Are you satisfied with your ISP ?

[linuxyogi]

Hi,

I am using a government owned ISP called BSNL. In one word its pathetic. The speed, FUP everything sucks beyond imagination.

I have done some research about the broadband scenario of our country and what I found is a bit weird.

The future is going to be like this :

Wired broadband (mainly DSL) is unlikely to improve.

Mobile broadband (4G) will take over.

Despite the fact that 4G is already here it is pretty costly. But prices are expected to decrease soon.

Are you satisfied with your ISP ?

Possible things to consider : Tariff, Speed, FUP, QoS.

[LastDino]

You forgot to mention local no name providers who provide direct cable connections through local router without controlling modems unlike some known brands (ex: Hathway provides modems and limits the no. of connections directly through it, it also uploads your user specific file to Hathway local server on start-up/bootup which contains info like your modem and system mac and all, and only after tallying it, it will establish connection ).

Other than that you nailed the situation quite accurately, I doubt that; BSNL will axe its own foot by being overly manipulative in upcoming years.

I used Hathways since 2008 to 2013, but then switched to this no name provider. I admit that hathway had much better connectivity and support, but it was almost 5 times as costly as this one, so...:P

[RichardET]

I use Verizon FIOS; its not bad; While mobile broadband may be the practical solution in a place like India, I doubt that it will become dominant in the USA for home internet, but I truly never considered it, so my opinion is less than a ruble in value.

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

I have Charter for a ISP i am happy with there bottom tear service
http://www.speedtest.net/result/3522281158.png
yea that is there bottom tear, they used to have slower but they are not offered anymore and unless you still have them you can't have them

the only competion around here is verzon dsl which ended up being 0.79 down and 0.2 up and cost about 20% more when you have phone service and there net goes down all the time

[pfeiffep]

I happy with my ISP .... Tested Verizon Wireless (FIOS to router)
download 24.39
upload 8.62

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

I am happy with Verizon FIOS. In 2 years it has only been down once for 1 hour. OOKLA speed test shows 58 Mbps down, 38 Mbps up, ping 10 ms. My wife still uses their TV/movie service bundle, we use Verizon smart phones; therefore, it is rather expensive.

[linuxyogi]

All you guys are getting descent speeds. The problem is the "evil" thing called FUP.

This effects a large population who are netflix users. I sometimes watch this (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNovoA9w0KnxyDP5bGrOYzg) show. They talk about these things all the time.

Top 8 Countries With World's Fastest Internet! (http://efytimes.com/e1/fullnews.asp?edid=120553)

[QIII]

60 down and 11 up on Comcast. Very few service interruptions. We have the internet/phone/TV deal and we've been with them for a while, so our cost is lower than new customers.

Still, since Google announced FIOS coming to our area, Comcast dropped their price a bit. Amazing what a little competition can do.

[sammiev]

60 down and 11 up on Comcast. Very few service interruptions. We have the internet/phone/TV deal and we've been with them for a while, so our cost is lower than new customers.

Still, since Google announced FIOS coming to our area, Comcast dropped their price a bit. Amazing what a little competition can do.

Just to help you out a little more, I will send other providers your way. hehe! :P

[Bucky Ball]

I have done some research about the broadband scenario of our country

What country would that be??? I'm presuming India. We have people from all over the planet here ... ;)

I use Bigpond cable in Australia and it's fine.

[CharlesA]

I've got Cox and it's decent, but even if it wasn't decent, it is either them or ATT. Unless I move and then it's a toss up depending on area.

[lisati]

No matter which ISP I go with, I'm pretty much limited to around 10Mbps down (or thereabouts) in my street, and, as near as I can make out, I won't have the option of something better until mid 2015 at the earliest. :( At least it's better than dial-up!

[mastablasta]

so far so good - they promise 20/20 and deliver it. i wonder if i should get a newer package with 50/50?!? would that be worth the slight price increase?

the only part i do not like is the choice of TV channels. out of 180+ channels only 2 or maybe 3 have anything one can watch. all the rest same old stuff, boring reality shows. even the so called educational channels have only realiuty shows now. WTF happened with TV?! there is no good documentary or movie on. if they have it's usualyl some old TV series or movie. something from 2000 is not fresh content that would draw the viewers...

