I thought data caps for home internet were a thing of the past…
I’ve somewhat recently moved back to a very rural area of the Midwest. Small town. No stop lights. Biggest businesses other than the bars are Casey’s, Subway, and Dollar General.
And we have one ISP (not counting DSL) — Mediacom. When we first signed up, I had to go with the second service tier. But not because of speeds, but so I could have a reasonable 1 TB/mo data cap.
Lucky me, they increased the cap to 1.5 TB. 🙄
I hope that in my lifetime I can see ISPs regulated as a public utility.
In Switzerland you get unlimited 10 Gbit/s for 50 bucks.
I hate you, congrats!
In Canada we have to give our firstborn to a telecommunication monopoly for somewhat OK internet.
Somewhat OK internet on the infrastructure our taxes paid for and the government handed over to Bell and Rogers, but don’t worry, they’ll stop all the other evil corporations from coming in and giving us cheaper internet.
I pay 90 ish Canadian pesos for 1gb/1gb for Bell fibre. It’s not too bad depending on your location, though that price is still too high. I’m at least making good use of it. 12tb of total transfers this month.
I pay 80$ for 1gb/750mb with bell. I could upgrade to 3/3 for 120$ but then they’d change my modem and the homehub 3000 was the last one I could remove the transceiver and plug fiber directly in my server opnsense router.
Wait, how’d you get that with Bell? I’m pretty sure my plan is the same speeds for like… double that amount
I have a permanent $30 discount from when I signed up. Also, apologies, I mixed up the price with my cell plan. 90 not 60.
I’m in a new construction (1yo), we only have Bell. Used to pay around that for 1Gbps, then they had a promo for 1.5Gbps at the same price couple months after we moved in. Called to complain, they ended up bumping me at that speed.
what the hell
WTF? 25gbps? Dang we really do have shitty internet in the States.
And /48 IPv6 subnet included! As it should be!
A /48 is quite overkill for a home customer. Do you have 65536 LANs at home? Here in Belgium, we get a /56.
They’re just preparing for one day when you have your own personal swarm of nano bots
Is it actually 10Gbit/s or just marketing? And how’s the latency?
The latency for 1Gbit/s is amazing, and i seem to get that speed. But i really don’t have the hardware for more anyways.
Yeah, but those are metric bits so they are a little bit smaller.
And for 80$/month you can get 25Gbps!
🔫 hand over the internet bill
Omg
Data caps on home internet services should be illegal. They should also be much higher on mobile, but that’s a whole other topic.
I have 940/940 Unlimited FTTH for $93.45(Canadian).
And France gets 5Gbps for €30 per month or 8Gbps for €40 per month. I’m in the US now and really miss free.fr as my ISP
I’m suddenly more motivated to do my French lessons on Duolingo now.
I know right! Free.fr was a real disruptor. They fought the government to open telecom to private companies (it used to be France Telecom only which is gov owned) then they worked with the gov to create a fiber network that can be used my multiple ISP. So no running parallel lines from separate companies, they all create, maintain and share the same network all over the country. Before that, they started as the first free dialup internet service. You would call a number, and connect. You were paying with ads. They also were the first DSL speed, first TV over DSL, first FTTH, first VoIP, and they also have a cell phone network. And the prices are forcing all the other companies to align. We seriously need free.for in the US.
What average consumer has hardware that’s actually capable of using more than 1Gbps?
Average none, though 2.5 Gbps is getting more and more common and WiFi is catching up too. You could max out multiple slower devices at the same time without hitting the limit of your uplink. I don’t have a use case for that, so I’d only upgrade from my current 1 Gbps to higher speeds if the price is comparable. That doesn’t mean that others don’t have a use case for it.
Most decent to higher end desktops have at least 2.5 Gbps. Even a laptop/desktop that doesn’t can get a 2.5 Gbps usb-c to ethernet dongle for like $30-$40.
Higher end access points also have 2.5 Gbps. I have no issue maxing out my 1.5 Gbps (ISP over provisions the lines so I get 1.7 gbps) on Steam. Also keep in mind that when you have a faster connection with multiple devices/people, each device/person might be able to pull 1 Gbps. As in if you have 2 Gbps internet service even 2 older computers that only have a gigabit internet connection, each could get the full gigabit to them.
If you’re the type of person that only uses wifi, you won’t see a difference between gigabit and multigigabit connections but plenty of people have ethernet throughout their homes and they make use of faster than gigabit connections.
2.5GbE and 5GbE is now in average consumer hardware. Also 10GbE router costs about 100$.
Data caps on home internet services should be illegal. They should also be much higher on mobile, but that’s a whole other topic.
