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Comment by anonymous_iam | Hacker News Reader

When I began reading the article, I was hoping it would detail their deceptive bandwidth management policies. I had the service for about 3 years (recently terminated) and found that speeds would slowly degrade over months. In the end my 200mbps service was giving me about 50mbps. The cable-modem link diagnostics indicated good signal levels and nearly non-existent error rates so obviously it had nothing to do with the cable plant.

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Serious question: What would Comcast do that would cause that?

Would they give you a higher proportion of bandwidth when you first subscribe for internet service (and checking speedtest.net), eventually reducing it to give way to other new subscribers? Or do they just not perform sufficient maintenance to keep the high speed?

I could see this happening if there is an oversubscribed uplink that gets worse as more subscribers are added over time.

Both. Overselling has been common for 20 years and leads to congestion when customers exceed the percentage of their likely bandwidth usage as estimated by the company.

After reading the actual complaint, it sounds like your problem is similar to some of the affected NY customers. Broadband demand is constantly increasing over time. Cable operators have to split service groups to keep providing higher tiers of service. If they do not, then congestion will reduce the speeds received by customers. Check out pgs 37-40 of the NY AG's complaint: https://ag.ny.gov/sites/default/files/summons_and_complaint....

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