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.
In Switzerland you get unlimited 10 Gbit/s for 50 bucks.
I hate you, congrats!
In Canada we have to give our firstborn to a telecommunication monopoly for somewhat OK internet.
I pay 90 ish Canadian pesos for 1gb/1gb for Bell fibre. It’s not too bad depending on your location, though that price is still too high. I’m at least making good use of it. 12tb of total transfers this month.
Wait, how’d you get that with Bell? I’m pretty sure my plan is the same speeds for like… double that amount
A /48 is quite overkill for a home customer. Do you have 65536 LANs at home? Here in Belgium, we get a /56.
Data caps on home internet services should be illegal. They should also be much higher on mobile, but that’s a whole other topic.
I have 940/940 Unlimited FTTH for $93.45(Canadian).
And France gets 5Gbps for €30 per month or 8Gbps for €40 per month. I’m in the US now and really miss free.fr as my ISP
I know right! Free.fr was a real disruptor. They fought the government to open telecom to private companies (it used to be France Telecom only which is gov owned) then they worked with the gov to create a fiber network that can be used my multiple ISP. So no running parallel lines from separate companies, they all create, maintain and share the same network all over the country. Before that, they started as the first free dialup internet service. You would call a number, and connect. You were paying with ads. They also were the first DSL speed, first TV over DSL, first FTTH, first VoIP, and they also have a cell phone network. And the prices are forcing all the other companies to align. We seriously need free.for in the US.
What average consumer has hardware that’s actually capable of using more than 1Gbps?
Average none, though 2.5 Gbps is getting more and more common and WiFi is catching up too. You could max out multiple slower devices at the same time without hitting the limit of your uplink. I don’t have a use case for that, so I’d only upgrade from my current 1 Gbps to higher speeds if the price is comparable. That doesn’t mean that others don’t have a use case for it.
Most decent to higher end desktops have at least 2.5 Gbps. Even a laptop/desktop that doesn’t can get a 2.5 Gbps usb-c to ethernet dongle for like $30-$40.
Higher end access points also have 2.5 Gbps. I have no issue maxing out my 1.5 Gbps (ISP over provisions the lines so I get 1.7 gbps) on Steam. Also keep in mind that when you have a faster connection with multiple devices/people, each device/person might be able to pull 1 Gbps. As in if you have 2 Gbps internet service even 2 older computers that only have a gigabit internet connection, each could get the full gigabit to them.
If you’re the type of person that only uses wifi, you won’t see a difference between gigabit and multigigabit connections but plenty of people have ethernet throughout their homes and they make use of faster than gigabit connections.
Data caps on home internet services should be illegal. They should also be much higher on mobile, but that’s a whole other topic.
I’m not convinced mobile deserves to have caps at all, either!
As far as I’m concerned, there’s no reason to limit the amount of data transfer except in times of congestion, and I also don’t see any reason the amount of data transferred during un-congested times should have any bearing on who gets throttled.
You’re way overpaying. I pay $40 for 1.5 Gbps with Bell FTTH. Give them a call and say it’s too expensive and see what they can do for you. Or tell them Rogers (if they’re in your area) offered you 1.5gbps for $60 and ask if they can beat that.
As for mobile, you should look at new plans. $39 gets you 20 GB $50 gets you 40 GB. Seems like plenty of data imo https://www.koodomobile.com/en/rate-plans?INTCMP=KM_HDD_2023_Plans_RatePlans_40gbfor45_ROC_MBSK
Best time to get a mobile plan is Black Friday, should be even better deals by then.
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.
In Thailand I’m getting 400Mbps upload and download with unlimited data.
It costs about 300฿/mo ≈ $8.7/mo
Median income is $23k in Thailand. $31k in US. It definitely doesn’t make up the difference.
Edit: Used Personal income for US and Household for Thailand. It actually doesn’t bring the gap significantly closer.
Why are you using median household income for Thailand and median personal income for the US?
Median household income in the US is $71,000.
USAGE ALLOWANCE?!?!
Laughs in Scandinavian
I have luckily never heard about data caps in Scandinavia except for mobile broadband.
Do they even exist at all, here?
My first (fast) internet connection was 1 Mbit.
We had 1gb to download per month. This cap disappeared when more competitors showed up though (i had that cap around … 2001)
I havnt seen a data cap for internet connections since. I am not aware of any either. Except for mobile phones. Though, they also have unlimited data for those , if you want. (I have. Just so i never have to worry about it ever again)
