
Report: Most Americans have no real choice in internet providers - rmason
https://ilsr.org/report-most-americans-have-no-real-choice-in-internet-providers/
======
crazygringo
Seriously. I don't understand why there isn't a movement to regulate ISP's
like utilities at this point. Why aren't mayors and governors running on this
as a major plank?

ISP investments, profits and pricing would all get regulated by the
municipality. Performance is monitored and guaranteed.

I've lived in many, many apartments in NYC and each building has only ever had
one choice -- Spectrum (was Time Warner) or Optimum. And it's always the same
-- it's $24.99-39.99 at first, then after a year it's jacked up to
$49.99-54.99, then another year up to $69.99.

It used to be you'd call to threaten to cancel and they'd re-lower it. But
they haven't agreed to do that for over 3 years now -- they'll just let you
cancel. They know you don't have a choice.

ISP's are so obviously by now a utility like water, gas and electric. Why
aren't we treating them that way?

~~~
cameronbrown
> Seriously. I don't understand why there isn't a movement to regulate ISP's
> like utilities at this point. Why aren't mayors and governors running on
> this as a major plank?

Who do you think gave them these monopolies in the first place?

~~~
Retric
Your local power, water, trash, etc company's have a local monopoly and
serious regulation. Internet just has the monopoly bit.

~~~
zdragnar
My local trash company, in fact, does not have a monopoly. The city I left to
move to where I am now implemented a monopoly trash service shortly after I
left, and gave my street to a trash hauler that is quite possibly the most
consumer hostile company I have ever had the displeasure of working with...
worse by far than Comcast. Also interestingly, internet options were Comcast
or I think Quest fiber. Sucks to be whoever bought my house, I guess.

~~~
war1025
There are like four different trash services we can pick from. It's kind of
crazy to me. I guess when all you need is a truck, it's not a hard business to
get into.

------
candyman
I was pleased when we lived in Boston where our building and many others was
able to put microwave-based services on the roof. It was internet-only but
very fast and inexpensive - just what we needed. Now we are in Louisville and
back to the only two mediocre and more expensive choices - ATT and Spectrum.
And if you go out into the country many homes are stuck with satellite
internet service from Hughes which is damn near unusable.

~~~
umvi
Online games on HughesNet are unplayable. Called and complained that ~500ms
RTT is unacceptable but they made up some excuse as to why it couldn't be
faster, some mumbo jumbo about the speed of light

~~~
antif
They didn't make that up.. the satellites are literally no closer then 118ms
(one-way). If you and the source/destination are directly under the satellite
you may be able to get a packet + response in 480ms under most-ideal
conditions. (that is four legs of transit between ground & space)

Elevation of orbit is 35,768,000 meters [1], and light moves at ~300,000,000
meters per second.

[1] [https://www.hughes.com/resources/press-releases/echostar-
xix...](https://www.hughes.com/resources/press-releases/echostar-xix-
satellite-jupiter-high-throughput-technology-successfully)

------
djaque
This is what frustrated me the most with some of my friends "free market"
arguments when net neutrality was in the news. I am also a believer in the
invisible hand, but it doesn't work when I can literally only choose from one
provider.

~~~
pascalxus
it's not the invisible hand's fault when that hand is tied behind it's back.
there's so many politicians that have been creating legislation that prevents
new entrants from coming into the market with regulatory capture. that's not a
free market.

~~~
msla
The fact it's impossible for everyone to build cable everywhere means it isn't
a free market.

~~~
posguy
The cost of the labor to build and maintain said cable makes it economically
infeasible for a second ISP to build out service in many areas of the US.
Permissive regulation will only enable competition in urban cores, as being a
3rd or 4th provider in suburban areas is not profitable.

Some areas have so few possible customers per mile that a fiber build by the
incumbent provider would not break even for decades even with an 80% take rate
by every building passed.

~~~
msla
Just so we're no longer talking around the issue:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_monopoly)

> A natural monopoly is a monopoly in an industry in which high
> infrastructural costs and other barriers to entry relative to the size of
> the market give the largest supplier in an industry, often the first
> supplier in a market, an overwhelming advantage over potential competitors.
> This frequently occurs in industries where capital costs predominate,
> creating economies of scale that are large in relation to the size of the
> market; examples include public utilities such as water services and
> electricity.[1] Natural monopolies were recognized as potential sources of
> market failure as early as the 19th century; John Stuart Mill advocated
> government regulation to make them serve the public good.

