Comments

• By jliptzin 2025-11-2317:255 reply

  Yep, I knew this was Comcast/Xfinity just seeing the title. I had the exact same problem, for years. Intermittent disconnects for a few minutes at a time, multiple times a day. I must have had upwards of 50 technicians come to my house, all insisting there was some problem with the wiring in my house (there wasn’t) or the router or whatever (hardware all replaced multiple times including the wiring). Eventually after years of complaining that the issue isn’t in my house, they finally sent a bucket truck a half a mile up the road and the problem was fixed in about 30 minutes. It worked well for about a year and then started happening again. They started giving me the run around again. I had appointments scheduled for technicians to come, three times in a row they just never showed up. To “apologize” to me they said they would provide a credit on my account. The amount? 1 penny. I took a screenshot and saved it in case anyone thinks I am making this up. Luckily, by this time starlink was available in my area. I switched to that, turns out it’s much cheaper anyway and since then have not had any issues. The sooner Comcast goes out of business, the better.

  Tip to anyone reading this: After I cancelled and closed my account, they billed me one last time for double my monthly bill ($200). No idea why, probably they thought they'd try to get away with it. I had little to no interest in participating in their customer support circus again, so I just went online to my bank and submitted a dispute of the charge. The bank instantly ruled in my favor and closed the case, issuing a permanent credit. I have never seen that before. They must be getting tons of Comcast chargebacks to do that.

  I also submitted a complaint to the AG office and my local commission but I'm not expecting anything to happen.

  By diogenes_atx 2025-11-2322:05

  I lived on the west coast for 15 years, mostly in California, and in my experience Comcast/Xfinity is one of the worst companies I have ever encountered as a consumer. Not only is the service unreliable, the company tries to slap you with charges when you call to report a problem. One day I saw a Comcast technician working outside my apartment, and as he was leaving, my internet service went down. I called Comcast, they sent someone out a few hours later, the internet was restored... and then, when I got my monthly bill, there was an additional charge for $29 or something, iirc. When I called customer service to ask them to remove the charge, they transferred my call several times and put me on hold for several minutes every time they transferred the call. Finally, after a hour on the phone, they agreed to remove the charge.

  Since then, I have moved to Austin, where there are two large Internet Service Providers competing against each other. I mostly use Spectrum; it is not perfect, people here complain about it, but it is incomparably better than Comcast.

  By ebjcoat 2025-11-2320:15

  Of the ~40 or so businesses I do general IT work for in New England, the ones with Comcast as the ISP are the least reliable. They experience significantly more downtime than any other provider.

  By hinkley 2025-11-2319:56

  The cost of disgruntled customers is that they might work for a competitor or a company you have to work with, like a bank.

  By zymhan 2025-11-241:38

  > The bank instantly ruled in my favor and closed the case, issuing a permanent credit. I have never seen that before. They must be getting tons of Comcast chargebacks to do that.

  I did the same thing, except I disputed a collections record on my Credit Report from either AT&T or Comcast. They also ruled in my favor quickly, and I was quite surprised that it wasn't a more difficult process.

  By xnx 2025-11-241:28

  The government wasted its time harassing Google when it should've been persecuting Comcast.

• By themafia 2025-11-234:065 reply

  The comment at the bottom of the article I believe is correct. I believe this because our neighborhood had the same problem. One day my neighbor, frustrated beyond his capacity, and seemingly very high on something, went outside and started ripping infrastructure out by hand and damaging everything else he could find with a hammer.

  They came out and replaced a lot of the damaged equipment and did a few upgrades. After that the intermittent 2 minute drop problems disappeared.

  By mh- 2025-11-234:436 reply

  I was merely pretty sure that the comment was AI generated as I read it. After reading it, I became a lot more confident when I noticed the username above the comment: Gemini 3.

  Is this a Wordpress plugin the blog author is using?

  By terminalshort 2025-11-234:524 reply

  Amazing that we now live in a world where AI can instantly an accurately diagnose a network infrastructure problem, but you are still forced to talk to CS drones who tell you again and again "have you tried unplugging it and plugging it back in?"

  By Workaccount2 2025-11-2316:463 reply

  Going off on a tangent now, but man, I wish when you called support you could go through a quick technical competency test, and your results dictated who you got support from.

