Internet Complaints (or: ISP rant)

[Issac]

I am so sick and tired of my ISP. They are near impossible to get in touch with, you have to sit for hours in telephone queues, and they always refuse that they have any problems. We have TV, home telephone and internet through them, and even if everything dies at once (No TV signal, internet stops working and trying to call our phone results in a voice saying that it can't connect) - they claim that they don't see any trouble on their end. It's just our phones, modems, and digital boxes that breaks down on the exact same time by chance. ... and then magically repairs themselves again after a couple of hours or days (also at the exact same time).

Now I've been waiting for a long time to send this post, wanted to attach a screenshot of the speedtest result I've gotten the last few weeks. But after 10 minutes it isn't even halfway done with the test.
But at the moment the download speed is at 0.11 Megabit per second... Bits! not Bytes... That's around 13 Kilobytes per second. That's incredibly slow in this day and age.

We are paying $35 monthly for 25 Mbit download speed (excluding TV fees and telephone fees).

I'm pissed off. Slow internet is rage inducing!!!

I just had to let out some steam! Have you guys experienced something like this, or are you currently doing so?
Let those complaints loose!

 

[migles]

i need to ask, why you don't just change for another isp?

 

[yusuo]

And you you didn't share the name of your isp so people could avoid like the plague

 

[The Catboy]

Wait you pay 35$ a month? I have to pay well over $150+ for Comcast and those people are assholes. They keep decreasing my speed and or just have the most unstable connection for cable internet. I used to get a more stable connection from Time Warner and paid less than half what I pay now.
Comcast also owns all the wires here, so we can't even switch ISP's and they even bought out the apartment complex I live in, so it's Comcast or nothing.

 

[WiiCube_2013]

In UK whatever ISP it may be it seems like they all blocked the popular torrent sites so I'm forced to use proxy IPs.

I remember when I was in Portugal (during August) that I didn't need proxies to access *torrent website's name* unlike here. :-/

 

[ferret7463]

hey Issac, I was having the same problem out of crumcast. I started keeping a record of when and how long my net be out. ( Noted every time the temp got above 85 F, it would go out) I would only pay the % that i had the net with a note stating why. needless to say, they cut me off after 2 months. I went to a much slower ( faster than dial up) but stable net service. I am a lot happier now.

 

[Armadillo]

In UK whatever ISP it may be it seems like they all blocked the popular torrent sites so I'm forced to use proxy IPs.

I remember when I was in Portugal (during August) that I didn't need proxies to access *torrent website's name* unlike here. :-/

Court order, so not really the ISPs fault .

 

[vassildador]

The situation over here is quite unfortunate... We can choose between 2 ISPs:

Belgacom

Pros:

• Has no data limit
• Relatively cheap (€ ~40-60/month)
• As far as I'm aware, no censoring
• Freedom! (All ports are available, can use your own router, ...)

Cons:

• Not getting anywhere near the advertised speed ("depends on your location" BS). We paid for 35 Mb/s, we got 4.

Telenet
Pros:

• Ridiculously fast (talking 120-130 Mb/s)

Cons:

• Expensive (€ ~80-100 a month)
• Draconian data limits (300GB / month)
• Censored all kinds of torrent websites, although Tor can be used to circumvent this
• Likes to randomly raise the price
• Blocks all incoming ports <= 1024
• Need to use their router and can only access a very limited set of parameters through their web tools

So yeah, you can pretty much pick your poison... cheap, uncensored but slow internet, or blazing fast, expensive and censored internet

 

[Issac]

Why not changing?
Because we live in a place with 30 other houses (not apartments) where everyone has the same system: TV, internet and phone through that one company.

And I didn't share the name since I didn't think anyone here would care about who they are (or that anyone has them outside of Sweden). They're called Tele2 and are active in Sweden, Estonia, Croatia, Lithuania, Latvia, The Netherlands, Norway, Germany, Austria and Kazakhstan.

Crystal... $150+ just for your home internet??? Well I knew internet was quite awesome in general in Sweden, but damn.. I didn't think it was that expensive wherever you live :o There's no data limit here either, and no blocked sites.
Then again, I pay $65 for my smart phone (5GB @ 4G speed (up to 80 Mbps) + 4000 SMS and MMS + 4000 minutes of phone talking to all the nordic countries).

ferret: I noticed the temperature has an impact on this crap as well, but both high and low temperatures. when we had up towards 95 F this summer things stopped working, and the same last winter on days near -13 F...