I’m not convinced mobile deserves to have caps at all, either!
As far as I’m concerned, there’s no reason to limit the amount of data transfer except in times of congestion, and I also don’t see any reason the amount of data transferred during un-congested times should have any bearing on who gets throttled.
You’re way overpaying. I pay $40 for 1.5 Gbps with Bell FTTH. Give them a call and say it’s too expensive and see what they can do for you. Or tell them Rogers (if they’re in your area) offered you 1.5gbps for $60 and ask if they can beat that.
As for mobile, you should look at new plans. $39 gets you 20 GB $50 gets you 40 GB. Seems like plenty of data imo https://www.koodomobile.com/en/rate-plans?INTCMP=KM_HDD_2023_Plans_RatePlans_40gbfor45_ROC_MBSK
Best time to get a mobile plan is Black Friday, should be even better deals by then.
Home internet data caps WERE a thing of the past when Obama appointed Tom Wheeler as FCC chairman, who then pushed rulings to classify ISPs as a public utility and started enforcing net neutrality. Companies that didn’t play ball started getting fined until they fell in line. Being a former executive for a major ISP, he was very familiar with the anti-competitive practices and underhanded tricks those companies had been using for years; and he used those practices against them to finally make some pro-consumer progress for internet access in the US.
Then, Trump came in and put Ajit Pai in charge of the FCC (no joke, my phone kept auto correcting his name to Shit Pie). Anyways, Shit Pie tore down those rulings and undid all those years of progress as part of the Trump administration’s anti-Obama initiative. Even though it was proven time and again that what he did was directly against public opinion, and that ISPs were flooding the public commentary with bot posts(some even made by dead people); Shit Pie continued to meme about himself and drink from an obnoxiously large Reese’s coffee mug while doing so. At this point, every provider of internet services has added back data caps in the US, and they have continued to increase their prices to maintain that 99.9% profit margin. They’ve also locked down more areas to prevent municipal broadband services from forming, and they’re even pushing for legislation to prevent them from ever happening.
The current administration has done absolutely nothing. In fact, they’ve been so unremarkable, I have no idea who is in charge of the FCC, and I don’t feel like looking it up.
In Thailand I’m getting 400Mbps upload and download with unlimited data.
It costs about 300฿/mo ≈ $8.7/mo
'Murica #1!!! (In high internet prices)
But you also get paid less
Median income is $23k in Thailand. $31k in US. It definitely doesn’t make up the difference.Edit: Used Personal income for US and Household for Thailand. It actually doesn’t bring the gap significantly closer.
Why are you using median household income for Thailand and median personal income for the US?
Median household income in the US is $71,000.
Good call. I didn’t even think to specify household vs personal. My mistake. I’ll edit to fix.
Although I agree that people get paid less here, I highly doubt that it costs an ISP in the US 8x more to transfer data than an ISP in Thailand.
I’m not really trying to argue that Thai internet is cheap, it’s that internet elsewhere is exorbitantly expensive.
What kind of rube works in the same country they live in? I met a lot of WFH workers when I visited Thailand, and not a single one of them was working for a company in Thailand.
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USAGE ALLOWANCE?!?!
Laughs in Scandinavian
I have luckily never heard about data caps in Scandinavia except for mobile broadband.
Do they even exist at all, here?
I had a friend years ago that had a cap, but that was literally the only one I’ve heard of in my life here (Sweden)
I don’t know, probably not. I don’t even know how fast I’d blow through 1,5 Tb!
My first (fast) internet connection was 1 Mbit.
We had 1gb to download per month. This cap disappeared when more competitors showed up though (i had that cap around … 2001)
I havnt seen a data cap for internet connections since. I am not aware of any either. Except for mobile phones. Though, they also have unlimited data for those , if you want. (I have. Just so i never have to worry about it ever again)
Dude… The US is doing it wrong. SE Asia. 1Gbps symmetrical, unlimited, unrestricted. ~14US$.
Yeah, the ISP cartels sucks. I’ve been stuck paying $170/mo for uncapped 1000/35mbps connection.
Thankfully, before the end of the year, a local ISP is moving into my area. They offer uncapped symmetrical gigabit, for $75/mo… I’ll be saving $95/mo for BETTER service.
The longstanding ISP cartels should seriously be punished for the abuse of their market positions and failure to appropriately use government funding they’ve been given.
1000/35mbps
That download/upload dichotomy should be illegal in and of itself!
Yeah that’s abysmal, but it’s a result of the fact that docsis has always been an asymmetrical standard in which upload speeds are lower than download. I recently moved house and my old ISP was fiber to prem, we had symmetrical gigabit. New house is cable ISP that only offers 1000/50… While docsis 3.0 supports up to 200mbps up. Bunch of greedy bastards.
