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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
I have an el cheapo connection and i checked my SOs connection today, 0.6/0.33 Gb.
On wifi…
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.
It’s not.
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.
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 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?
“Understand” should be “under”. It’s shitty autocorrect. Probably written on an iPhone. I fucking hate autocorrect on the default iPhone keyboard.
I thought you webdevs were good with implied semicolons because of JavaScript lol
Hey-ooh! 🥁
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. 😆
I have only now noticed that. Autocorrect in my head ig.
Took a while for me too, so 😄