
Internet horror stories: How ISPs screwed over users - tanglesome
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/internet-horror-stories-how-isps-screwed-over-ars-readers/
======
chimeracoder
It's time to make Internet access a public utility, just like water and
electricity. In this day and age, Internet access is as much an essential part
of life as both of the above.

Remember that the cables that they use were paid for with _public tax money_.
The private companies are selling _back_ to us the infrastructure that we
already paid to build.

This is one issue on which neither progressives (who tend to favor government
utilities/services) nor libertarians (who tend to favor the free market) are
happy, because we have the _worst_ of both worlds: a government-sanctioned,
unregulated monopoly, using infrastructure built with public tax dollars, and
re-sold to the original payers (the public) at monopolistic prices.

Unfortunately, recent efforts in this direction have completely failed. A
North Carolina town dissatisfied with Time Warner banded together to create a
municipal ISP, and Time Warner sued, on the basis that they "couldn't
compete[0]" with the superior speeds and lower prices that the municipal ISP
provided. In the end, Time Warner _won_ [1].

I, like 80% of people in the US, have no choice as to my broadband provider. I
don't have a landline. I don't have cable TV. All I need is Internet access,
and for that, my only option is paying Time Warner Cable, at whatever price
they decide to charge, for whatever service they decide to give me[2].

[0] read: "didn't want to compete" == "it's cheaper for us to sue you than to
lower our prices to market rate"

[1] [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/11/the-price-of-
muni...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2010/11/the-price-of-muni-
broadband-eternal-war-with-time-warner-cable/)

[2] Pro-tip: If you're stuck with TWC as well, don't pay for the higher speed
levels. That's just the maximum possible speed, and they don't guarantee you
anything close to that, for any portion of your monthly service. If you live
in a congested area, you're likely to get the same speed regardless of which
tier you purchase, so just pick the cheapest one.

~~~
reginaldjcooper
> Remember that the cables that they use were paid for with public tax money.
> The private companies are selling back to us the infrastructure that we
> already paid to build.

Actually unless I was misinformed, they are selling back the unimproved
infrastructure that we paid them to improve. The whole situation makes me so
furious and there's nothing I can do. Mesh networks, I guess. I need to make
some friends along a line from here to a backbone.

------
herge
The more I think about it, the more I want government to step in and
nationalise/regulate internet service, like they did with electricity.

Internet access has become commoditized enough that there isn't much
innovation in it's distribution, and it is so necessary for modern businesses
that it makes economic sense.

~~~
codegeek
I could not agree more for this specific case. Really wish Internet was just
another utility that we paid for and not worry about the monopoly these ISPs
have specially in some remote areas.

~~~
saalweachter
Remote areas? I had remarkably little choice in _New York City_. I lived in
Brooklyn and had Optimum Online. I was happy with it, but then moved to Queens
and now I had to switch to RCN, because they were in my building and Optimum
wasn't. Moved to Manhattan, and had to get TWC, until FiOS was installed in
the building.

~~~
jcromartie
You probably had a choice to opt out. I _must_ pay $50/month to Comcast for TV
service in my apartment in the DC suburbs, whether I use it or not (and I
don't). I then pay them $80 more for Internet. The only other option is
wireless.

~~~
pavel_lishin
... how does that work? Was it a part of your lease agreement, or a mandatory
part of your ISP's offer?

~~~
jcromartie
Yes, it's one of the apartment's hidden fees. I'm sure the apartment gets a
cut.

------
salient
If you want competition, stop letting local governments make "deals" with the
ISP's to bring such and such Internet or service to that area. Almost always
that ensures the company will get a monopoly in that area.

