That's an unfair response. In most markets (cable), there most definitely IS a huge upcharge for a DEDICATED circuit. You may have symmetric fiber, but is it a DEDICATED FIBER line? If so, you're lucky, The problem elsewhere is, there either is little to no competition or no decent service.
Yes, it is a dedicated fiber line, and I know I'm lucky. Lucky enough to not live in some state where politicians have polluted the ISP waters with ignorance and having succumbed to the marketing engines of ISPs. In fact, Frontier also recently ran dedicated fiber lines to our neighborhood after the only thing available from them for years was garbage DSL that topped out at 500kbps - since our neighborhood is 30,000' from the switch that serves it.
With fiber, even if it were not a dedicated line, the theoretical data limit is somewhere around 1/2 the frequency of the carrier which, if we are to take 600 THz as a middle ground for visible light would be something like 300 Tbps. No small amount.
Managing traffic flow across the internet is a tricky business.
Maybe that's your experience, however,t Spectrum announced proposed data caps a couple of years back and customers and the internet pushed back - causing Spectrum to abandon their plan of implementing data caps, and thus Spectrum going back on their plan to implement data caps is an indicator, IMO, that data caps are BS.
So, if Spectrum is able to handle the traffic without problems, I think the FCC is asking the right question, and at least someone is trying to get to the bottom of the issue here.
I would love to hear the responses from ISPs. I bet it would be popcorn worthy comedy, and hopefully, those who sit on the FCC board and/or their advisers are tech savvy enough to not succumb to the BS responses at least some of the ISPs will likely provide.
It's like traffic slowing to a crawl on a crowded freeway, which I guess is the reason or excuse for the existence of data caps. That doesn't mean the problem cannot be alleviated however, (one of the reasons for the advent of IPv6). There ought to be a way providers can give the customer what they need for a reasonable price. I think the technology is there to do so.
Yes, that's the point of the FCC looking into this, to get ISPs renowned for the worst possible customer service and expecting their customers to like it to stop crapping all over their customers and provide them decent service for rates that would be considered at least within reach of other, less technically advanced nations, that provide ISP service that is far better at a cost that is far less than in the US. In the past, and some still in this day and age, US ISPs want to sit on their lazy butts, let their infrastructure languish, while charging astronomical rates (compared with the rest of the technical world) and giving crap customer service. Someone or some entity needs to tell them "Cut the Crap!"
It's awful frustrating to lose out when you are doing something really important. There is a balance between giving the customer what they demand and what is takes to get it to them and make a decent profit for the providers. If they a holding the means to do so and still don't do it then something else is up. In a system where you have to pay for extras whether you want them or not (cable and satellite subscriptions with no custom lineup) and on the other hand when you can't get the services you want when you need them without paying excessively for them, then something is rotten in Denmark.
And, IMO, the root of it is greed that politicians let them get away with.
San Diego, for example, is practically a monopoly on internet service. The county is divided by a highway that (for the most part) is serviced by one cable provider on the north (Spectrum) and a different cable provider south (COX). Rarely are the two available to choose from. COX is a complete ripoff ($170/mo for unlimited Gigablast) whereas Spectrum is something like $99 unlimited (or less). To make matters worse, COX limits the UP speed to 10Mbps on all plans except Gigablast. Yes, 10 UP. On Gigablast, I'm "blessed" to have 35.
I'd love some regulation because these ISP's just take, take, take and keep raising prices and we have YET to get fiber from COX (despite the bright orange lines having been put in the street last year).
IMO, regulation is what is needed, and the FCC asking this, and other questions, is, apparently, the only way that any kind of reasonable controls on ISP Monopolies will come into play as asinine restrictions imposed by clueless politicians will be pushed to the sidelines.
Aside from that, competition is also the answer. When my fiber provider came into our area, Spectrum magically raised data rates to all their customers at no extra cost. Tell me that they could not have done that prior to having the competition. In fact, I played hardball with Spectrum, dropped their service (20Mbps at the time) in favor of a MVNO 4G connection that was 50Mbps but moderately more expensive. Then after having been with the MVNO for about 9-months, I took advantage of a Spectrum offer for 100Mbps (which would hit 120Mbps at times) for less than I was paying when I dropped them 6-months earlier. And still my neighbor was constrained to 20Mbps when I was getting 100Mbps. WTF?
The way that I see it, it was all part of the BS games that Spectrum was playing. Ultimately, I had to laugh at Spectrum because literally three days after I dropped them (where their pathetic "retention specialist" tried to scare me into staying with them by saying "You have to be careful of other providers because they have contracts" which was BS because my new provider did not have a contract) I got a letter int he mail that said "Congratulations. We're doubling your speed to 200Mbps at no extra cost" when my new provider was giving me 5x the speed for less.
So my point here is that Spectrum had the additional bandwidth necessary to be able to offer all their customers the 200Mbps speed. In fact, after this fiber ISP gained momentum in the area, Spectrum raised the speeds for ALL their customers to 200 Mbps without charging more. Admittedly, I don't have all the facts, but as
@Mark Fuller put it, I think this absolutely points to something being rotten in Denmark at least as far a Spectrum is concerned.
ISPs have been pulling this crap because they can, and no one has challenged them on it. With people in the FCC that are at least somewhat reasonable now, compared to Ash!t Pai, maybe something will finally get done so that BS crap will no longer be tolerated.
And yes, in my area, Competition is doing wonders for the customers.
