AT&T Publicly Humiliated over crappy internet

[Kisai]

On 2/13/2021 at 10:20 AM, Donut417 said:

Im in a similar boat. My parents pay the bill but im the only one who seems to give a shit. My dad just rolls his eyes at me when I mention the data cap. He rolls his eye's too loudly at me Ill just set all my games in my steam library to download. That will show him. 

Good luck with that. Pay for your own internet if you don't like who is paying for it not kow-towing to your demands. If you hit a cap and start paying through the nose for overage, you're the one one who is going to get the blame because your family likely has no way to tell who is using what.

 

On 2/13/2021 at 10:20 AM, Donut417 said:

I dont understand why they cant just standardize pricing across the US. We pay $86 for 200/10, but we dont have unlimited. But with unlimited its still no where close to $150/m. 

We all had unlimited back in 1999 when @home network was the thing that happened and subsequently imploded.

 

Suddenly P2P apps utterly wrecked the business model of "unlimited internet" in the face of dial-up. You had people who saturated all these weak internet pipes, and that left room for people to switch to DSL lines, and thus it's been a game of "who is going to pay for bigger caps with tiny straws"

 

Australia has the NBN. It replaced what was earlier a mix of bad dial-up and 2G/3G wireless service-as-only-service. Despite that Australians still have the worst-connectivity to the rest of the world, particularly Europe. 

 

In the US and Canada, our connectivity to each other is usually extremely good and usually better in North-South directions that it is in East-West ones. (Listen to anyone complain about east and west servers in a MMO, and you'll understand that Latency (LAG) is the key problem for games, not bandwidth. Getting 5ms to a server in the same city, vs 40ms for the state immediately north or south of you, vs 180ms for the city on the opposite coast.) Latency between Australia to US or UK is often so high that no MMO game can be played together unless backend functionality is on 1-second ticks, which makes FPS and MMORPG's utterly unusable.

 

What needs to happen is what happened to health care in Canada originally. You start by having all the municipalities building out their own fiber networks, and selling access to it. You solve the problem of having to dig up the road multiple times, and it's more future proof so the ISP's can't cheap out by running copper for the last mile because they don't want to pay to install fiber to a 40 year old building that has no conduits for running anything (eg you'd have to tear up the walls/ceilings to install it.) The building I'm in, was built before cable, it has 300-ohm pair terminal panels on the wall (the one in my unit had been painted over a few times, and I saw no antenna on the building.) My unit has a cable that comes down from the roof and through a hole in the outside wall. That cable has been exposed to the weather for probably 40 years and isn't even secured to the wall.

 

Once all the municipalities have every building connected with fiber, then you start having the routing systems setup so that nobody inside the city has to send their traffic out of the city if they are only using local services. eg If I want to pay my property taxes, i'm not sent to Calgary (ISP's HQ) and Montreal (popular place to have servers in Canada) to do so. Each city arranges for zero-rating between each other if they go through their local carrier hotel, and then the carrier hotels arrange for zero-rating between each state. ISP's get reduced to providing only backbone bandwidth (Eg if I select ISP A and the company I'm using services from is ISP B, then it's up to ISP A and ISP B to have zero-rated each other.)

 

ISP's don't pay very much to each other, they make the majority of their money from hosting services. Residential services is likely a loss-making venture, and the only reason they don't roll out upgrades to places is because the cost to install those upgrades exceeds the lifetime profit from the area. So you can't fault them for not wanting to run a fiber line out to someone 100 miles from civilization. That will likely cost them millions of dollars, where as hooking up 8 40-story towers in a two block radius likely costs them the same amount.

 

[Donut417]

3 minutes ago, Kisai said:

your family likely has no way to tell who is using what.

WRONG. My router record per device bandwidth usage. Thats how I know my dad uses over 500 Gigs a month. I wont get blamed for SHIT. Also while my parents do pay for internet, I cover the Winter taxes on the house, water, Cellular and all the streaming services. So Im not freeloading, like your implying. 

 

 

[leadeater]

4 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

so the state gives me free health care

Ah the not having to pay taxes loophole, got me there 

 

Here you'd be getting disability payments or ACC payments and those are taxed. I know, it's weird for the government to be taxing themselves, they are after all the ones paying that to the person then the IRD automatically takes income tax out of those payments. Money go rounds 

[leadeater]

3 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

I think the rest of the world does the odd VAT system. 

