Seriously. I like to think of myself as at least… quasi-responsible. I got the covid booster this weekend and, just like every other time I’ve gotten a covid vaccine, it has Kicked. My. ass. It’s currently 9:30 in the evening, as I’m writing this, and it feels like it’s a quarter-to-nobody-can-help-you, not-even-god o’clock. And my friend Ned is just sitting there across the table, indifferent to my pain. TYPICAL.
(NED: It’s a VERY long table, and I asked for the salt hours ago.)
Anyway - a significant study, optimistically titled “Fight for Fair Internet” was started in July 2021, and recently concluded, about the state of ISPs in the US, and you can probably guess about the results.
Prices were seen to be completely arbitrary, bandwidth boasts were a lie, secret fees were added at a shocking rate, and equipment provided across the board was sub-par. It’s a truly depressing state of affairs. What’s fun is, we as consumers have absolutely no recourse as a majority of Americans don’t actually have any choices- For a lot of people, it’s one provider or nothing. The guilty parties here are all of the usual suspects: Comcast, Verizon, AT&T, but even Google Fiber got dinged for crappy behavior.
There’s some good news though- overseas commentators were happy to chime in about how awful the internet access is in their countries too, so we Americans aren’t alone in our misery. Huzzah? I guess?