... and suffice it to say, I agree wit John Stuart Mill.

------
ExtremisAndy
It’s really depressing in rural places. I had to teach online all summer with
DSL 6mbps down/ 0.3mbps up. Forget uploading any video. My students never saw
my face. Thankfully, the videoconferencing software I was using managed to
allow me to share my PowerPoint and voice reliably enough. Otherwise, I don’t
know what I would have done.

------
gz5
Regulation does't always spur open competition and often has unintended
consequences.

Separate the last mile pipe provider/operator (infrastructure) from the
service providers. All service providers compete across that pipe. Traditional
ISPs, niche providers, etc. I may choose 5 of them as a consumer.

It does necessitate an open, multi-tenant architecture. Let's invest there
rather than investing in trying to implement a new regulatory scheme.

~~~
noodlesUK
Local loop unbundling, as it’s called in the U.K. has definitely driven prices
down for DSL, but it means there’s very little in terms of actual consumer
choice. It’s basically one ISP (virgin excluded cause that’s docsis and a
totally different network) for everyone, with different people you can buy
service from. If anything actually goes wrong with the network, open reach
fixes it, but there’s no way for a company to differentiate on performance,
only price.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> there’s no way for a company to differentiate on performance, only price.

That may be true for DSL, but for new infrastructure, you could have local
fiber to the nearest meet-me room, and it's then your ISP's responsibility to
light up that fiber. Fiber is capable enough that the limits on performance
and service will absolutely be the ISP and the equipment you hook up.

~~~
noodlesUK
Yeah, you might, but generally I’ve seen most deployments of FTTH being GPON,
which would mean you have to light up a small neighbourhood as the smallest
unit, unless you do something funky like WDM...

------
vondur
Heck, many Americans in metro areas have only one choice for internet
providers. I've helped people here in SoCal whose only choice has been 5-10MB
DSL service, and they were getting charged like $70/month for it.

~~~
mixmastamyk
Helped how? Getting charged that for 100mb in LA, and feel it is too high.

~~~
vondur
Sorry, done tech support for them, only to find out how slow their internet
was.

------
chrsstrm
In a rural area where the local telco was granted a legal monopoly, their
"high speed" comes in a 5/0.5mbps on a good day. The area is now blanketed in
T-Mobile 5G coverage, but questions asking T-Mobile about a 5G hotspot with a
wired LAN port have gone unanswered. I'd love to use a 5G hotspot as the
house's modem, but WiFi-only just won't work. Do any 5G devices with a SIM
slot and a wired LAN port exist?

~~~
bleepblorp
Cradlepoint makes very good enterprise-grade cellular modems with wired
Ethernet support. They're expensive and I'm not sure if individuals in the US
can buy them without going through a grey market vendor. For some reason or
other, the cellular industry doesn't like it when devices are readily
available to end users.

It's also possible to use some home routers 'in reverse,' to bridge a wifi
signal to wired ethernet. Devices on the wired segment will be stuck in a
double-NAT situation, however.

~~~
BenjiWiebe
Doesn't have to be double NAT. You can do passthrough/IP routing with private
IPs after the first device.

------
jtxx
in NYC, I’ve only ever had the option for one cable provider at any given
location, either Spectrum / Time Warner or Optimum, maybe RCN. but never more
than one to pick from, unless you’re in a fios building then I think that’s an
option. and there’s usually DSL but that’s not a real competitor.

~~~
JohnTHaller
We don't have FiOS or even have RCN on our block in NYC. Spectrum or "up to 3
to 7Mbps" Verizon DSL. That's it.

~~~
jtxx
same

------
frogpelt
I have a choice:

$80/mo for Local ISP DSL - 10 Mbps down, <1 up

OR

$100/mo for LTE hot spot for $100+/mo. 25 MBps down, 5Mbps up with data caps
and throttling.

The local ISP says they're installing fiber but they're only installing it
where the federal government subsidizes or completely funds it.

------
war1025
This seems fairly unsurprising to me.

Internet is a utility. Most people also don't have a choice in who they get
electric, water, gas, etc. from.

It's unfortunate that internet service quality is so varied from location to
location, but utilities tend to form natural monopolies.

~~~
Aaargh20318
> Internet is a utility. Most people also don't have a choice in who they get
> electric, water, gas, etc. from.

Wait, you don’t get to choose who your electricity and gas provider is either
?

Here we get to choose from literally dozens of providers. Same goes for
internet. I can choose from 13 different ISPs at my address on fiber alone.

I thought the US believed in competition and free markets ?

