[Discuss] data caps

[richard.pieri at gmail.com (Rich Pieri)]

On Tue, 22 Jan 2013 15:46:46 +0000
"Edward Ned Harvey (blu)" <blu at nedharvey.com> wrote:

> If your objection to cable is the business/marketing model, Fios is
> no better.  They *are* the cable company.  Just like comcast, rcn,
> etc.  Which we used before fios.

This is accurate from the business and marketing perspective. But at
least it's competition where both cable and fibre are available. At
least on paper. I noted that in the year before my condo complex
brought in FiOS the quality of service and customer service from
Comcast diminished considerably. There's a degree of apathy at Comcast.
They don't seem to care if, for example, their wiring infrastructure is
exposed to the weather. Verizon is more convincing about pretending to
care about reliability and customer service.

The technical differences are like night and day. Cable bandwidth is
shared. That is, every subscriber in a "neighborhood" shares a single
pipe. Which is fine sometimes and terrible sometimes. FiOS, like DSL,
is a private link out to the CO. If I do saturate my 25 Mbit link
downloading a major Guild Wars 2 update then it doesn't affect my
neighbors' service.

-- 
Rich P.