![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Astound(ingly bad)
2022-May-10, Tuesday 10:33
I realize I'm in the glorious elite for not having only one (1) internet choice, but nonetheless I must complain.
One reason American internet is laughably bad is the lack of competition. Most places have only one provider, or two if you're lucky, even in major cities. A provider in a major city might not service the whole city--I can get RCN but![[twitter.com profile]](https://p.dreamwidth.org/e0caa790ec10/-/twitter.com/favicon.ico)
thosesocks can't, even though we live only about half a mile apart. And even with RCN, it's only in the last few years that my internet in one of the largest cities in America has reached the speeds I routinely got over a decade ago in Chiyoda, a rural mountain town, where my house was literally surrounded by rice paddies. Until recently, though, I've had mostly good experiences.
Yesterday, the internet went out at 2:30 p.m. and as of this post it is still out. I call every few hours or so and every time the story is the same--there's still an outage, we can't tell you what caused it, we can't tell you when it will be fixed, we're useless. I had at least one person I talked to run some modem diagnostics, have me try some things, and tell me what they were seeing on their end, but I think that's balanced out by the person who literally speed-read a canned script at me and then immediately hung up. No one can tell me anything worthwhile. There was just a Comcast truck outside, maybe providing internet to former RCN customers, though DownDetector tells me that there was also Comcast outages on a beautiful spring day with no weather problems.
Pretty sure Chiyoda had maybe one internet outage in three years, and this is a place where literal wild animals could have been chewing on the cables.
Fortunately, we have other internet technology. I'm working from home today because![[instagram.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/profile_icons/instagram.png)
sashagee has had a rough few days and I'm able to do it through phone tethering. Cell service to phone tether to work VPN so the data is still protected. It's not as fast as my wired internet but it's plenty fast that I can still check webcomics on my iPad (which is also tethered) while I work. sashagee is watching Youtube thanks to us having an unlimited data plan. Just have to keep calling and seeing if there's an update, and demand a bill credit when the internet is back.
One reason American internet is laughably bad is the lack of competition. Most places have only one provider, or two if you're lucky, even in major cities. A provider in a major city might not service the whole city--I can get RCN but
Yesterday, the internet went out at 2:30 p.m. and as of this post it is still out. I call every few hours or so and every time the story is the same--there's still an outage, we can't tell you what caused it, we can't tell you when it will be fixed, we're useless. I had at least one person I talked to run some modem diagnostics, have me try some things, and tell me what they were seeing on their end, but I think that's balanced out by the person who literally speed-read a canned script at me and then immediately hung up. No one can tell me anything worthwhile. There was just a Comcast truck outside, maybe providing internet to former RCN customers, though DownDetector tells me that there was also Comcast outages on a beautiful spring day with no weather problems.
Pretty sure Chiyoda had maybe one internet outage in three years, and this is a place where literal wild animals could have been chewing on the cables.
Fortunately, we have other internet technology. I'm working from home today because
sashagee has had a rough few days and I'm able to do it through phone tethering. Cell service to phone tether to work VPN so the data is still protected. It's not as fast as my wired internet but it's plenty fast that I can still check webcomics on my iPad (which is also tethered) while I work. sashagee is watching Youtube thanks to us having an unlimited data plan. Just have to keep calling and seeing if there's an update, and demand a bill credit when the internet is back.
