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A Step Closer (Or Not) To Cable ISP Diversity
Tom Veil writes: "Yahoo! posted a story saying that AT&T Broadband and Comcast have both made agreements to work with other ISPs in order to allow them to provide service through cable systems. The Earthlink/AT&T deal appears to be set at this point, but they haven't received FCC approval. Don't suppose this means we'll be seeing free NetZero cable, but hopefully competition will kick in and make things more affordable for cheapskates like me." Bear in mind that both companies provide cable Internet service and are seeking regulatory approval for a merger. They have good reason to sidestep suspicions that the result would be a strangling monopoly.
i work for one of the isp's thats going to get a shot at at&t's cable lines, and i have heard that we are going to be offering about 500k faster down, and 128k faster up than what at&t is currently offering, for a little bit less than what at&t is offering it. keep in mind, this is still in beta testing in a few places, and it might change between now and then. but from what i have heard it will be at least faster speeds for the same price as at&t is offering.
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Check this out: Qwest.
Their DSL service is pretty expensive, unless you want MSN. Of course, this is competition at work, right? They only carry two MSN packages, both slow, and both cheap. In fact, it's cheaper to get DSL *and* MSN then it is to get DSL by itself, without an ISP. I feel fucking robbed.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
I currently use Time Warner Road Runner after trying Earthlink's cable over Time Warner's line after being a Road Runner customer previously. "Competition" is about the worst word you could possibly come up with. Let me give some background.
In early 2000 I signed up for Road Runner. I liked the product but not the service, Road Runner customer service was awful. Last year as part of the AOL Time Warner deal, AOLTW had to open their cable lines to other providers, and Earthlink was the one they chose to go with in my area. Since I'd had problems with Road Runner I decided to give the Earthlink over TW cable a shot. I called to make the arrangements.
Signing up was easy enough. Within a week I had Road Runner taken off my cable bill and was going through Earthlink. At first the only difference was a new mailbox and new DNS servers. Then I started getting outages, downtime almost every week. Without failure I was getting days every week when there was simply no cable modem service. When I called up the Earthlink number they said they had no known problems and told me to call my cable company. So when I called Time Warner they didn't even want to talk to me since I wasn't really their customer.
My experience was much worse with Earthlink than with Road Runner. In my opinion, Time Warner was doing something to interrupt the Earthlink service over their cable lines. Earthlink support people were very nice and sympathetic but they literally had no power to do anything about my problem. And Time Warner, well they could give a shit because I was paying Earthlink and not them. They didn't want to help me. While I can't prove it I am positive that it was intentional. Time Warner did something to make Earthlink over TW Cable FUBAR while Road Runner over TW Cable was running OK.
The end result. My connection using Earthlink over TW cable lines was up and down, flaky at best. Outages lasting a day at a time, every week. Earthlink wanted to help but they couldn't, because it was a physical problem with the cable (supposedly) that they couldn't control. But Time Warner DIDN'T want to help because I was Earthlink's customer instead of Road Runner's. I wound up cancelling the Earthlink and going back to Road Runner after less than a month. And naturally I wound up losing money in the deal because I had to pay Earthlink for the full month that I didn't use, then I had to resubscribe for Road Runner.
If you think using another provider over your cable company's cable is a good idea, think again. It's the same shit as DSL. Just like the phone companies make it about impossible to get DSL service from someone else, and just like the phone company and your third party DSL provider keep sending you back and forth when you have a tech problem.. the cable company will do the same thing if you try to get another provider over the cable lines.
Don't bother. It's still a monopoly plain and simple. Offering "competition" is a bullshit guise, because it's still the local cable company's fiber, and if there are physical problems, the local cable co does NOT want to help you!!
>> I'd bitch like hell if I was only getting 300kilobytes per second.
I'd bitch like hell if my cable provider, who previously provided me with 300KB/s, decided to start providing 600KB/s at the same price to please the warez kiddies and one-handed surfers, and went out of business because of it.
If you were in the broadband ISP business, you'd know they are already *severely* underpricing their bandwidth, compared to what they pay for it upstream. Gouging themselves even more for users who just want more freebies, would just be insanity on their part.
By purchasing a resale cable modem service you are setting yourself up for an enormous disappointment. There are many telco companies that re-sell Verizon service, on Verizon lines. If something goes wrong and you need a tech to come out, the company that takes your money can't touch your lines, they have to have Verizon come out and fix your problem, which will almost always take at least 2 weeks to fix. If AT&T sells cable modem and your service goes out, it will be weeks before you are back up. If you think the 3 day wait you get angry about now is bad, you will be in for a wake up call. Trust me on this one. It will make AT&T look like the good guys. They will be able to boast that "their" service is better, even though it is identical. Your tech support will not have access to the UBR's to check the power levels or see what your modem's IP is. They will not be able to clear the host on the UBR's if you want to switch computers, they will not be able to see you coming online. The will just have you power-cycle your modem, and if that doesn't work the only thing for them to do is to send an AT&T tech to your home 2 weeks later, and the problem might not even be with the service. It would be a nightmare choosing a service that uses AT&T's lines.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The story is a dupe, the topic is boring, the facts weren't checked. WE GET IT!!
I run an internet provider with dial, wired, and wireless access products. We charge $34.95 for a plain ol' dial account and I don't think its enough.
/29 will be available for those that want to firewall without NAT, and we'll do proper DNS for them as well. We *will* cap their monthly throughput if it gets excessive - I'm not selling 1.2 mbit throughput for $80/mo - its meant to be used in a burstable fashion.
Yes, you heard right, $34.95. Of course, we only aggregate customers 4:1 on the inbound T1 and the path to the net is set up to treat them very well. People who *need* dial up, I mean really need it for a VPN or Citrix session, don't mind $34.95 at all - they're thrilled to get something that works.
When Cox opens their net to us we'll be pushing something like a $80/mo cable connection to our network for home users. It'll have a single static public IP, a
The real big motivation in opening the network isn't competition in the realm of low prices - cable service is plenty cheap at $50 and I'd be happy if Cox unfornicated their peering/latency issues and charged 50% more. I'm excited about it because I can provide premium service on a layer 2 link that costs $30/mo and reaches places DSL and wireless will never go.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo