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.

  • eatstorming@lemmy.worldEnglish
    0·
    1 year ago

    Data caps are everywhere, I’m not sure why you’d think they’re a thing of the past. I believe the scenario is more like “you’re lucky if your plan doesn’t have caps” instead.

    1.5T/month is uncomfortable though. One of my VPN services has a 1T/month softcap (speed drastically reduces after that) and it’s usually fine for my household, but one person going crazy on YouTube rabbit holes or us binging something on Netflix, pushes that limit fast.

    Terrible scenario, but unfortunately I think there’s too much money involved for the right thing to be done and this kind of service getting the treatment it should have.

    • Anamana@feddit.deEnglish
      0·
      1 year ago

      No Datacaps for landline in Europe yeah… In many EU countries you can also buy a mobile flat without caps for like 40€.

      The US just doesn’t have a good consumer lobby.

      • Tetsuo@jlai.luEnglish
        0·
        1 year ago

        Sorry if this is nitpicking but as far as I know, there is no such thing as unlimited mobile data plans.

        In most contracts they will say that you have to use reasonably the data plan and you cannot for example constantly max out your connection. Like 24/7 constant max bandwidth used.

        In most case it doesn’t really matter but I really don’t like the fact that ISPs get to say it’s unlimited when it definitely isn’t.

        It’s unlimited*

        • Some restrictions may apply.
        • Anamana@feddit.deEnglish
          0·
          1 year ago

          I don’t know where you live, but here in Austria you can get truly unlimited ones. People also use them instead of landline connections without any issues.

          • cmeerw@programming.devEnglish
            0·
            1 year ago

            And depending where you live that might or might not work out well for you. If too many people in your neighbourhood use too much mobile data at the same time as you, speeds will decrease and unlimited data plans in particular will be throttled.

            • Anamana@feddit.deEnglish
              0·
              1 year ago

              Never got into it that deep myself, I just know other people who never had issues. Prime-time streaming in full hd etc.

              But I’m also pretty sure you can sue them, if they can’t keep up the advertised speeds over longer time. Obv only when the infrastructure is actually available.

              • cmeerw@programming.devEnglish
                0·
                1 year ago

                You can sue anyone for anything, but no one is advertising any guaranteed speeds for mobile broadband, so your chances will be fairly limited. Best you can do is withdrawing from your contract.

                • Anamana@feddit.deEnglish
                  0·
                  1 year ago

                  For unlimited data contracts you can usually pay different amounts for different speeds. They actively advertise with those maximum speeds and if you can never reach them, even tho they are available at your location, you can report them to a federal agency and take legally warranty claims.