I wish. I own my own modem and router, but Comcast won’t let me use them unless I pay a whole bunch of extra fees or accept a stupidly low monthly data cap. I’ve got my router downstream of theirs which is a bit annoying, especially considering their modem-router combo overheats and needs to be rebooted via unplugging power at least once a month.
Sadly I have no other options here in San Francisco. My house is not wired for phone service so I cannot get DSL. The various fiber services that are becoming more available in San Francisco are generally only available downtown or large apartment buildings. My freestanding house can’t get any of that. AT&T‘s new fiber doesn’t connect to me either. And webpass doesn’t have a good line of sight from my location to any of their microwave towers so I can’t get that. It is Comcast or nothing. It always amazes me that San Francisco is supposedly the tech capital of the world but internet connectivity here is worse than rural China. (And that’s not an exaggeration, I’ve spent plenty of time in rural China and in the mountains there, both the cellular and hardline service is infinitely better than San Francisco, aside from the firewall issues of course)
…I guess that turned into a bit of a personal rant but holy crap how is it 2025 and this is still a problem in a major tech city?
This is why the market needs some regulation. Here in The Netherlands, ISPs are required to offer free (as in freedom) modem/router choice. Not only can you replace the router, you can even use your own XGS-PON/AON/etc. SFP(+) module.
For a while I had fiber running through an XGS-PON SFP module in my own Fritz!Box. Now I use the provider's ONT (which is just a fiber <-> ethernet media converter) hooked up to a Unifi Cloud Gateway Max.
Plenty of folks here that have their UDM or OpnSense box hooked up directly to fiber with a Zaram XGS-PON module.
Also, I am sorry you have to deal with caps. Data has been unlimited here ever since we switched from 56k6 to ADSL. (I also have unlimited 5G for 25 Euro per month.)
You could also solve this with competition. If there were 10 ISPs it would be disadvantageous to give your customers reasons to leave you. Why aren’t there more ISPs? Maybe too many regulations. It is trivial to lay cable, except of course all the permits.
Or maybe it's an oligopoly where the incumbents have carved up the market and stopped competing, milking their customers instead.
Broadband is then extra special if you let the ISP also own the infrastructure as everyone has to reconnect their service to every house instead of one company (or forbid, the govt) owning the pipes and several companies competing for providing services over those shared pipes.
Imo the competition model doesn't necessarily (always) work that well for infra.
Because it's illegal to dig up the road without a permit and they won't give a permit to install new fiber when the road is already full of perfectly good unused fiber. They only grant one of those the first time.
Here in Germany ISPs are also required to let you use your own router for free.
So instead of making you pay for that option they increase the base price and the provide discounts if you use the provided router. In the end you still end up paying more with your own router than with the provided one. And will probably have a worse support experience if there are ever any issues.
Do the laws in the Netherlands have teeth against such shenanigans?
Best to ask in some local forums. E.g. the Zaram XGS-PON SFP+ module is popular among Dutch KPN users. There is also some cooperation between e.g. KPN (Dutch ISP) and Zaram to make it well. Also popular is the Fritz!Box Fiber 5090, which comes with a module (though currently max. 2.5Gbit). For other modules, AFAIK they need to be set up with the right slot ID of the provider, etc. But the locals will know.
If you happen to be in the Netherlands, some of the KPN tech staff hang around on the Tweakers.net forums. They help a lot of users there who want to go down this road.
Manwhile i live in a rural area 10kms away of a little town in the south of Chile with FTTH with 1gbit symetrical with Static ip address really unlimited (no CAP of anytype) with one deco for my tv for 24 usd a month with an installation that cost me 30 usd. Should i add i hace to use rainwater because no potable wáter Is available?
Same here (except Chile). It's weird/sad/expected because of Comcast & others that the US are still not reliably connected everywhere. From the country that brought us the internet!?
In my (European) country, you have to live in a swamp far away from everything to not have FTTH legibility, in the same ballpark prices as the comment above.
Static IP as a (free) opt-in.
That explains why you can't get decent service in rural Montana, but not in San Francisco! The best fiber services around (other than Google) tends to be the municipal ones that don't give one of the big operators space to pull their bullshit though.
I live in SF and Comcast doesn't charge me to have my own router.