~~~
war1025
> Here we get to choose from literally dozens of providers

How does this work? Is it similar to all the various wireless providers that
are actually just resellers for the people who own the actual infrastructure?
I don't understand how you could choose to get electric or natural gas from
someone else when there is a physical line that comes to your residence.

~~~
Aaargh20318
There is a physical infrastructure, owned by company A. You pay a fixed fee
for access as part of your energy bill. You have no choice in that. Your
actual subscription is with energy company B, Who you can choose freely. Of
course company B doesn’t hook up directly to your home, instead they look at
the total amount of power used by customers of company B and they are
obligated to supply that amount of power to the national grid.

~~~
war1025
Seems like an odd model. I guess it makes sense though.

------
JohnTHaller
Living in NYC, I have one high-speed internet option (Spectrum, formerly Time
Warner) and one not high-speed internet option (Verizon DSL with "up to" 3.1 -
7 Mbps). That's it.

~~~
codegeek
NYC still has DSL option ? Wow. I left NYC in 2005 as a resident and would
assume that it has fiber everywhere by now.

~~~
JohnTHaller
It was supposed to. NYC gave Verizon a deal in exchange for wiring fiber
citywide. They never did.

~~~
crgwbr
They at least partially did. I’m in a not-wealthy area of the Bronx and
somehow managed to get gigabit Fios from Verizon. But, yeah, it’s certainly
not everywhere yet.

------
fireattack
Questions for the people from areas that _do_ have: do the different providers
have separate infrastructures and facilities (optical fiber cables, switches,
etc.)?

~~~
vinay427
My parents' current and previous homes both had two choices. One was AT&T's
fiber option (probably FTTN, not FTTH) and the other was cable through the
local provider.

~~~
t3rabytes
AT&T Fiber is FTTH.

------
lutorm
Soon they'll at least have 2...

[https://www.starlink.com/](https://www.starlink.com/)

------
luxuryballs
I may be in the minority but my Internet has only gotten better, faster, and
cheaper over the years, so I am hesitant to advocate for any major change.

But it should be noted that the municipalities are typically who are granting
a local monopoly over the existing lines to the ISP and preventing someone
else from coming in and laying their own new cables down.

~~~
treis
You're not. These studies draw an arbitrary line for what counts as broadband.
And they typically ignore wireless and satellite options. Most people will
have a cable, a DSL, and several wireless options.

The profit margin of the large cable companies reflect that. They're pretty
much middle of the pack for the S&P 500. It's a capital intensive and
relatively low margin business.

Look at Google Fiber. They had cities falling over themselves to get it and
huge consumer demand. Ultimately they abandoned it because it doesn't make
enough money.

------
sixdimensional
Only Cox at the most southern point of SoCal where I live. I have only one
choice, other than satellite.

We can get 940Mbps down/35Mbps up w/ 1.25TB cap and mid level cable TV from
Cox for.. wait for it $270/month. O_o

Currently I get 150Mbps down/5Mbps up + mid level cable TV... $130/month. It’s
fast enough for work, but feels so expensive.

~~~
clairity
do you have neighbors within ~100 ft? if so, why not share internet (and cost)
with them? with that much bandwidth, you can split it 10 ways and not even
notice.

an smb-class wireless router will let you segment neighbors into their own
isolated vlan, and with mesh/repeaters, you can cover a fairly large area.

~~~
sixdimensional
It's a good idea for higher density.

I could probably reach two of my neighbors (two shared walls), but not more
without better equipment. Actually, because of how our construction is, I
could probably do a 3-way mesh router setup and put one node in each place.

I had an acquaintance who wanted to start a company flashing a custom OpenWRT
image onto Linksys routers, he added a little captive portal with billing
through Stripe so he could collect the neighbor's portion.

Your comment reminded me to go check and see if he ever decided to go through
with it.

I recall looking into this a long time ago, certainly could do it, but recall
some terms and conditions that prohibited it maybe.

The other thing is even with all that bandwidth, there is the 1.25TB monthly
bandwidth cap, which is one way I think they limit scenarios like this.

Good idea though thanks for suggesting it.

