Huh. Obama, the guy who appointed Tom Wheeler, Comcast stooge, to be FCC chair, now wants the FCC to regulate ISPs under title 2 as a utility. That would be a huge step in the right direction.
Although the FCC is independent and can ignore him. Makes me wonder if it’s a wink wink nudge nudge I’ll say the populist thing, then you screw the population sort of deal.
I have at least 4 major providers where I live in the Midwest, and I guess I am thankful for that- and pleasantly surprised based on all the complaints I hear about. I switch every time I get a better offer.
I live in Chicago and in theory I have multiple options.
In reality I have Comcast, RCN and AT&T.
AT&T is a DSL service which I used to have and like. Then they “upgraded” me to their new “whatever its name is fancy coherent system” and it became a colossal mess. Was going down regularly, speeds were all over the place but mostly shitty. We had numerous techs visit (also a tech savvy household). Nothing worked. Just turned to complete shit from not bad.
So we moved to Comcast. I despise Comcast but we bought business service from them and it works great. No problems at all. Just costs us a shitload of money.
The issue there is that you have options - you just don’t like them.
Now, I am about the last person to defend Comcast. I despise Comcast. But it strikes me that what people want is to have super-high-speed broadband available for free with no service problems.
My choices are not much of a choice. That I have even this much choice is likely only due to living in a major metropolitan area. Many places in the US have less or no choice (less choice in this case being two to choose from).
And look at my choices. AT&T is not really equivalent. It is DSL which is technologically incapable of the speeds cable can enjoy.
As for my choice between RCN and Comcast…well, not much of a choice. You’d think they’d be in a price war for customers but that never happens. They are bizarrely similar in their offerings.
And no, I do NOT want free internet access (well ok…sure…that’d be nice but I know nothing is free and one way or another I’ll pay for it and I am fine paying for services I use).
What I want is real competition that gives the US broadband internet access that is faster and cheaper. You know…like most other countries in the world already have.
When is the last time you checked with RCN? I switched over from Comcast with similar speed for a significant price reduction. Same thing when I migrated my phone service over from AT&T. Frankly, I’d have switched even for similar pricing, because RCN’s customer service stomps all over Comcast’s.
Plus, about a month ago RCN upped my download speed at no additional charge. Now, I’m not naive enough to think that there isn’t a price increase coming somewhere down the line, but I’m very happy with RCN right now.