  Nailing dense questions about network infrastructure? You get to the engineering team.

  Failing to know what the "G" in 2.4GHz means? You probably just need someone to tell you to restart your router.

  By vedmed 2025-11-2323:09

  This is actually a great idea. For the consumer. Not for a monopoly ISP which can ignore every issue and collect checks.

  By linsomniac 2025-11-2317:14

  Our city fiber support is awesome and I've had luck in the past with telling the frontline tech that I likely needed to talk to one of the senior techs, and getting immediately escalated. I don't remember the exact problem I was having, but it was something slightly tricky that I had done extensive investigation on before calling.

  By ce4 2025-11-2319:32

  Relevant xkcd:

  https://xkcd.com/806/

  By mh- 2025-11-234:543 reply

  I'm not so sure that's an accurate diagnosis. But I agree it's certainly better than one can get from phoning support.

  By Twirrim 2025-11-236:113 reply

  I can't speak to the accuracy of the diagnosis, but the claims about NTP are bizarre, and to the best of my knowledge, wrong. There's nothing specific about the times the incidents cluster around that would have anything to do with NTP. It doesn't work like that.

  By globie 2025-11-2313:381 reply

  We're talking about this line, right?

  >The precision of outages (at :29 and :44) matches a network-synchronized clock (NTP).

  I think this just correctly points out that if the trigger was something unsynchronized like animals chewing on wires or someone digging underground, you wouldn't have 61% of events occurring at these two second markers. Even if the trigger was something digital but on a machine that isn't NTP synchronized, you would eventually have enough clock drift to move the events to other seconds. 61% combined at two markers (exactly 15 seconds apart) strongly suggests synchronized time.

  By debtta 2025-11-2319:111 reply

  Those are minutes not seconds.

  By globie 2025-11-280:20

  D'oh!

  By VBprogrammer 2025-11-2310:07

  Though, if I was the author the speculation about the restart time would have me breaking out a timer.

  By noduerme 2025-11-2312:121 reply

  Customer support isn't allowed to tell you to attack the box with a hammer. But if they could be totally honest...

  By supportengineer 2025-11-2316:11

  Oops, I accidentally destroyed your infrastructure with my car. Please roll a truck.

  By szundi 2025-11-235:17

  [dead]

  By supportengineer 2025-11-2316:10

  That’s more about enhancing shareholder value than anything else. The MBA’s need to cut those costs and keep them down in order to get their promotions and bonuses. The CEO needs another yacht by the way.

  By cyanydeez 2025-11-2312:34

  "Instantly"

  By vedmed 2025-11-235:313 reply

  My brother ran the article through gemini and left that comment

  By ChrisMarshallNY 2025-11-2312:01

  Sometimes, the truth can be a letdown. Everyone was hoping it was LLMs all the way down. ;)

  I am very fortunate to have two competing ISPs in my area. Verizon Fios, and Optimum Fibre. I have played them against each other. I have had both, over the years. I am currently using Optimum.

  Still not especially cheap, but the service is good. The customer service ... not so good (think South Park).

  By Thorrez 2025-11-2313:42

  You can put whatever name you want there when you post a comment. You don't need to have a registered account.

  By matt123456789 2025-11-237:41

  I think it was someone trying to help and being cheeky about it.

  By NamlchakKhandro 2025-11-238:521 reply

  you've obviously never used AI much then, because I was able to instantly tell that it's a summarisation typical of claude/gemini/copilot

  By econ 2025-11-239:17

  Damned if you do, more damned if you don't.

  I do suggest using high voltage rather than a hammer.

  By stingraycharles 2025-11-238:145 reply

  [flagged]

  By bcraven 2025-11-238:347 reply

  I think this is a lazy criticism that I am _also_ growing tired of.

  If LLMs are trained on written information, that pattern of speech was present before they got there. It's a good way to add emphasis.

  By NicuCalcea 2025-11-2312:551 reply

  Certain patterns are much more common in LLM output than in human writing. I'm a journalist and love an em dash, for example, but I've never met/read another journalist that uses them nearly as often as LLMs. Same with the "this isn't just X, it's Y" pattern. When you have multiple of these patterns in every paragraph, it's a pretty clear indicator that the text is AI-generated.

