Originally Posted by Steerpike

Did they say if this was a 'package' or 'promotion' or whatever? ......

Originally Posted by civilservant

Windstream 10mbps. Sucks, but the only provider out here in the boondocks. When we first moved in to our new build we were getting 0.5mbps (yes that right, 0.5) so can't really complain now.

$75p/m

Originally Posted by Steerpike

Did they say if this was a 'package' or 'promotion' or whatever? Usually, Comcast will offer these deals for '1 year' and then, if you don't actively re-negotiate, they will bump you up in price without any further warning. As long as you don't mind fussing with them every year or so, this is not a terrible state of affairs but it is something you'll need to keep an eye on. But what you may have found is that you were on some legacy rate that was appropriate a few years ago, but has been reduced as the infrastructure has been improved ... but they never told you about it. Calling and verifying things once a year is definitely not a bad idea for a number of reasons.

The biggest hassle in terms of getting faster rates is that it often requires equipment upgrades, and those aren't always seamless activities. We needed new equipment in California recently, and the latest device they gave us (a combined modem/router/wifi access point) has a noisy fan which drives me crazy! In Arizona, I had a tech out troubleshooting an issue; he had to install an amplifier at the main cable box to boost the signal at the main TV outlet. I don't recall now if he said I still had the older 'RG59' coax cable or not (RG6 is the current standard). Basically, faster speeds require better infrastructure all round.

As an aside, when I lowered my bandwidth last year from around 100 to 50mbps, in order to save money, I didn't notice any difference in my viewing experience. A typical show on Netflix needs about 5Mbps for standard quality content, or 25 Mbps for 4K ultra content (which I don't pay for). So even 25 Mbps is 'good enough', unless you have multiple people in your household who are concurrently watching streaming content.

Originally Posted by tht

When they put in fiber here I was trying to decide between 150/500/1GB bandwidth, they charged $50/70/100 a month. I have the 150, I did test the 500mbps for a week but found no additional benefit, so I decided to keep 2 connections for redundancy instead of 1 with higher bandwidth.

Most people confuse bandwidth and speed. With fiber the best analogy are roads. With your 25mbps for Netflix example 150mbps is 6 lane highway, while the 500mbps is a 20 lane highway, both have the same speed (latency), we only have 4 people on so even if we were all watching separate Netflix that would still
leave some for everything else.

Now with cable internet they combine the connections earlier so you get “contention”
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contention_ratio

If you have 10 or 20 6 lane highways merge you are going to run in to issues… so they basically make you pay more to compete with other for the same bandwidth… once everyone upgrades you are back to the same issue again and they just make more money.

Using the ISP provided speed test is not a good idea, you are really just testing the line between your house and their connection, not the onward transit. I find that fast.com (by Netflix) is a better test as you are testing to their servers.

Originally Posted by tht

Have you looked at Starlink? It is $100 a month and you have to buy the dish but has bandwidth of between 100-200mbps and latency as low as 20ms, for context my fiber connection is around 6ms.

Originally Posted by tht

Have you looked at Starlink? It is $100 a month and you have to buy the dish but has bandwidth of between 100-200mbps and latency as low as 20ms, for context my fiber connection is around 6ms.

Originally Posted by kimilseung

Comcast Xfinity (or whatever they call it) Internet only, no phone, no TV around $100.00 per month. My wife works from home, so we do get $35.00 or something from her employer towards its cost. We have a 1,229GB month limit. We are usually touch at least close to 1,000GB each month

Originally Posted by Steerpike

That sounds like amazing latency for satellite! Your 'as low as' qualifier, is that yours, or from their literature? I just did a quick google of "starlink dish latency" and several independent reviewers are quoting closer to 45ms. This article (comparing Starlink to other satellite providers) says "Starlink's median latency, 45 milliseconds (ms) is close to fixed broadband's 14 ms" ... they are suggesting that 45 is better than expected. The article seems pretty good, and talks about how Starlink gets better the further north you are, and how it beats the pants off of many European countries' fixed broadband services. A related article linked in the above article - https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-in...-from-the-sky/ explains some of the rather amazing technology that goes into Starlink (another of Elon Musk's ventures, I learned).

What I couldn't see in the articles above was, what is the 'upload speed', and how are uploads accomplished? Further googling suggests a median upload of about 13 mbps, which is probably good enough for home use. One thing that boggles my mind is that the upload (or 'send') side of things is also done via satellite. It's one thing for a big device in space to blast down a signal to your rooftop dish (how satellite TV works), but for that rooftop dish to be able to 'talk back' to the satellite seems pretty amazing to me, but that's how they do it. Pretty amazing stuff.

Originally Posted by tht

Not got any first hand experience of it yet, I had a chance to subscribe last year, but had just got fiber to the house so did not go ahead with it. The main issue right now is that I this tied to one address. If I was allowed to move it between 2 properties it may become the best backup option.

“Users can expect to see download speeds between 100 Mb/s and 200 Mb/s and latency as low as 20ms in most locations.”

https://www.starlink.com/

Originally Posted by SpoogleDrummer

Surely moving a hotspot would be easier than moving a satellite? I just use my phone and truck hotspots as backups.

Originally Posted by tht

I assume you mean the “dish” not the satellite… end users have no control over the satellite constellation. I would only move this 2 times a year if I had it, to add redundancy to another property in the summer.

I have 4G hotspots with a WAN and LAN port and automatic failover but at best these get 20-30mbps so these are OK for “essential” services.. but not really as a N+1 redundant solution. These are on Verizon, but the other issue is when the power is out, everyone uses cellular so the service degrades even more.