Selfhosted

I've lived In rural areas in the U.S. all my life. Internet is always atrocious because the only ones that provide services out those ways know that they have no competition.

Luckily, I've had a great company come in and now have fantastic internet after they set up the infrastructure, but I still think about those days I had to use Windstream.

Thanks god I have unlimited 150/50 4g internet at home for around 42€ per month. This month we downloaded around 5.5 TB of data. Also small town, countryside, no stop lights, no businesses other than bars and shops. There is only one stop light in whole region. And whole region is getting fiber optic. We had DSL, but speeds were terrible.

Man, the US is weird sometimes. I don't think I've ever had a data cap on my home internet.

Aussie chiming in 50/20mbps for $90/m. I wanted 50mbps upload but it would have bumped the cost to $130/m.

Wow, that's pretty terrible. I can't remember the last time I've seen data caps on home Internet (edit: there were some a while ago, but those were basically cellular-at-home for places that are hard to reach with copper or optic fibre); must've been early 2000s. Right now I get 600 Mbps d/400 Mbps u at home and 10 Mbps d/u cellular (no data cap) for a total of under 30 EUR/mo.

Look into fixed wireless or 4G/5G home internet. Fixed wireless is sometimes exactly what you need in spots like that. It is not 4G or 5G, sometimes it is just long range WiFi or other lax spectrum.

This makes me seethe and rage and turns my piss to vinegar.

I have mediacom as well, but in a larger city of the midwest. They have datacaps here too, and i was paying about $100 for exactly this same plan up until a couple years ago. They started upgrading our speeds/caps because a new fiber company (metronet) is building in the area. Now i'm on 1 gbps down and a 4 TB cap. I still plan to switch to metronet when they finally light up my area, as its cheaper for the same speeds (plus no data caps)

I hope that in my lifetime I can see ISPs regulated as a public utility.

From an Aussie where our Internet is somewhat considered a "public utility" (NBNCo), it's not the best. I'm paying $130/mo (Aussie bucks) for 250/100 fibre.

Our NTDs are capable of gigabit symmetrical, but thanks to our Lord and Saviour, Rupert Murdoch, it was essentially limited speed wise and the network was built with ridiculous complexity, such as the CVC constraints (Connectivity Virtual Circuit), which means ISPs have to buy additional bandwidth and hope and pray that every user doesn't max out their connections at the same time.

For example, the POI (Point of Interconnect) I'm connected to has a total of 1.5Gbps with the ISP I'm with. Based on their stats which they make public to customers, I'm guesstimating that there's approximately ~50 other households in my POI area connected with this ISP. We all have to share that bandwidth otherwise it slows to a crawl.

ETA: I'm purely talking about the FTTP network here, not the other part of the mess that is NBNCo and FTTN/C/B, Fixed Wireless, Satellite & HFC... the NBN is a complete mess.

In the same exact boat as you. We have Mediacom or one DSL. They gave me a really good deal for the first year on my 1gig, but after that it's going to be about $140 a month. To make matters worse too, the wiring in my apartment building is REALLY old, so the service cuts out randomly sometimes (All tenants in the building are on splitters sharing one cable with the apartment across the hall.) And of course the landlord said that Mediacom was trying to trick me into spending more money and he would absolutely not run new cable. Internet in rural areas of the US is a total shit show. My connection is somewhat stable now, but I can't wait for something else to come to my area.

And yes I looked into Starlink, my building has a strict NO PUTTING UP ANTENNA policy.

And yes I looked into Mobile Carrier Routers and the fastest I can get is 50mb download with a data cap.

I feel your problem on a spiritual level.

Holy fucking shit dude... Sorry for you but in a weird way I'm a bit relieved to see this being the case in the US as well. The village I grew up in (Germany) still has a price of ~50€ for speeds of 50-100MBit/s However, there is at least no data cap in that case. My 1000 Mbit/s contract was capped to 1TB/month as well until four years ago (40€/month). I really hope this improves for all of us soon!

Friend of mine lives in bumfuck nowhere here in the US (like, no access to running water if it goes without raining for a few weeks - that kind of rural) and has gigabit up/down for $60 somehow. Meanwhile, there's 2 or 3 ISPs in my area who will gladly take $60 for half that speed and dog shit upload. I pay for both a resi and biz line and the latter is the same speed for $15 more. Criminal.

Meanwhile I'm paying $150 for less than that.