[gtravis3]

It looks like India according to Mr. Google. I don't know what other ISPs are available there. I use Comcast and it's ok, except for dropping a bit or two here and there while playing WoW on my Mac. The one concern that I have from listening to Fox Business is that Comcast, and perhaps may others after the SCOTUS ruling, is 'considering' changing to a usage fee plan. I can't drop it because my wife needs it for work,but I plan to eventually try non-graphical internetting, kinda like we did using UNIX shells in the pre-web days, to save every bit, byte, word, and gobble.

[linuxyogi]

It looks like India according to Mr. Google. I don't know what other ISPs are available there. I use Comcast and it's ok, except for dropping a bit or two here and there while playing WoW on my Mac. The one concern that I have from listening to Fox Business is that Comcast, and perhaps may others after the SCOTUS ruling, is 'considering' changing to a usage fee plan. I can't drop it because my wife needs it for work,but I plan to eventually try non-graphical internetting, kinda like we did using UNIX shells in the pre-web days, to save every bit, byte, word, and gobble.

Yes its India. There are a lot of ISPs here namely
BSNL broadband
Airtel Broadband
Reliance Broadband
Tata Indicom broadband
Sify broadband
Hathway
ZeeNext
MTNL broadband
YOU broadband
Railwire Broadband
Tikona WiBro
Connect Broadband
Spectranet Broadband

There are also a good number of small cable broadband providers.

What does "usage fee plan" mean exactly?

[mastablasta]

probably you pay as much as you use. as oposed to unlimited broadband plan.

i can (at least for now) set up home server and i think the max bandwidth avaialble to me is 100/100 Mbit. Unlimited data.

[LastDino]

''usage per pay'' plan would be similar to everything else we have here listed other than ''Unlimited''. It can vary from fixed data per amount to amount per kb of data. I suspect it is latter, if we take literal meaning.

[m-dw]

The problem here (UK) is that your ADSL broadband is delivered over copper wires owned by a single commercial entity regardless of your actual ISP. Coupled with the fact that most of the UK is serviced by copper cabling that is generally 60 years old and poorly maintained, this monopoly effectively limits the performance and reliability you are likely to get at a given locality.

There are strict competition rules governing how the supplier can price wholesale physical connectivity - the same corporate group owns voice and ISP businesses which (we're led to believe are heavily scrutinised) but there is no incentive for the infrastructure provider to provide a better service where it is less cost-effective to do so.

So given that we can't choose to go with another supplier if the speed/reliability of our current one is inadequate.I'm reasonably happy with my current provider, but I probably wouldn't recommend them to new customers. From the look of it the majority of UK suppliers are moving away from high speed wired access (ADSL, VDSL, FttP) in favour of developing 4G platforms.presumably because it is easier to build a new infrastructure from scratch than to continue to deal with OpenReach.

[lisati]

The problem here (UK) is that your ADSL broadband is delivered over copper wires owned by a single commercial entity regardless of your actual ISP. Coupled with the fact that most of the UK is serviced by copper cabling that is generally 60 years old and poorly maintained, this monopoly effectively limits the performance and reliability you are likely to get at a given locality.

Here in New Zealand, many of us are in the same boat: the ADSL is likewise delivered by one lines company, regardless of ISP. The situation with fibre isn't that much different. In most areas where there actually is coverage, there's often only one lines company able to provide a connection.

Speaking of copper wires, the connection from the street to my place is in a pretty shocking condition. I've never bothered spending the $$$ to get it fixed up properly.

[mastablasta]

here the situation is strange. plenty investment was made into infrastructure and the idea was that even some smaller town would have fiber. but then the eu came that told the company doing the investment (state owned) that they have to share the lines to avoid monopoly. so they said "we invest into infrastructure, share the line and the rest collect the profit. we won't do that." and they stopped.

it was ridiculous EU gesture. what would be right IMO is that the state would own the lines and if companies coinvested they would get a discount in usage if they didnt' they would pay a lot for using the lines.

anyway after that some other companies invested by themselve in part then they ran out... long story short in some towns and more rural areas connections on earth lines are patchy. and there is often local monopoly with inflated prices for internet access.

i am lucky that i live in a place where interests colided. so what i have is 2 fiber optics one next to the other, 1 copper cable from cable TV and copper phone cable. so i can choose from at least 4 different providers. using various cables for transfer. so of course i went with optics (most bang for the buck). so far so good.

