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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.
They also will pad their cable TV numbers by pricing Internet Only plans above Internet+TV plans. So to save money, you need to be counted as a cable TV subscriber even if you put the box in your closet and never plug it in.
I'm not in Comcast territory, but I'm not much better off. Time Warner Cable... I mean Charter is my only high-speed wired option.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
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.
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.
We need the government to build the infrastructure once, and then lease capacity to any ISP.
The government, or a commercial "last mile" provider, wires the area, then leases it out.
It's not optimal but really it ain't terrible either. I have 50Mbps cable at my house, but I go over to my parents at least every other weekend and they live further out - 3Mbps DSL is the best available in their area (I'm surprised they even have that available).
Honestly - if I were to download a file, it obviously goes a lot slower, but as far as just browsing the web and even watching Youtube videos on their Roku: The difference isn't even noticeable vs my connection at home.
Whether you want to call it "broadband" or not, DSL is still a perfectly functional and usable Internet connection (unlike dial-up where just browsing the web is slow to the point of being unusable).
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
Last mile is the problem. Last mile brought back to an aggregation point (COLO Facility), where MANY vendors vie for customers would SOLVE just about every problem we have with regulation and franchise agreements (government granted monopolies).
Imagine for a second, that the municipality owned that last mile, and leased it based on the customer/subscriber and the Vendor having a contract for service. Customer could order Comcast, Verizon, Charter, Netflix/Hulu, HBOnly or whatever . It might bring in the a la carte CATV we've all been wanting. I ONLY want ESPN and News, I don't want the 85 Shopping channels that you currently offer, unless you PAY me to take them.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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
How does AT&T stay in business?
Because, they pretty much own the Copper Cable Plant in the ground. Additionally, they really can't just "quit" copper, because all the old people with Landlines would freak out. They stay in business because the consequences of pulling out of COPPER landlines would be political suicide.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
they really can't just "quit" copper, because all the old people with Landlines would freak out.
Which is why they have an army of sales people trying to switch everybody to "u-verse". Yes, it's copper for the "last mile". But then it switches to fiber at a curbside box.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way