It’s ridiculous how simple and fair the rules for this could be, if only they’d been implemented in law to cover certain scenarios that ensure honesty.
An example set of rules could be:
1. Periodic monitoring of connection speeds is to be expected, and any action requires a minimum of X samples (say, X=10). Measurements may be performed by any party and the measurement method must be fully disclosed. If more than 30% of samples are failing to meet advertised Internet speeds by at least 5%, or any one sample is more than 50% below advertised speed, customer is entitled to a one-day refund of Internet fees. If more than 5 total occurrences in a single calendar month are failing, customer is entitled to a 15-day refund of Internet fees.
2. If the Internet becomes unusable for more than 10 minutes at a time in a single month and the outage can be traced to ISP-given equipment, customer is entitled to a one-day refund of Internet fees. If Internet is unusable multiple times, customer is entitled to a 5-day refund.
3. If company has cause to adjust Internet delivery expectations (such as, too many additional customers to serve original speeds on pipe to same area), existing customers are all immediately released from any contracts and may terminate service immediately with no penalties. In additional, ISP is liable for crediting customer monthly bills for the remainder of service, proportional to the difference in service speed with a 10% penalty for violation of original contract by the ISP.
4. Internet is considered a separate service and may not be bundled with anything else.
And it doesn’t even have to say this much to be a huge improvement. The point is that companies have been getting away with lousy services FOR YEARS and appear to be largely unpunished, while meanwhile the number of customers overpaying and not receiving stable and promised service numbers in the millions.
I haven't thought this completely through perhaps, but I've often thought one extremely simple regulation that might have a lot of good effects would be this:
ISPs must charge customers per byte transferred. In other words, no all you can eat plans allowed, usage based pricing only. This has the benefit of aligning consumer and ISP goals in the sense that providing fast service allows ISPs to make more money, so they are incentivized to provide high quality service built on high quality infrastructure. If the Internet is not working, they make no money. If it is slow, they make less. On the consumer side, it incentivizes efficient use of bandwidth.
Of course, this is only one piece of the puzzle. The other piece is that most ISPs have a defacto monopoly in their region. Not sure how we can solve this one. This is partially caused by bad decision by municipal governments, industry collusion, and it seems in part by just the nature of running physical utilities to homes and businesses (many regions also have electric, water, sewage, and gas monopolies).
I have google fiber. The speeds great and blows pretty much every commenter here out of the water.
So why am I posting? I'll tell you why. I have found a perverse interest in the fact it took google 18 months to drag fiber literally 250 feet to my house. I measured it. My neighbor had it. It took them 18 months. They kept telling me every quarter, it should just be two more months at the latest.
Do you know how long it takes cable companies to repair a downed power line?
Not 18 damn months! And that's if the power line is beamed up by aliens and disappears. Requiring an entirely new pole and cable run.
My point is there is no panacea so far. Cable companies suck, and milk the copper tit cash cow for all they can. They won't upgrade their infrastructure and will not compete with google fiber and other high speed offerings. But they do get work done on lines pretty fast.
Google screams in infrastructure but sucks at actual deployment. I'm really unimpressed with google. Gmail, android, fiber they just suck imo.
I'm more convinced now than ever that laws need to be revoked and cities need to deploy their own fiber to the home network at tax dollar expense and operate it like a utility. Open the backbone for leasing as well to interested parties at a fair price.
It's clear telcos and cable have a chokehold on the legislative. Things won't get any better. Competition won't increase. It's way beyond time to nuke the current system from orbit.
> I have found a perverse interest in the fact it took google 18 months to drag fiber literally 250 feet to my house
Did you ever get an official response on the reason for the delay?
The reason I'm asking is because I wonder if there could be a local ordinance or government interdiction that needed to be overcome in order to make what, on its face, seems like a relatively simple change. Incumbent utility companies tend to have a more streamlined process for requesting changes due to their familiarity and rapport with the local government processes and personnel.
Somewhat off-topic, but whenever you have trouble with customer service ripping you off or giving you a hard time, there is a magical incantation that works almost every time:
"If $company does not refund/provide the service that I paid for, my next call will be to the State Attorney General of $homestate and the State Attorney General of the state your company is incorporated in, for charges of fraud."
It's the upgraded version of "I want to speak with your supervisor," and it has never failed me.
FYI, for banks it's the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau [1] or your state banking regulator, e.g. the Department of Financial Services [2] in New York.
I have also used this for fraudulent threatening debt.
My grad school was trying to charge me for a semester I did not attend which was ridiculous considering I was getting a research stipend for much more than my tuition in my comp sci PhD program. Every year or so they would start harassing me again, when the supervisor trick stopped working, I threatened multiple law suits and contacting the State Attorney General and I haven't heard from them again.