I pay $130 for 1.4gbit and unlimited data. It's expensive but I also have no other choices. Sonic stops only one block over and we haven't been able to convince them to wire up my block.
I'm guessing a 5G mobile option is too expensive. In the UK I have a 3Mobile (Smarty unlimited data) 5G connection, using an MC801, for £20/m and I get around 1gb/100mb with it - until the tower hits a busy period, then it drops to about ~500mb/20mb
I'm in the Bay. My only reasonable options are Comcast cable and T-Mobile 5G. I had enough problems with Comcast that I went to 5G, and it's ... fine. The bill is $5/mo worse than the alternative, but there's been zero extra billing bullshit, so my actual internet expenses are slightly less than normal and don't involve 20hrs on hold every year.
The quality of service is the real problem. When the tower is busy (happens at least once a week), I usually drop to 30Mb/30Kb or so, which is little enough upload that even download-intensive applications often struggle. Plus, the jitter is terrible, latency is slightly worse on average, and 3 times so far I've had internet effectively down (spotty connections in the 1Kb/1b range) for days at a time.
Interestingly, "predictable uptime" is something I care about and is much better with T-Mobile. With Comcast I'd have at least one hang every 10 minutes or so for multiple seconds on an otherwise perfectly functional connection. With T-Mobile, it's either down for days (tower maintenance) or up (perhaps slow, but definitely up). That makes all sorts of near-real-time activities easier to coordinate.
I'd probably do it again (I don't think I actually have any options unless I get off my ass and finally sue Comcast), but it isn't a clear win.
I have 5G for home internet, and it's $55/month, including taxes. I get 100 to 300 mbps, though during lunch on weekdays that can slow to 50.
There are two other 5G Home Internet providers in this state. One wants $100/month for 5-100 mbps. The other won't let me sign up because it doesn't have the capacity where I am.
I live in San Jose and Comcast shouldn't charge me for my own router, but every couple of months the "equipment hire" charge appears on my bill again and I have to go through the song and dance of calling them again and getting it removed.
I also pay a little more than $130 for gigabit with a 1tb limit.
Ouch, I think a limit would drive me crazy. I pay $110/mo for FTTH, 1Gbps symmetrical, unlimited bandwidth, static IP (by default you get CGNAT), ISP (MetroNet) provides the modem, and I use my own router.
For fiber is it popular to use your own modem? I always bough my own cable modems (Surfboards) but once I switched to fiber I didn’t really investigate it. As long as the ISP gives me a “clean line” out of the modem then I’m happy.
I use about 4TB of download and 4TB of upload a month on average so a 1TB limit feels incredibly limiting.
I’m in Lexington, KY which can account for it being cheaper but if you told me 5-10 years ago that KY would have better internet than SF/San Jose/etc I would have laughed in your face. I also can get 2Gbps/1Gbps for an extra ~$30/mo but all my equipment is 1Gbps max so I haven’t considered upgrading until I do a more general refresh of my network hardware. I think they have 5Gbps (not sure the upload speed) coming soon but I haven’t followed it closely. And yes, I realize I could benefit some from having 2Gbps Internet, even if most of my equipment doesn’t support it because I could use some of it over Wi-Fi and the rest of it hardwired. My eero does support 2.5Gbps, just nothing else in my house does more than 1Gbps.
That’s also insane to me, I’ve spent quite literally my entire life chasing faster internet speeds and always paid for the best plan available (aside from 10x priced business plans) and now I’m passing up a 2x download upgrade because what I have works great.
I'm surprised by this, is Comcast super regional with it's restrictions? I have a Comcast 1gig plan in the Bay Area, and last I checked I get a small ($5?) discount for using my own modem. I've been on the plan for a least a few years now... so alternatively maybe I'm grandfathered in or something? Or maybe some Comcast sales person was lying to you about your options?
My experience in the Bay Area - if you rent the gateway from Comcast ($25/mo) then you have no data cap. If you use your own modem and want to remove the data cap it costs $30/mo, more than renting the gateway. The data cap is 1.2TB per month in my area.
I think that is what the commenter meant: "...unless I pay a whole bunch of extra fees or accept a stupidly low monthly data cap"
(edit: I initially thought it was $15/mo for the gateway + no data cap but just checked and it is $25/mo. They are called "Xfinity Gateway" vs "xFi Complete").