  Plus, the author admitted to using AI to write it.

  By Tanoc 2025-11-2313:151 reply

  One of the little tics I've noticed that helps weed out and LLM generated text is to CTRL+F and look for the word "therefor" in any of it. LLMs will use the word in a new sentence that isn't the conclusion of any previous sentences or paragraphs. Think like, "Bees are small fuzzy and yellow. Therefor their ability to fly is an astounding achievement." In all of my years of reading I've never seen people use the word that much in common writing, and when they do it's usually as part of a compound sentence. These things really do have their own little set of semantics and dialect that they follow that seems like it's a unique quirk.

  By onestay42 2025-11-2313:521 reply

  Do you mean therefore or therefor? I only ask because I have never seen an AI say therefor. (therefore ~ due to that; therefor ~ for that)

  By Tanoc 2025-11-2315:06

  Therefore. I'm so used to writing it without the extra E.

  By krsdcbl 2025-11-2315:37

  I'll second that, this is extremely annoying and exhausting.

  It feels like the slightest occurrence of a less-than-ubiquitous pattern or any word not regularly used by the majority of the population instantly spawns a sleuth of newfound linguists who'll pitch in to explain how this certain marker ought to be proof of AI origin.

  This does nothing for the conservation, except helping the claim that AI will erode and dumb down our language become a self-fulfilling prophecy when people start feeling pressured to use the most dumbed down, simplistic and rhetorically bland way of expressing themselves to avoid any "suspicion"

  By a2128 2025-11-2317:04

  Not necessarily, the LLMs used today are far from just simple models of written information on the internet. They use in-house data they wrote themselves, and RLHF/DPO where it's effectively training on its own data to optimize for human preference. If sampling with high enough temperature for this, it could theoretically bring out entirely new unseen forms of speech as long as people express their preference for it via the user interface

  By trueno 2025-11-2310:10

  I don't think anyone's here to debate the origin of speech patterns these things are using. Feels clear to me at least that the guy you're replying to is uninterested in reading stuff generated by AI, I can't say I disagree with him.

  By op00to 2025-11-2314:48

  No, that’s in literally every LLM generated response to a forum message I’ve seen. It’s so common as to have become a trope. That’s not confidence. It’s a clear indicator of AI.

  By stingraycharles 2025-11-2310:262 reply

  I’m very much uninterested in reading AI generated content. Your assertions seems to be “AIs only write like that because people have been writing like that”, but that’s not a great argument.

  It feels like AI has suddenly given a platform for people who previously were unable to properly write blog content. But it immediately feels unoriginal and generic.

  I’m just not interested in that type of content and immediately put off by it.

  The only reason I mentioned this is because of the comment about Gemini 3 being in the comments.

  I’m just really, really tired of all the AI content everywhere nowadays and crave some authenticity.

  It just feels like cheap remakes / imitations to of original content.

  By tankenmate 2025-11-2311:562 reply

  For the most part LLMs choose "the most common" tokens; so regardless of whether the content was "AI content" or not, maybe you are getting tired of mediocrity.

  And of course also that mediocrity has now become so cheap that it is now the overwhelming majority.

  By catlifeonmars 2025-11-2315:01

  This is similar to how the average number of children per household is 2.5, but no one has 2.5 children. The most common tokens actually yield patterns that no one actually uses together in practice

  By stingraycharles 2025-11-2312:26

  LLMs have the tendency to really like comparisons / contrasts between things, which is likely due to the nature of neural networks (eg “Paris - France + Italy” = “Rome”). This is because when representing these concepts as embeddings, they can be computer very straightforward in vector space.

  So no, it’s not all due to human language, LLMs do really write content in a specific style.

  One recent study also showed something interesting: AIs aren’t very good at recognizing AI generated content either, which is likely related; they’re unaware of these patterns.

  https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S147738802...

  By bmacho 2025-11-2311:05

  Was present, so what? It was 1 in 1 million, now it's 999999999 in 1 million. It is perfectly valid getting really tired of it, in fact, this is exactly what "getting really tired of" means and has always meant.