Oh they appropriated it all right, straight into their yachts and mansions.
Same boat here… and then the “default cap” is nothing. Between work and family, we hit the data cap of 1.25TB within three weeks.
Any place I can find more info about the “end of the year” timeframe you mentioned? A new ISP is also rolling in my area, but their site has been vague on time.
The main street into our house currently has it available, but our actual address not yet… driving me a little crazy.
Hope the new one is available for you soon.
$40 for 2 Gbps unlimited in Singapore. Caps on home broadband are frankly nonsensical.
In Germany we pay lots of money for 5G data volume. For me I got 20 Gigs for about 40 bucks, this is mostly Not a thing in the rest of Europe. But data plans on landlines are really dumb.
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Well mobile data is very different. With fibre optic you can generally keep provisioning more cables and a single cable already carries a huge amount already.
Radio has an absolute efficiency limit for the bandwidth of a signal and we’re pretty damn close to that now.
5g uses wider bandwidth channels, with more cells closer together and uses things like beamforming. But there’s still always going to be an upper limit that is considerably lower than fibre.
This is why they likely want to discourage 5g becoming a full alternative to wired, because there’s just not the capacity to do it on the same scale.
If you really think about it, caps on mobile data are also fairly stupid
Mobile is a shared medium and can only support a certain amount of bandwidth per phone mast (in a certain area). A mobile phone network heavily relies on most users not using their data plans most of the time.
In France at least I doubt it.
The only time I remember caps on landlines was when 56k modem were still the norm. Once ADSL was rolled out there was pretty much no caps anymore.
I think the fact that we had some healthy competition for landlines from the get go in my country meant the ISPs couldn’t get that much greedy and put caps in place. So it never ended being common where I live.
And when it was old school modems, well you were already paying for the phone communications anyway when connected to the internet so it wasn’t really unlimited anyway.
Well, I’m in portugal, which does NOT have a lot of healthy competition in the communication space, and as far as I remember there haven’t been data caps (I’m 18, so last 10 years is what I reasonably remember regarding being online), so I’ve always assumed it had to be some European level law
Belgium has them
Belgium also has free parking I’ve heard.
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Agreed. In the past you would pay for calling and text messages and data was often unlimited at the higher tiers, but since nobody pays extra for calling and texting anymore, they’re now charging for data. Luckily they can’t charge extra for EU roaming anymore.
Data caps on landlines is something that I haven’t seen for a very long time in my EU country. The last time I had a subscription with a data cap must have been with a 56k modem, if at all. Cable and DSL might have had fair use policies back in the day (or maybe they still do, who knows), but no hard cap. Or at least not that I can remember.
Internet nowadays is way too important to have data caps, especially at home. 5G should definitely be next. Differentiate in speed all you want, but ditch the caps.
There are still plans with data caps in Belgium, this is limited to the “cheapest” plans though at about 30 EUR a month
Data caps do exist in Europe, but they’re generally reserved for ultra cheap data plans. Something like €5 for 100mbit speeds. So you get a decent connection, but limited in traffic instead. Which makes sense.
While it’s stupid that ISPs are using their monopolies to screw consumers, the concept of data caps is not as stupid as you might think.
You’re not just paying for the connection between you and the ISP, but also all the other data links that get your internet traffic to its destination. For example, those cables across the ocean are owned third parties and they charge money for every byte that goes through. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for ISPs to pass that cost to users.
Furthermore, most links are overprovisioned in order to keep costs down. For example, if you assume that users only use 10% of their bandwidth on average, that means you can fit 10x as many people on a connection (or maybe 8x to account for peaks). This does mean that users should be discouraged from using their full bandwidth for long durations, otherwise the network operators can’t overprovision as much and have to invest more in infrastructure.
In Denmark, I pay ~19€ (~$21) for 1000GB of mobile data (they call it ‘unlimited’, but the small text says they may cut you off at 1000GB). Of course, I rarely use more than 50GB a month on my phone.
This is what I am talking about … Most countries in Europe just gives you kinda unlimited data plans… look at this crap
I rarely need mobile data because I work from home but if my landline has an interruption I can barely work 1 or 2 days with that if I tweak data consumption on my work laptop.weint auf deutsch
I’m moving to another provider next month to increase from 8GB@€30 to 15GB€25… Those are per month…
25€ for 15G is also way too much. I now pay 5,99 for 7GB. (Also germany, monthly cancellable, sim.de [No advertisement])
You should look here for good prices.
