Upgrading My Internet Speed - Costly!

I'm on a 1GB connection now, and it's an excellent service. I'm paying $54 a month. They offered to upgrade me to 2GB at $60. Well, that's a no-brainer!! Shut up and take my money!! Then she said, okay, with taxes and equipment that will be $75 a month! I said what happened to $60?!?! So I had to pass, as that $15 more is out of my budget range. It's actually $19 over what I pay now.

How much do you guys pay for your Internet? Am I paying too much? About right? Do you think $75 for 2GB is a fair price? I may haggle with them for a longer lease for a cheaper price.

Thanks!

I have 1GB Verizon FiOS. I have no burning desire to spend more money for the 2GB service they keep offering, I just don't see that it would make any difference to me operationally. I still have 1GB Ethernet in my network in any case.

snerd said:

I'm on a 1GB connection now, and it's an excellent service. I'm paying $54 a month.

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Count your blessings! I pay a helluva lot more than that!!!

Edwin said:

Count your blessings! I pay a helluva lot more than that!!!

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Yeah AT&T fiber here 1gb and it's like 73.00 a month. Ripple fiber wants 85.00 1gb and 95.00 2gb. I read reviews on Ripple and they are not very good. Mostly poor service calls and tech support.

flhthemi said:

Yeah AT&T fiber here 1gb and it's like 73.00 a month. Ripple fiber wants 85.00 1gb and 95.00 2gb. I read reviews on Ripple and they are not very good. Mostly poor service calls and tech support.

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I've had very minimal issue with the Verizon FiOS all the time I've had it, I initially got it installed in 2008 when it was available in my township and at our location.

I had one issue that lasted weeks that ended up being a very expensive piece of equipment in the CO, I was told around $25K. The service guy that came about the 4th time I called knew what it was, he was the one that knew it was really expensive. Armed with that information I was able to jawbone Verizon to finally replacing that CO equipment and restoring full service. Apparently, it only affected a small group of customers, so Verizon was dragging their feet on replacing it until we got together and got pretty vocal!

That's the only significant issue I've ever had, and even during multi-day power outages at our old house, the FiOS kept working when the power lines were on the ground.

snerd said:

I'm on a 1GB connection now, and it's an excellent service. I'm paying $54 a month. They offered to upgrade me to 2GB at $60. Well, that's a no-brainer!! Shut up and take my money!! Then she said, okay, with taxes and equipment that will be $75 a month! I said what happened to $60?!?! So I had to pass, as that $15 more is out of my budget range. It's actually $19 over what I pay now.

How much do you guys pay for your Internet? Am I paying too much? About right? Do you think $75 for 2GB is a fair price? I may haggle with them for a longer lease for a cheaper price.

Thanks!

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Residing in a senior living community, where the Wi-Fi is 'free', we survive at 25Mbps....

Think your internet is pricey? Try living on an island with only two providers—£178 ($237 USD) per month for 1000/200.

I'm at $119.00 a month for 1GB Cable and I don't even get the full GB because my older router/modem only gives me 720 - 740 Mbps.

I am on Starlink for 120.00 a month. Average 437 down and 42 up.

snerd said:

How much do you guys pay for your Internet? Am I paying too much? About right? Do you think $75 for 2GB is a fair price? I may haggle with them for a longer lease for a cheaper price.

Thanks!

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I pay just shy of $100USD for 1GB/1GB. $75 for 2GB is more than fair in my opinion.

z3r010 said:

£178 ($237 USD) per month for 1000/200.

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Steep!!!
I'm just over $100CAD for the same.

Edwin said:

Steep!!!
I'm just over $100CAD for the same.

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I also have Starlink as a backup, but need a static IP so using that full time isn't an option.

Not in the US, nor in any island in the middle of the Pacific - About $47 for 500/30 Mbps, including cable TV.

Here in not so sunny Manchester, I pay just £94 for my 1Gbps connection (1137/108) with Virgin Media but this also includes a Mega Lite TV Package on top. Originally they wanted just over £160 per month after a lot of loops and haggling they managed to get it down to just £94 after threating to leave them.

Hi,

In France US$ 26 for 500 up and down. Usually it does 400 Mbps at a typical Sunday evening.

Ciao, Han

1Gbps unlimited up / down €37 that's around USD 40 per month incl tax-- note 1 Tbps in some areas being trialled for ???? but 1Gbps seems plenty enough even for streaming 4K UHD movies with 2 / 3 people in the property doing that at the same time. Absolutely no probs if say 6 people streaming on Netflix / Amazon etc concurrently at standard full HD (1080p).

@han jansen - when I've been working in france Internet is pretty reliable and cheap for temporary workers -- never had a problem with it almost anywhere - even works in the Paris Metro OK.

Cheers
jimbo

The UK is generally more competitive in general due to extensive competition.

I pay £25 per month for full fibre 900 mbps and also a good 5g mobile phone plan (100 GB data, free calls, free texts) for £8 per month aa a vodafone bundle.

Interestingly, the older copper wire broadband does not appear to be much cheaper even at speeds of say 30 mbps.

At first, this seems disproportionate but a thing often not understood about the older copper wire system was a there waa a cost of renting the copper wire lines as its infrastructure are mostly owned by BT. In many cases the rent was over 60% of the cost, and rest by service provider.

However the newer full fibre cable system no longer charges rent but has higher ISP charges.

The key difference is that the maintenance of the new fibre infrastructure is carried by the ISP not the end user (the old copper wire end user charge was a monopoly in effect and not competitive).

With the ongoing digital switchover, and ISP can provide a telephone line rather than via BT and many provide a voip service via the broadband router often included as part of the broadband lease free of charge (some disingenously charge a fee as well).

The two key issues are that

1) landline calls do not work on a power cut. This is a particular concern for elderly or disabled people who do not have a mobile phone.

My battery backed telecare system now uses the mobile phone emergency infrastucture (you can make emergency calls at no charge

2) telephone extensions do longer work. It os possible to make modifications to fix this but is generally cheaper to simply use a DECT wireless phone setup).

One thing that annoys me is ISP provided routers have an analogue telephone port to connect existing telephones, but third party routers do not.

I wanted wifi 6E but provider only provided slightly slower wifi 5 ghz connections. This makes replacement of ISP routers with 3rd party routers more complicated.

In the end, I now just daisy chain the 3rd party router to ISP router via a short ethernet cable. The ISP router is effectively just a switch now but still fully functional (including landline) if 3rd party router fails.

retexan599 said:

Residing in a senior living community, where the Wi-Fi is 'free', we survive at 25Mbps....

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Not too far behind you, my friend.

snerd said:

Not too far behind you, my friend.

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just go for what you need. 25 Mbps while slow for loads is fine if you aren't streaming 4 or 8 K UHD video or forever downloading a load of stuff. It works perfectly OK for streaming Netflix etc at standard (1080p) definition if there aren't concurrent users and is perfectly OK for most file sharing etc.

Cheers
jimbo