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.

  • TetsuoEnglish
    12·
    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
      1·
      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
        1·
        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
          1·
          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
            1·
            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
              1·
              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.