I thought data caps for home internet were a thing of the past…

I’ve somewhat recently moved back to a very rural area of the Midwest. Small town. No stop lights. Biggest businesses other than the bars are Casey’s, Subway, and Dollar General.

And we have one ISP (not counting DSL) — Mediacom. When we first signed up, I had to go with the second service tier. But not because of speeds, but so I could have a reasonable 1 TB/mo data cap.

Lucky me, they increased the cap to 1.5 TB. 🙄

I hope that in my lifetime I can see ISPs regulated as a public utility.

  • @cmeerwEnglish
    1•10 months ago

    And depending where you live that might or might not work out well for you. If too many people in your neighbourhood use too much mobile data at the same time as you, speeds will decrease and unlimited data plans in particular will be throttled.

    • @[email protected]English
      1•10 months ago

      Never got into it that deep myself, I just know other people who never had issues. Prime-time streaming in full hd etc.

      But I’m also pretty sure you can sue them, if they can’t keep up the advertised speeds over longer time. Obv only when the infrastructure is actually available.

      • @cmeerwEnglish
        1•10 months ago

        You can sue anyone for anything, but no one is advertising any guaranteed speeds for mobile broadband, so your chances will be fairly limited. Best you can do is withdrawing from your contract.

        • @[email protected]English
          1•10 months ago

          For unlimited data contracts you can usually pay different amounts for different speeds. They actively advertise with those maximum speeds and if you can never reach them, even tho they are available at your location, you can report them to a federal agency and take legally warranty claims.