I'm rural and until three years ago, satellite was my only option for internet. Then a local electric cooperative which, in given areas also provides fiber to the house internet service, received a grant to provide access to rural customers. I jumped on that, one of the first to pay my deposit. When the guys were in the area running the cable from pole to pole, I took them homemade cookies, still warm from the oven. Then when it was (finally!) my turn to run it to the house and connect to the real world, I made brownies. Only two of them for that job, so they got to take the extras home. They said there were three crews who took turns flipping a coin to see who got to come to my house and hook it up. LOL

I'd come from Kansas City, you see, where top rated cable and internet service were "a given." So getting that fiber to the house was most wonderful.

No cable, tho. That is all from streaming and I still miss cable terribly.

But the internet is $55 a month, which I consider reasonable.

Optimum for the bundle. I’ve had my share of issues over the years but it’s been fine for quite a while now. I do have Fios in my area and I know the internet flies in comparison, but I’ve never gotten around to swiching. I say it’s because I don’t feel like memorizing new channel numbers but in truth, I’ve just not felt like dealing with it.

" I do have Fios in my area and I know the internet flies in comparison "

Food, I don't think that's correct.

My understanding is that signals travel through cable systems that are only partially metal wire at about the same speed as they do through fiber optic (ie, like Fios) systems. If your service is provided by a cable system, it's likely the vast majority of the miles your signals travel are in fact doing so on fiber optic lines, with only the last bit going through coax cable or whatever the system uses.

When an internet provider offers tiers of service like 50 Mbps and 100 Mbps, the difference between these two is bandwidth or capacity. Not speed. The signals are travelling at the same speed but the bandwidth determines how much data can be delivered in a fixed period of time.

An analogy - assume the water main in your street has an adequate supply and pressure, more than customers on the street require.

You currently have 50Mbps, a 1 inch pipe. You fill and empty your pool once a week and using just the one pipe takes too long. If you get a second 1 inch connection, call it another 50Mbps for a total of 100,Mbps, that figuratively doubles how much water can be delivered to the pool per hour. The water flowing through each connection is travelling at the same speed.

The Mbps measure is capacity or bandwidth, not speed. Looking at 100Mbps, and thinking about HD TV signals that seem to require about 15Mbps per TV, that means that 6 HD TVs could use that signal and there would still be capacity available for normal PC or tablet use.

Most people have far more capacity than they ever need, even momentarily. Internet providers are disingenuous about what their higher tier services provide, it's in their interest to indirectly suggest that greater numbers mean greater speed. Which, as above, they do not.

By ”flies”, I am referring to the speed at which my phone loads web pages. For most it’s virtually instantaneous at my mom’s house, relative to minor delays I experience most everywhere else, whether my home wifi, other public wifi, or Verizon’s cellular service. The difference is notable and consistent. Fire hose vs garden hose, regardless of the speed of water flow.

Yes, regardless of the speed of the water flow. Because this water all flows at the same speed.

I got a new phone last year, 5G enabled. The reception at my house is nothing to write home about because of the terrain but when I'm elsewhere and the screen shows a 5G signal with many bars, I similarly experience noticeably better responsiveness and "fast" loading of pages. Checking on Verizon data, its prior GTE service offered downloads of 25-50Mbps and its 5G is over 125Mbps. This is about bandwidth. All of the mobile radio signals, as with signals fed into a house ultimately with wires, travel at a high fraction of the speed of light.

I understand what you’re saying what I’m referring to is the end user experience.

Sure. What I was trying to clarify for readers is that as regards the different tiers that internet service providers set their rates by, so long as the bandwidth is enough for the simultaneous usage requirements of whatever people in the household are doing at any given instant - and it almost always is these days even with the lowest tiers of either telco or cable providers- ratcheting up to higher levels of bandwidth won't change the users' experiences at all.

Here's a tidbit of history I think is funny.

I believe it was back in the 1990s when the telco in my area started rolling out DSL service in the single digits of megs. That was modernization! I don't remember the year. My internet service before that was limited to using a dial-up modem at like 32K or 64K, depending on the connection. So the future was coming!

There was good news and bad news. Good news, it was available right away for locations close to a telephone company "central office". The max distance was something under 20,000 feet of wire, about 3 miles. For others, "construction" was scheduled to bring the service to more areas. For awhile, until they took it down, the construction schedule, detailed by neighborhood, was posted online.