Tell them it's a home office and get comcast business. There's no data caps on any of the tiers and they allow use of any modem on their approved list.
My current residential price is $65/mo for 500mbps/20mbps. Business is $120/mo for 500mbps/200mbps ($105 for first 24 months). I wouldn't mind getting a bit more sweet sweet upload. Maybe I will!
There is also "gigabit pro"/"gigabit x10" where they run fiber to your house. That is $350/month for symmetric 10gbps. Lots of limitations on availability and a big install fee, though. Gotta get the other half on board with that ;-)
I always wonder what are some ways to put 10 Gbps (well, even 1 Gbps) to good use in a home setting, beside marginally lower ping times. I'm not saying such uses don't exist, I'm just curious to know.
For me, the big win is everything being snappy and never having contention on my Internet connection. Maybe I could do with 500Mbps up and down just fine instead of a gigabit but I almost never hit the limits of my connection and that’s an amazing place to be. When I do hit the limits, it’s when I’m downloading a huge file and I’m very grateful for the speeds I have.
I’m not the first one to say this, but often it seems that faster Internet speeds have enabled completely new use-cases and applications that sometimes weren’t even obvious until a critical mass of people had the faster speeds.
Competition matters. Comcast/Xfinity was my only "choice" in Cambridge, MA. It cost about $70 per month for 100Mbps service.
My building in Oakland, CA has multiple options, including fiber. The Comcast folks setup tables at least once per quarter to help customers/residents. The cost was much cheaper. I now have gigabit fiber from Wave, and pay less than I did back in MA.
The crappiness of national ISPs is a feature, not a bug. ISPs have lobbied at state and federal levels to get their way. In many states, they have lobbied _for_ the ban of municipal ISPs.
Then between major ISPs they have under the table agreements to avoid competing in certain areas. This impacts all types of residential areas - suburban, urban, and rural. I believe it’s much worse in rural areas.
Why bother with providing good customer service or improving? They know you have no other choice.
Cellular networks functioning as ISPs have provided _some_ relief in this aspect but comes with its own drawbacks (congestion can get bad and you get throttled, and latency tends to be shitty all around).
The ideal municipal ISP I have seen is in Chattanooga TN. They (EPB) offer _residential_ customers symmetrical access starting at 1000 Mbps, up to 25,000Mbps. [1]
The 1gig plan is cheaper than GFi er and 2.5G plan is competitive.
Plus this money is kept within the ecosystem of this area. Creates high paying jobs. Profits reinvested into network rather than stock buybacks or some C-level executive that “super commutes” in a private jet.
I remember, they took the money for delivering fast internet then lobbied to change the definition of “fast internet” to specs they already provided. So the government investment became profit instead.
It kindof depends when a country did its investment into Internet infrastructure. More western countries did it first and are now stuck with older technologies that limit speed and capacity, where as the less modern countries put that investment in later and therefore have newer technologies like fibre.
Once an investment has been made it's hard to justify making another large investment, or if one is being made it becomes very political and captured by vested interests.
More western countries did it first and are now stuck with older technologies that limit speed and capacity, where as the less modern countries put that investment in later and therefore have newer technologies like fibre.
This is not necessary. These countries are also very rich and can afford to upgrade infrastructure. I am in The Netherlands and have 4Gbit fiber. At the end of 2024 there were 8 million fiber connections, whereas there are 8.4 million households. Heck, even my parents who live in a small remote village can get multi-gig fiber (though they are happy with their 100MBit).
Germany? We lived in Germany for five years and internet-wise it felt like going back to the stone age. We paid extra to get 20MBit upstream, but on Saturdays, you'd often only get 1MBit (more downstream of course). Cellular reception was crappy in much of the country (even inside larger cities).
We left Germany in 2018. We have unlimited 4Gbit synchronous fiber and unlimited 5G.
It's better now in Germany.
My parents life in the country side and got fiber about one year ago.
600/300 MBit/s for 60€.
Not cheap but very stable and always delivers.
I use Vodafone Cable 250/50 MBit/s for around 25€ (discount for new customers).
Not very stable but good enough.
1000/50 MBit/s is available but costs 50€.
