I thought data caps for home internet were a thing of the past…
I’ve somewhat recently moved back to a very rural area of the Midwest. Small town. No stop lights. Biggest businesses other than the bars are Casey’s, Subway, and Dollar General.
And we have one ISP (not counting DSL) — Mediacom. When we first signed up, I had to go with the second service tier. But not because of speeds, but so I could have a reasonable 1 TB/mo data cap.
Lucky me, they increased the cap to 1.5 TB. 🙄
I hope that in my lifetime I can see ISPs regulated as a public utility.
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Remember the net neutrality regulations that douchebag scrapped then opted to make a shitty YouTube video about? I do.
Our local fiber (1000/1000) is truly unlimited and just had a price decrease from $120 to $100. Never had an ISP do that before!
Holy fucking shit dude… Sorry for you but in a weird way I’m a bit relieved to see this being the case in the US as well. The village I grew up in (Germany) still has a price of ~50€ for speeds of 50-100MBit/s However, there is at least no data cap in that case. My 1000 Mbit/s contract was capped to 1TB/month as well until four years ago (40€/month). I really hope this improves for all of us soon!
In Germany we pay lots of money for 5G data volume. For me I got 20 Gigs for about 40 bucks, this is mostly Not a thing in the rest of Europe. But data plans on landlines are really dumb.
Check out Vodafone if you’re younger than 28. I’m paying 22€/month with their Gigakombi for unlimited 5G.
Way beyond that ;)
In Denmark, I pay ~19€ (~$21) for 1000GB of mobile data (they call it ‘unlimited’, but the small text says they may cut you off at 1000GB). Of course, I rarely use more than 50GB a month on my phone.
weint auf deutsch
I’m moving to another provider next month to increase from 8GB@€30 to 15GB€25… Those are per month…
25€ for 15G is also way too much. I now pay 5,99 for 7GB. (Also germany, monthly cancellable, sim.de [No advertisement])
You should look here for good prices.
Vielen Dank!, The problem is I need the Telekom Network otherwise I pay for nothing as the other ones won’t have reception :(
You can untick the other providers. I found this one for example.
This is what I am talking about … Most countries in Europe just gives you kinda unlimited data plans… look at this crap
I rarely need mobile data because I work from home but if my landline has an interruption I can barely work 1 or 2 days with that if I tweak data consumption on my work laptop.
Pretty much a thing in NL and afaik also BE.
source: am Dutch.
T mobile NL, 5G capped at 22GB. Cost: 20 euro.
35 euro in NL wl give you t mobile unlimited which is capped at 15 GB per day. Other providers charge more or less the same.
@home internet 1up/down GB fiber 45 euro. No datacap.
Pretty sure europe doesn’t have caps on landlines because of European wide regulation. If you really think about it, caps on mobile data are also fairly stupid
In France at least I doubt it.
The only time I remember caps on landlines was when 56k modem were still the norm. Once ADSL was rolled out there was pretty much no caps anymore.
I think the fact that we had some healthy competition for landlines from the get go in my country meant the ISPs couldn’t get that much greedy and put caps in place. So it never ended being common where I live.
And when it was old school modems, well you were already paying for the phone communications anyway when connected to the internet so it wasn’t really unlimited anyway.
Well, I’m in portugal, which does NOT have a lot of healthy competition in the communication space, and as far as I remember there haven’t been data caps (I’m 18, so last 10 years is what I reasonably remember regarding being online), so I’ve always assumed it had to be some European level law
Well mobile data is very different. With fibre optic you can generally keep provisioning more cables and a single cable already carries a huge amount already.
Radio has an absolute efficiency limit for the bandwidth of a signal and we’re pretty damn close to that now.
5g uses wider bandwidth channels, with more cells closer together and uses things like beamforming. But there’s still always going to be an upper limit that is considerably lower than fibre.
This is why they likely want to discourage 5g becoming a full alternative to wired, because there’s just not the capacity to do it on the same scale.