I remember calling up in my enthusiasm to find out more. I was told that the construction involved building "hubs" for each neighborhood from which the new signals would be distributed. They told me where the hub for my area would be and it happened to be several above ground steel "boxes" by the side of the road of unidentifiable identity that I drove by every day when going to work.

Imagine my excitement one morning when driving down that road, there were two telco trucks parked by the boxes. I pulled over to offer them a welcome on behalf of the neighborhood, which they took in the joking spirit it was offered. I asked them what the nature of the construction was. I was told, not in these exact words, "The DSL signal only travels a few miles and the capacity falls off as the distance increases. So we need to set up thousands of hubs throughout the state that are within just a few miles of customers who may want the service.

I asked "what technology is used to carry the signal the longer distance to these hubs? How does it get here from the central office?"

Their answer - "We're stringing fiber optic lines. That runs to here. Then from here to your house the signal will run through your existing phone wire". This was long been referred to in the phone industry as "the last mile of copper", an analog signal before being converted to digital.

Fiber optic, like 30 years ago!

Edit to add:

Even back in the latter days of when more people had landlines, most telephone calls other than very local calls travelled "over the internet". Calling across town, to another part of your state or the US. Calls overseas. Converted from being an analog signal to digital and then transported on the internet. And, the internet has been "mostly" fiber optic for decades. For those of you who've had occasion over the years to call to Europe, Asia, or other "across an ocean location", fuzzy phone calls as were long was the norm went away, replaced by clear digital signals.

PANIX - $10/month. Yep, the first internet provider in NYC, started in 1989, still exists. Panix. My coop offers it for ten bucks a month. Service is great.

Check out their old school website. Hilarious that this is reliable internet. https://www.panix.com/

For the last 7 years we've had Centurylink. It started out @ $69mo & has increased to $73.50, due to tax increases. Can't remember the last time it was down or if we ever had a problem....very happy!

spectrum is the only option we have except Dish. I am satisfied with the service but we are now paying over 300.00 a month and that is not for any extra channels. Tv, cable and landline.

Local outfit. "Fair" is in the eye of the beholder. Internet isn't horrid but bundle cable/land line/internet at you are almost at $200 which I think is insane. There's really no way to separate it all out. Cable is the cost that's aggravating given the minimal options but ya can't have non dial up internet w/o a package of some level.

AT&T here. Cost pretty much depends on what services you choose....which and

how many options to TV Channel Tiers, etc. Internet is very reliable (now watch, I

have probably jinxed myself). All my lines are underground here, and does help

keep them more reliable in bad weather, etc. All the Techs that I have ever talked

with have been very helpful...except one....who wanted to show me how smart he

was, I guess. Finally, got him zeroed in on what I had asked him Bundling all services is the cheaper way to go of course. I don't think Cell service would be cheaper

by itself.

Spectrum is available in my area, and they work hard to convert people...cards in

the mail, notes on doors and door to door salesmen. Irritating quite often.

.

" ya can't have non dial up internet w/o a package of some level. "

That's interesting, arcy, because my two services are just that - internet only.

I just looked at my specs, both are the lowest tier possible.

One is 400Mbps. The other is also 400Mbps. The cheapest plans each offer. Both are enough bandwidth for a household of 10 HD gamers, so they're too much by an order of magnitude for our household of two retirees.

Both sites surely intentionally and misleadingly talk about speed rather than bandwidth for their different levels of service. If anything, I think that the take away is that in my suburban settings like most other, internet carriers have substantially enhanced their available capacity with new equipment and new technologies. The gating problems in many homes is limited or blocked Wifi signals around the house where devices are located and the limited capacity most inexpensive routers offer. Both are issues with easy solutions.

I'll never use AT&T again. They lied to me over 10 years ago, telling me if I paid them over $100 they would install fiber optic internet. Paid them, never happened. They installed something but it wasn't what they said. They actually did this a few months ago and came knocking on my door asking me to switch over. I told them why I wasn't going to do that. I was nice because it wasn't their fault.

I have Spectrum now. Was paying $29.99, now $49.99 and T-mobile is offering $30 a month. I'm thinking of switching. The only thing keeping me from it is the thought of having to change my email address everywhere.