Yeah, comcast is quite terrible. They only get better with competition. I have 1G up/down on FIOS, and it’s been 65 dollars/month for 6 years. Quite reliable. But what can you do when you’re somewhere when Comcast has the monopoly?
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How Fast is your Internet?
- Thread starter Christopher11
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Depends on time of day as I'm on T-Mobile Internet these days
Just tested ... good for my needs and value is excellent
Just tested ... good for my needs and value is excellent
Yup.
At my prior home, I had access to multiple ISP options. For years I would just swap ISPs, Comcast and FiOS. When the new customer deal would expire, I would cancel and sign up for the other service. My monthly costs would range from $29 to $50 a month, depending on the deal at the time.
Both ISPs were pretty reliable, but I preferred FiOS due to the symmetrical upload and download.
FiOS finally wised up, and had great deals for existing customers that didn't expire, causing me to just stick with them for the last few years I was at that address. I was paying $35 a month for 300Mbps FiOS service.
Needless to say, I was pretty sad to find out that my new home only had Comcast as an option. The service has generally been worse, and it has been a lot more expensive than what I used to pay.
Yeah, much of the PNW urban area has Comcast monopolies, Seattle specifically only allowed Comcast in the city limits. They would also allow centurylink DSL but that was connection speeds of the last century over copper. It seems to be slowly changing, there’s an independent fiber ISP slowly expanding in PNW cities like Portland and Olympia, but with rather odd coverage.
Curious what you guys will say, I was thinking that a great setup would be an internet plan like the ones described above, but with Starlink as a backup. That way, you really can't be without internet. It's important these days.
It really depends on your usage and the reliability of your connections. In the 6 years we’ve been here, our only outage was when the remnants of a hurricane came through, took out the high voltage transmission lines and FIOS went down till power came back. In that scenario, I’m happy just having the phone as a backup, with tethering if absolutely necessary. Your needs may vary, I mean it sucks not to have internet, but it’s just so uncommon here.
Agree with Profcutter's reply. I guess it depends on how often you lose internet & what you use it for. I work from home & we've lost internet about once a year or so for the last several years. I've been able to get by with hot spotting from my phone. I recently bought an iPad & the T Mobile 5 Gigs for 150 days for $10 deal so I can use that for my hot spotting needs.
T Mo also recently came out with a home internet backup plan that costs something like $20/month if you have a phone line with then, $30 if you don't. It gives you some amount of high speed internet & is designed as a backup in case your home internet goes down. I think it's like 130 Gigs, but I could be wrong.
The thing about using Starlink as a bkacup is that it's pretty expensive for something you aren't really planning to use. I could be off, but I seem to remember it costing around $100/month. I'm not sure that I need internet that badly that I'd be willing to pay $1,200/year for a backup that I will likely only use for a day or 2.
There are also other places to get internet if yours goes down. I know there are several places around town that will let you rent an office (more like an open space, but you do get wifi) for under $50/day. I have 3 of those on my list in case my internet goes down & hot spotting isn't working. I'd rather pay that cost than starlink (at least for my needs).
Sorry for the late reply. I'm not really sure what they block. I think they still block porn and certain anti-monarchist sites. But I recently saw a bunch of videos on YouTube that portrayed the current king in a less than favorable light. But, those seem to have disappeared. Not sure if they are blocked or if the government got YouTube to remove them. As always, a VPN comes in handy now and then.
I'd love to have FIOS (or GooGF) . . . mostly for the ease of using custom hardware.
Until then, a TT's 1G/1G fiber will get me through
Until then, a TT's 1G/1G fiber will get me through
Hell yeah it will. ; )I'd love to have FIOS (or GooGF) . . . mostly for the ease of using custom hardware.
Until then, a TT's 1G/1G fiber will get me through
Agreed, I'm fine with my phone as a backup. And hoping a more premium iPhone would give me good mobile hotspot. I have Xfinity mobile which uses the Verizon network I believe, I'm quite happy with it, but never get good results trying to connect my MacBook. But yeah, for sensible working people I think one good internet connection and phone as a backup is perfectly fine. I was in Costa Rica this past winter (best time ever, I am in love with that country), and lots of expats have Starlink in addition to their wifi, which also seemed sensible. Especially if they work remotely, gotta have it.