  By Kim_Bruning 2025-11-2311:161 reply

  These days it could also be a human being who has been talking with AI. People pick up the lingo of the <people> they're talking with.

  By stingraycharles 2025-11-2314:242 reply

  It’s more than that.

  The real insight: it’s not just lingo. It’s semantics.

  See what I did there?

  By Kim_Bruning 2025-11-2315:24

  And as Kim_Bruning watched the sunset, they smiled, knowing that they really hate stingraycharles for that demonstration right now.

  (I just wanted to let you know you're terrible and made me smile)

  By Aachen 2025-11-2314:56

  No

  By vedmed 2025-11-238:422 reply

  I used AI to analyze the log for patterns and to make the charts.

  By stingraycharles 2025-11-2310:302 reply

  You do you, but the least you can do is either not reply, or admit that you used AI to write the copy as well.

  By vedmed 2025-11-2311:125 reply

  I'm not a data analyst. Almost everything pertaining to data analysis of the log is perplexity labs.

  I'm also not a journalist and the article I wrote didn't sound professional and was too long. So I had AI change it to have a professional tone and structure and then edited it.

  I'm also not an artist and I had AI generate a picture of a bear reading a newspaper. Then I used krita to remove the background and make it transparent.

  I also asked the AI to generate 10 headlines, it gave me this one:

  How a monopoly ISP weaponizes support incompetence against technical customers

      Calls out systemic issue, appeals to HN's anti-monopoly sentiment
  

  Then I changed it to:

  How a monopoly ISP refuses to fix upstream infrastructure

  Yes I leveraged expertise from three fields outside of my skillset to simplify a task, bounce back ideas, and conclude with a superior end result. It was demonstrably effective and it would have been stupid to spend 4x the effort to receive zero traction.

  By bityard 2025-11-2314:291 reply

  If you are not a journalist, and AI is your editor, then you should remove the statement on your site that calls itself a newspaper. Newspapers have journalists and editors.

  What you have, sir, is a blog.

  By vedmed 2025-11-242:40

  make me.

  By mh- 2025-11-2317:27

  I just want to apologize if my amusement about the Gemini comment below the article played some part in kicking off this absurd off-topic witch hunt.

  I don't see anything wrong with using AI in the way you did.

  By teiferer 2025-11-2312:421 reply

  Thanks for owning up.

  Though you did your original message a disservice. Now we are left wondering how forthcoming, honest and friendly you were with that support staff. I'd also try to cheap out if I'd have to deal with a rude and/or dishonest customer. I'm not saying you were, but it's hard for us to know if you throw things at us like "why should I care?" You need to understand that this causes certain reactions.

  By vedmed 2025-11-2313:011 reply

  [flagged]

  By teiferer 2025-11-2313:46

  I personally don't mind at all that you used AI to make your writing more accessible. To the contrary, I think it's a very suitable use of the tool and I would do the same.

  But don't you realize what impression you are conveying to the audience here by being so strongy defensive? To the point of lashing out at bystanders like me? That's exactly what makes people wonder how you interacted with the company that you are so strongly (and likely rightfully) criticising.

  To answer your question, by "owning up" I meant admitting to using AI for the text after initially denying it. Again, no judgement on my end for having used it. Apologies if my choice of the term implies a judgement to you. That wasn't my intention.

  By stingraycharles 2025-11-2312:071 reply

  [flagged]

  By vedmed 2025-11-2312:292 reply

  Do you want me to prostrate before you for using AI? Get real. I told you exactly how I used it.

  And no AI did not write the article. I wrote it. Then I instructed AI to restructure it to have a professional tone.

  By stingraycharles 2025-11-2313:03

  That’s literally what using an AI to write content is. The fact that you’re not seeing that and are resorting to these kind of ridiculous comments says enough.

  By LoganDark 2025-11-2313:461 reply

  AI did write the article; you wrote the prompt to the AI.

  By gregw2 2025-11-2314:18

  If his admissions are true. your statement is more misleading than his. He wrote it. AI edited it. Right?

  By bmacho 2025-11-2311:321 reply

  [flagged]

  By vedmed 2025-11-2311:442 reply

  I lied?

