Please don't do this. Not only is this a violation of the agreement between you and the ISP, but consumer internet pipes were never designed for this type of service. This is only feasible if the internet coming to your house is a business line, which it won't be if you live in a residential area.
Does screen-sharing and letting someone control your screen count as "subletting"? Does inviting someone to join your local Minecraft game (which internally starts a server and exposes it to the internet) count as subletting?
If your ISP sells you a service of X Mbps (and if they want to be more precise, X packets per second and X total data transferred in a month) you should be able to use it for any purpose you want. The purpose or content of said packet don't suddenly make it take more network resources.
If ISP's networks suddenly can't cope because people start using what they've paid for then it's on them and they need to price it accordingly and market it more honestly.
It's not though. Sure what you say may be correct in some amount but it has little to do with the comment you responded to and isn't much more than excuse for why ISPs take advantage of their (largely) monopoly powers in the residential internet space.
The reason you don't get a consistent speed and a guarantee as a residential ISP client isn't because of any of the reasons you mentioned. It's because ISPs can force you to pay for their service at whatever price they charge and no matter how bad it is.
The internet could be out for 8 hours a day, you could get sub-dialup speeds consistently, you simply can't connect to some services for some inexplicable reason, or your packet loss could be so bad that you get kicked from services and pages constantly. Guess what, you are still going to pay for it because what's the alternative? No internet at all or satellite internet that goes out whenever a cloud is in the sky and that alots you 1GB a month at 56kbps for 200USD/month.
No matter what a residential ISP does, they will still get their money and even if you service is complete trash you'll grin and bare it lest you end up without access at all. That's the reason we don't get consistent service with residential plans and it won't change until something happens to break us out of the monopolistic regulatory captured environment we are in.
Yes, the US residential market would definitely benefit from more competition.
The model we have here is to separate the infrastructure from the service such that infrastructure providers lay fibre to homes and businesses and then sell wholesale to ISPs who sell service over the common fibre to consumers. It’s definitely better than the US model as there is competition between ISPs and they therefore have reason to apply pressure to get problems fixed. Infrastructure upgrades are still painfully slow as there is little competitive reason to upgrade the fibre (or fibre / copper VDSL in many places) as all the ISPs have little choice but use the infra provider for a certain area.
Ideally you want more infra, but the cost of building out fibre networks is high, particularly if you’re only selling to 1-in-2 or 1-in-3 properties due to competition. That’s before you get to the politics and legals and lobbying you need to do to succeed in the US. I’m hopeful 5G will compete with broadband and give the providers the kick up the ass they need.
> ISPs should advertise more honestly, but if they started talking about contention ratios in their advertising the average consumer would rapidly lose interest.
In short, they have to lie to get business? Why is that even legal?
I'm surprised by how downvoted you are. It is kind of obvious that it is a violation to me here, since we have a history of people reselling their bandwith in blocks of flats.
People feel entitled to their internet access without consideration of infrastructure costs, especially in North America. They see symmetric multi-GB connections commonly offered in countries such as Japan, South Korea and Singapore, and wonder why it can’t be done in the US.
Population density is why: Singapore is ~8400 people per square kilometre, while the US is a scant 36 per square km. That’s two orders of magnitude difference. Everything else follows from this (high prices, single provider, spotty last mile service, etc.)
Population density is often used as an excuse for this, but it's a weak excuse.
Finland has less population density than USA and manages to solve these issues; NYC has more density than Singapore and still has the same problems with internet access and pricing as the less dense areas of USA.
No, it's not about the population density, the key difference is in the lack of competition.
> People feel entitled to their internet access without consideration of infrastructure costs, especially in North America.
What? People are paying the infrastructure costs through their internet bill. If the ISP is pricing it wrong or is mis-representing what they're selling then it's the ISP's fault and not the customers'. The ISP is free to change prices and/or change their marketing to represent the true nature and capability of the service they're selling.
This is true, but even in US locations with high population density, we still don't have symmetric multi gig connections. Instead, we 1 or 2 choices for a wired ISP: generally cable / DOCSIS and DSL. And around here, PSTN copper is literally rotting on the poles, so DSL is out. Fiber is supposed to be installed "soon" (I estimated 1 to 2 years.)
