net nuetrality Service provider monopoly rant

[Slimberton]

First post.

I think the end answer may just be 'just move', but for the purpose of this I'm going to keep being consistent and stubborn until I get more options in my area.

I'd also like to document my experiences here as to why we need net neutrality, and how it has impacted me, personally. This is essentially my rant for my experience over the last couple of years since I've moved here. 

 

My options are a couple local satellite internet services (1Mb download max) and a primary FTTN (100d 5u max unless ftp) internet service, which is what I settled with. Pretty good except for lack of options.

When I moved here the options seemed to be much higher (at least 2 other main services), however, they've since told me they don't service my area.

I assume was when Net Neutrality was abolished is what caused this, after late August 2018.
Nevertheless I complained that I kept getting 25- 97% packet loss from my $150 top tier internet plan for 100d 5u. I requested fiber to premises to which I got a call from a higher up quoting me ~$35,000 as a non-business user to install it OR being offered a free upgrade to a beta program that allows 500d-20u (same pricing) I agreed to the ladder since it met my expectations. Except I still had issues with packet loss until I sat down with one of the technicians trying to replace my entire connection from our house to the node for the 2nd time (2 months worth of sending technicians out later). They listened finally and actually called me if it was resolved, which it was. They told me it resolved packet loss to the nodes leading up to mine, so it wasn't just me. I was able to stream with <1% packet loss now. 

I can't stress the customer service is absolute ass, and the pricing for the same deal is 3 times cheaper if I had been with a different known brand instead of this local brand ISP.
I've called both providers (monthly) as a consumer asking for them to bring up a quote to service my area and none of them do when I know they could as they have in the past..

In fact, I wish I was recording them when I asked. The first time I called a secondary internet service, they told me they made a contract deal with my local provider to stay out of the area. This was when I truly felt lack of competition due to net neutrality. 

As for the poor service, some of the people who work customer service are always on edge. While trading in my modem for a docsis 3.1 one, the two older ladies who always service at the building was dealing with a very frustrated customer saying that the service was terrible. They just teamed up and told him that's how the internet works. It's a series of tubes and didn't approve any upgrade or offer any betas like I was given. They were convinced they knew everything and genuinely looked like a couple of idiots to me. That alone made me want to swap, but it was too late. Google reviews has dozens filled just about the 2 ladies at the service desk. They will never get fired, though! Apparently, there's a coworker with AT&T only 1500 ft of where I live and anything across the highway in the same city with these providers. As a side note, living 4 hours from Charlotte, NC, I wish Google Fiber meant something nowadays.

What do you think can I do to get a better deal? It's not bad, but like, this is expensive. I had to also pay an additional $15 a month for a static IP, so I can host game servers. I currently pay $175 a month without any cable or phone services and

Pricing.. bundling would increase that even further. I'm not interested in losing any extra speed for any particular budget, I'm just looking for something less overpriced.

$60 for 10d 1u. $105 for a full bundle, their cheapest plan as of today.. (Remember, they doubled all their options half a year ago, so it was same price for 5d, .500kbps u)

Is there any light at the end of this tunnel for competition or is this stubborn wait and cashgrab going to take a couple decades?
As for the poor service, I wish I could give better examples. Some of the people who work customer service are always on edge. While trading in my modem for a docsis 3.1 one, the two older ladies who always service at the building was dealing with a very frustrated customer saying that the service was terrible. They just teamed up and told him that's how the internet works. It's a series of tubes and didn't approve any upgrade or offer any betas like I was given. They were convinced they knew everything and genuinely looked like a couple of idiots to me. That alone made me want to swap, but it was too late. Google reviews has dozens filled just about the 2 ladies at the service desk. They will never get fired, though!

 

Sure the speeds might be MUCH higher than most rural areas have to deal with, but it's still a shitty monopoly. I really hate the lack of competition and I won't stop making my monthly call to check up on if competition will survey my area. Never got a call back. This is a very shortened version of the story. I have my own experiences from tech support I don't feel like adding. Just know that not enough of them were gratifying and always a grind.

I have to give my local joint props for straight up quoting me for FTP. It might've taken 3 calls to get them to do it, but I've never been quoted like that without being in a business platform from any service.
That's all I got, we got another small storm, so the internet went out for a little bit. Gonna call the nearby providers to see if they can survey my area again.

[mynameisjuan]

From a SP engineer POV...

