So I was just renewing a contract with a VPN provider, and paid out for a couple years it works out to somewhere under $2/month.
ISPs around me can run from about $50-$150/month
If I’m putting the major bulk of my traffic over a tunnel that could eat up a sizable chunk of a given connection point for the provider that I’m sure costs more than $2/month to maintain. I would have to assume it would take the combined subscriptions of several users to pay for a given node.
So how does that work as a business model? Unless these VPN providers are getting a steal on their connections it’s hard to envision how they can manage to pay their costs without these nodes being absolutely bottlenecked when a few people start streaming some shows.
American residential internet prices are a fucking rip
But also. VPNs do not need to worry about the “last mile”, I.e. infrastructure to your house, which is most of the cost of your residential service.
That last mile thing would make a lot more sense if the carriers kept enough staff to have appointments not take a week. Add to that the wireless carriers around don’t have much price advantage either, but that’s mostly a ‘fuck you, we can’ pricing I figure.
The joys of living in the corn fields.