Dear Comcast, I Noticed Your Email About My Tweet and Wanted You to Have This | Hacker News Reader

Dear Comcast, I Noticed Your Email About My Tweet and Wanted You to Have This

vice.com

17 pointscoloneltcb11 comments

I try to maintan only VPN outbound traffic and Comcrap starts dropping it. I have to genrrate some other noise. Mobile carries are similar. I had a VPN I use at work,when I work from home it won't work,one day I thought maybe DNS might be the culprit so I looked and it turns out I was using dhcp (normally default to static config) and the comcast gateway set my DNS to their 75.75.75.75 resolver, change that to 1.1.1.1 and voila my VPN works again. I have so many stories with them but the worst part is that their competition in the US are just as dirty except some are less agressive and obvious about it. In many ways Google is like Comcast, they just keep saying "sorry,but it's not so bad" while they continue to fling glittery faeces at you (sorry for the colorful expression, my passion for the subject overwhelms me)

Comcast has a virtual monopoly in most areas which leaves most people with zero choice. There needs to be a way that physical infrastructure is owned by public utilities and the ISP's only sell network connectivity and other services.

I have 4 ISPS in my area, including Comcast. It's been the same for the last couple of years and I've moved around to different areas.

How much of the infrastructure did companies like Comcast fund? They should get a check from the government, if they become public utilities and they funded it.

They already got several checks from the government, and failed to provide anything in return (except for lobbying money to stifle municipal broadband): https://old.reddit.com/r/explainlikeimfive/comments/6c5e97/e...

This article is referencing fiber.

It's also disingenuous (and just factually incorrect) to say there is 'nothing' in return.

https://www.highspeedinternet.com/providers/fiber

Multiple companies offering Fiber in many parts of the US.

There are also multiple options (Comcast, Wow, AT&T, Time Warner, bell atlantic, satellite, and many wireless options) in most areas of the US, which by definition means there isn't a monopoly.

Many people throw out the 'monopoly' label and really have no idea what the word means.

> It's also disingenuous (and just factually incorrect) to say there is 'nothing' in return.

They literally did not fulfill their contractual obligations, but thanks to lobbying, were forgiven.

Do you have proof that no fiber cable was laid down in any part of the US?

I have proof that much less fiber than was paid for was laid down. I've linked it before, here's a few different links if you can't be bothered to click on the previous one:

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-book-of-broken-promis_b_5...

https://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ATT-Takes-Billions-in-FC...

Alternatively, private entities may still own the infrastructure, but be forced by law to rent them at reasonable price to whoever wants to start an ISP. I think this model exists in a few european countries at least.

While this model definitely exists, I doubt it’s helping much.

At least in the UK, it’s still more expensive for my business to rent DSL lines and offer broadband on them than the retail price of what the incumbent offers (who so happens to own the physical phone lines, albeit through a weird arrangement of multiple companies).

It’s definitely a step in the right direction but I’m still not convinced it helps much.

They should just expand the definition of monopoly a bit and then regulate the monopoly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com