It's precisely for this reason why I'm against states making deals with ISP's
even if it means bringing gigabit fiber to their areas. Will it still be fast
enough 10-15 years later? Because you can bet they aren't going to upgrade it
anymore after they get their local monopoly. I'm sure 1-10 Mbps seemed super-
fast 10 years ago, too, when they made the first deals from which they got
their current monopolies.

~~~
mindslight
> _I 'm sure 1-10 Mbps seemed super-fast 10 years ago_

It's plenty fast now, too. Good-quality 1080p H.264 video is 3Mbps. 6Mbps is
50GB/day. If this is not enough, you most likely have a software problem.

Not that we shouldn't strive for progress, but most of the complains in these
comments are completely different from the rural horror stories of the article
- they're taking for granted development that isn't actually there. Signing up
for the cable company because it has the highest advertised speeds and then
complaining about the implications of a shared medium provided by an
unregulated monopoly is myopic entitled whining.

Look into competing DSL options, really. Your new provider may even have warm-
blooded people answering the phone.

~~~
Jtsummers
So we can saturate our internet connections with one video stream. That means
it's _not_ fast enough. Presently living alone so this is mostly a nonissue
for me, but what about people with 2+ users at home? One wants to watch the
latest Doctor Who, the other wants to check their email and browse the web,
someone is losing out.

~~~
mindslight
This is exactly the kind of knee-jerk entitlement I'm talking about. I'm
guessing if connection speeds were 10x higher, you'd still be making similar
arguments for why the slower one was also completely unacceptable. I'd love a
100mbit home connection as well, but we don't have those and signing up for
cable is a very stressful way to pretend.

As for the current practicalities - first, two of these streams would fit in
6Mbps. Second, streaming is unnecessary for tv/movies, and I'm guessing you
don't watch 24 hours of a day - upgrade to a non-streaming setup.

~~~
Jtsummers
I probably wouldn't, my service is around 12Mbit, it is fast enough for me and
I've rarely saturated it. I fully understand that (like CPUs and memory) the
tech will grow to fill the space provided. You claimed a 1-10Mbit/second data
connection was fast enough but essentially made the argument from the
standpoint of a single user of that connection. Home connections are often
multi-user so by your calculations they are not fast enough for most users.

Second: "upgrade to a non-streaming setup"

What services are comparable to Hulu/Netflix in terms of variety of content
(though Netflix streaming seems to have poorer coverage these days, lost some
contracts?) that is not a streaming service?

~~~
mindslight
I saturate my 10/1Mbit all the time. I've had a 16GB disk image uploading for
the past few days, and it will be going for a few more. It would be great if
it was done in a few hours, but current consumer connections simply won't do
that. If I had cable, I'm sure Time Warner would have throttled the transfer
right down and it would have taken a similarly-stymieing amount of time.
Either way I have to wait, but this way I'm not also tearing my hair out
hating my ISP and wondering when they're going to jack my price or send me a
nastygram.

As for entertainment, torrents seem to work for me. If you're looking for a
branded service to contribute money to the destruction of the Internet, then
I've got to wonder why you'd have any issue with the cable companies besides
price.

~~~
Jtsummers
So I like paying people for a service that satisfies a desire. That means I
have to like cable companies too (who I've not dealt with in 2 years)?

Do you have another means of contributing to the artists, actors, directors,
crews that make the shows/movies you torrent so that they can receive
compensation and continue to make the media you enjoy? Or do you strictly
avoid all media that isn't CC-licensed?

------
sarah2079
Talking with Comcast on the phone can seem like talking to someone from
another planet. When I moved last year and needed to move my service with me,
I was instructed to just bring the Comcast box to the new place myself, and
then call a specific number when I had connected it to turn service on. Great!
I thought, that sounds easy.

Well it turns out the people answering at that number (the number they gave
me, remember) were completely unfamiliar with the concept of moving. "You want
to do what?" they asked incredulously, as if I was the first person they had
ever encountered who had moved from one residence to another.

"I have moved. My service has already been disconnected at the old address,
and I would like to activate it at my new address" I repeated, thinking they
had just misheard me.

"Have you tried unplugging it and then plugging it back in?" they offered
helpfully.