Eh I'd say your system is odd, makes more sense to have a flat Goods and Services Tax (GST), or called VAT or Sales Tax, all the same thing. Exceptions create complexity and mistakes.

[leadeater]

3 minutes ago, valdyrgramr said:

It's actually simple in most cases you just add a small percent like here it's the total of the item/s+6%.

That is how GST works, it's just applied to everything here no exceptions. You buy a fridge, GST, you pay a plumber to fix your hot water, you pay GST. GST is the Grim Reaper, it cannot be escaped lol.

 

Our GST is 15% btw. Because it's flat and global, no exceptions, all prices are displayed including GST here.

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, valdyrgramr said:

There's a few states that have 0 tax, like Deleware, but they have ot pay federal tax through the IRS.   The hard part is figuring out on your own what is taxed and what isn't when it comes to purchasing items.

Yea I just meant here and pretty well everywhere else it's not complicated because it's applied to everything at a single rate and the tax is paid at purchase and handled by the merchant/business so I as the consumer paying for the item or service never have to worry about it and if it's not paid it's not the customer at fault as it's the responsibility of the business.

 

I've never in my entire life filled in any tax forms, income or sales or anything. My income tax is handled by my employer and automatically paid with each payment and itemized on my payslip if I ever care to look at that.

 

Honestly I'm very happy to be paying a little more in tax to not have to fill out these kinds of things and have to calculate it myself or have to pay someone to do it. "I ain't doing that, if you want me to pay tax figure it out yourselves" 

[PhantomJaguarr]

Seems like my ISP only bothered to upgrade to a gigabit service when Google Fiber announced it had wanted to expand in my city back in the day. 

[Stahlmann]

On 2/13/2021 at 6:17 PM, Vishera said:

America is behind most of it's allies when it comes to Internet and health care...

I am sitting here happy with 1Gb/s and the best ISP you can ever have. (I am from Europe)

Yeah i also have reliable 1Gb/s without data caps and i'm not even living in a city. Just a village with about 6000 people living here. And i also have options, as other providers offer the same speeds for me (albeit for a lot more money).

[Kisai]

21 hours ago, Donut417 said:

WRONG. My router record per device bandwidth usage. Thats how I know my dad uses over 500 Gigs a month. I wont get blamed for SHIT. Also while my parents do pay for internet, I cover the Winter taxes on the house, water, Cellular and all the streaming services. So Im not freeloading, like your implying. 

 

 

You better get that in writing then, because if you're going to blow a hole in the internet budget, I'm pretty sure you're going to be paying for it regardless of what the router says.

[Kisai]

17 hours ago, leadeater said:

That is how GST works, it's just applied to everything here no exceptions. You buy a fridge, GST, you pay a plumber to fix your hot water, you pay GST. GST is the Grim Reaper, it cannot be escaped lol.

 

Our GST is 15% btw. Because it's flat and global, no exceptions, all prices are displayed including GST here.

GST and VAT are the same thing, but not always the same way.

 

GST in Canada has exceptions, There is GST on junk food, not healthy food. This has lead to an explosion in vegan/gluten-free alternatives. GST is not on prescription drugs and OTC drugs but is on most things in the pharmacy. Then things get confusion because some provinces still use PST with an entirely different set of exceptions.

 

Basically in Canada the GST is VAT. In Australia GST is VAT, but must be included in the sticker price and has exceptions as well. The US has no form of VAT. There were proposals for one both by 2016 candidates and the elected president's administration but really, didn't get anywhere, as per usual.

 

Businesses have to do a lot of nonsense paperwork to deal with taxes because if the thing you charge for (eg labor) and another thing (eg product) are tax or non-tax, you have to create invoices that take that into account, and that makes things insane for self-employed individuals that have to deal with other businesses, because you not only have to make sure you are charging the taxes, but that they are as well.

 

The only thing that would simplify this is by eliminating all exceptions, and requesting refunds on taxes paid by having every last penny you spend tracked on a per-item basis. Essentially allowing the government to look at your credit card, debit card, and bank account. I know people will balk at that more than doing the existing exception spaghetti paperwork.

