.net/

[lloose]

It's not free. Their prices went up and are going up again beginning in Jan 2015. you shoul'dve gotten a letter in from them alerting you to all this.

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BTW, if you want to test your speeds. Use some meat. http://testmy.net/

No letter or price increase for me. I did some research, and their most expensive plan is going up by $2 a month. Not exactly breaking the bank.
Anyways, I know that everyone things that Comcast is the devil, but I still love them. I guess im the odd one but I've never had issues with them or my connection. I am not a casual internet user either.

[Cyanotical]

Despite the generic viritol by your statement, I'm actually pretty proud of my job and its accomplishments. Comcast treats me well for my work. I don't work at that location, but I also wouldn't identify my specific location to anyone here either anyways.



If they worked harder, what would there be to gain? People already are angry at their poor customer service(which is pretty poor, but the same is true for every massive company), if they had an overwhelmingly stronger and faster internet, then people would be even louder with their 'monopoly' talk.

Let's say the following, Comcast operated at a faster pace. You now decide between Comcast, providing somewhere around a 250Mbps connection rate, while the other providers are going to be either Satelite, which I shouldn't need to go into detail on, or A/DSL, which is still at it's current limits, because they, too, are not improving their speeds. With all the talk of Comcast being a monopoly, how does the landscape change if you have to choose between absolute shitty internet, and an awesome alternative?

A lot of infrustructure improvement is needed to accomplish the goals people request. It's not a simple upgrade of internal hardware and efficiency. Comcast started up on the east coast and bought up companies as it grew, taking over those companies infrastructure in the meantime. Is Comcast a perfect company? Of course not. I don't agree with a lot of the politics, net neutrality, and the like, but I do know that I work to provide the best of the services we have available for people, and in a lot of areas we are the best. And for that I am proud of.

the problem is that the infrastructure has already been paid for, unless of course comcast wants to refund almost two decades of tax subsidies all at once, they owe everyone in every area they service at least a 100Mbps connection, and 1Gbps full duplex to stay on par, instead they are busy sending old ladies $1200 bills for missing remotes

And you should be proud. Hard work is hard work. I'm sure the person who said you shouldn't probably works for a non profit humanitarian aid group and donates his entire paycheck to save puppies in those commercials with Sarah McLachlan. :P

not really, "hard work is hard work" is BS, and comcast is one of the most hated companies in the country, its not something to be proud of, this is a company that knowingly and willingly swindles people out of their money, and by saying you are proud to work there you are saying you are proud to be part of that, making you part of the problem

[lloose]

I'm interested to hear what you do for a living.

[Cyanotical]

I'm interested to hear what you do for a living.

why does it matter?

[lloose]

why does it matter?

It doesnt. Nothing in the last 2 pages of this thread does either. I made this thread to tell people in the states areas to reboot their routers and enjoy their now faster internet. Instead it's turned into personal attacks on people's jobs and a pissing match about isp's and their policies. Mods just lock it please.

[noteworthynerd]

Yeah, this thread is basically just an ISP hate-thread at this point, and despite my own personal feelings towards the major ISPs, that's not real constructive.