“I really shouldn’t, man,” Barry said as he reached out to accept it.
Now, the more Barry and I talked, the friendlier we got. But, when I told him that I was working from home, Barry told me I was pretty much SOL. (Sure Outta Luck…)
I could not believe what I was hearing.
“Router throttling, man,” he said. “So, yeah, when you sign up, they give you the speeds you asked for. At first. But after a while, they throttle the bandwidth in your router. The internet going to your house hasn’t changed, so it’ll say you’re still up to speed. But the router doesn’t have the same output as it used to.”
I blinked as it started to dawn on me, just what Barry was saying…
“It’s their little game,” he said. “Suddenly, your internet’s not going so fast, but you can’t actually prove that it’s slower. Since the numbers look okay, you probably just have to ‘upgrade’ to the next package. Which is more expensive, of course.”
He took a swig of his beer.
“How can they do that?” I asked.
He shrugged, as if to say, Corporate America, man.
Furious, but not completely surprised, I told Barry he might as well not even fix it, and that I’d be changing providers immediately.
“It’s not gonna help,” Barry told me. “They all do it. All the ISPs. If they all do it, they can all get customers that want to ‘upgrade.’”
Exasperated, I fell back in my chair.
“Isn’t there anything I can do?” I asked, defeated
Barry smiled at me and held one finger in the air as he finished his beer. Then he went out to the truck and returned with a small white device. He plugged it in the wall and dusted off his hands with a “watch this” smirk on his face.
The technician, Barry (name changed to protect his identity – I know his employer is going to want to know who spilled the beans), came out and got to work on trying to fix my internet. And, he seemed like a relaxed and friendly guy, so I offered him a beer.