------
neonate
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200814203602/https://ilsr.org/...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200814203602/https://ilsr.org/report-
most-americans-have-no-real-choice-in-internet-providers/)

------
qetuo
I live in an apartment in Passaic County, NJ. My ISP, Optimum, has a monopoly
on this group of apartments.

They take advantage of this to charge $75/month for plain broadband Internet
service, which is about 50% more than the average Internet service (including
Verizon FIOS) costs in the nearby area.

Just sayin'.

------
connon
Thank you for sharing. This is exactly why Ready (YC S20) makes tools that
help America's thousands of Local Internet Service Providers compete with the
copper cartel. [https://ready.net](https://ready.net)

~~~
CameronNemo
FYI your layout is somewhat broken on Firefox Android.

~~~
connon
thank you Cameron. Just pushed update to site last week. Appreciate the
feedback. Working on it now

------
exabrial
I have 4, which is unusual. To some the problem, more local competition is
needed. The problem is curbing the anti-competitive prentices that prop up
local monopolies. States don't seem to care about consumer choice.

------
danielschonfeld
Time and time again lately this issue comes up on HN as if it’s a single
sector affected by the same umbrella of broken politics and broken system we
have.

It isn’t. It’s the same old, rinse and repeated. America’s evolution of the
free market capitalism experiment has failed and became a plutocracy. That
doesn’t mean free market as a whole doesn’t work but it means our version of
its evolution has failed for a bunch of different reasons some more illogical
and childish than others.

The question is the same always too. How and when do we recognize it and start
rebuilding it in a radically new way. Does it take a civil war? A world one?
Does it take 99% poverty? Or does it just take for China to fail so we can’t
have our mind numbing $5 electronics to keep us entertained.

How do we all (myself included) become citizens of a nation again and not
consumers in a luxury work camp who are kept pacified?

------
seesawtron
A side remark: They also don't seem to have any real choice in Presidential
candidates (like a lot of governments around the world).

------
umvi
Well hopefully things like Starlink can provide an alternative to terrestrial
internet and force competition into the picture.

~~~
CameronNemo
Frankly the problem is one of regulation and regulatory capture, not
technology.

------
darth_avocado
What I don't understand is why do we keep repeating these same observations
again and again and still nothing happens. I've been upset at Comcast
constantly jacking up the prices, not having an internet only option in my
area (gets bundled up with TV), making sure good prices are available only if
you get a 12 month contract and so much more. I mean Southpark said it years
ago and even John Oliver had a segment on it. What is new about this? And why
haven't we seen an action against it?

~~~
bleepblorp
There's been no action on improving Internet service for the median American
because American governance is responsive to the whims of business interests
(in this case, ISPs with monopolies) and indifferent to the interests of the
public. This pattern is reflected across the entire spectrum of public policy
and is not just limited to the market for Internet services.

Put bluntly, American democracy is nowhere near as effective at protecting the
interests of the American public as the American public has been made to
believe. [0]

Internet access is merely a symptom of a deeper American problem and cannot be
fixed without fixing the deeper problems with American governance.

[0] [https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-
core/c...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-
core/content/view/62327F513959D0A304D4893B382B992B/S1537592714001595a.pdf/testing_theories_of_american_politics_elites_interest_groups_and_average_citizens.pdf)

------
heavyset_go
Same thing with health insurance.

~~~
avmich
Interesting that we discuss sometimes benefits of having engineering licensed,
but here we apparently see disadvantages of licensing going wrong.

------
mistrial9
right - and comparing its service to the AT&T offering, a residential Internet
service provider in the California Bay Area said, "and, we don't send in those
reports that most ISPs do" .. on a support call..

------
darepublic
Canadian here. For us it is Rogers, Bell or some skin of those two

~~~
MattGaiser
For internet?

Where are you located? Even my grandparents in Northern Ontario have some 5 or
so options, and not just skins of the Big 3.

I checked 8 providers when I lived in Kingston.

For cell phone, you are right.

~~~
cmehdy
If you're talking about Start, Tekksavy, Tbaytel and similar, they're all
bound to Rogers or Bell. I think the user you're replying to is pretty much
right when it comes to Canada, and it shows in the prices you get. Same thing
for phones.

A couple providers are through satellite and such in rural areas and in those
cases it's typically even worse since the service truly sucks while costing
much, and they're in no rush to do anything about it when there are issues on
the line. And I'm not even talking about middle-of-nowhere stuff, just places
north of Sudbury for example.

