$50 a Month for 1Mbps: How AT&T and Verizon Rip Off DSL Customers | Hacker News Reader

$50 a Month for 1Mbps: How AT&T and Verizon Rip Off DSL Customers

arstechnica.com

41 pointsokket19 comments

I experienced this firsthand in Westwood (LA) of all places. If you moved from the dorms to off-campus apartments, chances were one or two ISPs would have a monopoly on your building. In my case the "lesser" of two evils was Verizon DSL @5m down/768k up at around $52/month. (IN 2015!!!) A short walk from "the birthplace of the internet."

A stark contrast with the hand-me-down internet in the dorms (I was getting >500mbps down, >200mbps up out of the wall via standard cat5e to my desktop).

Apartment building systems are rife with profiteering. One company gives the landlord a kickback to be the only provider in the building and they has free reign to be as shitty and overpriced as they want. Your landlord is making money, the ISP is making money, nobody has an incentive to change the system.

Maybe it's different now, but when I lived in apartments nobody advertised "good internet" or "competitive ISP choices" in the listings. It's something you can't discover until you've already signed the lease and moved in.

It's kind of a missed opportunity from the resident's point of view. You could wire a building with Cat6 and run a mini-ISP connected to some bulk transport to provide faster service at a lower price, but that's more work and requires some technical expertise. Plus, it's so easy to just get that Comcast kickback every year.

> It's something you can't discover until you've already signed the lease and moved in.

I always call the local ISPs to ask about getting a quote for the new address before I've moved in.

Yeah, but they'll lie and say they have service (because it is in their "service area") and you won't discover the truth until the installer calls to tell you that the building manager won't give them the key because they're with the wrong company. This happened to a friend of mine. He was pretty pissed that his $60 gigabit cable modem service was impossible and he had to buy some 15/5 link for $80/month from a different company instead.

Good reason to demand it be written into the lease.

I love the mental image of you walking into the leasing office and going:

"I'm very happy that the apartment is finally available after sitting on the waiting list for 3 months in this competitive market. Lets get to signing the lease so I can move it. But first I'm going to have my lawyer add quick clause where you guarantee competitive broadband internet options for my unit on penalty of substantial fine."

I imagine their reaction being similar to if you had walked in with your head on backwards.

Yes, but other than voting with your wallet, there is no other solution short of legislation.

Surely you must see that legislation is the only solution, as voting with your wallet is useless in such captive markets (someone else will snatch that apartment right up, ISP be damned).

Yes, of course, but until then, that is the price to pay in the desirable markets.

Or, alternatively, come up with 1000 boring stipulations that will generally be true anyways. It'll make you look paranoid/vulnerable and harmless, lowering the chances their lawyers (or sales agent's assistant...) will notice Bullet Point #593.

It's how they get things through Congress...

This is actually illegal. You can request time warner to come in if you want.

My dad was at the end of the line with DSL in rural north FL. Similar prices for a few MBps. Finally switched over to ATT unlimited cell service, getting 40 MBps with some kind of deal on direct tv. So much better. He has dual directional antennas points them at various towers trying to get best signal.

Rural cellular is the future. Currently posting this from the mountains of NC on Exceed satellite as there is no cell service at this campground...

I'm curious how that connection to a sat net works with a normal consumer laptop. Or do you have some fancy General Dyn laptop?

No satellite service is mentioned in the GP comment. I expect they're just using a fixed 4G modem that has Wi-Fi.

Satellite services also generally consist of a box with a couple of LNB connectors on one end and an Ethernet socket on the other end that you'd run to a Wi-Fi router.

The likelihood you'll ever find a direct-wired satellite link built-in to one machine, outside of a ridiculou$ly-expen$ive military setting running equipment based of 15-year-old designs, is about 0.05%.

Crazy. I was paying some insane amount to TWC before AT&T came to town over a year ago. AT&T had a signup deal for 1Gbps fiber symmetric for $70/month. It's over a year later and that's what they still charge me. There's no expiration AFAIK. You can't get this rate from them currently and I think they only offered it when they thought there was going to be competiton from Google. But I don't care why. It's solid service at a reasonable price.

(BTW, I still have my free Google Fiber t-shirt but Google still isn't anywhere near my home.)

Also, TWC is Spectrum now and I can't get them to stop mailing me promotions for service which is still slower and more expensive than AT&T. (Spectrum Internet Gig 1000/35 is $125/mo. There's a $20/mo discount promo good for 24 months.)

I'm still flabbergasted by the state of US ISP. From the historical leader of computers, the 'free market' .. you get crippled pricey access. It's beyond me that nobody managed to tilt the status quo yet.

Pays you 54.5c per minute for the rest of your life

($78,480 per 24h)

(AT&T's CEO earned $28.7M in 2017)

I currently pay $68/month for 3Mbps down, 1Mbps up from Verizon DSL. They're my only option for internet except for satellite. Our local cable company would need to run half a mile of cable to our house to hook us up, so they refuse to serve us.

Downloading at 1GB/hr and paying the same price as our local cable company's gigabit is sad in 2018.

I currently pay $78/mo and I barely get 1 down it’s frustrating. It’s the only option I have.

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