Vielen Dank!, The problem is I need the Telekom Network otherwise I pay for nothing as the other ones won’t have reception :(
You can untick the other providers. I found this one for example.
Check out Vodafone if you’re younger than 28. I’m paying 22€/month with their Gigakombi for unlimited 5G.
Way beyond that ;)
Pretty much a thing in NL and afaik also BE.
source: am Dutch.
T mobile NL, 5G capped at 22GB. Cost: 20 euro.
35 euro in NL wl give you t mobile unlimited which is capped at 15 GB per day. Other providers charge more or less the same.
@home internet 1up/down GB fiber 45 euro. No datacap.
I’m reading all the comments and I’m shocked… In France, with uncapped access and 1Gbps down/600Mbps up (theorical) I pay 40€/mo (30€ every six month when I call to complain that it’s too expensive). And it’s definitely not the cheapest provider.
That’s insane !
I just don’t understand the point of data caps. Internet is not something you order, like 10TBs for a village and the next order will arrive the next month. Or worse - internet supply issues, where Cisco is not able to manufacture TBs in time… Like what the fuck is data cap.
You don’t have TBs in internet infrastructure. You have throughput which means how much data per second you can send through your infrastructure.
Anyway, everyone flexing their ISPs, so do I:
- Vilnius, capital city of Lithuania
- “Telia” ISP.
- They offer speeds from 250mbps min to 2gbps max.
- Not sure about the other plans, but 1GBPS that I have is 940mbps down and 580mbps up and costs 19.90eur per month. Most importantly - no data caps, no slowdowns (at least in the past 3 years) and public IP that does not change.
I was very close to closing on a house in rural midwest but I checked isp’s and every one available had caps so I just stayed away.
It’s why you just get a business line, usually just slightly more expensive, and you get 99.9% SLA uptime and unlimited cap.
You shouldn’t need a business line to get reliable, fast, unlimited internet.
O %100 agreed. Just suggesting a way around the bullshit cap they impose.
And a static IP, and the ability to do whatever you want with the fiber
Yep a static IP is great for hosting dedicated servers
Great internet is also a deciding factor for us while looking for our next rural midwest home! I use the FCC Broadband Map and availability searches on local ISP websites to confirm available speeds and no data caps. We passed on some great homes because of slow/no internet or data caps.
Our current rural midwest home has 940x35 w/o data caps from a cable-based (DOCSIS 3.1) ISP for $34.99/month. I’m sure they will increase the price after 12 months. When the time comes, I’ll call them again to complain and get a decent price again.
Good choice. I live in the rural midwest and the only thing that’ll reach (even though we’re in the flatlands) is a WISP we pay $170 a month for 12/6. No data caps, but it’s slow as shit. At least it’s not satellite so we can still play games online fairly reliably but damn.
lol uncapped 500mbps fiber (actual fiber directly to your house) connection is 10-12$/month in Ukraine
Looking at all you guys with your gigabit connections, meanwhile I’m in Aus and lucky to get 30 down and 15 up
I live in the UK and currently have copper cable at about 60mbps for £60 per month. I thought what I had was bad because I have a friend who gets 1gbps for £30 a few miles away.
I’m in the US and get 1Gbps for about £30, because my city forced ISPs to sell portions of their networks to third party competitions to break up monopolies.
Crazy that they make you pay in pounds in the US though.
Where the hell in the UK are you? I’m in the North and pay £26 for 60mbps but get more like 70 due to how close I am to the street cabinet though I haven’t even got copper cable here, just crappy aluminium that is so old I think Alexander Graham Bell himself fitted them.
I’m in the north-west but I’m limited to BT because nobody else has cables down yet. A different company claims to be fitting FttP round here in a few months though.
Similar issue here, full fibre roll out is estimated to be complete in 2025.
I’m just outside Newcastle on the coast and could get Virgin but my neighbours have had a nightmare with it.
They only rolled out their fibre about three months ago so there might be issues with that
I’m in leeds and pay £30 a month for 1gig with virgin. You sould move house. Get better broadband.
Where on earth are you and who with to be fleeced that much?
In the north-west. BT currently have a local monopoly so they can charge what they want
If you’re rural, check out B4RN.
So it’s my impression that (and my knowledge might be out of date here) but almost anywhere that BT is then there should be at least 1 other company that operates on their lines (or rather Openreaches line, after they were split out of BT for competition purposes) so you should be able to get someone else with luck.
Try using Sam knows website and they tell lots about your line and what you can get.
![[RANT] I pay $70/mo for this privilege](https://i.imgur.com/xEZZ9Hb.jpg){kind=link}