  By bmacho 2025-11-2311:521 reply

    "The article itself is also AI generated. Plenty of typical signs for AI."
    "I used AI to analyze the log for patterns and to make the charts."

  By vedmed 2025-11-2312:31

  [flagged]

  By stingraycharles 2025-11-2312:052 reply

  In your comments you’re specifically avoiding answering the question, until you finally admitted to using AI to make your tone more “professional”.

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46022576

  Sorry, but the semantic constructs used in the article, the em-dashes, the use of ± signs that nobody ever uses, the typical bold formatting, the fact that your brother posts AI generated comments on your blog, it’s just too much.

  I don’t blame you for it, writing a blog post like this without AI takes days of work. But at least own up to it, instead of now playing innocent that you didn’t lie.

  No you didn’t lie, you omitted the part you also used AI to write the copy when confronted.

  By Aachen 2025-11-2315:06

  > the em-dashes, the use of ± signs that nobody ever uses

  It is a bit saddening that correct punctuation is now a sign of dishonesty. I use em dashes and keep seeing people say it's such a dead giveaway. Now it's also ± which I also use. Are multiplication signs instead of "x" next? Or degree symbols? What can I still use if I want people to not think I'm too dumb to write my own text

  You mention more signs (semantics, choice of what to embolden) but they're not binary signs (present → it's generated) and basically guesswork

  By vedmed 2025-11-2312:332 reply

  [flagged]

  By stingraycharles 2025-11-2313:05

  You don’t owe me anything, but you’re being dishonest and that deserves being called out.

  Now we’re left wondering whether you were dishonest in the content of your article as well.

  By bmacho 2025-11-2311:231 reply

  [flagged]

  By vedmed 2025-11-2311:331 reply

  I don't mean to be dismissive or rude, this question is genuine:

  Why should I care or bother?

  This is the extent to which I used AI: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46022576

  By bmacho 2025-11-2311:362 reply

  [flagged]

  By vedmed 2025-11-2312:052 reply

  What route dude I made an article to bring attention to the issue and the attention has been brought. Why do you want me to do things your way? I do things my way just fine. There's always someone to tell you that you should do this or that. Why should I do this or that? You do this and that if that's whats important to you. And if you want me to do this and that then convince me why I should.

  By bmacho 2025-11-2312:111 reply

  You shouldn't lie about your work because that harms society (if you care about us) and society also will punish you (if you care about yourself). If you don't care about yourself or the people around you, then I have no idea why you should care.

  I hate this aspect of HN, on other websites I can just block these types of sociopaths/trolls at their first message. But here I end up wasting my time and energy or I'll look bad.

  By vedmed 2025-11-2312:34

  [flagged]

  By stingraycharles 2025-11-2312:122 reply

  [flagged]

  By rs186 2025-11-2314:13

  Exactly. If the author says "parts of the article was written by AI", that's probably it, nobody will waste any more time on this because this is what the author has decided to do.

  But instead the author seems to hide the fact of using AI under the discussion where some people find it distasteful to use AI. That doesn't help.

  By vedmed 2025-11-2312:391 reply

  You are the one with the problem, not me.

  I suggest you reread, I am very transparent about how I used AI in the very thread to which you are replying claiming that I am denying using AI.

  By stingraycharles 2025-11-2312:57

  You’re not being transparent. When I called you out on using AI for writing the copy, you responded with:

  “I used AI to analyze the log for patterns and to make the charts.”

  Which is very, very much suggesting you only used AI for that.

  Later, you admitted you used AI to rewrite your article.

  That’s not being very transparent at all.

  By rncode 2025-11-2313:091 reply

  my internet has been broken for 17 months but you're more upset about me using ai to make my sentences sound professional than about comcast refusing to fix their infrastructure

  By teiferer 2025-11-2314:061 reply

  Unless you (rncode) are the same person as the article's author (vedmed), nobody has expressed being upset with you.

  HN doesn't normally like when people open multiple accounts. Yours is 17 hours old. (Two facts that I won't comment on further.)

  By vedmed 2025-11-242:43

  that's not me but I concur with the statement made

  get a life

  By bryanrasmussen 2025-11-238:291 reply

  I have to admit I am also tired, and your quote sounds like a competent engineer doing a flex, and also being a bit bitter.

  on edit: regarding the comment, yeah that sounds pretty AI.