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

here the situation is strange. plenty investment was made into infrastructure and the idea was that even some smaller town would have fiber. but then the eu came that told the company doing the investment (state owned) that they have to share the lines to avoid monopoly. so they said "we invest into infrastructure, share the line and the rest collect the profit. we won't do that." and they stopped.

it was ridiculous EU gesture. what would be right IMO is that the state would own the lines and if companies coinvested they would get a discount in usage if they didnt' they would pay a lot for using the lines.
could said isp charge other ISP for using there infrastructure

[linuxyogi]

probably you pay as much as you use. as oposed to unlimited broadband plan.

i can (at least for now) set up home server and i think the max bandwidth avaialble to me is 100/100 Mbit. Unlimited data.


''usage per pay'' plan would be similar to everything else we have here listed other than ''Unlimited''. It can vary from fixed data per amount to amount per kb of data. I suspect it is latter, if we take literal meaning.


I went to Airtel's office with the USB modem which I purchased on 2011. What they is told me is really strange. They told me that their 3G enabled sims do not work with dongles at the moment and I have to wait 2 months for that.

I simply called up my cable operator yesterday and they just gave me the connection. This ISPs name is SITI Broadband. Both my local cable operator and SITI main office are very sincere. I got a call from SITI main office asking me if my connection is running okay about 10mins after the connection was made.

This is a true unlimited plan. My plan is slow (512Kbps) but they they have high speed plans.

They have not implemented any FUP in any of their plans.

[vasa1]

...
I simply called up my cable operator yesterday and they just gave me the connection. This ISPs name is SITI Broadband. Both my local cable operator and SITI main office are very sincere. I got a call from SITI main office asking me if my connection is running okay about 10mins after the connection was made.

This is a true unlimited plan. My plan is slow (512Kbps) ...
Good decision. You can't relax with a limited plan.

[kyle20]

I have comcast, and it is decent. I think its overpriced for the amount speed that I get, but then again they have a monopoly in my area so I can't do much!

[whatthefunk]

Yes, I am satisfied. I am fortunate enough to live in a country where the government has not been bought by the ISPs. I have a high speed fiber optic connection for a fraction of the price I would pay for a dial up in America.

[sports fan Matt]

FIOS has never given me a problem. Charter used to jack up my rates every month...

[Buntu Bunny]

I'm satisfied now that I switched to Charter (something I said I'd never do because of their constant barrage of advertising). Had AT&T prior to that - the worst, most unstable service ever!

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

I'm satisfied now that I switched to Charter (something I said I'd never do because of their constant barrage of advertising). Had AT&T prior to that - the worst, most unstable service ever!
yea that is annoying, get at least 4 calls a day of them wanting to sell us tv
the worst part is if you want to say upgrade a service you cant use one of those callers to do it unless you also get a new service

[lz1dsb]

I would say that I'm in general satisfied with my ISP. I've subscribed about an year ago and there has been only a couple of outages in the connection. I pay for the lowest possible unlimited speed plan, which is 30Mbps upload/download. And frankly, I don't need that much speed. If there was a cheaper plan, I would have signed up for it, even for lower speed. My infrastructure at home is WiFi only, so I cannot fully utilize the the high speed that I have to my home...

[d-cosner]

I use Comcast internet and am pretty happy, the cost is kind of high though. Their customer service is excellent and they have always fixed things in a very timely manner. The speed is great too!

[rewyllys]

Reading the plights of many of the posters makes me realize how lucky I am to live in Austin, Texas, where there is competition among Internet service providers. We have: Time-Warner, AT&T U-verse, Grande, and Google is laying fiber for service to begin in about 8 months.

I'm a very happy customer of Grande Communications, from whom in February I started using 1 Gb fiber service to my router; that's 1 Gb downloading and uploading.

Time-Warner locally offers 1 Gb service for a higher price than Grande charges, and Google's future service will also be 1 Gb. I don't know what AT&T U-verse is currently offering; I pay no attention to them, after dropping them about 3 years ago because of their simply terrible customer service.

[llanitedave]

I live in a very rural area, and I have three choices: Dialup, Satellite, or Verizon 4G wireless. We had Wild Blue satellite for a number of years, but not only was the service slow and the bandwidth limited, they were constantly attributing bandwidth to us that we had not used -- we were even unplugging the dang modem and they were still accumulating it! Now we're on a Verizon 4G jetpack. Much faster, but still very limited on bandwidth. But at least they count it honestly.

We would love to have about two or three times the bandwidth that we do.

