As Abraham Lincoln or maybe William Shakespeare probably once tweeted, there is no truer manifestation of the human condition than complaining about one's Internet service provider. That's why, after a recent e-mail thread in which we mocked Senior Reviews Editor Lee Hutchinson's Internet plan, we decided to let the world know what we pay our Internet service providers and what we think about them.

It turns out there are a lot of current and former Comcast customers in the Ars Orbiting HQ, which is no surprise as it's the biggest broadband provider in the US. The rest of our US people are on Verizon FiOS, Charter, Cablevision, Sonic.net, Astound, and RCN. We also have a few Europeans who can tell us about something called "competition."

We'll start with the Europeans first and move on to Verizon FiOS customers. Then we'll have a section on "other" ISPs before finishing with a loonng section on Comcast. The writers and editors will provide their location, price, advertised speed, actual speed as measured by Speedtest.net, data caps (if any), rented equipment (unless they use their own), and a little blurb blasting or praising their ISP. I asked all our editors to follow the same general format, though not everyone did. It's an unruly bunch, but hey whaddya gonna do?

-Jon Brodkin

The view from Europe: Haw haw!

Associate Writer Chris Lee: Competition is nice

ISP: On.nl fiber-to-the-home

Location: Eindhoven, Netherlands

Price: €46 per month ($63)

60Mbps symmetrical

Services: Internet, basic TV

As a family we pay more for cell phone service than for Internet service: ~100 euro per month for four phones. Eindhoven is a city that lives in the long shadow cast by Philips, a fading consumer electronics giant. Despite Philips’ lack of performance, Eindhoven prides itself as being a technically oriented city, and, as such, it would be embarrassed to have anything less than first class Internet service.

I have options for DSL, cable modem, and fiber-based ISPs with prices ranging from about €15 ($20.45) per month (15/0.75 Mbps) up to around €80 ($109.06) a month for 100 Mb/s up and down. Competing ISPs include UPC, Ziggo, Tele2, Vodafone, and KPN. As usual, bundles are the rule, but there are, to my knowledge, no data caps. As for outages: for the last eight years with three different service providers in two different cities, I had exactly one unplanned outage and maybe three planned maintenance periods.

My current service provider is on.nl (I had to look up their name), providing basic cable and a 60Mbps symmetrical service over a FTTH connection for €46 ($62.71) per month (we chose not to have a landline). We rarely experience congestion for streaming video or gaming, the exception being when we are connecting to a server via a proxy or VPN.

Associate Writer Iljitsch van Beijnum: Ziggo isn't perfect, but it's “cheaper, faster”

Location: The Hague, Netherlands

ISP: Ziggo cable

Speeds: 90/9 Mbps, just upgraded for free from 60/6

Data caps: None that I know of

Monthly rate: €55 ($75)

Additional services: phone line, basic cable (60 channels that require a cable box, about 15 in HD, plus 25 analog ones)

Equipment: Wi-Fi router is included, I paid 99 euros for a very crappy Cisco HDTV PVR

The one thing I'm not happy about is that it took them three weeks to connect me two years ago. Living without furniture the first weeks after I moved back to the Netherlands was one thing, but having to go stand in front of the city hall building to leech their Wi-Fi after hours to download my podcasts like an animal... I chose Ziggo instead of a DSL ISP that would give me IPv6 because it's cheaper, faster, easier to connect my Apple Time Capsule and because I could cancel at any time. I wasn't entirely happy about how their "router" mangled my incoming connections, so I had them change it to a dumb cable modem mode so I could use my Apple Time Capsule as my home router and terminate an IPv6 tunnel. They did so on December 24... but it worked, so I didn't have to go back to standing in front of the city hall building until the new year.

There's also a €65 ($88.61)/month tier with 180/18 Mbps speeds. When I signed up they had just Internet access but then the speeds were slower. Now they just have TV+Internet+phone or TV+Internet. The speeds are the same but the latter is only 5 euros/month cheaper.

As for competition, you can get DSL from a bunch of different ISPs although KPN, the ex monopolist, keeps buying up the independent ones. Fiber is being rolled out in some places, but it's not here in my pre-1900s neighborhood.

Interesting how most of you guys [in the US] have worse down speeds but better up speeds.

Technology Editor Peter Bright: Home not-so-sweet home

Peter moved from the UK to the US, but still runs a server in his parents' attic back home. Here are Mr. Bright's thoughts on his UK service:

It's not all sweetness and light in the EU.

I retain a BT Infinity connection in the UK. BT Infinity is British Telecom's fiber-to-the-cabinet service, using some VDSL variant between the cabinet and the home. In principle, it offers two performance tiers; one is about 40/10, the other is 80/20.

The phone line I have between the cabinet and the modem is so long, so poor, and so aluminum, that BT will not even let me pay for the 80/20 service. I pay for the 40/10 service. I do not get 40/10. I get about 18/1.5.