I posted previously that my ISP provided symetrical 8Gbps for 60€/month with Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime (ad tier). I also had a 10€/month unlimited 5G mobile plan with them but unfortunately the coverage isn’t that great when it comes to my usage so I switched to another mobile provider for a 120Gb 5G plan for 20€/month.
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That's some Sweet Pipe!
If it's available, ~140€/mo gets symm 5Gb/s shared fiber to the Household here in America 🤷♂️
I claim-home central to the 6th largest metropolitan statistical area in the USA (ATL), and it always amazes me that I can't consistently maintain five-bars of cellular signal.
Where I live outside of Philly, you’re not getting more than 1 gig no matter how much you pay. They are starting to put in 2gb FIOS but that’s the fastest you can get here.
Currently sub to A T's 1Gb symm, and it's totally-fantastic.
I could, also, sub to T's 5Gb for thrice the cost . . .
. . . which would probably put me into Car-Payment territory
No need, as I'm regularly waiting on the end-point to respond to most requests.
Those being said, I would love to sub to VIOS (or Frontier), given the chance.
Is that Ting by any chance? I've been getting 931Mbps down and 940Mbps up for two years now. The only hiccup was when a power outage knocked out a 7 year old router, and Ting's DHCP server glomming on to the Ethernet adapter's MAC address used to see if there was a connection. I submitted a trouble ticket to Ting, got a call 40 minutes later and was back on the air.
The original installation impressed me as the tech showed up at the beginning of the 8AM window and I was up and running at 8:45. It did help that I had a conduit from the demarc to my office and we used the twisted pair for DSL to pull the fiber through.
The original installation impressed me as the tech showed up at the beginning of the 8AM window and I was up and running at 8:45. It did help that I had a conduit from the demarc to my office and we used the twisted pair for DSL to pull the fiber through.
It is Ting. Our neighborhood just got hooked up a couple weeks ago. I'm planning to replace my router (I don't have any of their equipment except for the ONT), so I know I'm going to have to call them to release the MAC address before I connect the new router. Just trying to decide what to use...! I have an Orbi 960 system presently and kind of hate it.
The impression I got from the tech was that Ting's DHCP server was misbehaving. Something on the order of 2 to 5 minutes of disconnect is supposed to cause the DHCP server to be open to a new MAC address. In my case the DHCP server did pick up the USB-C to GbE adapter when I was checking the link, but it wouldn't let go of the adapter's MAC address. The tech made a comment about not recognizing the manufacturer of the Ethernet adapter - FWIW, the manufacturer is encoded in the MAC address.
IIRC, the new router has the ability to clone MAC addresses, so I might have been able to configure the router to use the adapter's MAC address.
I got the impression that you lived in coastal north county. Back in 2021, Ting was blanketing Encinitas with cars for early bird signup. For a $9 refundable deposit, the first month would be free and the number of deposits would be used to prioritize lighting up neighborhoods. The fiber conduit in the street behind me was installed about three years ago, conduit in my street late sppring 2022 and service turned on in July 2022. I was amused at what turned out to be a. wildly optimistic map of the expected rollout for Encinitas.
IIRC, the new router has the ability to clone MAC addresses, so I might have been able to configure the router to use the adapter's MAC address.
I got the impression that you lived in coastal north county. Back in 2021, Ting was blanketing Encinitas with cars for early bird signup. For a $9 refundable deposit, the first month would be free and the number of deposits would be used to prioritize lighting up neighborhoods. The fiber conduit in the street behind me was installed about three years ago, conduit in my street late sppring 2022 and service turned on in July 2022. I was amused at what turned out to be a. wildly optimistic map of the expected rollout for Encinitas.
on wifi6e with my macbook air when i'm in the same room as my modem/router I get this :
Could it be your cellular provider? Which one do you use? I use Xfinity, which I believe is on the Verizon network.
