Sign of the coming apocalypse...

[Trinity]

In Canada the regional Telcos have pretty much a monoploy on good broadband services. However, you pay a real premium for any premium service. I was paying $99/month for 3 MB DSL. (experiences with cable were less than satisfactory since many use the Telco networks as second class citizens).

Today I was downloading some files at 670 KB/S. Errrr... 670 I said to myself; must be some compression thing going on. So I do a test and sure enough download speeds in excess of 600KB/S. I thought someone had goofed and took the governor off my DSL. Then I checked the Telco website and low and behold they changed my service. Still the top end package but speeds went from 3 MB to 7 MB and price dropped to $64/month!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

You know the world has to end after that.

[ilia1986]

The world doesnt have to end after that. Consider yourself Exceptionally lucky.

[Russian Ninja]

Great, first Adult Happy Meals and now we have broadband that, quite frankly, makes the slow crap we have out here in Aus look like a piece of junk. The standard Broadband speed here is 128, paying about the equivalent price.

The apocalypse is definately nigh. Ph3@r...

[Io'Kra]

Lucky lucky. Fastest my 'broadband' has ever went is 499kb/s, accelerated on a Gamespot download. Whoopdy doo..

[reki]

Great, first Adult Happy Meals and now we have broadband that, quite frankly, makes the slow crap we have out here in Aus look like a piece of junk. The standard Broadband speed here is 128, paying about the equivalent price. [

128 upload, but Trinity is talking about download speeds. Telstra unlimited (http://www.bigpond.com/internet-plans/broadband/cable/Unlimited/) is uncapped download speed and is only AU$60/month (or about US$40).

I regularly hit speeds over 500KB/sec.

[No Surrender]

I can get over 600KB a second and my connection costs the equivilent of $20 AUD.

[Martian]

See, another reason to love Canada.

[Rent-a-Zilla]

meh - I have to pay GBP/£25 per month for a measly 512/256 Kbit connection.

I can get 1024/384 Kbits for GBP/£45 per month, and 2048/384 Kbits for GBP/£85 per month. When I hear about bargains like CAD/$64 per month for 7168/XXX Kbits, I want to puke.

[Homdax]

I getting 2 MBit assymetric (down 2 Mbit / up 0.5 Mbit) for roughly $40 per month.
Installing this week...then I WILL BE ONLINE! ...finally...
maybe some gaming as well...

[Retroboy]

Hrm. Those speeds ain't available on the east coast yet. We get 2Mbps for about $60 a month, 1Mbit for about $45, taxes in.

-- Retro

[Homdax]

Jiaiks! Poor yanks...
but it took us 2 years to get it up...intense lobbying and phoning and stuff...

¤¤ Homy

[A176]

Love it, eh Trinity? Thank the speed wars between the likes of Telus, Bell, and Rogers/Shaw for it. Apparently Bell is testing out VDSL too (we're talking 20-50 mbps).

[jetfx]

56k at $35 a month. Nice eh? We pay more for our telephone services out in the countryside.

[FluxX]

Well, they are doing it here in the uk too.

Blueyonder, Teliwest and a few others added %50 bandwidth free.

But my provider, BT, did nought :( . £30 per month for 512/256 isn't too bad.. is it?

[Kroggy]

My ISP did the same, upped my cable connection from 1.5MB to 2.5MB download.

[NovaBurn]

damn canadians get the good broadband :|

we are paying $40 for 2.5mb cable that sucks and is comparable to 1.5

[mrmoron]

Same thing happened to me, except that the speed dropped from 1mb to 0.5mb and the price stayed the same, which is 39€.

[Afoxi]

Great, first Adult Happy Meals and now we have broadband that, quite frankly, makes the slow crap we have out here in Aus look like a piece of junk. The standard Broadband speed here is 128, paying about the equivalent price.

The apocalypse is definately nigh. Ph3@r...
Well, RMIT's standard classroom computers can reach 10 MBytes/Sec from certain sites.