  By NamlchakKhandro 2025-11-238:531 reply

  I'm also getting tired of the people getting tired of the people getting tired of AI

  By econ 2025-11-239:19

  Marketing is very excited about the negative articles.

  By yard2010 2025-11-2310:41

  The internet was never here to stay, it's not getting better, enjoy the last days while you can.

  By razingeden 2025-11-236:42

  >frustrated beyond his capacity, and seemingly very high on something, went outside and started ripping infrastructure out by hand and damaging everything else he could find with a hammer

  hmmmm i think i just saw that guy at the motel 6 in palm springs.

  By patrickmay 2025-11-2314:53

  So much for the platitude that violence never solves anything.

  By esseph 2025-11-236:252 reply

  That's a felony in the US by the way, and most will prosecute if they have enough evidence of who it was.

  By mschuster91 2025-11-2310:501 reply

  Thing is, even if the neighbors saw something, they didn't see anything when the cops come knocking because everyone is most likely pissed off as well and happy someone is finally doing something that forces attention.

  By Nextgrid 2025-11-2316:211 reply

  I find it hard to think of an industry more universally hated than telcos/cable/phone companies so good luck finding a snitch.

  By fransje26 2025-11-2320:141 reply

  For-profit health insurance companies?

  By Nextgrid 2025-11-2322:07

  I wonder if they would top it actually. The need to interact with health insurance mostly scales with age, where as the shittiness of an consumer-grade telco is constant.

  By GCUMstlyHarmls 2025-11-235:222 reply

  Did the neighbor get in trouble or was this a mom-stealing-baby-food-and-diapers kind of witnessing?

  By komali2 2025-11-237:58

  Or was it "the neighbor" in the same way that "my friend" has a weed hookup?

  By 3eb7988a1663 2025-11-2316:35

  Strongly doubt anyone fessed up to the destruction. "Came out this morning and some hooligans must have done it in the night"

• By ksec 2025-11-2313:1911 reply

  I am reading this and thinking why does it sound familiar. And then only learned Xfinity means Cable / DOCSIS. Edit: I wish the title could be edited as Cable ISP.

  It is a common problem with DOCSIS! And has been the case since 1.0 era. DO NOT use Cable if you can.

  It happens when it is over subscribed, as well as other radio interference. Although common cause is over subscription. You may actually try downgrading your speed / DOCSIS 2.0 / 3.0 to see if it helps.

  Funny enough with G.Fast, had they continue the investment running 1Gbps on telephone cable would have still been better than DOCSIS.

  I used to fight this before I got my fibre optic. Even 5G Internet is better than DOCSIS. For people who have never been through this, you will quickly learn the one thing most important with Internet or WiFi isn't Speed, bandwidth or latency. It is reliability! It is far better to have a reliable slow 6Mbps ADSL connect than a 1Gbps Cable that has connection constantly dropping off.

  I dont know about US, but in most places on earth Government seems to be ok to mandate electricity and water as well as telephone line as standard. I wonder why we cant mandate Optical Fibre as standard as well. And it seems most property agency refuse to put internet connection speed and types on the property pages. If consumer could easily learn without optical fibre equals shitty property and refuse to buy or rent the land lord will have interest to quickly act upon it.

  By Nextgrid 2025-11-2316:051 reply

  > mandate electricity and water as well as telephone line as standard. I wonder why we cant mandate Optical Fibre as standard as well

  Electricity and water was mandated at the time the government mostly did right by the people and wasn't yet (fully) captured by corporate interests. By the time the internet arrived this was no longer the case.

  By light_hue_1 2025-11-2316:433 reply

  If people actually read history books we'd make much better decisions as a society.

  No. Water and electricity were not mandated in a magical past where the government was awesome. The government has been captured by corporations and special interests forever. The level of corruption in the 1800s was astronomical compared to today.

  People fought for those rights. Often literally. And they still don't exist in some places.

  Arkansas just passed a law that you need a working roof, electricity, heat and water, in 2021.

  So no. Sitting around lamenting a past that never existed won't get us anywhere.

