ISPs' long nightmare of having to list all the fees they charge is finally over
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/07/isps-long-nightmare-of-having-to-list-all-the-fees-they-charge-is-finally-over/Open linkView original on discuss.onlineSyndicated from the fediverse. Read and engage on the original instance.
View original on discuss.onlinehttps://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/07/isps-long-nightmare-of-having-to-list-all-the-fees-they-charge-is-finally-over/Open linkView original on discuss.online
77 replies
Fuck this administration
The entire e administration as well as ice should be put into camps after this is said and done.
I prefer high security jail, and trials to make Nuremberg blush.
No socialism for fascists. They like the death penalty so much, I say 'oblige them', in no sweeter terms.
We really did not execute enough at Nuremberg. I agree that prison would be a waste with such crimes.
They keep unironically saying it's "open season" of Dems and liberals, so I say let's flip it the fuck around.
I have bad news for how the Nuremberg trials generally wound up.
Agreed. We gotta do better this time.
Have we not wasted enough resources on them? Put them to good use and bury them. Let's focus on rebuilding.
Idk man, I'm more inclined to enslave them until they pay off their debt.
What is it, now? 5k per American person? Seems like a life in slavery is proper reparations.
Edit: and that's only discussing what they owe Americans.
Honestly. Send them all to antarctica.
Put them all on a spacex starship (for maximum irony) and fly it into the sun. Livestream the entire months-long journey to the sun so we can watch them slowly go insane and turn against each other. 70% odds they don't even make it all the way to the sun😭
I've long advocated for a reality tv show where we send the richest assholes in society into a 1 way rocket trip to the sun.
That'll drive the flerfs wild!
My ISP every few months:
"We can upgrade yo-
Does the upload speed upgrade too?
"Well, no- click
My favorite is Spectum’s “Gig” (I guess too many people can’t pronounce 1 Gbps) plan is like, significantly slower than their 600 Mbps or even their 400 Mbps like 80% of the time.
One guhbips
Giga is the Spanish word, so they might just use it because it's more bilingual friendly
I doubt it has anything to do with Spanish. The G in Gbps stands for giga because that's the SI prefix for 10 to the power of 9 or 1000 bigger than mega. Calling it a gig is just a lazy wording.
I call it gig, it's a pretty common abbreviation IMO, like 32 gigs of ram.
I had AT&T Gigabit symmetric fiber once and it was glorious.
I just switched ISPs because the one I had never gave me the speed I was paying out the ass for and had constant outages. I switched and became the first house in my street with fiber. Now everyone is getting it. My bill is also $50 less than it was before. Only upsides. I think the deals are so good because my new ISP used to be terrible until the company got bought out and renamed. Now they're the best around me by far.
Well they makes me curious what the "upgrade" entails. 🤔 Have they ever told you?
Faster download it's always faster download and never understand any circumstances upload.
I get 1gig down and 10megs up... On spectrum.
10 Mbps up in the year of our lord 2026?..
I swear to god, I'm not convinced the US is a first-world country.
Neither are we
~ Americans
Wut. Corporate monopolies of shitty cable companies maximizing personal profit at the expense of clients is like the most capitalistic thing you could have.
2nd world countries would be much more capable of providing good internet service.
I have an el cheapo connection and i checked my SOs connection today, 0.6/0.33 Gb.
On wifi...
It's not.
Not to defend spectrum, but there is an actual reason for this besides malice.
Coax cable internet uses analog switching and routing between you and your ISPs first Ethernet hop. It's basically a series of unconfigurable hardware low-pass and high-pass filters to ensure that upload traffic and download traffic flow cleanly.
When cable internet started and these systems were installed in your neighborhood, a range of low-frequency (low-bandwidth) channels were selected for uploads, and a range of high-frequency (high-bandwidth) channels were selected for downloads, going off the assumption that more people wanted downloads than anything else.
Fast-forward to today, and the ISPs don't really have any choice but to sell you the asymmetry that they installed 20-30 years ago. The only way to redirect the flow and assignment of channels would be to rip out and replace all of those analog filters, and they're not going to do that because grandma isn't going to go without cable for 3 weeks. Grandma will call, get angry, and pick a new cable provider. Grandma is by far their most consistent and profitable customer.
I think there is actually a choice in there somewhere.
And in case it needs to be spelled out, it's upgrading the infra to offer better speeds. But they have no incentive to do so because that benefits only the customer.