After an hour on the phone and many, many transfers I was finally able to talk
to someone who could handle this bizarre and complicated request. I hate to
think how much time it will cost me if I ever have a real problem.

~~~
simoncion
> I hate to think how much time it will cost me if I ever have a real problem.

If you're a person with clue, get friendly with the folks at the local Comcast
office, or one of the technicians. If you're technically inclined and can
demonstrate that you're wise enough to only call them about issues with
_their_ network, you'll probably be able to get the support number for the
local office.

------
tehwalrus
In the UK, we have loads of broadband companies who sell service through BT
phonelines. (catch: you have to pay BT for line rental, which at £13/month
isn't too bad, and you do get a phone number for that.) This acts very much
like the "municipal fiber network" proposed in the article - all your customer
service is with who you pay your bill to, and they set your download limits
and any throttling (and there are more expensive options[1] that offer larger,
well-defined limits and promise not to throttle.)

Fibre connections seem to be either BT or Virgin running their own (separate)
infrastructure all over the place, and you can get cable broadband if you
actually want cable TV.

Personally I've stuck with ADSL2+ since, in London, that's good enough. When I
move out next year, we'll see which hardware can get me the best speeds.

[1] [http://idnet.net](http://idnet.net)

~~~
cdr
That was supposed to be how it worked in the US, at least in the late
90s/early 00s - phone (and cable too, I think?) telco network operators were
legally obligated to let other ISP companies lease their lines and deliver
service to customers. There was no real enforcement though, and network
operators just waged guerrilla warfare on independent ISPs - inexplicable
"delays" connecting lines for customers that disappeared if the customer got
impatient and signed up for the telco instead, service limitations and outages
that telco customers on the same lines didn't notice, etc - until most/all of
the independent ISPs went bankrupt or gave up.

------
coldcode
Funny how efficient electric service is now in Texas. There is one outfit that
installs and maintains the lines, and dozens of competing service companies
that just handle billing (and oddly enough all use the same third party
billing software). Compare that with the ISP situation where each town has a
cable company and a phone company and that's it. Except where an older phone
company had a presence years ago where those lucky folks can also get FIOS as
an option. My town, the 50th largest city in the US, has TWC and AT&T and no
FIOS. So I have an option of Dumb or Dumber.

The laws in this country to allow monopolies are a joke, but both political
parties could care less.

~~~
ahlatimer
Depends on where in Texas you're talking about. In Austin, we have the City of
Austin Utilities (though the suburbs do seem to have options). El Paso only
had one option when I lived there, too.

------
drcube
>Of course, not everyone's home Internet is terrible.

I dispute this. Is Google Fiber all right? Do you Silicon Valley folks get
decent service? Because out here in the real world, ISPs are uniformly
horrible. I haven't met or talked to anyone on the entire Internet who is
satisfied, or simply not constantly enraged, by their ISP. It seems every
single one is corrupt and incompetent at the same time.

~~~
Locke1689
I love my ISP, CondoInternet. $60, 100M symmetric. Upgrade to 1000 available.
Free static IP, full IPv6 support.

~~~
steve-howard
Same. The only downside is that the buildings they provide service to are
horrendously expensive.

------
caiob
Lately, I don't mind connection speeds as much as I care about absurd data
caps. It's almost 2014, for god sake. Are we still having to fight for our
data usage?

~~~
drcube
Because anyone who uses more than 5GB a month is a pirate, don't you know?

~~~
hfsktr
It's ridiculous considering the variety of activities that require internet.
According to the usage chart for the last few months when I log into TWC our
house uses more than 5GB a day (we have 3 adults and a kid in the house).

------
lemonsrsour
We have a lot of competing ISPs here in Lithuania. Just for comparison, I pay
<15$ for 100mbps connection and in the 10 years I had maybe one or two outages
that were fixed within few hours.

------
stuff4ben
Makes me think twice about changing my Internet from Earthlink (provided by
TWC) to a faster offering from TWC. It works now and I don't think I've ever
had an outage in the almost 10 years I've had it in 2 separate houses. Only
problem is it's slow as dirt. They advertise 15/3 but I rarely get over
380Kbps upstream which makes working from home all but impossible for me. I'd
love to get 30 or 50Mbps down, but I'm afraid of what might happen if I
switch...

------
adriancooney
I've had a similiar horror story with Eircom, one of Ireland's main providers.
We were paying for 3mb/s at €40/month but only receiving around 0.4mb/s. I
gave customer service a ring and they said they could _downgrade_ the line to
1mb/s which would improve the actual signal but we'd still have to pay for the
3mb/s. I really wish it was nationalized like electricity but I don't think
our government is technically competent yet.

------
forkrulassail
I've been kicked from 7 South African ISPs as a top 2% or 'abuse' user, after
paying for uncapped access. Things seriously need to change this side.