  By qwerasdf5 2025-11-2320:33

  Glad to hear that Arkansas now has working roofs, electricity, heat, and water. Must've been weird before 2021.

  By everdev 2025-11-242:26

  Oh yah I remember that time when government was so captured by corporations that they forced the politicians to institute a 90% tax on incomes above $3 million

  By lostlogin 2025-11-2317:08

  I don’t think that an awareness of the past is suggested because the past was great. I think it’s because seemingly good ideas weren’t, so it’s a chance to avoid repeating mistakes.

  By icedchai 2025-11-2315:491 reply

  I had packet loss on my DOCSIS connection for years, on-and-off. The upstream speed would also regularly drop below a megabit. It became a problem for remote work.

  I complained regularly, and always had "techs" come out. They would usually claim it was my splitter or my modem. I suggested they go outside and test the line from the street. They'd then confirm the loss was present on the line outside, then escalate it to the "outside guys" (plant or whatever.) It would be fixed for a month or two, then come back.

  Eventually I was able to get the HOA to allow fiber into the neighborhood. Cable is NOT reliable.

  By driverdan 2025-11-2322:171 reply

  > Eventually I was able to get the HOA to allow fiber into the neighborhood.

  Crazy that you needed someone's permission to get fiber.

  By Marsymars 2025-11-243:291 reply

  It's fairly involved in an older neighbourhood if the utilities are buried... they installed it in mine a couple years ago, and it involved months of contractors and trucks in the neighbourhood marking utility right-of-ways and hydrovaccing holes in everyone's front yards.

  By icedchai 2025-11-243:431 reply

  Yep, it was this exactly. 40+ year old neighborhood with buried electric, gas, water, telco. They had to dig up yards, do horizontal drilling under some roads, etc.

  By account42 2025-11-2413:58

  They just rip up the roads here. And then a couple months later another company does the same for their fiber because we can't have proper shared utilities anymore.

  By xp84 2025-11-2316:142 reply

  Yeah, here in the US there are geographically tiny pockets in a few major cities that have actual fiber. Most of the country, including a shocking number of dense urban areas outside the east coast, has zero fiber penetration. Of our two telephone monopolies, one installed fiber for 10 years and quit (the East Coast one), and the other basically never installed fiber to the home.

  So anyway, outside that lucky group we all use cable only because the alternative is, in many places, 6Mbps ADSL on aging and flaky copper wires. Or potentially 12Mbps… VDSL? AT&T branded that as U-Verse for a while. But basically they ceded the market to the cable companies.

  By bavell 2025-11-2316:202 reply

  This talking point may be a bit outdated now... I'm in a small suburban area in the southeast with 5Gb fiber available from AT&T. Around 500k in my municipal area (50k in the city proper).

  By xp84 2025-11-2323:09

  Idk but I’m still waiting for AT&T to get off their butts, as is most of my county. And this is a nearly fully urbanized county, basically no rural areas here at all, and all the cities touch.

  AT&T is allergic to capex and even if they changed their mind recently they waited an unforgivably long time (20 years!) to start. They and their predecessors were happy to take all those sweet subsidies for doing so in the 90s though.

  By ryandrake 2025-11-2319:59

  You're probably just in one of those "geographically tiny pockets in a few major cities."

  By PaulHoule 2025-11-2318:46

  I live in a place that’s rather difficult to serve and I’m just past the range where the full 24 Mbps ADSL2 speed is available so I get 20 Mbps. Once in a while my telco has infrastructure problems, it uses to be common that there would be lightning or power outages and it wouldn’t come back until they did some kind of manual reset, I talked w/ them and the PUC about it and then it seemed like they set it up so it would do an automated reset. The techs tell me if I lived very close to the node they could set me up with much faster VDSL.

  By jasonwatkinspdx 2025-11-2317:251 reply

  > I wonder why we cant mandate Optical Fibre as standard as well.

  The incumbents have been lobbying against this heavily, winning state laws banning municipalities from setting up their own fiber in some places.

  By massysett 2025-11-2317:315 reply

  Why should optical fiber be standard? I want reliable, speedy network connectivity. It’s up to my network provider to determine the best means to do that. I don’t care if it’s tin can and string if it provides the service I need.