 

 

[leadeater]

34 minutes ago, Kisai said:

The only thing that would simplify this is by eliminating all exceptions, and requesting refunds on taxes paid by having every last penny you spend tracked on a per-item basis. Essentially allowing the government to look at your credit card, debit card, and bank account. I know people will balk at that more than doing the existing exception spaghetti paperwork.

Well that is how it's done here, they are also proposing no GST on things like fresh fruit and veg too but not actually done yet. Wouldn't actually be too hard to do but everyone is reluctant to put any exceptions in or different GST rates because everyone knows complexity can introduce error.

 

Our IRD knows if you have an undeclared alternative income because they know exactly how much you get paid, how much tax you have paid on that income which is automatic and they know how much interest you get paid by your bank for your bank balance (because that is income taxed too). They also know how much you spend because GST so irregularities in either taxes paid versus projected income by the IRD or in the amount you spend then the IRD will open a case file on you and investigate.

 

Knowing someone that did get in trouble with the IRD, self employed business owner, don't mess with the IRD as they will take everything, which is exactly what they did. And by everything I really do mean everything, to be fair he screwed up big time.

[Donut417]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

You better get that in writing then, because if you're going to blow a hole in the internet budget, I'm pretty sure you're going to be paying for it regardless of what the router says.

The fact is me and my parents dont have the "Fuck you" relationship. Ive talked to my mom about my dads usage. She just says, if we go over, we go over. Also if my dad pulled, you gotta pay for the overages thing, Id just remove all the streaming accounts from his devices. It wont have to come to that. Ive also considered just paying for the unlimited portion of the internet. Because I guarantee  we are not staying under the cap when he retires. 

[Euchre]

I can definitely see that this is a gamer biased forum (as expected, really), in that 25mbps down is 'not acceptable', let alone 3-5mbps upload. Most of us in truly rural areas are lucky to have 3-5mbps down, let alone up. To have 25mbps would be phenomenal. I don't want it just so I can game, I would just like being able to look at weather radar without waiting a couple of minutes at least for buffering. Stability would honestly matter more than outright speed, as my 6mbps DSL works passably for my critical needs, but is not reliable or stable enough to really call it solid.

 

The problem of getting internet to the rural world is the same as it was for power and telephone - the providers don't see it as profitable enough, and thus won't deploy infrastructure unless compelled to. Partially subsidizing, and partially mandating that it be done, is how it was done, and needs to be done.

[NumLock21]

I don't know about the others, besides AT&T, Verizon needs to be publicly humiliated. Verizon still charges their DSL customer an arm and a leg for slow 1.5Mb/s speed, and they still have the audacity to even have anything above 1.5Mb/s as enhanced.They also unwilling to upgrade their infrastructure, because those people have no other ISPs to turn to, so they're stuck with them.

I hope Elon's Star Link and Google Fiber is a huge success and expands all over the US, so those people, and others who are getting ripped off by their crappy ISP can finally have other options to turn to.

[Donut417]

7 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

Google Fiber is a h

Wouldn't count on Google. They haven't had a good run at fighting off the incumbents. Look at what transpired down in Nashville a few years back. Be mindful that some of those competitors own the utility poles Google needs to use. Not to mention they probably have the local governments paid off. 

 

8 minutes ago, NumLock21 said:

also unwilling to upgrade their infrastructure, because those people have no other ISPs to turn to, so they're stuck with them.

They dont want to a traditional phone company any more. Verizon has been selling off unwanted DSL areas to companies like Frontier. AT&T is probably going to do the same. 

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, Euchre said:

I can definitely see that this is a gamer biased forum (as expected, really), in that 25mbps down is 'not acceptable', let alone 3-5mbps upload. Most of us in truly rural areas are lucky to have 3-5mbps down, let alone up. To have 25mbps would be phenomenal. I don't want it just so I can game, I would just like being able to look at weather radar without waiting a couple of minutes at least for buffering.

It's actually not based on gaming at all, 25Mbps not being quite enough is based on two HD video streams of common platforms without encountering buffering and/or to allow a third person to generally browse the internet. Having two people watching shows/movies that the same time isn't uncommon when you are used to having an internet connection capable of doing it at all and then your usage patterns and expectations start to change, then you become used to and in a way reliant on this. So gaming actually has little to do with it at all as other than downloading the game bandwidth required for online play is next to nothing compared to everything else.

