What's the fastest internet speed offered in your area and how much (if you know) does it cost?

[ZedClampet]

Where I live in Tennessee, USA, I pay AT&T $70/mo for 1 Gig with no data cap, but there are much faster options. Here's the top offering by company:

AT&T: 5 Gig for $180/mo
Xfinity: 2 Gig for $230/mo
Frontier 2 Gig for $???--wants me to enter a bunch of info before it will give me a price
WOW 1 Gig for $64
Earthlink 1 Gig for $100
Spectrum 1 Gif for $???--wants personal info to give price
Viasat 100 Mb for $40

Some of the phone companies like Verizon offer home Internet via various channels. Not going to check all of those.

But the reason I ask is because AT&T just notified me recently about upgrading to 5 Gig, and I was surprised that was available. I'm not going to do it right now because it would basically only come in handy for downloading games, and I'm not going to spend an extra $110/mo to download games faster.

If you have used 5 Gb before, I'd like to hear about your experiences. But, in any case, what's the highest speed available where you live and do you have it? Is it worth the price you pay?

 

[Colif]

Think the best I could get here is 100mbit
not exactly in the same league is it...
And I don't know what price would be.
mind you

A team from Monash, Swinburne and RMIT universities logged a data speed of 44.2 terabits per second (Tbps)

link
But Universities don't share or count really.

 

[ZedClampet]

Think the best I could get here is 100mbit
not exactly in the same league is it...
And I don't know what price would be.
mind you

link
But Universities don't share or count really.

Based on the prices I listed that would be a bit out of my price range haha

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Dang, Zed. You're lucky, man. Where I live, Comcast is the best, and I'm getting around 340mbps right at the moment. I think I'm paying like $140/month for that bundled with local cable channels.

 

[Frag Maniac]

That's kind of a loaded question for me. Reasons being, I can't get the 1 Gig speed they offer because our apt building doesn't have Fiber Optic lines, so I have no idea what MY price would be as an existing customer, as you have to input your exact address to get that info, and it would only come back saying I can't get it.

That said, I HAVE seen them advertising 1 Gig for $55 a month with free install, but I'm sure that's for new customers only, and I'm not sure how many months you get it at that price, as it doesn't say.

 

[Alm]

I checked on a comparison Website and apparently Virgin Media do a 1gig connection in my area for £55/month on an 18 month contract.

 

[Zloth]

Now that I dumped the TV, Google Fiber is 1Gb for $70/mo. I can double that for $100/mo, but I haven't been able to justify the cost. No contracts on that stuff and their service has been really good to me.

It doesn't look like anyone offers 5Gb - that's crazy fast! Better make sure your motherboard can handle it!

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

Top end speed is not good here, lots of old copper wires in the apartments blocks that require DSL until you get to the street cabinet. So 100mbps is the best we can get.

Good thing is, its 15 euros a month for 100, something around 5 euros for 50 mbps and if you dont want to pay anything then 10mbps is free. All unlimited.

Could also get a 5G router and a contract, for up to 1gbps unlimited for 45 euros a month. Not sure on the real world download speeds with that as I havent tried it.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Top end speed is not good here, lots of old copper wires in the apartments blocks that require DSL until you get to the street cabinet. So 100mbps is the best we can get.

Good thing is, its 15 euros a month for 100, something around 5 euros for 50 mbps and if you dont want to pay anything then 10mbps is free. All unlimited.

Could also get a 5G router and a contract, for up to 1gbps unlimited for 45 euros a month. Not sure on the real world download speeds with that as I havent tried it.

100mbps is really great for DSL, though. I think our fastest DSL here is like 25mbps, with an upload speed of 2mbps!

 

[Kaamos_Llama]

100mbps is really great for DSL, though. I think our fastest DSL here is like 25mbps, with an upload speed of 2mbps!

That's about what I got when I lived in the back end of nowhere in the early 2000's on DSL, originally it was up to 8mbps and we used to get about 2 on average. Still a massive step up from 56k dial up that we had before that.

I dont know much about networking generally but as I understand it we have fibreoptic cables to the street and then the last few meters into the blocks has to be DSL on the old telephone wires. Because it only has to go a short distance over old school wires its a lot faster than standard DSL, at least I read that at some point a long time ago.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

That's about what I got when I lived in the back end of nowhere in the early 2000's on DSL, originally it was up to 8mbps and we used to get about 2 on average. Still a massive step up from 56k dial up that we had before that.

I dont know much about networking generally but as I understand it we have fibreoptic cables to the street and then the last few meters into the blocks has to be DSL on the old telephone wires. Because it only has to go a short distance over old school wires its a lot faster than standard DSL, at least I read that at some point a long time ago.

Speaking of 56k dial-up, I remember when 56k seemed very fast. Back on my Commodore 64, I had a 1200 baud modem, which was considered fast at that time. When I got my first Windows-based PC, I think it came with a 14.4k modem, which I upgraded to a 28.8k modem. When I got my hands on a 56k modem, I thought it was blazing fast. Lol. For a while, I even had a second phone line dedicated to my modem.

 

[Pifanjr]

In the new apartment we're moving to we can get 100 mbit for about €40 and 1000 mbit for about €60 a month over the new fibre connection. There doesn't seem to be an option for more than 1000 mbit. I think we pay around €45 a month for 50 mbit now over DSL.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

In the new apartment we're moving to we can get 100 mbit for about €40 and 1000 mbit for about €60 a month over the new fibre connection. There doesn't seem to be an option for more than 1000 mbit. I think we pay around €45 a month for 50 mbit now over DSL.

That's around $78 for 1 Gbit. That's not bad at all compared to where I live.

 

[Brian Boru]

Looks like around 75Mbps download & 6 upload, with Ping roughly 15 and Jitter ~5ms.