  By throw0101a 2025-11-2321:46

  > Why should optical fiber be standard? I want reliable, speedy network connectivity.

  The second sentence answers the question.

  > It’s up to my network provider to determine the best means to do that. I don’t care if it’s tin can and string if it provides the service I need.

  You assume that your network provider wants to provide "reliable, speedy network connectivity" and not "maximize profits with the smallest possible outlay".

  Given they already have a bunch 'legacy' infrastructure, they're going to try to milk that existing plant as much as possible before shelling out another dime on anything new. That is not a recipe for "reliable, speedy network connectivity".

  By jasonwatkinspdx 2025-11-2323:59

  So municipal networks are a classic example of a natural monopoly, where it's more efficient to just have a single utility network vs redundant infrastructure.

  Fiber is good for this because it's both cheap and effectively future proof vs consumer needs. Also, thanks to how IP works, a municipality can build out the physical network, then offer competitive options among ISPs delivering service on it if they like.

  This generally results in much better service for consumers at lower cost, which is why Comcast, Century Link, etc, have been doing all the political maneuvering they can to pre-empt voters from choosing that path.

  By MrMorden 2025-11-241:11

  Fiber is cheaper, faster, and far more reliable. You've already constrained the problem such that fiber is the only possible solution, and there's nothing wrong with that.

  By Nextgrid 2025-11-2318:271 reply

  Mostly because we're pushing the limits of long-range copper to offer currently-standard bandwidth levels, where as fiber is just getting started (you can go to 100Gbit on the same fiber by just swapping the optics at either end).

  By navigate8310 2025-11-2318:56

  Also deploying copper is much more expensive than dirt cheap fiber optic

  By ranger_danger 2025-11-2320:07

  > the one thing most important with Internet or WiFi isn't Speed, bandwidth or latency. It is reliability! It is far better to have a reliable slow 6Mbps ADSL connect than a 1Gbps Cable that has connection constantly dropping off.

  Please don't assume everyone's usecase is the same as yours. I would pay dearly to have an unreliable but FAST connection just to get away from my 6Mbps DSL.

  By Nextgrid 2025-11-2316:14

  Isn't this particular failure mode applicable to any TDMA technology (of which even GPON fiber is one) when the contention ratios become too high?

  The issue is that the ISP selling services beyond what that physical network segment can provide, and it being effectively legal to sell something and not deliver it if you're a big enough corporation and only scam consumers.

  By neelc 2025-11-2314:59

  At the present moment I live in a place in NYC without fiber. Manhattan row townhomes are notoriously hard for Verizon to install FiOS in. I chose 5G over DOCSIS simply because of upload speeds.

  T-Mobile (both TMHI and Calyx Sprout SIM) has 40-75 Mbps uploads versus 20-35 on Spectrum.

  It also helps that I use a L2TP VPN to a BGP VPS to get myself a public IPv4, otherwise I'd have Spectrum for no CGNAT.

  Yes, I'd much rather have fiber with symmetrical speeds and low latency. Heck, if Spectrum had high split or even mid split I'd have that.

  Cable hyped their "10G" upgrades but it's basically vaporware while non-cable ISPs actually showed up with fiber and/or 5G. Trump's tariffs are also punishing cable ISPs.

  By watermelon0 2025-11-2321:181 reply

  YMMV and this probably heavily depends on the provider and location, but in my experience, at multiple locations, cable is rock solid, generally delivering close to advertised speed.

  Sure, they might be a short (<1h) outage once or twice per year, but even fiber infrastructure is not immune to this.

  By pimeys 2025-11-2321:26

  Well... We had a ton of issues with DOCSIS until a few years ago, when they built fiber to the nearby pole, and the cable is just a few meters inside the house to the street. Before it used to break all the time.

  Yeah, they will eventually bring fiber to the apartment. This is Germany anyhow, it will happen in the next 10-30 years.

  By pwillia7 2025-11-2313:40

  interesting the article mentions his speeds dropped. I wonder if someone at support knows this but knows there's nothing they can really do to fix the issues?

  By zeruch 2025-11-263:54

  "I wonder why we cant mandate Optical Fibre as standard as well"

  Lobbying by big ISPs.