Agreed. In the past you would pay for calling and text messages and data was often unlimited at the higher tiers, but since nobody pays extra for calling and texting anymore, they’re now charging for data. Luckily they can’t charge extra for EU roaming anymore.
Data caps on landlines is something that I haven’t seen for a very long time in my EU country. The last time I had a subscription with a data cap must have been with a 56k modem, if at all. Cable and DSL might have had fair use policies back in the day (or maybe they still do, who knows), but no hard cap. Or at least not that I can remember.
Internet nowadays is way too important to have data caps, especially at home. 5G should definitely be next. Differentiate in speed all you want, but ditch the caps.
There are still plans with data caps in Belgium, this is limited to the “cheapest” plans though at about 30 EUR a month
Belgium has them
Belgium also has free parking I’ve heard.
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Data caps do exist in Europe, but they’re generally reserved for ultra cheap data plans. Something like €5 for 100mbit speeds. So you get a decent connection, but limited in traffic instead. Which makes sense.
If you really think about it, caps on mobile data are also fairly stupid
Mobile is a shared medium and can only support a certain amount of bandwidth per phone mast (in a certain area). A mobile phone network heavily relies on most users not using their data plans most of the time.
While it’s stupid that ISPs are using their monopolies to screw consumers, the concept of data caps is not as stupid as you might think.
You’re not just paying for the connection between you and the ISP, but also all the other data links that get your internet traffic to its destination. For example, those cables across the ocean are owned third parties and they charge money for every byte that goes through. It wouldn’t be unreasonable for ISPs to pass that cost to users.
Furthermore, most links are overprovisioned in order to keep costs down. For example, if you assume that users only use 10% of their bandwidth on average, that means you can fit 10x as many people on a connection (or maybe 8x to account for peaks). This does mean that users should be discouraged from using their full bandwidth for long durations, otherwise the network operators can’t overprovision as much and have to invest more in infrastructure.
Okay I might sound like an idiot, but what’s the difference between a phone plan’s minutes/messages quota and internet usage quota? Aren’t they both selling a predetermined amount of usage for a predetermined amount of money?
I think the issue is that these service providers are more than capable of providing “unlimited” data, but choose not to because they can make a lot more when people inevitably go over their limit. The salt on the wound is the fact that ISPs usually have no competition. They usually have a monopoly on the area in which they operate.
Where I live, we have unlimited data that only gets throttled if you use a truly absurd amount (like if you’re constantly pirating large amounts of 4k movies or something). No caps or unexpected fees. Overall, I always felt like I had it pretty good, and I still think that…mostly.
The funny part is that my ISP had competition move to town recently. I kid you not, the week before the competition officially started up their service, my ISP sent a letter saying they were doubling my Internet speed for no extra charge.
They were trying to show how awesome they were but really it was the biggest slap in the fucking face. You’re telling me you were overcharging me that much for years?
Another issue is that advertising, which you never asked for, makes up part of your monthly data usage, as do routine and unavoidable downloads like security updates, video game patches, etc.
There isn’t much difference at all. Neither should have a cap.
Data moving across a network doesn’t have any per-unit cost to the people operating the network. Whether you use 5TB or 5GB doesn’t impact the bottom line of the ISPs at all.
The only justification for a data cap would be if they’ve overprovisioned their network and sold too many people plans that are too fast for their network to support, so they need to disincentivise people from actually using it. Even then that’s pretty shaky justification.
You have a datacap? Damn
Why not starlink? At that point I think it would be a nice investment.
It’s datacapped at 1TB before you get throttled, and the performance is always degrading, and you have to buy from an asshole.
I’d do it if I was desperate, but it’d essentially have to be the only option available.
In the Netherlands we complain a lot about gas prizes, costs of groceries. et cetera.
But regarding internet we have come a long way. Fiber is available to approximately 50% of the households currently (and they are expanding fast)
Mobile data is really seen as a commodity. 5G with unlimited data is €25/€30 a month (depending on the carrier). Although 5G in the Netherlands is not yet up to speed (3,5GHz will become available soon), the realistic speeds achieved are more then decent. (Benefit of having a crowded, flat country)
In the Netherlands we complain a lot
about gas prizes, costs of groceries. et cetera.Sorry, moest ik even fixen :)
On topic, I’m in NZ and we tend to be behind in things, but Internet here is awesome. NZ$95 for unlimited 900/500mbps. They are starting to roll out 2.5 gbps.
