This is technology bites episode 77 for August 25th 2024 Technology bites is a microcast where I share brief bites on interesting technology.
Enjoy and here we go This week.
I want to talk about internet service providers This is a technology that all of us use every single day of our lives for the most part I would assume that to be true and While it may not be necessarily an interesting technology if you think of How it’s changed over time It is fairly amazing.
I can remember early days of computers and networks and and those types of things where really the connection to the world in general was Held by very few people and maybe businesses might be able to afford an internet connection those kind of things but almost rarely was that the case of personal people living at home and in Their personal computers and what we would often use is what is lovingly referred to as sneaker net so if we needed to Give a file to a friend or take a file to work or whatever the case may be We would create the document the Whatever the file was we would copy it onto a disk and then carry that to Whoever needed it and there were various ones.
I mean, you know, I’m not gonna go through the whole history here That’s not really the point but I remember that when I I was able to afford a computer that there was, you know, the modems and the and the Wine of a modem connecting to the internet through a telephone line.
It was something that was Unique and people even remember that today and many people can mimic that sound.
I won’t try to do that here and Then we went to constant on Internet connections might be DSL.
It might have been through your cable television provider and Then since then it’s grown to other opportunities through fiber Satellite connections different ways that that can happen in our world today but one thing that I think has always held true is about choice and Oftentimes it really depends on where you live as Where you get your internet from?
Very rarely.
Are you in a position where you have a choice in who you choose as your?
internet service provider I May be a little bit off there because you probably always have a choice.
Maybe a secondary choice but oftentimes it is either slow and very expensive or so slow and inexpensive that it becomes almost useless for any type of Useful work that you might do from your home and so You know, my wife said it the other day.
She said I can’t believe we live in such a populated large United States City and we only have one real choice For internet service providers and that is the case for probably very many people throughout the Whole of the United States and while there are different technologies oftentimes you only have access to one of them and Sometimes you might be in a position where only one of them works for you where you live And so that is your only choice and and to me that that creates a real problem because without competition then Things in the market can go awry.
We can’t really rely on a market to set cost and Level of service and those kind of things because with only one choice It’s either yes or no, and we’re not willing to say no to drive prices I Hope over time this gets solved but at the moment, I think it’s very Much that story throughout all of the United States.
So first very limited choice so then because of that we get continually increasing costs for less service and Also the quality of the service is maybe not the service providers highest intent because Where else you gonna go so you may complain a little bit about it here or there but you know short of Hey this Super Bowl cut out or you know, whatever event that maybe lots of people watch and and Listen to or whatever the case may be and that gets interrupted by poor service from an internet service provider, then they can catch a lot of flack from The community as a whole, but we still don’t have anywhere else we can go and in addition to that all of our personal information whatever it takes to connect to the internet is then for sale and You know, I may be jaded in that but our internet service providers get to see everything that we do short of turning on a VPN which is Is possible but often Over the head of many who are not all that technically savvy So in my opinion The idea of an internet service provider is out of whack in the United States without competition without multiple choices then there is nothing that makes anyone any Provider want to give us a service that is above and beyond and in fact, you know I I’ve heard a few tech people talk about this and there is still some disagreement but this the cost of the service is is interesting because I Don’t have to change anything in my house for me to get faster service Through Cox who is my internet service provider.
I just have to give them more money well, if nothing changes between me and them and the Hardware that I have in my house doesn’t change in either then that means the cost to Cox for providing me a faster internet service is Of no consequence to them.
They don’t have to pay any more money It doesn’t cost them anymore.
The service is already there So basically what you’re doing is paying additional costs for no additional reason Because it doesn’t cost them anymore.
Just they just make more profit.
I Understand that’s what companies are supposed to do.
So I don’t know the final answer to that, but I just feel like without competition We as the consumer have very little voice in what we get from an internet service provider now one of the things that is also Problematic is the United States is a huge country and there are vast portions of the country that are in areas where the Closest internet service provider is unwilling and is not required to spend any money to get service to those more rural areas and So for a while there was very little choice.
So you you had maybe a satellite Service provider that would get you some internet speed, but it was often very slow and very expensive But if it’s necessary, then it’s necessary.
We have the same problem I think with the service providers for our cell networks that they it doesn’t blanket the whole of the United States and I Don’t know who should be responsible for that.
I’m not sure where that comes from, but I Don’t know it almost feels like it should be a utility like power and water and those kind of things But even in the rural areas you often have to Dig a well to get water.
It’s not provided to you by any other entity.
Although power Continues to be spread throughout the United States in a way that everybody gets to participate So it’s very interesting.
It’s a little bit of a challenge I’m not sure the final answer but this week as I was listening to one of my tech podcasts they were talking about Elon Musk offering of The internet link man.
I’m the name of it is escaping me Star link, you know where you get the internet through his satellite services that he has launched in variety of locations now From what I understand the service is Solid and Actually, the speeds are pretty good, especially compared to other satellite devices where just it just doesn’t work in my opinion But it’s also very costly compared to what you might get from a Fiverr provider at your house or Cox like I have at my house Just the initial equipment outlay itself can be in the multiple hundreds of dollars And then on top of that you’re paying for a service and probably the hundred hundred and fifty bucks a month for something that is not super fast, but probably is quite solid and I always thought of that as kind of out of reach of most people but when you think about it It allows people to live where they want and still get an internet service that allows them to work from home that allows them to participate in an internet with Enough speed to do online gaming to do videos to consumption those kind of things.
So maybe that is an answer for Parts of the United States, but in general there’s no competition there either.
So why would That service have The drive to do it faster better cheaper kind of thing So overall you probably can tell that I am dissatisfied with the state of the internet in the United States I think it should be less expensive.
I think it should be faster and I think it should have competition to Drive a market and I don’t know if that will ever happen or when that will ever happen But that is a dream well, that is all I have for today as Always I want to thank you for listening to the technology bytes microcast if you have any comments suggestions or questions You can send them to technology bytes at Merrick family comm and that’s in e a RIG Family comm and technology bytes is with a BY TES Thank you again for listening and I look forward to the next time we are together taking another bite of technology