[Kisai]

2 hours ago, leadeater said:

It's actually not based on gaming at all, 25Mbps not being quite enough is based on two HD video streams of common platforms without encountering buffering and/or to allow a third person to generally browse the internet. Having two people watching shows/movies that the same time isn't uncommon when you are used to having an internet connection capable of doing it at all and then your usage patterns and expectations start to change, then you become used to and in a way reliant on this. So gaming actually has little to do with it at all as other than downloading the game bandwidth required for online play is next to nothing compared to everything else.

 

There's only two considerations, of which ISP's only care about one of them

a) Speed

b) Latency

 

Speed, to ISP's doesn't matter how they do it, be it dial up, satellite, 3g/4g, starlink, extended point-to-point range wifi technology, etc. Bonded cable and bonded DSL is utterly the less-good experience for gaming, but completely functional for streaming provided the streams you deal with only fit within one of the unbonded channels. So for DSL a single channel is up to 75Mbs/15mbs here, which I suspect is actually VDSL2. Bonded DSL (using two lines) is a technology that has existed for 20+ years that was originally used with ISDN, and dial-up. It also never worked very well on dial-up. Bonded cable on the other hand uses multiple channels, and always results in higher latency. 40/10 is the maximum before channel bonding is involved.

 

The Starlink tests people have been doing have actually shown this latency being slightly worse than bonded cable. Bandwidth (Linus got 138/23mbps with 27ms latency)

 

I get 29.5Mbps/6.5mbps 5ms on Telus, and I'm getting the modem replaced for whatever reason Telus wants to replace it shortly. I know in the administration menu it actually connects at a higher rate.

 

 

VDSL2 - 17A is actually a 150/50 capable profile. So based on the above, that means 122/61 would be the maximum achievable, and it's technically already running at 56/7. 17A has apparently been standard since 2015, which would actually predate this modem which is from 2014.

 

When I had shaw, I could not get less than 40ms to the same game I had otherwise been getting 12ms to on telus (at another location in vancouver) , so when the contract ended I gave it back and switched back to telus (and those cancelation fees from shaw pretty much ensures I never switch to shaw again short of fiber to the unit) and also ported the mobile phone since Rogers has chosen not to compete in the wireline market since it sold it to Shaw 20 years ago for a swap of Shaw's wireline cable assets in Eastern Canada.

 

That in itself is another reason why there is no competition in a lot of places in North America. Each of the ISP's have only been able to grow by consuming their competitors. Third parties are not allowed access to the ISP's who have installed copper (which some ISP's have been tearing out) or fiber (who the ISP's then say are double-dipping on bandwidth costs to the third party ISP.)  Municipal fiber is basically the only way you solve the problem of incumbant ISP's being non-competative, by making them compete against the city for it's own access. This is the case in New Westminster (one of Metro Vancouver's municpalities) and likewise there is another first party ISP that runs it's own fiber called Novus, so if you want the sweetest of ISP deals you need to be in one of the buildings powered by Novus, because Shaw and Telus will undermine the heck of out Novus's offerings. You know, like competitors should.

 

The rest of Telus and Shaw's markets are captive to paying the same prices be it from Telus or
Shaw, or Uniserve or Teksavvy, or any other third party that runs on top of Telus or Shaw's copper lines. Novus is $65/mo for 100Mbit, vs Teksavvy which is $70/mo for 75mbit. Telus meanwhile is $95 for 75/15 and Shaw is $95 for 75mbit. Yet Shaw will happily advertise fiber, even though there's no fiber to the building. Rather, as I said earlier in this thread, the cable is slipshod installed on the outside of the building.

 

ISP's need to be humiliated when their offerings are not in line with what they advertise to others. It's a known thing for example that you can get sweetheart deals from Shaw and Telus in Novus buildings, but ONLY if you're in those buildings. The same does not hold true if you're in Shaw Tower or Telus Garden.

 

[GDRRiley]

On 2/14/2021 at 6:03 AM, 8tg said:

Not to defend the horrible situation that is ISP monopolies in the US, but the main reason these monopolies can exist and why their service sucks is because America is absolutely huge.

