[ReverseCold]

I don’t know why they don’t advertise their oversubscription rate. The FCC should probably require this to be disclosed in some standard location. So many people are mad because “I paid for a gigabit and I can’t use the whole thing”… but like you didn’t pay for a gigabit you paid for a gigabit shared among 100 other people, which means peak-of-sums you should usually get gigabit, but it’s not guaranteed.

The internet is a series of tubes! You can get a dedicated gigabit sized tube but it’ll cost 1-2 orders of magnitude more.

E: Even elsewhere on this thread people are like

> I dunno, I pay $70 a month for gigabit from Google Fiber and absolutely saturate that thing all day long up and down.

Yes! You are the noisy neighbor getting lucky that your neighbors aren’t also noisy!

[ahnick]

It's pretty obvious isn't it? They don't want anyone to understand how the system really works. They should not be allowed to put the words "Unlimited" anywhere in their advertisement. period. It's all deceptive advertising and they should be raked over the coals for it.

If it's shared then say "Shared gigabit internet for only X dollars!" I guess the reason they don't do that is because a lot of people would choose competitor services if they were honest. Cable companies are soul sucking monopolies/duopolies and deserve no quarter.

[Sophira]

That reminds me of the way JCPenney had a thing where they would do no promotional pricing in a bid to be honest with the consumer about the actual price of their products... and it backfired massively. People assumed that because they didn't have any sales that they weren't the cheapest prices.

In the end, people go for what they perceive to be the cheapest prices, not necessarily the prices that actually are the cheapest.

[nyjah]

I guess the reason they don't do that is because a lot of people would choose competitor services if they were honest

Competitor services? Starlink aside, I have no options but what I have. I think many people at least in USA are in similar situation.

[dehrmann]

There's a difference between a data center connection and a home connection. For 99% of home users, moderately oversubscribed gigabit is perfectly fine, and no one would pay the premium (and it's a big premium) for more. Once 1 GB downloads are slow or the connection can't handle 5 HD streams, it's getting into false advertising territory.

[SkiFire13]

> If it's shared then say "Shared gigabit internet for only X dollars!" I guess the reason they don't do that is because a lot of people would choose competitor services if they were honest.

I don't think any competitor will give you a dedicated gigabit to you for a reasonable price, especially if everyone suddently starts asking for one.

[internet101010]

There usually are no competitors.

[userbinator]

There's two (interrelated) values here --- speed ("flow rate") and volume.

"Unlimited data" refers to volume.

Gigabit refers to speed.

This customer presumably isn't too worried about the speed, but is rightly under the impression that he isn't being charged on volume and can thus use as much as the speed allows.

[vlz]

Ok, but you cannot truthfully advertise unlimited volume if you put a limit on the speed which is in turn also limiting the volume.

[SAI_Peregrinus]

When it first started back in the Before Times, "Unlimited" internet was in contrast to dial-up connections which weren't always on. It's unlimited in time (as long as you're subscribed), not necessarily guaranteed to keep the max speed for the entire time.

That contrast is now gone, so it's become deceptive IMO.

[throwup238]

If that’s the case they should market the plan’s throttling upfront. “Unlimited mobile data” comes with very clear fine print that isn’t buried in the TOS about how many gigabytes the customer gets before it drops them to 3g speed.

[userbinator]

I believe in those cases even after you pass the throttling limit you can continue to transfer data at however much 3g speeds will get you for the rest of the billing period, and thus they won't cut off your service for using "too much".

[wmf]

Oversubscription ratios vary from neighborhood to neighborhood. Perhaps ISPs could advertise the worst case but that would make their service look worse than it is. And of course no ISP will be the first to disclose.

BTW the FCC recently introduced "nutrition labels" for ISPs. https://www.fcc.gov/broadbandlabels

[presentation]

That’s why I think this has to come through rules and regs - any individual company can be honest, but it would probably come at the cost of dishonest competitors winning customers.

[AnthonyMouse]

> So many people are mad because “I paid for a gigabit and I can’t use the whole thing”… but like you didn’t pay for a gigabit you paid for a gigabit shared among 100 other people, which means peak-of-sums you should usually get gigabit, but it’s not guaranteed.

But that's something different than what Cox is doing.