 

*Please note this does not exclude any shady practices that ISPs do or that they are 100% innocent

 

1 - ISPs are fucking expensive. Competition will only be between the current ISPs for some time, its just too expensive even begin with Gov and grant support. Even for a small regional ISP it would cost minimum $1-10m just to start. Add the amount of time it would be before it begins to pay for itself and to be profitable....There is a reason the knight in shining armor is not just swooping in to save the day. The risk/investment is too high.

 

The closest thing to competition are WISP (Wireless ISPs) These are the companies who deploy Ubiquiti, Mikrotik, Craddlepoint PTMP dishes to customers. Its fractions of fractions cheaper, almost instantaneous setup and can be managed by minimal staff. But.....its still wireless on prosumer hardware, little hardware support, redundancy is a joke and the people who tend to work at these startups really do not know much about networking aside from the basics. Outside of residential, its not even relevant. 

 

2 - Pricing. Yes, monthly cost for internet are quite high in some locations but people dont understand the cost behind it. Lets do some quick and dirty math for some equipment that we deploy. This is widely used equipment that can provide service up to 32 customers per PON, we will stick to just a single PON:

• Chassis - $10k
• Blade - $5k
• 10G optics x 4 - $2k
• GPON SFP - $1k
• ONT - $200 x 32 - $6k
• 144C Fiber - $1.07/ft
• Splice case - $70 x 1-32
• NID housing - $5k
• NID DC feed - $1k
• NID COLO Lease - $$$/year
• Pole/Conduit Lease - $$$/year

Easily already $40k and I havent even gotten to -

• OSP Fiber labor - $40/hour x 16-24 hours/splice
• Engineer labor
• Additional upstream equipment for redundancy, upgrades to handle additional load
• Constant maintenance of lines, repair, weather damage...fucking backhoes...sorry
• Equipment failures and fines

Then you have the bullshit of stuff like sales, marketing, customer support, training, documentation.....

 

That $40k just became $100k+ instantly. This is for just 32 customers and even at $100/month each it would take 3 years before it even payed for itself if everything goes smooth. This is where you cost come in and fluctuates between rural and suburbs and metropolitan areas. Big problem is that most ISP dont drop current subscriber prices even its its for DSL 3/1 (this is through the roof cost of copper maintenance though)

 

I get people hate ISPs but they have no clue how much it cost to run. That is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of cost on just the access platforms. Major decisions have to be made when planning to expand. Does it make sense to spend 100k for say 10 people? What if you took bought a 12 slot chassis instead with 12 blades and were able to light 1,000 customers up? There is a reason cities have better access with better prices. 

 

Google admitted defeat due to cost. I think that was an eye opener for a lot of people and it should for you too. 

 

3 - I can't speak towards customer service. Remember you are speaking to everyday people, these are just jobs they happened get into with basic training. Add onto that the calls on actual issues to just consumer ignorance, it can go either way. Its the same across all large businesses

[Donut417]

2 hours ago, Slimberton said:

why we need net neutrality

Has nothng to do with competetion. When it was enacted it did nothing for competetion in the US. ISP's like Comcast still had data caps. Providers like T Mobile and other mobile providers still zero rated services. It costs wayyyy to much to start an ISP. It costs millions upon millions to wire up a town. 

 

2 hours ago, Slimberton said:

higher up quoting me ~$35,000 as a non-business user to install it

Thats not too bad to be honest. Ive see Cable Co's wanting $50k just to extend their coax network to a customers home. The cheapest price I have seen for installation is from Comcast. If your within 1/3 of a mile of their fiber network, and can pay $1000 for install and $299 a month. They will provide a 2 Gbps symetical Metro Ethernet connection. Basically a dedicated line to you home. Its actally a very good deal, if you need Fiber. 

 

Keep in mind that quote is for labor and equpment/wiring. The ISP is not going to pay for any of that. They are looking for a return on investment. It would take years for that to happen if they brought Fiber to your home. In some cases if you get a business account and agree to a contract they will pickup some or all of the cost. 

[Slimberton]

2 hours ago, mynameisjuan said:

1 - ISPs are fucking expensive. Competition will only be between the current ISPs for some time, its just too expensive even begin with Gov and grant support. Even for a small regional ISP it would cost minimum $1-10m just to start. Add the amount of time it would be before it begins to pay for itself and to be profitable....There is a reason the knight in shining armor is not just swooping in to save the day. The risk/investment is too high.