Sometimes i think people forget that, that the population of some individual European cities inhabit areas in America 10 times larger than their entire country.

The infrastructure is hard to keep up on an upgrade when a population of 20,000 people takes up 500 square miles.

 

For reference my entire state of Indiana is about the same size and similar population to the entire nation of Austria, to keep things in scale. 

given the tens of billions we've given to ISPs over the last 2-3 decades we've funded them plenty. had we required fiber back in the 80s and 90s we would be much better off today. The punishments for companies like charter or TWC or frontier not fulfilling their contracts are so lean.
AT&T slow move to fiber is sad it  took my city running the backbone through many major streets that ISPs could buy bandwidth on for them to give us fiber instead of aDSL

[Letgomyleghoe]

6 hours ago, Euchre said:

I can definitely see that this is a gamer biased forum (as expected, really), in that 25mbps down is 'not acceptable', let alone 3-5mbps upload. Most of us in truly rural areas are lucky to have 3-5mbps down, let alone up. To have 25mbps would be phenomenal. I don't want it just so I can game, I would just like being able to look at weather radar without waiting a couple of minutes at least for buffering. Stability would honestly matter more than outright speed, as my 6mbps DSL works passably for my critical needs, but is not reliable or stable enough to really call it solid.

 

The problem of getting internet to the rural world is the same as it was for power and telephone - the providers don't see it as profitable enough, and thus won't deploy infrastructure unless compelled to. Partially subsidizing, and partially mandating that it be done, is how it was done, and needs to be done.

"gamer biased" then continues to list reasons why a strong internet connection is a good thing. You're points are flawed. 

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

So for DSL a single channel is up to 75Mbs/15mbs here, which I suspect is actually VDSL2.

Yes that would be VDSL2. Problem is like all DSL based technology you'll never actually get that. There's a lot of VDSL2 here and the general observed expectation is around 30/5, with the lucky few that live close to the road side box/exchange getting 50+/10+.

 

There are also newer DSL standards but there is very little deployment of those out in the wild, mostly VDSL2 and a select few annex's within that standard.

 

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

When I had shaw, I could not get less than 40ms to the same game I had otherwise been getting 12ms to on telus (at another location in vancouver)

DSL encoding latency is 10ms (maybe it's slightly better now?) and if you add on interleaving you can basically add on another 10ms, if you're unlucky it can be more though. Add on some pathing, peering and routing differences and what you got isn't unexpected. When I was on ADSL2 I was able to get in game latency to NZ based servers as low as 30ms.

 

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

Third parties are not allowed access to the ISP's who have installed copper

It's not a case of not being allowed, it's that the company that own them will not even sell access to them. We slapped Telecom years ago with a hard no on that behavior and made a law change and introduced regulation that required them to provide access to cabling owned by them, as only they had it (Telecom brought what was government phone network). The wholesale price was also regulated so they couldn't just shaft other companies that were using it too.

 

Solvable problems that eventually lead to better solutions as more companies are then able to exist and compete then build up their own infrastructure. That said in large part cabling/fibre infrastructure should be government/state/county owned and ISP's consume access rights to it and build services on top of it, like our UFB network.

 

1 hour ago, Kisai said:

ISP's need to be humiliated when their offerings are not in line with what they advertise to others.

That's actually something we addressed as well, ISPs have to advertise what is actually achievable so when in regards to GPON FTTH speeds are advertised at 950Mbps not 1Gbps because that's actually the technical fastest it can be. It's harder for VDSL2 as distances is the largest factor so they can use the "up to" wording on those plans but they actually have to do a line signal test and give you a proper estimate of the speed you will be able to get before you sign the contract.

[Euchre]

10 hours ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

"gamer biased" then continues to list reasons why a strong internet connection is a good thing. You're points are flawed. 

It is only flawed if you consider gaming or streaming the 'necessary' part of broadband internet access. Consider what it takes to log in to your bank, your school, your government agencies for taxes or other services and requirements. Doing that on dial up has become basically impossible. That's the reason we see broadband as vital infrastructure, not lag time in games or the ability to start watching a video stream in HD. You quite literally have to use the internet to get a job, file for unemployment, and pay many of your bills anymore.