They just run a new fiber line to every customer that says "I need symmetric speeds, please".
If you're willing to pay they probably will, but it's something that's generally very expensive, so not something they advertise. If you're serious about it, look into business offerings.
Paying the ISP to run a new fiber cable yourself is 10-50k.
The ISP can do this at a better price if they do a neighborhood all at once due to economies of scale.
The US government already paid the ISP to run fiber in like the 90s. They should give the money back with interest or lay the fucking fiber
Many of them laid the fiber but were only required to use it for phone service. Since their infrastructure was all filled and paid for, and financial assistance only covered replacing cable phone systems, many cable systems have run dual backbones for a long time now.
Also, many smaller cable ISPs interface to att or sprint, or similar. So they also weren't paid to increase their backbone access.
Sucks, I had fiber to my building for more than a decade before I was offered (forced) to move it, bumping me from 1mbps to 20 for a 15 dollar/month increase because "they can".
At least I get what I pay for, I hear some don't.
I changed provider after they tried to tell me 1/4 Mbps was more than enough. It didn't even have packet shaping. As soon as Google photos tried to back up, the packet returns required to lead webpages started falling over. It was painful.
I remember how happy I was when I got 50mb upload... About 20 years ago?
Wait, wouldn't you want 9 more down then? Who wants asymmetric speeds with faster upload than down?
They're getting 10 MBit up, not 10 GBit
Oh fuck, that should be illegal
I'm sorry, I didn't understand any of that. 😬
Download - data go beep boop from someone else's computer to yours
Upload - data go beep beep from your computer to someone else
lmao I know, I'm a web developer by profession. 😆
But what the fuck does this sentence mean?
I thought you webdevs were good with implied semicolons because of JavaScript lol
Hey-ooh! 🥁
"Understand" should be "under". It's shitty autocorrect. Probably written on an iPhone. I fucking hate autocorrect on the default iPhone keyboard.
Missing punctuation, add
,or:after "Faster download" to fix the syntax errorI guess this part should substitute understand for just "under"?
Man, some real sloppy proof reading. 😆
Fuck any internet provider that hides fucking fees. If my bill suddenly goes up next month I know exactly what caused it and will act accordingly by not paying that bullshit fees.
Hey, that doesn't make any sense! In 2024, lemmy.ml assured us all that Biden hadn't made any improvements to America!
And Hexbear was singing Trump's praises. Let's all remember this fact: Tankies love Trump and hate Democrats, even if sometimes they claim otherwise that's just them putting the mask on.
Hating Democrats (the establishment at least) is justified, but yes, tankies love Trump.
Again, if they have the technology to correctly bill you for those fees, they have the technology to tell you what they are before they bill you for them. It's the same damn thing.
Putting in the "fuck you" charge internally is easy.
Coming up with a convincing name on the bill is hard.
Internet in America has always been a ripoff.
But... The efficiency of consolidation!! /$
What would you expect in a 1st world country?
Gotta nationalize public utilities for that to be decent.
Especially when you consider how many subsidies the telecoms get
Yeah it's not even funny to taunt you any more. I mean in like 2014 sure, but today it's more sad.
Looks like I'm aiming pringles can directional antennas at McDonalds again like the 00's.
pringles can is too small, you need a can 8cm in diameter minimum. 400ml cans won't do but bigger ones, 800ml, 1200ml will work https://www.wikarekare.org/Antenna/WaveguideCan.html
Old folgers coffee can it is.
For 2.4GHz *
pringles can would work okay for 5ghz but making feed element for that band would be hard without expensive test equipment
NanoVNA's are pretty cheap for ~$100-200, though that being said I've only looked at them for ~1GHz work
I've got one sitting by my TV, haven't ever used it. I'll fiddle with it today to see how high it can measure.
some variants go above 2.4GHz but going over 5GHz is entirely different thing
Pringles is no yagi?
I can't really blame them. Counting all of that profit money takes a whole shitload of time and leaves very little room for value.
This kind of shit is why the CFPB was and very much IS needed!
And also a classic case of regulatory capture, of course.
If you ever get tired of ISP garbage, Calyx offers unlimited internet as long as you are in 4G/5G range. Your payment also goes to supporting a privacy rights group instead of down the corporate drain
This is actually pretty neat.
https://calyx.org/about
That's just US of Corpokistan chasing EU...
That sounds like a bigger nightmare