"Unlimited" and over-subscription aren't incompatible. You have a gigabit connection, the 40Gbps uplink is shared between 1000 other people who each have a gigabit connection, the over-subscription rate is 25:1. That's fine as long as the average usage during peak hours is 4% -- which it might very well be. A 4k Netflix stream is 25Mbps, which is 2.5% of a gigabit connection, so you're not above that even if everybody is streaming in 4k at once.

You're even fine if everybody is streaming in 4k at once and then on top of that 15 people want to fully max out their connections. And everybody using their connections at once doesn't really happen. At any given time a lot of people will be using zero.

Now, there will be times that are outliers. Maybe a popular video game drops without staggering the release and suddenly 30% of the customers are maxing out their connections at once to download an update and the average speed drops from 1000Mbps to 100Mbps for a couple hours. That's why it says "up to", right? That isn't artificially limiting anyone, that's just everyone getting their pro rata share in a time of atypical demand.

But on a typical day with an adequately provisioned network you should be able to get the speed on the label, and there is still no reason to be limiting anyone's speeds during times the network isn't over capacity.

The issue is they don't want to over-subscribe their network at only the ratio that would allow them to provide the rated speed on a typical day, they want to promise more than they can deliver and deflect blame onto people who are only using what they were promised.

[bobdvb]

That's true, although the reality is that the capacity is much more limited in many providers local infrastructure than you'd like to think. Those 1000 users will only get 10G at best, and remember that both in Cable and FTTH the spectrum allocation on the local segment is asymmetric.

You have a finite downlink capacity and a finite uplink capacity, users are not just competing for the same time on the wire, they're competing for spectrum. If everyone was on Ethernet to the home then you'd be right, but FTTH and Cable are in physically contended spectrum in the cabinet/cable itself. Proper fibre ethernet costs more per user than FTTH/Cable because each user needs a port on a switch, instead of using TDMA and everyone being on the same wire at the other end.

[sqeaky]

I have paid for two gigabit connections and I sometimes saturate them for days at time. Doesn't cost that much.

If I am not to use it like that then it should say clearly on the paperwork that I have data limits, and I don't have any such notifications.

[godelski]

  > I don’t know why they don’t advertise their oversubscription rate.

They typically advertise as "up to" and often hide data limits in small text. This is also common among phone carriers who say "unlimited data" or worse, "unlimited 5G" but then throttle you after you hit a certain data limit.

I'm not saying this to justify their actions. I actually think this is worse because it demonstrates clear intention to mislead. But it's something to be aware of because they will argue (and frequently some smug person that I guess has a boot fetish) and then blame you for not reading. But I strongly disagree. Words mean things, and they mean what a reasonable person would interrupt. You can't just hide stuff in legal language. No person has enough time to read all those TOS agreements and even if they did, it's not in normal language that's understandable by the average person. If a contact is fair only if participants are informed and consenting, then I don't think most of these contacts should hold up (they do).

But hey, we live in a world where courts have decided that "boneless wings" doing clearly mean "without bones". But I for one don't want to live in a country where that's okay.

There's a lot of smoke and mirrors with the legal system and I for one don't think enough people are upset. Apathy isn't working.

[verisimi]

> Words mean things, and they mean what a reasonable person would interrupt.

Interpret. Words mean things, you know.

[nixosbestos]

Edit: removing an apparently quite inaccurate comment. Apologies.

[FredFS456]

It /is/ how it works with PON based fibre networks. See https://blog.init7.net/en/overbooking-how-providers-divide-u...

[jpambrun]

Because it's none of our business as customers. This oversubscription rate is a risk they calibrate on their side. Given the marketing material, if all customers decide to use more bandwidth, it up to the utility to upgrade their infra to match in a timely manner. This is the risk they took and competed on.

[qaq]

40Gbit from he is 2K so no it's not 1-2 orders of magnitude more

[TheDong]

I think you're trying to imply that it should be $50 for 1Gbit with that comment, but HE fiber and residential fiber aren't comparable. Apples and oranges.

HE only has to run relatively short cables within a datacenter, which is designed for running those things, while residential fiber has to be run much further through much more hostile terrain.

Residential fiber takes more total land and maintenance and has different customer density per unit laid.

Unless HE also offers residential fiber at that rate, don't think it's comparable.

[trilbyglens]

Do you really not understand?