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macadami
join:2008-03-05
Carthage, TX
| Bandwidth legal requirements by provider?
I'm not sure if this is where i should post this, but i did not see another forum that was any more suited for it.
I was a new subscriber to a WISP in rural east texas, they are not a very large company and only cover about 100sq miles mainly targetting the areas without dsl or cable access.
When i signed on, my service was decent, although i never actually attained the 512k down i was buying; most speed tests rated it somewhere between 35k-45k instead of the 65k max i should get.
This didnt bother me however, because i understood i was in a rural area, and had no other option for relative low latency and a reliable connection.
The company grew in consumers since i signed up, estimates to the guy i talked to in the 300-500 member rate. Internets even a necessity way out here, and more and more people are realizing it. My bandwidth and latency has been getting worse over the last 5 months to the point now where i get 300ms-2000ms pings and max of 10-20k down, even in off times. I started tracerting the problem and noticed all of the latency coming from the main tower to the phone company a few miles away.
I did not get to talk to the owner, just an installer, but he told me they only have a single t1 line from their main tower out, which was exactly what they started with and to his knowledge there were no plans of upgrading it any time soon. So doing some simple math and even a low estimate of 300 members, all perhaps paying only the 60 a month for 512k, it doesnt take a genius to figure out that one t1 line cannot ever hope to supply everyone with the amount of bandwidth in the contract.
Perhaps when they first started the company, the early subscribers weren't downloading files, viewing youtube, or any other bandwidth heavy activities, but now I feel like they owe me a little more than what i'm getting.
I only have 2 options for internet here, satellite and this motorolla canopy wisp, i choose this for the low latency they advertised for gaming.
Anyways to my topic, are there any legal requirements for an isp to provide a certain amount of bandwidth, or can they just advertise whatever they like as long as the intranet connection provides that amount? Could i set up a wireless access point, charge people money under the assumption of getting 11mb of bandwidth and have the router connected with dial up? | |
RockyBB
Premium
join:2005-01-31
Longmont, CO
| said by macadami  :Anyways to my topic, are there any legal requirements for an isp to provide a certain amount of bandwidth, or can they just advertise whatever they like as long as the intranet connection provides that amount? I'm not aware of any legal consumer protections specific to the ISP industry. If you're in a rural area, however, you might have an opportunity to influence one. That is, have your county commissioners enact an ordinance requiring any ISP doing business in the county to maintain service levels within 75% of advertised speed or face some penalty. The commissioners would hold hearings on the proposed act, which would smoke out the owner to testify regarding his thoughts. Be careful what you ask for, of course, as this would be a game of chicken with your WISP, which might decide to simply withdraw or to raise pricing. | |
iansltx
join:2007-02-19
Golden, CO
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| reply to macadami
In addition to what RockyBB said, if there are 350-500 customers on the WISP, fed by a single T1, there's some profit in the area. Even if the T1 is $1200 per month. So you could start a competing Canopy outfit. Or maybe threaten to do so with everything ready to do so. If the ISP is running 500 customers off of a T1 they might as well be selling dialup service, so you've got a leg to stand on... | |
shorthairedp
join:2005-11-21
united state
| reply to macadami
unless you signed a contract GUARANTEEing a bandwidth, the answer is no, you dont have a legal leg to stand on.
But witht hat much oversubscription, its bound to get sluggish or creep to a crawl.
you CAN get Hughesnet, slightly higher price, but the service will actually be better than what youre getting. Normally I would never advise a satellite option due to limitations and latency, but your situation is oversubscription.
for gaming, youre out of luck.
Read the many many many start a WISP threads in the WISP forum if youre genuinely interested in competing, but plan on laying out a lot of dough, or in a year or so, your users will be here posting what youre posting about you | |
kewlkeed
Grouch
Premium
join:2005-02-05
Knowlton, QC
| reply to macadami
Ditto on shorthairedp,
Unless you signed a guarantee for bandwidth, you're out of luck. If they say "Up to 1Meg" and you only get 1kb, you're still out of luck. There's no false advertising, perhaps a touch misleading but not enough to stand on.
As was said above, you can see if the town will take some action, or you yourself could, but you play a dangerous game as the owner could just decide to fold up shop for your area and then you're really screwed.
It sounds like the owner doesn't understand what he's doing (This is quite common lately and seems to be growing sadly, and giving a bad name to those WISPs who do know what they're doing). Two seconds of number crunching tells you he's massively oversubscribed and doesn't have a hope in hell delivering what he says. He needs to upgrade his core feed, and once that's done he still probably needs to re-work a lot of his network to get that speed back to you properly. There's a WISP near us that does the same thing. Their clients get dialup speeds and they just throw stupid solutions at it (Like getting a 20x20meg fiber pipe at the tower) hoping it will solve the problem, when in fact it's entirely caused by the piss-poor design of their network bottlenecks and bad RF design. Chances have it if you have an owner who is not even capable of properly assessing his incoming feeds, there's a good chance his entire network is in shambles and wouldn't even handle a greater pipe if he were to put one in.
--
Justin - DSLR resident grouch and Mr Negativity
TSI Fanboy - "Dontchya wish your 'net was hot like mine! Ohhh Dontchya!"
Have a nice day! | |
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