Cheap Internet for Low-Income American Familes

[Chris_]

Cheap Internet for Low-Income American Familes

Any family with at least one child who qualifies for the free lunch program at public schools can subscribe to a low-speed (1.5Mbps) Comcast Internet connection for $9.95 a month. Comcast guarantees that it won't raise the price and offers the plan without equipment rental or activation fees. Subscribers also cannot have "an overdue Comcast bill or unreturned equipment," and they can't have had Comcast Internet in the last 90 days.

The Internet Essentials program was also a part of the conditions under which Comcast was allowed to buy NBC earlier this year. The company pledged to reach 2.5 million low income households with high speed Internet for less than $10 a month, and to sell some sort of computer for $150 or less.

ars technica

[thundley4]

Even the poor deserve to use bit torrents.

[Chris_]

Give me streaming video and Xbox games or give me death.

[thundley4]

I can remember paying AOL over $20/month for 56K dial up. 

[Chris_]

You can't even get that anymore.  With phone service, dial-up costs nearly $40 a month.  The cheapest unbundled (no TV, no phone) non-dial-up service I can find is Clear 4G, which is $45.  The best I've gotten with them is 2 Mbps.  I was getting 4 Mbps with Comcast, but I was paying almost twice as much for it.

[thundley4]

I have Comcast for cable and internet and they call me wanting me to get their phone service too.  My internet is about $45/month.

[Chris_]

  How the hell do you manage that?  When I moved here, the only option I had was dial-up or cable and the best Comcast could give me was their "standard" package that I mentioned above.  I paid $75 a month for that crap.

[thundley4]

Comcast bought out the last company Insight Cable, and at that time we were getting 10-12MBs for the same price.  They have actually increased performance without raising the cost. However, there is a download limit each month, but we've never came close to it.

[CG6468]

I have Comcast for cable and internet and they call me wanting me to get their phone service too.  My internet is about $45/month.

Same carrier: Ping 17, Download 24.20, Upload 4.06

[thundley4]

Same carrier: Ping 17, Download 24.20, Upload 4.06

Does it vary from test to test even within a few minutes? Mine does, but not too much.

[CG6468]

Does it vary from test to test even within a few minutes? Mine does, but not too much.

Yeah, it does, but like you said, not very much.

[JohnnyReb]

I can remember paying AOL over $20/month for 56K dial up. 

Remember hell, that's what I got now out here in the country on the tin can and string telephone system.

CheapLow cost Internet for Low-Income cheap American Familes is what I want to see. 

[Janice]

I seem to remember paying something like $9.95 or $10.95/ month for Netzero dial up internet service.

Dont they still offer somethin like that on the tin can and string telephone systems for just anybody?

[rich_t]

You can't even get that anymore.  With phone service, dial-up costs nearly $40 a month.  The cheapest unbundled (no TV, no phone) non-dial-up service I can find is Clear 4G, which is $45.  The best I've gotten with them is 2 Mbps.  I was getting 4 Mbps with Comcast, but I was paying almost twice as much for it.

That is kind of low for Clear 4G.  What is your CINR and HO RSSI?  You can find them under diagnostics in the Clear Connection Manager.  You might be on the edge of your servicing sector.

[Chris_]

That is kind of low for Clear 4G.  What is your CINR and HO RSSI?  You can find them under diagnostics in the Clear Connection Manager.  You might be on the edge of your servicing sector

My RSSI is -70 dbm and CINR is 20.  I'm less than a mile from the nearest tower but I'm on the back of the building facing away from it.

I took it out to the parking lot with my laptop and set everything on top of my car... the best I got was 2 Mbs, but I could always check it again.

[rich_t]

My RSSI is -70 dbm and CINR is 20.  I'm less than a mile from the nearest tower but I'm on the back of the building facing away from it.

I took it out to the parking lot with my laptop and set everything on top of my car... the best I got was 2 Mbs, but I could always check it again.

Call customer service and make sure that you aren't being rate limited.

Also try different servers on speedtest.net to see if your speeds differ.  They differ significantly depending on which server I use.

Your CINR and RSSI readings aren't bad and you should be able to get higher than 2Mbs.

My RSSI is -79 and CINR is 12 and I average about 4-5 Mbs.

[Chris_]

Denver, CO
2.2/2.7 Mbs

Toronto, ON
1.2/1.4

Chicago, IL
2.1/4.0

Washington, DC
1.6/6.6

Parsipany, NJ
1.7/3.8

Los Angeles, CA
1.3/1.0

Murfreesboro, TN
1.0/1.6

[rich_t]

Those readings suck.  There are several things that might be causing your crappy speeds.

Are you using the USB modem or the home modem?

If you have the USB modem, take a drive around town and see what your speeds are in other areas.  At home/office you might be hitting a sector that has an issue that hasn't been isolated (bad antenna, bad cable to antenna etc.)  We completed a sweep in my market a few months ago and found several antennas that had high standing wave readings that can very easily cause reduced service.

Call customer service and ask them to have an RF engineer take a look at the portion of the network you are hitting (they will need the MAC address of your modem, but should be able to pull it up in their system, you can also find it under the diagnostics in your Clear Connection Manager).  Don't let them tell you that you need to pay for a service call (they farmed that out to the Geek Squad at Best Buy and it ain't cheap).  We used to do truck rolls for free for this sort of issue but Clear killed those about a year ago in most areas.

You might be getting some interference but your CINR readings don't seem to indicate bad interference.  I'd also ask them to see if you have been rate limited on the account.

Other than that it might just be that you live in a high volume area and are suffering from network congestion.  The only other thing that I can think of is that the BTS your are hitting is set for a lower QAM setting on the microwave back haul due to interference of some sort or other radio restriction.  This can cause significantly lower down load speeds for the end users.

What city do you live in?  I might be able to do some checking from my end.

[Chris_]

I'm in Nashville.

[rich_t]

I'm in Nashville.

Damn it...  Nashville is homed to the Indianapolis WSC which for some reason I no longer have access to.

I'll have to look into that on Monday.

[rich_t]

Have you called customer care yet?

[Chris_]

Not yet.  I haven't had time.  I suppose I should do that at some point.

[rich_t]

Not yet.  I haven't had time.  I suppose I should do that at some point.

I would if I were you.  Feel free to ask them to bridge me to the call.  PM me and I will give you my number when you are ready to make the call.

[compaqxp]

I have Comcast for cable and internet and they call me wanting me to get their phone service too.  My internet is about $45/month.

Much better then mine. About 30$ a month gets you this from Aliant.

[Janice]

This speed tester seems to get closer to what I actually get:

http://www.bandwidthplace.com/

as opposed to http://speedtest.net/

then theres http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

and http://www.myspeedtest.de/speedtest.htm

and http://www.dslreports.com/stest

Interesting how they vary.