Fuck that, instead of making them increase their imaginary "up to" numbers, make them advertise contractually guaranteed minimums. Id rather have a 25 mb minimum over a 100 mb maximum that usually sits around 8 mb.
When I bought internet services and colocated with major carriers every contract came with a Quality of Service rider that stipulated guaranteed quality and quantity of service. If my metrics fell below those minimums I had recourse. But, I could not extend that to my customers because they were using a shared resource I was providing. In general, though, I agree that there should be a QOS with every user connection.
A 4x increase for download and a 7x increase requirment for upload.
That's a pretty solid improvement, honestly. They also have plans on whne to increase it to 1Gbps down/500Mbps up, so it seems like they are taking it seriously.
It's interesting. I have a remote place (not where I live) in the least populated, podunkest county in the state (which is saying something). And we were still able to get fibre and 50Mbps out there (and it could be higher, but not really worth the extra money since it's rarely used).
Still within a couple hours of a big city, though. Guessing you're further away than that, or something?
He is right though on megabits to megabytes. Internet speed is advertised in bits/s where files and transfer speeds are usually shown in software as megabytes/s
100mbps symmetric should be minimum standard. 100mbps down with 10mbps up is worse than remote islands with mud huts. Seriously, I was on a Pacific island that looked like what an after hurricane photo op does, and they had direct access to the fiber cables. So gigabit symmetric internet ONTs glued to the side of huts for a few bucks a month.
I fear that will only happen when storage manufacturers are forced to use 1024 bytes per KB like everyone else.
In fairness it's a very longstanding tradition that serial transfer devices measure the speed in bits per second rather than bytes. Bytes used to be variable size, although we settled on eight a long time ago.
I have symmetric 1Gbps and do a LOT of data transfer (compared to 99.99% of people). And even then I rarely really would need or even notice more than 100Mbps.
For most people, in the real world, why is 100Mbps "very slow"?
It's amazing how much our views change with time. My dad was definitely a super early adopter of cable when it became available in our area, if I recall it was 16 Mbps which was unreal to me in 2002. I made do with 5 Mbps in uni and it was totally usable.
But now, I've had 1Gbps for years and wow it's so different, changes your habits too. I don't hoard installed games as much, I can pull them down in minutes so why keep something installed if I'm not going to use it?
Altice (Optimum) took this opportunity to cut upload speeds from 35mbps to 20 under the guise of the "free upgrade". You want your old upload speeds back? Oh that's their most expensive tier now.
Same for my "XFinity" (Comcast) service. Literally the only plan with more than 20 up is the most expensive tier with 1200/35. Sadly, it has been that way for several years... but this year they had no choice but to jack up all rates across the board so the most expensive tier is now $30 more expensive ($90 -> $120). No other competition so... that's that.
I went from a 1.5/1 Gbps fibre connection down to a 20/10 Mbps when I moved. There is a MASSIVE difference. Rural internet is dog shit and no one cares
I honestly believe that is because rural areas are almost always represented by republicans, voted in by majority republican voters. both groups of which are extremely disinclined of making the entirety of human knowledge easily and quickly accessible, because then people might see how much things are better in other countries and start asking questions to their federal representatives.
Your download speed being fast or slow doesn't mean the servers hosting the data you're accessing or the DNS servers between you and that server are going to feed you data at that speed.
Game stores like Steam and GOG can provide download speeds of up to 1 Gbps or more, also torrents have no speed limits, it depends on the number of seeders
Your connection would not allow streaming one Blu-ray quality video stream, and good luck doing anything else in the connection while that is happening.
If your work sent you a 10gb file and you needed to send it back, it would take you 3 hours to do that. (With a functionally useless connection otherwise while downloading and uploading the file)
Downloading a popular game like baldurs gate 3 would take just under 9 hours.
Downloading it twice (to play with your spouse or kids) + updates, and then watching Netflix (which will cut into your download speed) while you wait for it download would toil away a weekend.
Nevermind the fact that slow Internet literally wastes away your life as you spend more micro moments just staring at blank and partially loaded websites.
I'd like to see a big government push to provide municipal services in every single metro area and extend it by whatever means into rural communities.
Xfinity keeps raising rates, I'm paying more now for just internet than the cost of basic cable, internet + digital voice was back in the 00s. While around 800 down, it's still only about 40 something up, and has been like that for years and years.
I think we desperately need competition and if the government were to provide it, that'd be just fine.
It really does suck, where I live the base plan gives you 300mbps down (which I know is pretty fast) but you are limited to 10mbps up. As much as they tout their speeds you'll only get them if you pay top dollar.
Sounds like Spectrum where I live, on the bright side our 300 down is usually closer to 350 down, but also their 10 up is usually closer to 8. Meanwhile you have to dig to find the upload speeds when you sign up, even though they have the download speeds plastered everywhere. Honestly, there should probably be a rule that ISPs can't list download speeds without upload speeds right next to it.