Edit:

For $40 a month you'll get 100 Mbps, for $80 you'll get 250 Mbps!! Unlimited data, uncensored.
The thing is the stability that just doesn't work well at all!

Edit2:

By the way, it seems like there is something strange with my house.
Was going to stream a football game but it was one of those days when the speed was at 0.5 Mbps. My dad has a mobile 4G router (same ISP) at work where we checked and had full 40+ Mbps speed. So he took the router home (3 minute car ride), we plug it in and set it up and we get 1.7 Mbps speed.

 

[Minox]

Issac: This wouldn't happen to be a DSL-connection, would it?

 

[james50a]

shit i wish i had ur internet XD i get max 1200kb down in canada from bell and 100kb up for 60$ a month with only 80gb of TOTAL data usage per month (this is uploading and downloading). on the plus side though no censorship bullshit (but it comes with mcfee so kinda worse (for those who dont know mcfee likes to delete files it doesnt like and theres no way to tell it to go to hell. this includes cracks for games which no other virus scaner ever detects as a virus))

 

[vassildador]

Wait you pay 35$ a month? I have to pay well over $150+ for Comcast and those people are assholes. They keep decreasing my speed and or just have the most unstable connection for cable internet. I used to get a more stable connection from Time Warner and paid less than half what I pay now.
Comcast also owns all the wires here, so we can't even switch ISP's and they even bought out the apartment complex I live in, so it's Comcast or nothing.

Isn't that considered a monopoly, and completely illegal ? Our ISPs had to open up their cables to third parties so they could "buy" some bandwidth and resell it.

shit i wish i had ur internet XD i get max 1200kb down in canada from bell and 100kb up for 60$ a month with only 80gb of TOTAL data usage per month (this is uploading and downloading). on the plus side though no censorship bullshit (but it comes with mcfee so kinda worse (for those who dont know mcfee likes to delete files it doesnt like and theres no way to tell it to go to hell. this includes cracks for games which no other virus scaner ever detects as a virus))

Yeah, I've heard of Canadian ISP's being the worst of the worst... it's incredible how they can simply continue to overcharge their customers for incredibly shitty services and get away with it.

 

[Issac]

Issac: This wouldn't happen to be a DSL-connection, would it?

(Some words in Swedish since I don't know what to call it all in English (These will be in quotation marks))
Nope, it's that "Tre hål i väggen" thing they promoted some years ago. You know when they updated the "TV-uttag" to have three connections instead of two (Radio - TV - Internet).
It's this crap: http://www.tele2.se/bredband/25mbit-bredband.aspx

 

[dicamarques]

AMEN! ISP on the world are ALL F*cked up, they only think about money.

 

[Chary]

Used to have AT&T, that was a nightmare. Then I jumped to Comcast which is a...slightly less nightmare.

 

[trumpet-205]

Look for business Internet services. They are more expensive than regular Internet services, but they come with up-time guarantee which typical Internet services do not have.

 

[Lumstar]

Whidbey Telecom has like 6mbps for $30. Slow, but reliable enough. No signs of censorship or a data limit. AFAIK I lack usenet and IPv6 support.

 

[trumpet-205]

Whidbey Telecom has like 6mbps for $30. Slow, but reliable enough. No signs of censorship or a data limit. AFAIK I lack usenet and IPv6 support.

Here in California I have to pay $50 for a 6 Mbps services. I do get IPv6 via 6rd.

 

[marcus134]

shit i wish i had ur internet XD i get max 1200kb down in canada from bell and 100kb up for 60$ a month with only 80gb of TOTAL data usage per month

drop Bell asap, you can get much cheaper and faster service from youmano, teksavvy and others.

 

[endoverend]

I pay 55$/month for 100Mbit/s internet with Charter, and I don't have much trouble. Super cheap (I was originally paying this for 30mbit/s, but they tripled it for free ) and it's the fastest typically availible residential internet (besides google fiber, which isn't in my area). Safe to say I'm happy.