I fully understand the expenses of all the infrastructure. I get all of that. I'm making a point that people who were grandfathered into a secondary internet service provider reap the benefits. My neighborhood was serviceable under a limited time during net neutrality, was what I was trying to say. I laughed it off when the providers claiming that they wouldn't be able to offer the deal to me for long, which I assumed they meant the current literal deal, not the entire service. When I chose my local provider, they promised to double speeds and reduce prices, which is why I banked on them instead of lower speeds, but much better prices. While I don't have proof of my neighborhood having those services, I do have coworkers in nearby neighborhoods not even across the highway who have these services who were and have their max 50/50 plan through a secondary service. Though disconnecting it would mean never having the service again. 
This service has been operational for 75 years with possibly ~4883 monthly customers, 35% of our town's population at the lowest plan would be roughly ~$280,000 a month. 
Don't have to pay for new PONs as they already have full coverage of the entire area and 7% fiber for the local businesses a mile from my house. No additional expansions or role outs, so I assume all the role outs were paid for (before fiber to node integration) we have the best options in our area. What other fee's do they have? I was just estimating 35% of my town's users, but imagine if that was much higher? Like the United States average internet usage in united states being 89.8 % according to Internet World Stats. Imagine if all the grandfathered users got special better discounts to switch making that much higher? Damn.

 

It could be cheaper, right? That's all I mean.

[Slimberton]

47 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Thats not too bad to be honest. Ive see Cable Co's wanting $50k just to extend their coax network to a customers home. The cheapest price I have seen for installation is from Comcast. If your within 1/3 of a mile of their fiber network, and can pay $1000 for install and $299 a month. They will provide a 2 Gbps symetical Metro Ethernet connection. Basically a dedicated line to you home. Its actally a very good deal, if you need Fiber. 

 

Keep in mind that quote is for labor and equpment/wiring. The ISP is not going to pay for any of that. They are looking for a return on investment. It would take years for that to happen if they brought Fiber to your home. In some cases if you get a business account and agree to a contract they will pickup some or all of the cost. 

I know! That's an excellent deal. I do live right next door to the facility. So it is an option I'll be looking toward in the future. Nevertheless, thinking about the suffering community. This is hell. I overestimated the google reviews, actually. Rocking that 1.5/5 stars.

Competition would be expensive for the new competition, I'm sure. But what I'm actually trying to show is that the competition was already working on coming closer to us, a growing town. My provider stopped them in their track in the process as soon as they could.

[mynameisjuan]

9 minutes ago, Slimberton said:

his service has been operational for 75 years

50 of those being primarily phone

9 minutes ago, Slimberton said:

roughly ~$280,000 a month

So with even smaller ISPs having ~50 employees, just covering wages. 

 

11 minutes ago, Slimberton said:

Don't have to pay for new PONs as they already have full coverage of the entire area and 7% fiber for the local businesses a mile from my house. No additional expansions or role outs, we have the best options in our area.

I dont understand what you are saying here. This coverage was a cost to them which passes down onto the customer. You would have to be more clear

16 minutes ago, Slimberton said:

What other fee's do they have?

Its not free to maintain

[Slimberton]

34 minutes ago, mynameisjuan said:

50 of those being primarily phone

So with even smaller ISPs having ~50 employees, just covering wages. 

 

I dont understand what you are saying here. This coverage was a cost to them which passes down onto the customer. You would have to be more clear

Its not free to maintain

Yes, you're not wrong, but it's an established business nevertheless. The crews I've known are the same ones each time, small indeed.
Alright per a customer, that makes sense. After the expenses of establishing a connection, it's not going to cost $40k each month/year? And I strongly doubt $60k+ a year is accurate based on how much they've deployed. If you can explain how the technology changes between device A and B. If everyone in my node or PON, unless I'm confusing them, had the cheapest option ($60 opposed to $100 as you mentioned to be the cheapest option.) then they do NOT break even. The company loses money on their investment despite there being all 32 users on that PON. However, users who pay beyond their node's maintenance ($185) make up for it. When I requested the connection FTTN, it was a switch. Whoever I talked to saying, '~okay you now have the higher speeds~', not even 15 minutes later I had already gotten the full speeds. The equipment already upgraded before hand. Obviously an investment they foresaw to be worth it.
" There is a reason cities have better access with better prices."
I'll be that person and say my current place is much denser population/area than where I came from, while my hometown offering 1/3 the pricing. They certainly didn't offer fiber to residence, but had my provider now not upgraded to their newer equipment, perhaps they could've been the same price or better? Perhaps they could offer the exact pricing as the nearby cities with more well known providers do?