[nousermane]

Ah, yes. The classic "all our customers are morons" approach, with no opt-out for those 0.1% who, in fact, are not. Very typical among ISPs/Telcos.

Where I am, we used to have a different, "nerdy" ISP [0], where customer was allowed to bring their own modem; they also provided real IPv4/v6 dual-stack since forever, easy to request a /29, tech-support that's realistic to reach, and staffed with people who know what they are talking about, no bulk-firewalling port-25, etc... All for a modest 2x price increase over market average. Alas, they're out of business now.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xs4all

[kmeisthax]

The opt-out is buy business-class service[0].

My guess is that the 2x price increase Xs4all was charging for their plan was a bridge too far for most customers. It's important to keep in mind that the vast majority of people rent their modem, don't know or care what a /29 is, and is calling tech support because the plug is loose or the modem needs a power cycle. Bulk-blocking SMTP happened because open ports are botnet ports, and the average customer does not know how to identify and shut down zombies on their network.

[0] Assuming your provider isn't stupidly committed to "you can't have business class because you're in a residential area, WFH doesn't exist, and the zoning code is gospel, all hail Robert Moses"

[bombcar]

Even if the provider is stupid AF you can usually get around the residential restriction by starting the discussion with the business side of the company; once the salesman has a nibble he's not gonna cut you free if he can help it.

And then get a 2 year term on whatever seems a "good deal" at the time (I had cable speeds and 5 IPs) and once that is up call them and "drop down" to whatever you actually need (cable speeds and 1 IP) - you'll find that at that point there will be various "packages" that were never advertised but the system is quite capable of supporting.

If all else fails, find a company that works with the provider and offers service over their "last mile".

You'll pay for all the above, but not as much as you might think, and business support is actually good in many, many cases. Fabled evil Comcast rolled a truck twice until they tracked down a problem, at no charge.

[mindslight]

Still sounds like a huge hassle compared to municipal fiber.

[bitwize]

I still get emails from Comcrap because once I had a business internet plan with them in a residential area -- an apartment no less.

When it comes to internet service, "giving a crap about the customer" is a premium add-on from Comcast, but once you commit to opening your wallet for that, they do deliver.

[voidwtf]

What Comcast did you do business with?

Comcast doesn’t give a crap about customers, full stop. Oh yes, they’ll send “technicians” out 3 to 4 times a month to tell you everything tested perfectly. But get them to put a line monitor on your connection, provide them logs that you have over 5% packet loss that doesn’t start until after the CMTS, and they’ll get an “engineer” involved who will come out and leave some testing equipment which will confirm the issue. Over a year later, the issue will remain unresolved.

My aunt bought a house where, at the best of times, her kids can finish a game with only a handful of disconnects. The other 20% of the time they can’t even watch Netflix or streaming sports.

They tried the “business connection” trick already, at a cost of $300 a month for 150mbps. That didn’t improve anything.

The “investigation” remains open, and the “engineer” just doesn’t bother updating them anymore.

My cousin went door-to-door only to discover the whole neighborhood is having the same types of issues. It’s just the new normal.

[tgsovlerkhgsel]

IMO, if the ISP doesn't want to sell Internet access, they shouldn't be allowed to call it anything that could be mistaken by a consumer for Internet access.

Trying to upcharge customers for what they were initially supposed to deliver should be considered fraud.

[RunSet]

> The opt-out is buy business-class service.

Yes, punish the undesirable behavior with more money. That will teach them a valuable lesson.

[Wowfunhappy]

Well, the charitable interpretation would be that you're paying for their extra support costs.

[RunSet]

The charitable assumption on the service provider's behalf would be that their customers are not morons.

[pixl97]

Most of the time you can get around this by providing your own 'dumb' modem with no VOIP features on it. Quite often the control feature is on the firmware the ISP uploads to the modem.

[techsupporter]

> Where I am, we used to have a different, "nerdy" ISP [Xs4all]

I remember Xs4all, sorry to hear they went under.

I also miss the brief moment when we had line sharing on copper telco networks in the United States. Most people were perfectly happy with the standard offerings from their local telco, but those of us who wanted more could connect with an ISP who offered service via a dry pair DSL connection. I loved my time on Speakeasy, for example.

I remember all of the flaws with the line sharing system, too, but it actually worked for the short time we had it, in spite of the problems. Asking a niche ISP to build its own facilities-based network is an exercise in futility for many deployments. Of course, cities or counties or public utility districts could do it but the incumbent providers don't like that.

[voidwtf]

We had a similar type of “tech” ISP in the USA with a lot of similar features called Speakeasy back in the early 2000s. You could get static ips easily, delegated control of your reverse dns upon request, they encouraged connection sharing by offering an additional email account and IP address for $6/mo and even had guides how to setup different SNAT and masquerading scenarios on Linux.

They were so cool compared to the options from AT&T and Roadrunner. It was like an ISP run by enthusiasts, for enthusiasts. They ended up getting bought by Mindspring IIRC.

[techsupporter]

Yep, I think we're talking about the same Speakeasy ("I loved my time on Speakeasy, for example."). I remember they used to assign IPs almost at random; you wouldn't get a larger subnet, you'd just get more IPs sent down your connection and it was up to you to have the routing equipment to handle them.

This was also the rise of the OpenWRT software on the WRT54G (and GS!) because no consumer-level hardware coult do it. So many Linksys devices bricked from failing tftp sessions, but it worked so well if you could incant it onto the device.

[jorams]

It's worth noting that there's a spiritual successor to XS4ALL called Freedom[0].

[0]: https://www.freedom.nl/

[Tijdreiziger]

And... they're still just as expensive as XS4ALL was. It's nice the option exists for people willing to pay the premium, though.

[jorams]

They're significantly cheaper if you live in an area with a non-KPN fiber network. In KPN network areas they're paying more than consumer pricing to KPN for network access, unfortunately.