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Cable Expands Broadband Domination as AT&T and Verizon Lose Customers (arstechnica.com)
The cable industry's grip on the U.S. broadband space increased last quarter, with Comcast and Charter gaining nearly 500,000 subscribers, combined. Phone companies AT&T, Verizon, CenturyLink, and Frontier, however, all lost Internet customers. ArsTechnica reports:The 14 largest ISPs, accounting for 95 percent of the US market, gained 192,510 Internet customers in Q2 2016, bringing the total to 91.9 million, Leichtman Research Group reported today. Cable companies accounted for all of the gains, adding 553,293 subscribers for a new total of 57 million. The phone companies lost 360,783 subscribers, bringing them down to 34.9 million. Phone companies' losses more than doubled since Q2 2015, when they lost about 150,000 subscribers. [...] Comcast and Charter, the two biggest ISPs, led the way in subscriber gains. Comcast added 220,000 broadband subscribers to boost its total to 24 million, while Charter (the new owner of Time Warner Cable) added 277,000 subscribers for a new total of 21.8 million. AT&T lost 123,000 subscribers, lowering its total to 15.6 million. Verizon lost 83,000, leaving it with 7 million Internet customers. CenturyLink and Frontier lost 66,000 and 77,000, respectively.
Of course the companies that rely heavily on DSL lost customers to faster connections. DSL is today's dial up.
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It's Information Highway robbery!
DSL has always been slower than cable, the only reason anybody ever thought otherwise is because the telcos spread FUD about cable being a shared medium. What they conveniently left out was the fact that the backbone is shared no matter what media is used, meanwhile DSL being on inferior voice grade copper has to use interleaving to prevent insane amounts of packet loss, which means retransmits that count against your rated speed with accompanying deliberate latency to compensate for jitter, in addition to the fact that they never heard of 802.1x, instead relying on PPP for authentication, which gave you about 15% layer 2 overhead that also counts against your rated speed.
Care to share your findings?
call it what you will, i'd rather have slower if it was actually cheaper.... and in relation to speed, NOT just 5 bucks cheaper for 5mbit vs 30... which is a fucking sham.
when we signed up years ago, we signed up for 3mbit speed. that's all we needed then, it's still all we need today. yet we went from $29 for 3mbit to somehow paying $69 for 30 (but only getting 15) without ever changing or upgrading anything. and that's the cheapest thing they have. WE WANT OUR SLOWER, CHEAPER SPEED BACK, CHARTER. FUCK YOU. one size does NOT fit all, it only fits your bottom line.
I called AT&T to consider their DSL against my cable company's attempt to hike prices a little. Usually, the sales department of any organization is exceptionally strong. Not AT&T.
Me: I'd like to sign up for service.
AT&T Guy: [Babbles on about service area something or email accounts or the AT&T web site for 2 minutes. Nothing to do with price or signing me up.]
(After getting tired of the script reading which has nothing do with what I want ...)
Me: "Stop right there. AT&T has a price offered on the internet of [price]. If I can get that price, I sign up. Can I sign up for that price --- YES OR NO?"
AT&T Guy: "No."
Me: "Ok, thank you for your time."
How does AT&T stay in business? It's like a self-aware bureaucracy of red tape, even their sales department isn't sales oriented.
... relying on PPP for authentication, which gave you about 15% layer 2 overhead that also counts against your rated speed.
FWIW, not all DSL providers use PPPoE. At least not here in Canada.
The only reason I am off AT&T and on Time Warner is because AT&T capped their services as leverage to try to force you to subscribe to Direct TV or Uverse TV. (unlimited internet access if you subscribe to TV).
I didn't want to pay 30 dollars a month for an extra service that I won't use, so ironically I had to call up the TV provider, and subscribe to their internet only plan, for cheaper than AT&T.
They tried forcing their customers to pay for their dumb mistake of acquiring Direct TV, and it didn't work.
In other news, pay TV subscriptions drop 665,000 in the second quarter, 2016
http://www.leichtmanresearch.c...
Maybe many those slow DSL and satellite video subscribers moved to cable companies to get the speed they need for streaming video entertainment.
In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act. George Orwell
I had the same problem. AT&T refused to give me DSL on my AT&T copper line in CA because they had uverse and insisted on that or nothing. So I buy via a 3rd party provider, using AT&T's DSLAM and infrastucture, and actually pay less than AT&T would have charged me for DSL.
The root problem is that the ISPs in USA want to sell their non-ISP services, and price the services accordingly. E.G. Cable + internet is just a few dollars more than internet only.
Comcast is in the TV business, selling you to the premium programming providers.
Don't forget, Comcast owns 100% of NBC and a large portion of cable TV channels.
They're also in the movie business; as they own a number of studios as a result of Universal ownership
They're also in the sports business, as CSN has an unholy amount of agreements and prior to the agreement with the FCC over buying NBC/Universal, they were distributing them by fiber. Why? They have to negotiate carriage if it's uplinked by satellite. (FCC may have changed this, I haven't kept up.)
They own a chunk of Hulu.
I can't remember the unholy list of other things they own.
I change between cable & Verizon dsl or fios depending on price.
I don't believe you. When you subscribe to FiOS; they disconnect your copper and have no way of going back to it. It is *extremely* difficult to keep copper unless you are a business, or have some major legitimate reason for keeping copper. In which case; they will charge you for an extra line.
Huh? Oh you mean for the phone line... Yea, if Verizon/Frontier is your LEC and they have installed FIOS and you didn't have another cable option, then you are up the optical creek. But I dare say that's not very common. I know of new construction areas where this is true, where they never put in copper, and they are stuck with one option, but this is not very common around here.
At my home, they installed FIOS about 10 years ago. They left the TWC copper connection dangling and just hooked up the FIOS ONT cable to my house wiring that way. I can *easily* switch back and forth between the two options and get cable, phone and internet from either or both. I haven't switched off of FIOS though, so I don't know if they left the copper in working order or cut it when they where burying the optical run, but I don't really care. TWC would gladly bury another wire for me when I switch. I have a feeling I won't have to wait too much longer though, I'm not happy with Frontier's customer service so I'm likely going to dump the fiber for awhile once my contract is up and they start bumping up my rates again.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
This. Plus the fact that in many areas, especially urban ones. The infrastructure for telcos is shit. In my downtown, the cables running from the CO have at least 30% that are not good enough for DSL. The cost to gig up downtown to replace 1930s and 40s wiring is too great and left alone. Many more outlying areas have newer and better infrastructure, but long line lengths to the CO to deal with. DSL is lose lose all around, and the LECs will die from it.
Silence is a state of mime.