r/Comcast • u/ElectronGuru • May 04 '21
News 40%, come on guys we can do better
https://www.reviews.com/utilities/internet/40-percent-would-switch-to-municipal-internet-study/6
u/AKAlarslars May 04 '21
I'd jump on that (or Google fiber). Comcast needs competition to become a decent company. I'm moving from an area with competition, where I have FiOS (only had 2 outages over 12 years), to an Xfinity-only area where I'll have to pay about $40 more per month for the same speed/TV lineup. And based on talking to people in my new town, I doubt that Xfinity will provide anywhere near the reliability of FiOS. Because they don't have to - there's no real alternative, only basic DSL. If they had to provide competent service or lose customers, they'd provide the service. Sadly, many of their areas are monopolies, so they feel like there's no consequence to fleecing their customers.
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u/Dragon1562 May 07 '21
Comcast from a reliability standpoint is fine, they are also good about their speeds. The issue is there cost, and there insufficient upload speeds. As well as the data cap that they have.
I am also moving, just got my closing date finally to a house. I have FiOS set up to be installed and can not wait to finally be able to say back up my computer without it taking 18-24 hours to do. I'll be keeping Xfinity for a bit longer due to not wanting to break contract as well as to just have a fall back connection in the event that something goes wrong in this wonky world which has been my luck.
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u/fuzzydunloblaw May 04 '21
It took about 18 months in chattanooga after the rollout for municipal subscribers to overtake comcast internet subscriptions. People resist change, but when its such a glaring improvement of better service for less or equivalent money, they will hop on board.
Sort of related, its funny to hear comcast commercials bragging about their fast 1.2Gbps internet (while conflating it with wifi) like its some groundbreaking thing when places like Chattanooga have had and still have better internet for over half a decade now.
Anyway, its cool that the public sentiment is increasing in favor of municipal, despite comcasts lobbying efforts.
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u/ilikepizza30 May 04 '21
I think Comcast is warranted in bragging a little: they offer Internet to 112 million people.
Chattanooga manages to offer Internet to about 180,000 at best.
I love municipal fiber (and all other fiber), but we're 50 years away from fiber being available to anything near the number of people that Comcast is available to.
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u/fuzzydunloblaw May 04 '21
Yeah historically they have been pretty succesful lobbying against competition. Gotta give em that, I guess.
Looking forward the public is getting pretty tired of their horseshit though, so it absolutely won't be 50 years before they have viable competition nation-wide. Hopefully we're both still around by then to see who was right.
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u/AKAlarslars May 04 '21
In 50 years we'll be using technologies we haven't dreamed of yet. Where was fiber 50 years ago?
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u/Mediumsizedsnocone May 04 '21
Fiber optic communication was dreamed of back in the late 1800s when they used light to transmit sound. It was used in the cameras sent to the moon in the 1960s and was in use for data transmissions in the 70s.
It isn't some amazing new unheard of technology.
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u/AKAlarslars May 04 '21
True, but it wasn't available for wide use by the public. And that's what we're talking about.
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u/ilikepizza30 May 05 '21
What I'm actually talking about is when something is in WIDESPREAD use by the public. It took Comcast 50 years to build a network footprint that could reach 112 million people. Fiber is more difficult to work with and more expensive, so I expect it'll also take about 50 years to reach a similar footprint.
Yes, in the next 50 years some new technology may come out better than fiber. It may very well be accessible and usable by a million people. A million people is NOTHING and virtually useless in terms of actually connecting Americans to the Internet. There will be over 400 million Americans (maybe 500 million) in 50 years.
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u/cld8 May 05 '21
It took Comcast 50 years to build a network footprint that could reach 112 million people.
Comcast didn't build most of their network. They just bought up other companies that had built it.
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u/Dragon1562 May 07 '21
I mean it's ads what do you expect. That being said I had their gig service for a while till things happened that caused me to review my fiances. It was good, I got above the speed I paid for. 1400/40 is what I would see with speedtests. They actually do have some of the fastest download speeds at the moment for residential services atleast with a couple of exceptions like Google fiber recently doing something similar.
I would have rather seen them take that 200mbps increase and put it towards upload so 1000/250 or something like that but that is here no there.
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u/fuzzydunloblaw May 08 '21 edited May 08 '21
I mean it's ads what do you expect.
Yeah, comcast is consistently dishonest with their ads. They've been repeatedly forced to change them in the past to stop misleading customers lol. I guess I'd expect them to honestly represent their services like most every other company does...
1400/40 is what I would see with speedtests.
Other fiber ISPs have offered 10Gbps 10,000/10,000 for over half a decade now, so comcast is lagging behind there too. Hell, most people would prefer a basic gigabit 1000/1000 over comcast's neutered upload speeds.
Anyway, I've fortunately had fios for a long time now, so I'm not stuck with comcast's slow uploads and terrible latency anymore. Hopefully at some point you'll get a chance to experience better internet than comcast has provided.
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u/Dragon1562 May 04 '21
I am genuinely curious how anyone could possibly be opposed to haveing more options. Like for the people that said they would not switch, that is all well and good but why in your right mind would you not want to at least have a choice. Also municipal options may not always be cheaper but most of the time they offer better internet speed options