 

100+ years ago it was having an address. ~85 years or more ago, it was plumbing and electricity. ~60 years ago it was telephone service. Now, it is internet access. If you want a good reminder about prioritizing what is required for life, go without power for 3 days, let alone internet. You'll find out when you start feeling grossly dirty, hungry, thirsty, and maybe alone, how to prioritize needs vs wants.

[NumLock21]

I haven't noticed Verge's title until now.
 

Quote

You shouldn’t have to publicly humiliate AT&T to get usable internet

I bet Mr Epstein have tried other option in the past, but to no avail, so this was the only dramatic thing he can think of. The risk was high as he spend $10,000 on a ad in WSJ, at least it paid off.

 

Quote

In his ad, the North Hollywood, CA resident says he’s been an AT&T customer for 60 years (and backs it up with a @pacbell.net email address), and says he’s disappointed that the company isn’t keeping up with competitors when it comes to his area’s internet. Less than two weeks later, AT&T techs had him hooked up, though the company says it was part of a planned rollout.

Planned rollout?
Planned rollout my rear end. So when will this planned rollout be completed? Don't tell me it won't be completed until the year 2077 or later.

 

Going with the bold text, they tried to paint Mr. Epstein like some impatient person.

AT&T: We're doing this planned rollout in your area, because you can't wait like any other normal behaving customer, here is your fiber connection. Now stop nagging!

Verge: Yeah, AT&T is doing the best they can, so you shouldn't have to publicly humiliate them.

 

Stupid Verge and with stupid titles. Why wasn't the original Ars Technicia one link? Their was more neutral, unlike Verge's

 

Ars: AT&T customer since 1960 buys WSJ print ad to complain of slow speeds

Verge: You shouldn’t have to publicly humiliate AT&T to get usable internet

 

 

[Donut417]

1 minute ago, NumLock21 said:

Why wasn't the original Ars Technicia one link? Their was more neutral, unlike Verge's

Because this was the one John Legere posted on Twitter as he was making fun of AT&T, just like he used to when he was CEO of T Mobile. 

[Letgomyleghoe]

2 hours ago, Euchre said:

It is only flawed if you consider gaming or streaming the 'necessary' part of broadband internet access. Consider what it takes to log in to your bank, your school, your government agencies for taxes or other services and requirements. Doing that on dial up has become basically impossible. That's the reason we see broadband as vital infrastructure, not lag time in games or the ability to start watching a video stream in HD. You quite literally have to use the internet to get a job, file for unemployment, and pay many of your bills anymore.

 

100+ years ago it was having an address. ~85 years or more ago, it was plumbing and electricity. ~60 years ago it was telephone service. Now, it is internet access. If you want a good reminder about prioritizing what is required for life, go without power for 3 days, let alone internet. You'll find out when you start feeling grossly dirty, hungry, thirsty, and maybe alone, how to prioritize needs vs wants.

but your whole point was that we were a gamer biased forum, because we were complaining about internet speed. 

[Euchre]

58 minutes ago, Donut417 said:

Because this was the one John Legere posted on Twitter as he was making fun of AT&T, just like he used to when he was CEO of T Mobile. 

You mean the same guy who was making fun of AT&T by dismissing a whole swath of rural states, as if humans not in urban coverage are 'trash' from "dust bowl states". Yeah, don't care much for his perspective. https://www.theverge.com/2013/1/9/3853890/t-mobile-ceo-calls-att-network-crap-mocks-verizon

10 minutes ago, Letgomyleghoe said:

but your whole point was that we were a gamer biased forum, because we were complaining about internet speed. 

I was originally replying to someone talking about how the US needs to commit to broadband ubiquity, as infrastructure. You and others seem to think that basic infrastructure is defined by how well you can game and stream multiple HD videos at once. Arguments like that are what get a lot of proposals for improved infrastructure dismissed as 'a bunch of whiny gamers' who want free access to 'winning' quality internet access. That dismissal is wrong in that we don't even have close to that level of access, nor is what is being asked for nearly so ambitious, but it is fair to say that it sounds that way - and this forum definitely is dominated by gamers. Gaming is fine, but it doesn't define the core needs that ubiquitous broadband represents.