[lisati]

What amuses and annoys me is that one of the TV ads for the ISP I use happily tell me that I have a choice between ADSL, VDSL and fibre for my landline. This isn't exactly true: in my street there's a choice between dial-up and ADSL, with VDSL and fibre not due to be available until mid 2015 at the earliest; this is the case regardless of which ISP I choose to go with.

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

Reading the plights of many of the posters makes me realize how lucky I am to live in Austin, Texas, where there is competition among Internet service providers. We have: Time-Warner, AT&T U-verse, Grande, and Google is laying fiber for service to begin in about 8 months...

I am surprised there aren't more choices in Austin, Texas. As the state capital I would have expected all the providers to what to provided the best service to the lawmakers of the state.

[rewyllys]

I am surprised there aren't more choices in Austin, Texas. As the state capital I would have expected all the providers to what to provided the best service to the lawmakers of the state.
The state government has nothing to do with Internet and cable television service in Austin.

These services are controlled through licenses issued by the municipal government. This is the typical pattern of licensing of such services throughout the United States.

[Linuxratty]

Why yes I am..It's Suddenlink.

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

The state government has nothing to do with Internet and cable television service in Austin...

I think you may get an idea of what I was referring to if you Google Texas state laws governing ISP. :)

Edit: I choose to be vague in my posts because discussion of politics is not acceptable on this forum.

[rewyllys]

I herewith apologize, not only to Old_Grey_Wolf, but also to anyone else who finds that I engaged in a discussion of politics when I made a statement regarding the level of government (e.g., municipal, county, state) that, in Texas, exercises jurisdiction over licensing of providers of Internet and cable-television services. I believed, and still do believe, that my statement was solely factual and did not intrude into areas of advocacy, opposition, or other forms of partisan politics. Certainly, my intention was only to be factual, not argumentative.

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

@rewyllys

No reason to apologize. I nor anyone else that I am aware of thought that you engaged in a discussion of politics. I simply meant that I was avoiding doing so.

I hope the forum community can get this thread back on topic.

[pretty_whistle]

I am satisfied with my fiber optic through CenturyLink. I used to have Comcast and part of the time it sucked. There were periods where the speed would slow to a crawl and last 3-4 hours but on this I dont get that happening. :)

[Rsxhawk]

I pay for the bottom tier basic internet from TimeWarner in my area, its terribly slow, its supposed to be 15 Down / 1 UP, but its more like at most 3 Down / 120K UP at any given time. Fortunately, like some others have mentioned, we have signed up for Google Fiber and should have it installed in a month or two, others in my area that already have it say its amazing. It's not that Timewarner's service has been unreliable with outages or anything, but their rates continue to go up - we are now at 62.99 a month for this crappy connection, that's $8 away from Google Fibers "internet only" package of $70. Having said that, TWC can't come close to matching the speeds that GF can provide. We also have a choice of ATT U-verse but I do not want to deal with the customer service nightmare that is ATT. Google Fiber all the way.

[LastDino]

Wow! 60+ dollars for just internet per month? :o

[sammiev]

Wow! 60+ dollars for just internet per month? :o

I'm there.

[Old_Grey_Wolf]

I pay for the bottom tier basic internet from TimeWarner in my area, its terribly slow, its supposed to be 15 Down / 1 UP, but its more like at most 3 Down / 120K UP at any given time...

How old is the router? I had an old Linksys router that wouldn't go above about 3 Mbps down. I replaced it when the ISP speeds went above 4 Mbps.

[pqwoerituytrueiwoq]

How old is the router? I had an old Linksys router that wouldn't go above about 3 Mbps down. I replaced it when the ISP speeds went above 4 Mbps.

given the upload speed i doubt it is the router
looks like a poor signal getting to the modem or a crap/defective modem

[Rsxhawk]

How old is the router? I had an old Linksys router that wouldn't go above about 3 Mbps down. I replaced it when the ISP speeds went above 4 Mbps.

Actually its a Juniper SRX branch firewall with a real world (IMIX) throughput between 300-400 Mbps, thats not the problem - :-)

Prior to that I had a Cisco ASA 5505, and prior to that I had one of those old crappy Linksys WRT54g units.

Once I get google fiber I won't be able to fully utilize the speed with the Juniper SRX, but all of my Juniper equipment is mainly for lab/learning purposes since that is the equipment I work on on a daily basis. But I'm okay with using Google's provided router for awhile until I find something else that has all of the features I'm used to while maintaining the 1g speeds.

[help_me2]

I'm getting 57mb down at home, so yeah, I'm happy. I have comcast.