2022-03-26
Ping Down Up Jitter
SpeedTest.net 13 75 6
Spectrum.com - - 69 6
Fast.com - - 79 - -
SpeedTest.att.com 15 74 6 2ms
Xfiniti - - 75 - - - -
Cloudflare 45 69 5 9ms

We're paying something crazy, being in US— $89/month to Comcast, only option here.

Edited in correct amount.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Looks like around 75Mbps download & 6 upload, with Ping roughly 15 and Jitter ~5ms.

2022-03-26
Ping Down Up Jitter
SpeedTest.net 13 75 6
Spectrum.com - - 69 6
Fast.com - - 79 - -
SpeedTest.att.com 15 74 6 2ms
Xfiniti - - 75 - - - -
Cloudflare 45 69 5 9ms

We're paying something crazy, being in US—I think it's around $75/month.

What is Jitter?

 

[Frindis]

Jitter: British dialect word from the early plow era. When an old farmer feels the jitter when plowing the crops aka a bumpy line of crops. Often the reason why farmers retired because of fractures in the tailbone, which resulted in the new tractors having springs according to Berrow's Worcester Journal, 14/76.

My internet speed is 55.19Mbps up and 49.22 Mbps down.

 

[Frag Maniac]

What is Jitter?

Jitter is a result of time delays in the sending of data packets, which is often caused by network congestion or route changes.

 

[Brian Boru]

We're paying something crazy, being in US—I think it's around $75/month

Just edited to actual $89 to Comcast, only option in our boondock—ludicrous!

What is Jitter?

What we feel when paying internet bill each month.

 

[ZedClampet]

Just edited to actual $89 to Comcast, only option in our boondock—ludicrous!


What we feel when paying internet bill each month.

I'm not sure there's anyone worse than Comcast. So glad we have options here. Our city got rid of all the anti-competition laws about 15 years ago.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

I'm not sure there's anyone worse than Comcast. So glad we have options here. Our city got rid of all the anti-competition laws about 15 years ago.

Oh, there's a lot worse than Comcast. Where I live, the only alternative is Frontier, which is DSL-only. Their fastest is 25mbps down/2mbps up. Comcast is amazing compared to that. I get like 320mbps and rarely have any problems.

Other than those two, we have some kind of crappy wireless service that is slow and laggy, and satellite. Elon Musk's service should be available sometime this year, but it's pretty expensive.

Edit: just checked and I can't get StarLink until 2023.

 

[ZedClampet]

Oh, there's a lot worse than Comcast. Where I live, the only alternative is Frontier, which is DSL-only. Their fastest is 25mbps down/2mbps up. Comcast is amazing compared to that. I get like 320mbps and rarely have any problems.

Other than those two, we have some kind of crappy wireless service that is slow and laggy, and satellite. Elon Musk's service should be available sometime this year, but it's pretty expensive.

Edit: just checked and I can't get StarLink until 2023.

you don't understand the expansiveness of comcast's horribleness. they have a low monthly bandwidth limit that had us paying over 250 a month for the same speed that your frontier is giving. their speeds have since improved, but their pricing hasn't. and if you'd ever dealt with comcast customer service, you would shudder just from seeing the name.

if my only choices were frontier and comcast, i'd go with frontier.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

you don't understand the expansiveness of comcast's horribleness. they have a low monthly bandwidth limit that had us paying over 250 a month for the same speed that your frontier is giving. their speeds have since improved, but their pricing hasn't. and if you'd ever dealt with comcast customer service, you would shudder just from seeing the name.

if my only choices were frontier and comcast, i'd go with frontier.

You're getting screwed then. We have Comcast, and we're paying like $120 for a bundle of our fastest internet plus local cable channels. Like I said, we're getting somewhere around 320mbps for that.

 

[Frag Maniac]

you don't understand the expansiveness of comcast's horribleness. they have a low monthly bandwidth limit that had us paying over 250 a month for the same speed that your frontier is giving. their speeds have since improved, but their pricing hasn't. and if you'd ever dealt with comcast customer service, you would shudder just from seeing the name.

if my only choices were frontier and comcast, i'd go with frontier.

Comcast in the city I live in is charging the same price for same speed up and down that I have, but they allow 1.2 TB vs a measly 400 GB on the service if you don't pay extra for unlimited. Hell, I probably wouldn't even have to bother with unlimited with Comcast, but the neighborhood I'm currently in only offers the service I have cable wise.

So I don't see that it makes sense to blanketly call Comcast horrible, unless you truly know how other services in other areas compare, because believe it or not, some are worse.

 

[WoodenSaucer]

Comcast in the city I live in is charging the same price for same speed up and down that I have, but they allow 1.2 TB vs a measly 400 GB on the service if you don't pay extra for unlimited. Hell, I probably wouldn't even have to bother with unlimited with Comcast, but the neighborhood I'm currently in only offers the service I have cable wise.

So I don't see that it makes sense to blanketly call Comcast horrible, unless you truly know how other services in other areas compare, because believe it or not, some are worse.

Are you saying Comcast caps you at 400GB/month? That's really low if true. I thought their caps were across the board. They raised them all to 1.2TB during the pandemic.

I just checked my usage. We watch all of our TV through streaming services, sometimes at 4k resolution. We were consistently using 500-650 GB/month. But then I got GamePass, and I've almost hit my cap for this month with 2 days left. I have 246GB remaining. Glad I checked!

 

[Frag Maniac]

Are you saying Comcast caps you at 400GB/month?

No, you misread it. Like I said, they allow 1.2 TB a month, vs the ISP I have, which caps it at 400GB, and it's the only one available in my neighborhood unfortunately, unless I want very crappy DSL at only 15Mb speed.