America has a monopoly problem

Re:America has a monopoly problem by nikolay on Tuesday October 24, 2017 @02:07PM (#15543755)

ISPs are monopolies in the purest form. Here in Orange County, California, you have no choice but go with Cox. And that's why an internet service, which costs less than $10 around the globe and is symmetrical and offers higher bandwidth, costs $100 here! Even worse when it comes to the business internet service! I had to find internet service for a church here in OC and the pricing starts at $200 for 10 Mbps!

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Re:America has a monopoly problem by scarface74 on Tuesday October 24, 2017 @07:10PM (#15546001)

Isn't there a chance that in the next few years that the last mile competition will eventually be solved by wireless?

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Re:America has a monopoly problem by nikolay on Tuesday October 24, 2017 @08:16PM (#15546335)

Not that there's truly unlimited wired Internet in the US, but as far as I'm aware, most wireless Internet plans are limited, and throttled, so, those are not the same service to compare anyway. More than 10 years ago, some mesh wireless providers were offering some competition, but I don't think they exist anymore, so, Cox' only competition is the ridiculous AT&T DSL service.

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Re:America has a monopoly problem by scarface74 on Tuesday October 24, 2017 @09:39PM (#15546711)

I have AT&T Fiber - $70 a month all in no extra fees are taxes. Gigabit up and down theoretically. I can get 600Mbps/600Mbps on a bad day wired and 900 u/d on a good day. It's unlimited.

I'm not saying that wireless is a good alternative for everyone but I know a lot of people that could get away with the "unlimited" plans that carriers offer. In the future it could provide real competition.

The plans aren't throttled any more - as soon as you reach limit they automatically cut you down to 2G speeds, you are "deprioritize". Meaning that if you are in a heavily congested area, your speed will be lowered to give lighter users full access.

When we were between renting and buying we were in a place with horrible internet and we used our phones on t-mobile for everything - including streaming to an Apple TV. We used 70-150Gb per month mostly at night with no noticeable speed issues.

For technical reasons, I'm more accepting of wireless data limits than wireline. No matter how much a wireless carrier spends, they can't beat physics. There is a limit of how much data can be delivered over a certain spectrum (Shannon-Hartley theorem?)

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Re:America has a monopoly problem by nikolay on Wednesday October 25, 2017 @02:36AM (#15547983)

Lucky you! Cox for $100 gives you on average less than 100Mbps downstream and 10Mbps upstream.

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