I had billing problems with Century-link for 6 months. I filed an FCC complaint and suddenly my bill was fixed! CLink then replied to the complaint saying that they had already fixed it. Funny how that worked out.
me either, any ideas on how we can do this? I'm currently supposedly guaranteed 100mbs yet my 50mbs fios was leaps and bounds better than one I'm getting now [fios not available in my new area]
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.
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?
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....
Have had TWC now Spectrum. In two years the price has gone from $35 to $60. There is no cheaper tier, according to them. I use it over wifi so couldn't even use their supposed blazing speed (100mb) anyway.
What can I do? The only competitor, AT&T is not very cost effective either and I dread doing business with them---just paying the bill was an exercise in frustration due to their constantly broken website.
Ask Spectrum if they offer the "Everyday low price" tier. It's $15/month where I live for 2/1 Mbps down/up but they don't advertise it. This isn't a promotional rate.
Time Warner blatantly tried to rip me off and, then stole my money when I signed up for Earthlink.
First they put charges for channels and shows I never purchased over a 3 month period adding up to $900. I tried to fight it and they wouldn't remove the charges. I cancelled my service and found Earthlink.
I gave Earthlink a little over $100 to hook up a cable modem to my house. 12 hours later it was disconnected and I was told I owed Time Warner $900. They never told me when I signed up that the line would be owned by TWC or that I owed money.
They kept my $100 so, I called AT&T which was the only other option. AT&T lied to me and told me I was getting fiber at 25Mb/sec. When the installer showed up with twisted pair I asked, this is DSL isn't it? He told me yes it was DSL and I'd only get 17Mb/sec. I just tested it on Fast.com and I get 12Mb/sec. Oh well, this is the only choice I have left for working at home at this point.
We were recently converted from Time Warner to Spectrum. It was all handled over the phone, and at no point did the customer service rep mention anything about my docsis 2.0 modem not supporting the "up to 60Mbit" they were advertising. Since this was my own modem, I won't fault them too much, but they really should make sure their customers have the correct equipment to take advantage of the service they're buying. Luckily, Spectrum does not seem to be charging for modem lease like TWC did, so I drove up to the local office and picked up a docsis 3.0 modem. My speed jumped from 35Mbit to 75Mbit afterwards (I was previously on 15mbit with TWC for $5 more per month).
This is what this case is about. TWC did this to me. They leased me a Motorola SB6121 that is capable of doing 100Mbps. They then "upgraded" my speed to 200Mbps, but kept the price the same. The 100Mbps tier then became $10/mo. less than the 200Mbps tier. At that point, they were ripping me off for $10/mo.
I confronted customer support with a well-crafted chat message pointing this out, with links to their own specs. They moved me to the 100Mbps tier and credited me $80 or $90 for overcharging me, and didn't fight about it at all. It's like they made damn sure I didn't engage the Streisand Effect.
Anecdotally, I have noticed my upload speeds with Charter Spectrum have been noticeably better over the past month. My uplod went from 100-150 KiB to 500-700KiB
[+] [-] makecheck|9 years ago|reply
An example set of rules could be:
1. Periodic monitoring of connection speeds is to be expected, and any action requires a minimum of X samples (say, X=10). Measurements may be performed by any party and the measurement method must be fully disclosed. If more than 30% of samples are failing to meet advertised Internet speeds by at least 5%, or any one sample is more than 50% below advertised speed, customer is entitled to a one-day refund of Internet fees. If more than 5 total occurrences in a single calendar month are failing, customer is entitled to a 15-day refund of Internet fees.
2. If the Internet becomes unusable for more than 10 minutes at a time in a single month and the outage can be traced to ISP-given equipment, customer is entitled to a one-day refund of Internet fees. If Internet is unusable multiple times, customer is entitled to a 5-day refund.
3. If company has cause to adjust Internet delivery expectations (such as, too many additional customers to serve original speeds on pipe to same area), existing customers are all immediately released from any contracts and may terminate service immediately with no penalties. In additional, ISP is liable for crediting customer monthly bills for the remainder of service, proportional to the difference in service speed with a 10% penalty for violation of original contract by the ISP.
4. Internet is considered a separate service and may not be bundled with anything else.
And it doesn’t even have to say this much to be a huge improvement. The point is that companies have been getting away with lousy services FOR YEARS and appear to be largely unpunished, while meanwhile the number of customers overpaying and not receiving stable and promised service numbers in the millions.
[+] [-] jaredklewis|9 years ago|reply
ISPs must charge customers per byte transferred. In other words, no all you can eat plans allowed, usage based pricing only. This has the benefit of aligning consumer and ISP goals in the sense that providing fast service allows ISPs to make more money, so they are incentivized to provide high quality service built on high quality infrastructure. If the Internet is not working, they make no money. If it is slow, they make less. On the consumer side, it incentivizes efficient use of bandwidth.