~~~
nathanb
I visited SA a few months ago, with an eye toward possibly moving there and
working remotely (I'm a software developer for a large software engineering
corporation that's relatively friendly toward remote workers).

My opinion was that it would be very difficult to be a remote software worker
in SA because the network infrastructure was so poor. Everyone I talked to
just used USB cellular modems to get online, and the load would actually cause
the cell tower near my friend's flat to crash sometimes at peak hours. The
Internet was entirely unusable for good portions of the day.

Meanwhile, if you're willing to pay a premium for installation and use of a
wired connection, you wind up dealing with the sort of thing you faced or just
flat out apathy toward whether or not the service should actually work
consistently.

In your own experience, is this an accurate assessment?

------
jamestnz
Interesting article for me, being that I have no experience with the ISP
industry in America at all.

 _" The best solution, I think, is to lay fiber in all the municipalities and
have consumers choose their ISP, with service delivered on the municipal fiber
lines..."_

This is exactly what has been happening where I live - Christchurch, New
Zealand. A number of years ago, a city-owned LLC called Christchurch City
Networks Limited (now known as Enable Networks[1]) began rolling out an
extensive fibre network in the downtown/city-centre area. Initially, for about
$700 (NZD) per month, you could lease a dark pair between your premises and
your ISP of choice (or even directly between two arbitrary premises, plugging
directly into your own equipment at each end, with no ISP involved).

You'd then negotiate arbitrary speed/bandwidth/caps with your chosen ISP. We
were paying something like $3000 per month for a 1000 mbit/sec internet
connection with (IIRC) a 2TB cap. This was probably 8 years ago or something,
it doesn't cost anything like this now.

Latterly, they've been rolling out a GPON-based (passive) fibre network. If
you are connected to this part of the network, there are highly standardised
plans available from multiple ISPs. You can choose one of two speeds: 30
mbit/sec symmetric, or 100 mbit/sec symmetric. Different ISPs have different
usage plans available. Any public (government-funded) school can sign up for a
30 mbit/sec plan, with unlimited traffic, for something like $200/month.

Amongst home users, ADSL2+ and VDSL2 are both still popular choices (and our
pricing there seems similar enough to the US, with stupidly low caps and high
prices), but fibre continues to gain traction.

[1] [http://www.enable.net.nz](http://www.enable.net.nz)

------
protomyth
Is there some law that keeps power and gas companies[1] from doing internet?

1) they have right of way to the home

------
mnw21cam
Largely I'm happy with my ISP. Except that somewhere in their core network
they have a broken link, which means that 0.01% of the internet is
inaccessible to me, as of a couple of weeks ago when they "upgraded" my
connection. Unfortunately that 0.01% includes my friend's computer which runs
my backup email servers. Tried explaining this on the phone to the ISP. The
script the phone-jockey had basically took me through rebooting the router,
trying a couple of different browsers, and then saying that they were pleased
to have solved the problem.

------
Aloha
I worked for a major ISP - Two of them, one being the largest suppliers of DSL
nationwide and the other, their largest reseller.

There are some horror stories out there - in truth, the majority of customers
get what they pay for monthly without the plethora of stupids presented here.

On the other hand, when I set up service with Comcast, my bill had 4-5 mystery
charges monthly for 4 months, no one could explain what they were, and they
got credited. But still, it was an hour of my time each time it happened.

------
crum
Has anyone heard of: "Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly
Power in the New Gilded Age"

------
TrainedMonkey
I am surprised AOL is not mentioned. I remember story going around how
subscription made by a person could not be cancelled even though that person
passed away.

------
freeasinfree
There are usually alternatives, but they're sometimes hard to find.
MonkeyBrains in SF is top-notch. [http://www.wispa.org/find-a-
wisp](http://www.wispa.org/find-a-wisp)