Funny, because it’s true
This is almost started price in Canada
Is it? I get 1.5Gbps for $80/mo no caps and I checked my tiny hometown and they have similar prices. This is in Ontario around Ottawa
In my rural town where the cottage is, XPloreNet finally brought fiber. I used to pay $140 for SpaceX (and because of the trees, I got at most 100 mbs of throughput). Now, with XPloreNet, I get consistent 100 mbs and my bill has been reduced to $75 per month. We pay too much for our Internet.
The sad thing is you only need one company to enter the market with aggressive prices so the others are forced to react (and admit they were abusing their clients).
That’s what happened in France with Free, and now everyone can have 15 to 30€ good internet. Caps are something never heard of. Later they did the same thing with mobile networks and now most of Europe have cheap unlimited no roaming etc. Zero company went bankrupt, they just had to learn how to reduce their margins.
As a result I have a 10Gb/10Gb fiber with tv for 40$
I’m paying 12$ a month for 300 mbps symmetric in India… Though not fair to directly convert into dollars
Edit: no caps on bandwidth
In Switzerland you get unlimited 10 Gbit/s for 50 bucks.
🔫 hand over the internet bill
I hate you, congrats!
In Canada we have to give our firstborn to a telecommunication monopoly for somewhat OK internet.
I pay 90 ish Canadian pesos for 1gb/1gb for Bell fibre. It’s not too bad depending on your location, though that price is still too high. I’m at least making good use of it. 12tb of total transfers this month.
I pay 80$ for 1gb/750mb with bell. I could upgrade to 3/3 for 120$ but then they’d change my modem and the homehub 3000 was the last one I could remove the transceiver and plug fiber directly in my server opnsense router.
Wait, how’d you get that with Bell? I’m pretty sure my plan is the same speeds for like… double that amount
I have a permanent $30 discount from when I signed up. Also, apologies, I mixed up the price with my cell plan. 90 not 60.
I’m in a new construction (1yo), we only have Bell. Used to pay around that for 1Gbps, then they had a promo for 1.5Gbps at the same price couple months after we moved in. Called to complain, they ended up bumping me at that speed.
Somewhat OK internet on the infrastructure our taxes paid for and the government handed over to Bell and Rogers, but don’t worry, they’ll stop all the other evil corporations from coming in and giving us cheaper internet.
what the hell
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A /48 is quite overkill for a home customer. Do you have 65536 LANs at home? Here in Belgium, we get a /56.
They’re just preparing for one day when you have your own personal swarm of nano bots
WTF? 25gbps? Dang we really do have shitty internet in the States.
Omg
Yeah, but those are metric bits so they are a little bit smaller.
And for 80$/month you can get 25Gbps!
Is it actually 10Gbit/s or just marketing? And how’s the latency?
The latency for 1Gbit/s is amazing, and i seem to get that speed. But i really don’t have the hardware for more anyways.
I’d be so screwed on that plan. According to my router, I’ve downloaded 5311 GB in the last 30 days, and uploaded 399 GB. Sure doesn’t feel like it in hindsight, but some family members are on YouTube all day every day, others constantly downloading new games on Steam, and my Plex media Server and *arr apps just chews through data.
I pay about $ 25 for unlimited 300 MBit/s, I also get 50 GB of data in all of the EU, 100 MB world wide roaming and 100 minutes world wide calling.
Oh, and it’s on my phone.
Yikes. I pay $80 a month for 1Gbps up and down with no data cap. It’s amazing what happens when one company doesn’t have a monopoly in an area. Prices go down and quality of service goes up.
*edit: replied to wrong comment
![[RANT] I pay $70/mo for this privilege](https://i.imgur.com/xEZZ9Hb.jpg){kind=link}