Looking for new ISP

[Morgray]

Hello,

I currently live at a friends place in Las Vegas, Nevada ( I normally live in Germany) and I was wondering about his ISP. He told me that he pays 35$ for it a month, for telephone and internet. His internetspeed is only 2MBits. I thought that this price is way to high for that kind of low speed, since in Germany you would get atleast 16 mbit for that kind of money.
For 35€ you can even get 32Mbit+Phone, which would be like 42$.

So he asked me look if I could find better deals, though I am not very experienced with American ISPs, so I thought I'd ask here for your suggestions.

Edit: His current ISP is called Embarq.

Thank you very much,

Bless you.

 

[MtnMan]

Yep, while the US invented the internet, the US ISP's invented screwing their customers while the rest of the world has far superior offering from their ISP's.

We probably have better offerings than some 3rd world countries but that is about it, thanks to corporate greed and the best politicians that money can buy.

 

[Morgray]

Thanks MtnMan,

I have to say at first I had problems believing you, after looking on this site http://isp-review.toptenreviews.com/optimum-online-review.html where they have the top best ISP listed, ...wow...I really did not expect that.

It's really expensive here, it seems like what this friend of mine here got is actually a good offer.

Anyway...thank you. 😉

 

[mammador]

Is that a local ISP? I don't live in the US, but there are several national ones. Not Comcast though, I don't see a need for 250Gb download per month. Just offer different packages, with a bandwidth limit (5 Mbps, 15Mbps, 50Mbps).

That said 2 Mbps is enough for light Internet usage. If somebody streams a lot, downloads like a beast, or has multiple Internet services on the home LAN (VoIP, Web, e-mail and video) then yeah 2 Megs is too small.

 

[drebo]

US ISPs are able to screw their customers because of legislation enacted by the Clinton administration.

Enforced monopolies are bad for customers.

 

[kornphlake]

What you're friend is paying is pretty competitive with what everybody else is paying. There's usually some provider that offers 6-10mbps service for ~$20 per month for the first 6 months when you sign a 2 year contract, the last 18 months will cost a lot more than the introductory price though. I pay comcast $60 per month for 15mpbs, and I get free basic cable (although I use dish network for television, it was cheaper to package cable with the internet than to pay for just internet.) In my area since there's really no competition, rather I use cable or DSL I'm going to pay about $60/mo, I can switch providers every 2 years and save a few dollars for a few months but in my experience the billing always gets screwed up and the time I spend on hold and arguing with customer service cost more than what I save by switching. When I lived in San Diego there were 2 cable companies and 2 phone companies that serviced my address, the rates from the different providers were pretty competitive.