I literally can't switch. I live in one of the biggest cities in the world, and the ISP's here have carved it up into neighborhood level monopolies. I have one option.
I much prefer the UK model. BT Openreach wire up the infrastructure and take care of the telephone exchanges, and then ISPs compete to provide their services on the lines. To be fair, they have been slow rolling out fibre into rural areas, but most exchanges now have a choice of 10+ ISPs for prices equivalent to $25 a month.
Why aren't you all protesting about being tied into such oligopolies? America is supposed to be about free markets and open choice.
Key words "supposed to be" but in reality there's at least as much regulation creation at the behest of corporate lobby as a barrier to entry against competitors. And notice how the median reliability and performance of the big three is worse than in countries where internet access is treated more like a public utility.
But that's basically what they are, they're natural monopolies but are in some ways more heavily regulated as if they were competitive businesses where anti-competition law would be easier to execute. Notice wherever Google Fiber tries to move in how much better service and performance gets while at the same time the local one or two choices step over themselves in outrage.
If the music industry were saying "punish them! turn off their water!" people would probably better understand just exactly how vindictive they're trying to be.
Unfortunately, getting anything done about the oligopolies - or monopolies - doesn't seem to do anything.
It seems what is basically needed is some investment in infrastructure and some legislation to help remove the barriers to entry. But the US moves slowly to do such things unless there is money to be had. I remember some folks in the late 90's or early 2000's that were just getting home phone service, after all - out west in the mountains. Additionally, the lobbyist for these companies have more money than God. (debatable, but you get the picture). Normal folks making 25,000 a year can't compete with that - their yearly salaries are a drop in the Lobby's bucket.
"America is supopsed to be about free markets and open choice"
And technically, it still is, they say, so long as you can afford to do provide all of the infrastructure and get through all the red tape.
Communications infrastructure naturally tends towards a monopoly - it makes very little sense for thirty different companies to run wires to your house, on the off chance that you'll choose them over a competitor.
The advantage of the Openreach model is that the last-mile infrastructure is treated like a public good. Anyone can lease bits of that infrastructure and everyone pays the same regulated rates. The system ensures that the monopoly is as small as possible, segregating out the stuff that's a natural monopoly from the stuff that naturally supports competition.
Thanks to Openreach, I have a meaningful choice over my internet service. I can choose dirt cheap service from a multinational, or I can pay a premium for specialist service. If my ISP starts doing traffic shaping or has lousy customer support, I can choose from any number of other ISPs.
It is the same model in all of the EU. Some countries do it very well such as France. Other, such as Germany, not great, but better that the USA "open markets" solution. For proof, compare the price of Internet access in Paris and New York.
Exactly. I can get Comcast up to I think 200mbit now (I have 100) or ATT DSL which would require paying for a phone line + the service which would cost the same as Comcast and run at 768k. This is in Silicon Valley. My apartment building doesn't give me any other options (and Comcast is the only "official" one, but ATT claims they can offer me service...never tried).
Having lived through the dial-up modem -> ADSL era, I think that 25/3 too high a bar to call 'broadband'. There was a definite qualitative jump from dial-up to ADSL1, and the qualitative difference between ADSL1 and faster speeds is much less noticeable. Definitely present, but less noticeable.
Perhaps another way of putting how I see it - excluding really heavy traffic like video or (cough) torrenting linux isos (cough), you're rarely saturating your broadband bandwidth with casual internet use. Whereas with dial-up/non-broadband, it didn't matter what you did, you were saturating your bandwidth and always waiting.
(YMMV - this is just how I see the term 'broadband' as a qualitative label)
Clearly you haven't seen modern websites. The bozos who write them produce blank pages that weigh in at 1MB, and god help you if you want some text there...you'll be downloading 3000 javascript frameworks, 200-300 web fonts, and of course some icon fonts too...
oh, and ads..
I agree that modern websites too often tend towards being bloated messes, but I also agree with vacri's idea that for most uses the jump between dialup and ADSL1 feels much more substantial than further increases.
After a certain point the thing rate limiting you for most network usages (including web browsing) stops being your own connection to the ISP and starts being other things, like the speed of the website you are visiting under whatever load it is currently under, the website's own bandwidth out to the greater world (split up among however many people use it), etc.
I currently have 300/20 service, and though I see a nice set of numbers when I visit speed testing sites, in typical real world web browsing situations it feels no faster than the old 30/5 service I had before this.
> the ISP's here have carved it up into neighborhood level monopolies
This a textbook antitrust violation, at least by US law (specifically, agreeing to partition markets in this way and not compete with each other). In the absence of some exception in federal law (state law would not suffice), I'd love to see someone go after them with an antitrust case.
It can be an option if you have good enough coverage in your area and you don't use much data (i.e., no streaming or system updates). Typically unless you have some grandfathered in plan, you'll either pay per additional chunk of data (I think Verizon charges $10/GB) or be heavily throttled.
If it helps, there are probably wi-fi, mobile broadband, and cellular telephone providers that probably won't ask for your name or address, although you'll probably get gouged for bandwidth.
No need. There's only a handful of providers in most places. Here in Rochester, NY there's really only one unless you want to go with the misery that is Frontier's DSL.
