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.

  • rizoid@midwest.socialEnglish
    171·
    1 year ago

    I was very close to closing on a house in rural midwest but I checked isp’s and every one available had caps so I just stayed away.

    • Jikal@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Good choice. I live in the rural midwest and the only thing that’ll reach (even though we’re in the flatlands) is a WISP we pay $170 a month for 12/6. No data caps, but it’s slow as shit. At least it’s not satellite so we can still play games online fairly reliably but damn.

    • LogicBomb ⚙️💣@infosec.pubEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Great internet is also a deciding factor for us while looking for our next rural midwest home! I use the FCC Broadband Map and availability searches on local ISP websites to confirm available speeds and no data caps. We passed on some great homes because of slow/no internet or data caps.

      Our current rural midwest home has 940x35 w/o data caps from a cable-based (DOCSIS 3.1) ISP for $34.99/month. I’m sure they will increase the price after 12 months. When the time comes, I’ll call them again to complain and get a decent price again.