I ask because I feel I need to save some money in the oncoming months. Currently, I pay over $76 for 100MBps/1000GB cap. And I don’t think it’s a bad deal, but they’re going to be hiking it up to $90+ by next October and I feel it is not worth that. But I also need to save money too.
What is the difference between 55MB and 100MB when it comes to speed? The cap for the 55MBps plan is 350GB and I tried asking if that could be altered but the ISP says they can’t. This plan will cost me $30 a month.
All I ever do anymore is just stream YouTube, sometimes Hulu/Netflix/Tubi. Occasionally I’ll download a game or two, multiplayer gaming is non-existent.
Edit: There’s been a lot of good responses replied to this and I appreciate it.
I’m leaning towards on downgrading with the volume of people that suggest that it isn’t that bad, but it boils down to preferences and habitual behaviors when using the internet. With so many games already downloaded and being left to just streaming/Second Life, I think it warrants the change.
I just wish that my ISP would’ve kicked up the cap to 500GB because that’d sweeten the deal much more but this ISP is not well known and these kind of ISPs operate on different worlds than the big names.
Furthermore, people have suggested going 5G Wireless but the problem with that is that my apartment management is stingy as fuck so it’s not an option for me nor does Verizon say that they can offer a plan in my current location. Fiber connections such as Google Fiber, MetroNet .etc aren’t an option.
Century Link seems to only offer $70 for…10MB in my location (Fucking awful)
Mediacom says they can’t even service my area (then how come I see your vans around where I am with other customers?)
Speed should be the same (as in ping), the bandwidth is half of it. If you are alone 50Mb/s should be more than enought for people who don’t need to download huge amounts of data quickly.
So if you don’t build operating systems from source code, don’t need to download huge games on a regular basis, don’t work as a editor with huge video files you share with others, don’t do p2p pirating, and similar things, I don’t think you will see a big difference.
If you’re a big family where everyone starts streaming youtube or twitch/netflix or do alot of voice/IP calls when they come home at the same time, then you will feel the difference.
I’m betting $100 on you running back to your ISP’s nearest office to extend your plan within a week.
You have data caps in the US??? I pay 40 euros a month for a 2Gb/s connection in France with no data cap.
You guys get more than 1MB/s?
You guys get less than a gigabit?
Last summer I switched to Tmo 5G home internet. At my location it beats the 100/20 cable plan I had at half the price. YMMV, my last house only 1/4 mile away it was unusably slow, like 20/1
5G fixed wireless is the way. I could pay Cox $120/mo for a 500Mbps cable line with a data cap, or I could pay Verizon $60/mo for 5G and get 1200Mbps with no BS fake data cap.
5G home internet is cheap because not a lot of people have it yet. Jump on the train now OP before it gets more expensive.
The only catch is that you have to make sure you have good line-of-sight to the tower before you order. That’s the key to getting good speeds. Look out your windows and try to find some 5G antennas. In my neighborhood they’re installed on the light poles.
That said, even if you can only get LTE service, chances are it’ll still be cheaper and faster than the competition in your area. So it still might be worth it to look into it.
I thought I was overpaying for my 1500Mbps at £75
Thank you EU for your many blessings.
lol now comes australia: $109 for 100/40, and that’s a good deal because our conservative government fucked everything and pissed away $40bn
To me in Italy, which generally has shitty internet by europe standards, your rates are horrifingly terrible, expensive, and inexplicably capped. I pity your network
I was on 50 max for a while, it’s perfectly fine for pretty much everything but big downloads will take longer
(I was gaming online on voice chat at the same time my family was streaming and there wasn’t any issue)
I have just upgraded to 500mb for about £35 a month though your pricing is rough
Make sure you’re not mixing up MBps and Mbps. Internet speed is almost always measured in megabits (Mbps) not megaBytes (MBps), the former being 1/8 of the equivalent megabytes per second.
55 megaBYTES per second is just fine, that’s a full HD movie download in about 3 minutes. 55 megaBITS would be about 24 minutes for the same thing. Would that matter to you? No idea. But if you’re currently at 100, everything would take about twice as long as before the switch regardless.
I went from 100 Mb/s to 50 Mb/s about 1.5 years ago, and to be honest it is enough but can be an annoyance. Streaming is no Problem, even two concurrent 4k streams work (tried on youtube, Netflix and Disney+). Downloads just take a while so if you have to download larger files you need to plan ahead a bit. Also, streaming while performing large downloads is tricky. In order to avoid constant buffering you’ll need to either significantly reduce your streams quality or set um some priorisation rules on your network.
I’ve been gaming and streaming most of my life with sub-30mbps download and sub 15 upload speeds, didn’t have symmetrical 50+ until a year ago.
As others have said, you have to plan ahead. If you need to download something large, let it be and go do something else while it does its thing. Streaming high quality on two screens or more is doable but you’ll buffer eventually.