Of course, this is only one piece of the puzzle. The other piece is that most ISPs have a defacto monopoly in their region. Not sure how we can solve this one. This is partially caused by bad decision by municipal governments, industry collusion, and it seems in part by just the nature of running physical utilities to homes and businesses (many regions also have electric, water, sewage, and gas monopolies).
[+] [-] X86BSD|9 years ago|reply
So why am I posting? I'll tell you why. I have found a perverse interest in the fact it took google 18 months to drag fiber literally 250 feet to my house. I measured it. My neighbor had it. It took them 18 months. They kept telling me every quarter, it should just be two more months at the latest.
Do you know how long it takes cable companies to repair a downed power line?
Not 18 damn months! And that's if the power line is beamed up by aliens and disappears. Requiring an entirely new pole and cable run.
My point is there is no panacea so far. Cable companies suck, and milk the copper tit cash cow for all they can. They won't upgrade their infrastructure and will not compete with google fiber and other high speed offerings. But they do get work done on lines pretty fast.
Google screams in infrastructure but sucks at actual deployment. I'm really unimpressed with google. Gmail, android, fiber they just suck imo.
I'm more convinced now than ever that laws need to be revoked and cities need to deploy their own fiber to the home network at tax dollar expense and operate it like a utility. Open the backbone for leasing as well to interested parties at a fair price.
It's clear telcos and cable have a chokehold on the legislative. Things won't get any better. Competition won't increase. It's way beyond time to nuke the current system from orbit.
[+] [-] porpoisemonkey|9 years ago|reply
Did you ever get an official response on the reason for the delay?
The reason I'm asking is because I wonder if there could be a local ordinance or government interdiction that needed to be overcome in order to make what, on its face, seems like a relatively simple change. Incumbent utility companies tend to have a more streamlined process for requesting changes due to their familiarity and rapport with the local government processes and personnel.
[+] [-] rm_-rf_slash|9 years ago|reply
"If $company does not refund/provide the service that I paid for, my next call will be to the State Attorney General of $homestate and the State Attorney General of the state your company is incorporated in, for charges of fraud."
It's the upgraded version of "I want to speak with your supervisor," and it has never failed me.
[+] [-] JumpCrisscross|9 years ago|reply
[1] http://www.consumerfinance.gov/complaint/
[2] http://www.dfs.ny.gov/consumer/fileacomplaint.htm
[+] [-] dsugarman|9 years ago|reply
My grad school was trying to charge me for a semester I did not attend which was ridiculous considering I was getting a research stipend for much more than my tuition in my comp sci PhD program. Every year or so they would start harassing me again, when the supervisor trick stopped working, I threatened multiple law suits and contacting the State Attorney General and I haven't heard from them again.
[+] [-] John23832|9 years ago|reply
Many customer service workers are underpaid/overworked and DGAF.
[+] [-] CaptSpify|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] breul99|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wmf|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fosco|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] j_s|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iaw|9 years ago|reply
I've been able to sustain 760 Mbps down and 105 Mbps up, it's the most satisfying experience I've had on the internet.
[+] [-] space_ghost|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anonymous_iam|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trendia|9 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] overcooked|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mixmastamyk|9 years ago|reply
What can I do? The only competitor, AT&T is not very cost effective either and I dread doing business with them---just paying the bill was an exercise in frustration due to their constantly broken website.
[+] [-] wmf|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bradfa|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsmithatx|9 years ago|reply
First they put charges for channels and shows I never purchased over a 3 month period adding up to $900. I tried to fight it and they wouldn't remove the charges. I cancelled my service and found Earthlink.
I gave Earthlink a little over $100 to hook up a cable modem to my house. 12 hours later it was disconnected and I was told I owed Time Warner $900. They never told me when I signed up that the line would be owned by TWC or that I owed money.
They kept my $100 so, I called AT&T which was the only other option. AT&T lied to me and told me I was getting fiber at 25Mb/sec. When the installer showed up with twisted pair I asked, this is DSL isn't it? He told me yes it was DSL and I'd only get 17Mb/sec. I just tested it on Fast.com and I get 12Mb/sec. Oh well, this is the only choice I have left for working at home at this point.
[+] [-] heywire|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imajes|9 years ago|reply
Seems spectrum maxes out at 120mbps, whereas they used to sell 300mbps. (or is that just me?)
[+] [-] JshWright|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] CodeWriter23|9 years ago|reply
I confronted customer support with a well-crafted chat message pointing this out, with links to their own specs. They moved me to the 100Mbps tier and credited me $80 or $90 for overcharging me, and didn't fight about it at all. It's like they made damn sure I didn't engage the Streisand Effect.
[+] [-] justinhensley|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mixmastamyk|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imajes|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jarcoal|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sctb|9 years ago|reply
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]