Americans Getting Ripped Off For Internet?

[jyl]

At home in Oregon, I pay about $100/mo for about (advertised) 100 Mbps home internet, and a similar amount for similar speed office internet.

My daughter just got Internet service at her little apartment in France. She is paying $30/mo for (measured) 800 Mbps down, 47 Mbps up.

Anyone know that costs and speeds are like in US vs other countries?

[911 Rod]

Internet and cell phones are pretty expensive in Canada.

[Otter74]

Compared to Europe and Asia (and that's a whole lot of the world), the US gets hosed. The 'free market' isn't always.

[masraum]

Internet is cheaper and faster in Europe, at least, for countries that I hear about.

Over the years, I think my costs have ranged from $35 up to about $65. I was paying $65 2 years ago in Houston, but then I only had 35mb service because I didn't need more than that. I'm paying $50/mo now for 5G T-mobile. My speeds vary between 35-150mb down and are generally 5-40mb up.

Something else to think about that likely has a huge impact on it.

The size of the US and Europe are about the same. But Europe has more than double the population, and is split into a bunch of independent countries. Also, most of the people are distributed across a smaller area. To me that says that they have twice as many customers (can charge less per customer), and the infrastructure (cabling/fiber) is likely reduced by quite a bit (fiber to the Arctic Circle or all of the little towns in Estonia? doubtful).

[stevej37]

My Comcast bill is $260/month.
That includes internet, tv, and phone.

[john70t]

I'm paying $40/mo for dial-up. $15 for flip phone which actually has a map.
It's about 5mb/sec but enough to FPS on. Barely. Something like 140ms ping I think.
Big D/L's are scheduled at night but some take several days.

AT&T sends me ads for $50-80/mo. plus $120 tv packages(ad spam) which would be an extra grand per year.
I will never use Xfinity (billing department is nothing but fraudulent)

[john70t]

Originally Posted by stevej37

My Comcast bill is $260/month..

My man that is $31,200 every decade....just saying

[stevej37]

^^^ Yeah...It's unreasonable...but whenever I try to cut something out, the bill goes up.
The triple play plan was a genius for Comcast.

[masraum]

Originally Posted by john70t

I'm paying $40/mo for dial-up. $15 for flip phone which actually has a map.
It's about 5mb/sec but enough to FPS on. Barely. Something like 140ms ping I think.
Big D/L's are scheduled at night but some take several days.

AT&T sends me ads for $50-80/mo. plus $120 tv packages(ad spam) which would be an extra grand per year.
I will never use Xfinity (billing department is nothing but fraudulent)

5Mb dial up?

You might (we did) be able to get ATT Internet only without the TV crap. That's what we did. They really pressure you to get Internet, TV, and cell service through them. I haven't had any sort of cable/TV service other than Netflix and Prime video for years.

[john70t]

Srry, DSL is what I meant to type. A small michigan company w/great customer service.
Any of the phone lines still existing they have to maintain and rent by law I believe.
I like to pay good companies and create competition.

I read it costs about 1/10th of a cent for an ISP to send 10GB of data.
Maybe that's electricity only and doesn't include hardware and software upkeep. idk. Lots of hackers out there.
With something so ingrained as data transmission, and startups so prevalent, the monopolies are still making a 'bundle'.

[wildthing]

100Mbps for $100 is expensive. I have Comcast Triple Play at $210, with HBO and HBO Max, with a theoretical max of 1.2GBps. I have to call every two years though to ensure I get the best rate.

I'm just waiting for fiber to be available here for the 10GBps speeds.

[dw1]

I don't mean to be PARF about this, but....

People say that taxes are substantially higher in "socialist" Europe, but if you combine the cost for things we pay for in the US (like the expensive internet access with extra taxes & fees), it actually works out the same or slightly less expensive.

This isn't based just on my experience, but on co-workers who temporarily relocated to the US from Germany and were surprised on just how many things they had to pay extra for in the US.

[A930Rocket]

$75 a month for Internet only. We do not have cable or a home phone.

[Shaun @ Tru6]

One of the best ways to reduce your internet bill is to buy the router and any other equipment that Comcast is charging you $50/month for. The router is $50, one time purchase.

My Comcast with all taxes, etc. is $71/month for I think around 20-25 mbps

Verizon is $65 for cell phone.

[bugstrider]

We had ATT DSL 1.5 Mbps at best. It was running $65 monthly. That’s in Placerville, CA. Plus $48 monthly for basic phone service.

Dropped them and went to Starlink. Comcast isn’t available to our address but they said they could run 1100’ of cable at $8.00 per foot if we wanted it nearly 10 years ago. Yeah, no!


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[stomachmonkey]

Pricing all over the place.

Part of the problem is cost of infrastructure and the other part, the bigger part, is lack of competition.

In my community of 4,000 homes some of us have a choice of two providers, both of whom suck.

The other part has only one option.

TX prohibits municipalities from creating their own networks.

I actually looked into creating a co-op for us using wide area WIFI but I'd technically have to lease tower space on the border of the community because installing any infrastructure on community property would technically run afoul of the municipality prohibition. Might get away with putting AP's on peoples roofs but I'm not that motivated to deal with that.

The 3rd emerging option is 5G, TMobile is currently chasing that space and of course it comes with some of the limitations of cell based carriers but I expect to see a lot of improvement in the next 5 years that will become a legitimate threat to current cable based providers.

[JackDidley]

Spectrum/charter just went from $125 to $150 a month. Advertised 400 meg but really 100 meg. Includes mid level cable.

[Flat Six]

Ditched Cox Cable, kept internet only. $100/month for ~330mbps down / ~35mbps up. We own our cable modem, separate LAN & WiFi (Orbi). We can get 1 gig from either Cox or CenturyLink. But we'd have to run new cable from the fiber optic drop at the outside of our home to the structured wiring panel. And get a new fiber optic modem. Don't need either yet.

[Gogar]

My new centurylink fiber is $65 and does about 750-800 down and consistently over 800 up wired. My wifi is only getting to mid 300s up and 200 something down but I'm going to work on it.

The $65 is before all the add on bs but I haven't got the first bill yet. I'm guessing around $80 total.

[jyl]

We have basically Xfinity or CenturyLink or TMobile 5G. Xfinity offers the most speed and I’ve been happy with the reliability, but is expensive - although, seems they have deals if I want to also move my cellphone to them. CenturyLink has an iffy reputation locally - but they have good deals it seems. TMobile 5G is new and I don’t know much about it. There’s also Starlink, but I think my trees preclude using it as my main Internet service at home.

Meanwhile, I just measured 930 Mbps down on this $30/mo French service.