If you live together with someone you can always switch the contract taker and thus always get the "new" customer benefits to save some money.
I don’t think there is any such law, not that I could find. Telekom refuse to make the connection. They say that if it isn’t there when the apartment is built a new one can’t be added. I live in an attic conversion
I just checked.
There is no right to a land-line but a general right to being connected.
So somebody has to provide you a connection.
If nobody does you can message the "Bundesnetzagentur" and they will oblige a provider.
In Germany you sign a contract and it is hard to get you out. The rent increases very little while you are there. When you move out they do a quick renovation and charge double or triple the rent you paid.
We used to be stuck with Comcast, but we had no trouble using our own modem and router.
We moved from lower Nob Hill to Russian Hill and were finally able to get fiber from Sonic. We went from ~300Mbps down to 1G (more like 750Mbps) and from $137/month to $50/month. Oh and it’s symmetric, very much unlike cable. So happy to get rid of Comcast.
I had a similar problem with having to deal with an ISP provided modem, and solved it in the stupidest way possible: xmas light timer to reboot it in the middle of the night. It's set to go off for 30 min then come back on. Sadly, I've had this up and running for years...
Just accept that xFi, the $30 additional fee or whatever it is, is just part of the price. If you’re not a normie you should probably just pay it and get a decent experience. Comcast is a monopolist but there are worse experiences out there than 1.4Gbit down/50Mbps up.
Interestingly, in my part of Los Angeles, the single family homes all got fiber well before the apartment retrofit. It took me joining the hoa board and a year to jump through the hoops for Frontier fios retrofit.
> needs to be rebooted via unplugging power at least once a month.
This (or a memory leak, anyway, something) is why I have my ISPs modem (I luckily can disable the router part; I think that might actually be EU mandated) on a smart plug. When my internet fails, I check to see if the modem is reachable, if it’s not, I go to Home Assistant, turn it off for 10 seconds and then turn it on again.
I guess I could automate it, but every 1-1.5 month is not enough to make me bother.
I have my own router, but use the ISP's modem. The modem is also able to act as a wired router and Wi-Fi router, but I set it to "bridge mode" to disable the wired NAT so that I could use my own router instead. (When they replaced the modem, I did tell them to enable bridge mode, and they did that, so that is not a problem.)
I just moved to Oakland and pay $50/month for 10 Gbps fiber with Sonic. I thought that was just the norm here after staying in a few SFH BnBs in the area that all had the same. I’m kinda surprised SF doesn’t have better connectivity.
Is the issue just a matter of different regulations increasing cost of installations between the bay?
Check out MonkeyBrains? It's wireless broadband and they have LoS to many parts of SF. I used them back when I lived there (admittedly some time ago) and I had no complaints. Very much a small ISP with personalized service.
It can be fiber speeds! I had symmetric gigabit with MonkeyBrains for 3 years.
It just depend on the size of their install; I was in a relatively large apartment complex so they invested more in bigger(?) antennas.
starlink has the opposite for ipv6, if you want to assign your own ipv6 addresses, you have to bypass the starlink wifi-router. ipv4 is still cgnat, but having a real-life routable IP (v6) address is nice.
Have you considered Starlink? You might give up some speed, but it is a fantastic bypass for monopolist bullshit. All the providers in my hometown wanted to charge my parents five figures to run something that wasn't 20-down copper, so they bolted a Starlink dish to the roof and got ~250 symmetrical (IIRC) pretty much constantly.
Sadly I have no other options here in San Francisco. My house is not wired for phone service so I cannot get DSL. The various fiber services that are becoming more available in San Francisco are generally only available downtown or large apartment buildings. My freestanding house can’t get any of that. AT&T‘s new fiber doesn’t connect to me either. And webpass doesn’t have a good line of sight from my location to any of their microwave towers so I can’t get that. It is Comcast or nothing. It always amazes me that San Francisco is supposedly the tech capital of the world but internet connectivity here is worse than rural China. (And that’s not an exaggeration, I’ve spent plenty of time in rural China and in the mountains there, both the cellular and hardline service is infinitely better than San Francisco, aside from the firewall issues of course)
…I guess that turned into a bit of a personal rant but holy crap how is it 2025 and this is still a problem in a major tech city?