You can probably set up some rules on your router to prioritise whatever device you deem most important, however. Although, if its important enough to warrant a rule on your router, it would probably be better to just plug an ethernet cable in anyway.
May I ask what city and state you live in? These options seem terrible.
Des Moines Iowa.
Yes I know the options are terrible and I am aware if alternative ISPs but my apartment management only offers just one ISP. It is not Verizon or any other big name, just some not so well known company with a site design from the 90s in every bad way.
May I humbly suggest Verizon 5G home internet. I checked and it’s widely available in Des Moines. Around $45 a month with a discount if you also have Verizon mobile. 300mbps down and like 30 up. No caps. It’s just a white box that uses cell towers, so you are not limited to whatever shitty service your apartment complex has contracted with. I used it for 2 or 3 years in Providence, RI, and it was terrific. Cheap, fast enough for my work needs and streaming on 2 TVs, and I never had any problems.
Tried doing an area search, only got a form for my address to notify me when service is available.
Oh bummer. I used city hall as the address, since that’s all I had to go on.
Note to self. Do not move to Des Moines. I pay $60/mo for symmetrical gig (1000 Mbps) with no cap.
Try tmobile’s wireless internet. They usually have an option to try free for 30 days. Depending on where you live it can be a great alternative.
Why does your apartment management have a say in it?
If there are other providers in the area then you likely already have lines running to your place and shouldn’t need their sign off on it.
Because they are the shitty kind. Here is what I do not get, I have seen CenturyLink and Mediacom vans come in my area. I assume it is to service people’s connections or other things. If my apartment management tells me that VisionSystems is all that they can offer, why do I see vans from other ISPs come here?
And Mediacom isnt too far from us either.
Mediacom and CenturyLink claim to not service my building though so something is not adding up.
That is really shady. Unless you live in a rent controlled apartment I’d be curious if they even have legal recourse if you used another provider unless there was damage to the apartment.
You could probably force the complex to let you use whatever provider you wanted as long as the infrastructure (conduits in the ground etc) is there and it probably is. But I would likely be a very annoying fight.
More than likely they are getting a kickback from the ISP to inform users that they are the only option.
We have a (kind of) similar situation here. Our complex has these devices installed by the local electric company that turns our water heater on and off on some randomized schedule that is claimed to be based off of our usage and the local time. We were never told about this device and it’s not in our contract. On top of that, the property management group gets a kickback for every one that is installed in a unit.
We don’t have the most stable schedules (random schedules, night shift, day shift, etc) so of course the device couldn’t figure it’s shit out and was just shutting our water heater off at different times. I had to call the power company to have them disable it.
There has been a history of corporate things like this happening where providers do shady shit, kinda like gangs having their own territory and “agreements” not to sell dope in each other’s area to keep their profits stable and not mess with each other or whatever other reasoning it may be.
My point is, there is more than likely some shady business practices going on between the ISPs and the property management.
This practice is allowed and it sucks. Try wireless.
Maybe T-Mobile home Internet is good enough?
I was thinking the opposite. I have 1 option for “high speed” in my town, and it’s $90 for 12Mbps that rarely actually gets to that speed. I just barely switched to starlink and it’s been amazing.
Yeah that’s pretty cheeks pricing. I pay less than double that for symmetrical gig speed.
I pay $65 a month for Verizon Fios with Symmetrical gigabit
Tell me where you live. I want to go to there.
Massachusetts lol. Rent will run you $2500 a month, and houses start at $500K. Taxes aren’t great either. Welcome!
DSL is the only thing available-outside of Starlink–in my area. My service is rated at 25Mbps. For almost everything it’s fine. It will take most of a day to download a PS5 game, but it’s fine for streaming video.
Wow that is expensive.
In NZ I’m on a 300/100 plan with no data cap, for $77/month. That is about $43USD/month.
I have 800/300, no caps, for like 30€/month. Those prices are insane.
It definitely is, middle of nowhere Indiana here - I’m getting 1000/1000 for $95 and no cap. But I’m lucky enough to be in a location with competition, lots of areas in the US only have one option so they get charged whatever the ISP wants.
95 fucking dollars a month?!? And you reckon that’s a good deal?
I’d call it Stockholm syndrome but even the Swedish know you’re getting fucked up the ass 😂
It’s a better fucking deal than $76 for 55mbps lol
For ~$100USD/month 4000/4000, no caps.
For ~$80USD/month 2000/2000, no caps.
For ~$60USD/month 1000/1000, no caps.
I pay $5 for 100Mb/no cap. I’m not from the US though
That is cheap compared to NZ
I pay that much for 6/0.512
I’m not sure what to say…that really sucks.
I pay $15 / mo for 600 Mbps symetric in Thailand. But I go off the beaten path with just my cell as a hotspot which is 10 Mbps for $90 annually. I can do almost anything I want with even those speeds—just make sure you are blocking ads (uBlock + DNS) to stop all the sludge from gauming up your pipes.
