Comment by e40 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by e40 | Hacker News Reader

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I'm sitting here on a Comcast connection that is expensive and AT&T has FTTH in my neighborhood. I just can't seem to pull the trigger on the order because of the horror stories I've heard, and from personal experience. When I had ADSL from AT&T, they absolutely could not give me a connect that didn't drop randomly 2-10 times a day. I had 10+ visits from them over several years and at one point they told me "don't call us anymore" because I was too expensive for them. This, after being told by someone that put a device on my line and found the problem was in the drop cable (from the pole to the house). The new drop cable was ordered and a guy shows up 2 hours later and tells me it's not the drop cable (he didn't measure anything). When pressed, he told me it was too expensive to replace the drop cable. A subsequent tech told me to have a "tree trimming accident" where the drop cable was severed. I was worried I would be charged many thousands of $'s so I didn't do it and just switched to Comcast. (I have had my own issues with Comcast, and I hate them with a passion.)

The situation with home internet is just so shitty.

FWIW, I have had the exact opposite situation in multiple locations across the country -- every DSL (and, once, FTTH) connection I've had has been rock solid -- every Comcast internet connection has been flaky -- in one place, the connection went down every afternoon. Multiple Comcast technicians couldn't figure out the problem.

I so agree with your last statement.

If you're in an area they serve, getting Sonic is much better, BTW. They can operate over AT&T FTTH and DSL. It's a tad more expensive, but the customer service is unbeatable.

Sonic uses AT&T in my area, so I will definitely check them out. Thanks. It's a little annoying I have to get a landline, which basically adds $15-20 to the price. <sigh> I have an asterisk/freepbx system that I will continue to use. I wonder if their TOS require you to hook up a phone. Not looking forward to reading that...

Without debating the technical/cancer type of issues... Isn't 5G supposed to finally make wires obsolete? You'll put a device in your house (from say, Verizon) which speaks 5G on one side, and maybe has an ethernet jack and/or speaks Wi-Fi on the other side.

I’ve yet to experience any wireless connection with fidelity, latency, and bandwidth as good as fiber.

"fidelity" is a new one to me, what does that mean in the world of digital communications?

In this case it'd likely be talking about corrupted, truncated, or otherwise mangled packets. So having to retransmit things. You'd still technically have the same bandwidth and latency on the connection itself even if it's causing all kinds of overhead on upper levels of the stack.

Could also be related to audio transmission, like bluetooth versus wired.

Also, fiber can be analog, too.

I just use the word as shorthand for “it just works in all aspects”.

LOL, and I'm sure Verizon would only charge you $150/mo for a whole gigabyte per month! Er I'm sorry, it's unlimited!*

* Slows down to 2G after 1 gigabyte.

After 6 years of mobile internet with only 1GB per month my ISP basically trained me to not use it for anything unless absolutely necessary. The irony of course is that prices have dropped but I'm not going with a bigger plan. I switched to a "budget plan" and stayed on 1GB per month for which I pay only 5€ per month.

I absolutely despise mobile ISPs.

I was imagining a wireless but not mobile type of device

In addressing this at a political/regulatory level it became clear to me that while it is convenient to beat up on Comcast (however deserving they may be of such treatment), the real problem on the east coast corridor are the trade unions. They have raised the cost of doing business by at least an order of magnitude. It is a heartbreak for me personally - my grandfather was highly involved in the labor movement back in his day and today he would roll over in his grave at the rampant corruption.

Citation needed. Comcast for one is _vehemently_ anti-union. I see only right-wing media claiming unions drive up internet costs.

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