Reasonable internet service in Eugene?

I pay WAYYYY too much for my internet services through comcast, please help!

8 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

u/DrKronin Feb 08 '13

Comcast is the best deal (sadly). I can't bring myself to give them any more money than I already do, so I have Centurylink. Neither are really all that fast, but Comcast is faster. Let's hope Google Fiber chooses Eugene sometime soon.

Cable companies make a 97% margin on Internet service in the U.S. because they have no competition, and thus no incentive to reduce price.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '13

Back east we had 3 local cable companies. It made it pretty easy, every year I'd just call up and say 'company x offered me a better deal, will you guys give me a deal to keep me from switching?'. It's like a 5 minute call that saves you a ton of money.

You can still do it here though. Cable may not exactly have any competition here, but you can still do DSL and Satellite. You can often do those cheaper as well, though the service is worse, but you can still use their lower prices to leverage Comcast into giving you a better deal. Just make sure the deal they give you does not require a contract...

2

u/DrKronin Feb 08 '13

I've heard that trick before, just haven't tried it. Honestly, I'm less concerned with the price, and more concerned with the fact that I can't get more bandwidth. I'd happily pay $100/month for 100-500 Mb down and at least 50 Mb up, but those speeds just aren't an option. A co-worker of mine pays the equivalent of $20/month for 5 times Comcast's top bandwidth offering -- in Brazil.

1

u/[deleted] Feb 08 '13

What are you doing that you need that much bandwidth for?!?!?

I had Qwest/Century Link for quite a while and gave up mostly because the upstream was a paltry 768k and they had no better service to offer. My current comcast is 30mb down, 3mb up and I find it does the trick just fine. And though it's not cheap, $75 a month for that speed plus digital starter cable ain't too shabby.

1

u/DrKronin Feb 08 '13

Heh, "need" is probably too strong a term, but I could probably use nearly a gigabit at times. The biggest issue I've had with Comcast/Centurylink has been when I'm involved in some latency-sensitive gaming at the same time my girlfriend is streaming HD video or uploading hi-res photos (she's quite the prolific photographer). I also occasionally like to host private video streams of old, hard-to-find shows for friends, and 5 Mb up only allows a couple of people, and I can't do anything else while that's going on.

Currently, I'm getting about 20Mb down, 5 Mb up with Centurylink, so it isn't all that much slower than Comcast. The upstream speed might even be a bit faster at times.