Aluminum phonelines were used in the UK in, I believe, the 1970s during a time of high copper prices. While adequate for voice, it has lousy performance characteristics for DSL. BT is apparently under no obligation to replace aluminum phone lines with copper, much less with fiber to the premises, because the line, as terrible as it is, is adequate for voice.

For the privilege of using this service (along with a few other bits and pieces, like a bunch of static IP addresses and removal of bandwidth caps) I pay in excess of £50/month ($84). I don't know the exact amount because I don't look at the bill; it will only enrage and depress me.

The rest of us poor saps—we'll start with Verizon customers

Senior Products Specialist Andrew Cunningham: Netflix and Twitch problems

ISP: Verizon FiOS

Location: Jersey City, NJ

Monthly bill: $59.99 ($84.99 after two-year contract discount expires, but I bet I can get them to let me keep it)

Services: Internet

Advertised speed: 50/25

Data cap: None of which I am aware

Included equipment: Combination modem/router thing

Before we moved to Jersey City we had Optimum Online, which was pretty cheap and we were pretty happy with, but they were outside our new service area. A quick search suggested we'd have to go with Comcast, but after regaining consciousness I did more looking and discovered we'd be able to use FIOS instead. We've been mostly happy with it—their overheating router was causing connectivity problems for a while, but they replaced it and it's been fine since.

A couple small complaints: first, despite consistently exceeding the speeds we're actually paying for, we've had intermittent trouble with streaming video services, primarily Netflix and Twitch. Second, the router they give out is a terrible 2.4GHz-only 802.11n monstrosity, and even though I've hooked a real router up to our network to handle Wi-Fi duties we still have to use their crappy thing for DHCP and some other network services.

Senior Science Editor John Timmer: “This is what Internet service should be like”

ISP: Verizon FiOS

Location: New York

Monthly bill: $85

Services: Internet plus phone

Advertised speed: 75/35Mbps

Data cap: None

I’m happy. Extremely stable connection, no outages or need to reboot any hardware that I can recall. Upstream bandwidth is great in case I need to access any of my files when out of the house. Aside from the price, this is what Internet service should be like.

Charter, Cablevision, Sonic.net, Astound, and RCN

Technical Director Jason Marlin: A man of few words

ISP: Charter cable

Location: Asheville, NC

Monthly bill: $44.99

Services: Internet

Advertised speed: Up to 30Mbps down, 4Mbps up

Actual speed: 60Mbps+ :)

Data cap: None.

Included equipment: Package included a free modem

Culture Editor Casey Johnston: Champion haggler

ISP: Optimum Online/Cablevision

Location: New York

Monthly bill: $45

Services: Internet

Advertised speed: 50Mbps down, 25Mbps up

Data cap: None

Included equipment: an Arris modem

I used to get service outages sometimes, though I only know about them because Optimum contacts me about each one through a phone call or e-mail, which seems like a strange thing to do after the fact. I had a thrilling and harrowing experience haggling with them after my introductory rate ended, mostly because they are the only provider in the area aside from mobile tethering, and I was worried I was sending myself up the Internet creek when my entire job relies on having a connection. I got to the point where the representative said they'd only be too happy to disconnect my 10Mbps down/5Mbps up service for $60 a month, when would I like the service people to show up and kidnap my modem? After giving them a date and getting put on hold, they came back with both a speed bump and a discount.

Tech Policy Editor Joe Mullin: Comcast switcher

ISP: Sonic.net DSL

Location: Oakland, CA

Monthly Bill: $48.15, promotional rate until January 2015

Services: Internet & required voice land line that I rarely use

Advertised speed: The average for Sonic.net fusion service varies with distance from local (AT&T) serving office. Users like me, at a bit more than 2000 feet from the office, get an average of 19Mbps.

Data cap: none that I know of

I switched from Comcast, where I was getting 20-25 Mbps and a basic cable package for a bit over $100 a month. This is cheaper, and I live fine without cable TV. At least as important, I feel better about my money going to a locally owned business that has great service and wins privacy awards from EFF.

It is slower. But Netflix still looks great 90 percent of the time, and that's enough for me. I live very close to an AT&T service office, which makes it possible for me to get the speeds I do get. Some Sonic customers are farther from these offices and get speeds well under 10 Mbps. It would be a much harder decision for me if that's all I could get.

Senior Editor David Kravets: a happy, concise Astound customer

ISP: Astound cable

Location: California

Monthly price: $64.95, plus $5 a month for a modem. I bought my own, so I don’t pay the extra.

Data cap: 1TB allotment monthly

Advertised speeds 110Mbps down, 10Mbps up.

I have Astound, 110 down, 15 up, 1TB a month allotment. $65 monthly. It’s beast.

See the next page for all the dirt on Comcast.