That said, my home computer only gets 20kb/s

[Ammon Ra]

60kBps, on a 256kbps/down connection when your suposed to have a maximum of 32kBps. :D
lovely isn't it?

[normal i.e. d/l]

[thegoatman]

upped my cable connection from 1.5MB to 2.5MB download.

Bah. All my company ever increases is the price. an i cant even choose my service. I find it irritating that legal monopolies are encouraged for cable, but not for telephone. I realize i am fairly ignorant about the field, but it seems to me hte the diference in infrastructure between the two does not mandate the use of monopolies on cable, hte way it does for electrical power. Unless of course, the cable companies build hte infrastructure (which is suppose they did), while telephone what not handled that way.

Well, maybe i'm just complaining about something that wont change, but the next municipality overhas different comany contracted to that region and pays around 10$ less a month. at least they did at one point, though i don't know what the current prices are.

[Retroboy]

3MBps makes "TV on a PC" reasonably feasible. Some of the 1Mbps offerings are damned hard on the eyes.

-- Retro

[The5thElephant]

All I get is 360 kb/s max download. Damn lucky Canucks.

[A176]

1mbps is fine for high quality streaming. High quality being 300-500~kbps.

Any higher and that's just stupid for the server peeps ;|

Personally I don't quite understand the politics in the States regarding telecom. You guys have massive backbones to carry data on, and with more and more people investing in wireless, you'd think the old copper line would get some benefits.

[Thorn]

Hrm. Those speeds ain't available on the east coast yet. We get 2Mbps for about $60 a month, 1Mbit for about $45, taxes in.

-- Retro
Where do you live? I get 5 Mbit for 50 a month. 5 down 1 up.

[hayabusa01]

I subscribe to Verizon's standard DSL service at 768/128 Kbps. At first the service was $58 a month, but it dropped to $34.

Cable in my area used to be 1 Mbps down, but I think they just bumped it up to 2 Mbps recently. About $40 monthly charge.

Only thing though, there's so many cable subscribers here that quite often the speeds drop to dial-up equivalents.

There's only one DSL provider worth going to in my area, which is Verizon. It doesn't make sense to go to anyone else like FlexNet since they have to run the service through Verizon's lines, which adds another $25 to the service fee. This is because Verizon is the state's only telecom provider.

The other broadband option being cable, by Oceanic/Time-Warner's Roadrunner.

[AceRimmer]

Shall we call this the ISP hate page, for such outrageous pricing?
Both my parents work, and yet they refuse to up the ante go for broadband connection, even if its only 256kbits.

[Bonnet]

Wierd thing, comcast was great to us here in colorado and our cable doubled in speed, score!

[jpaugh78]

i was paying $45 a month for my cable service, and i got a pretty decent speed out of it. In my first month of having the cable modem, i downloaded 80GB worth of data....so you do the math..... ;)

[hayabusa01]

i was paying $45 a month for my cable service, and i got a pretty decent speed out of it. In my first month of having the cable modem, i downloaded 80GB worth of data....so you do the math..... ;)

80 GB converted to 81,920 MB
81,920 MB divided by standard 30-day month; 2,730.67 MB a day
2,730.67 MB divided by a 24-hour day; 113.78 MB an hour
113.78 MB divided by a standard 60-minute hour; 1.89 MB per minute
1.89 MB converted to 1,941.81 KB
1,941.81 KB divided by standard 60-second minute; 32.36 KB per second

81,920 MB divided by $45; 1,820.44 MB per dollar.

Gimme a break, I'm bored. :dunce:

[jpaugh78]

only 32k a second. that seems slow. Of course that was mostly stuff being downloaded at night while i slept, which is only usually 7 hours or so.....so can you re-figure that? ;)

[Langy]

JPaugh - Easy. Multiply his figures by roughly 3 (3x8=24 hours a day) then round some stuff off to make up for the extra hour, and you get roughly 80-90 KB/s.

We were one of the first families to get cable in our area years upon years ago. It's apparently a 10 megabit line, and I'm guessing there is no limit to download speed besides what the line can physically carry, though I don't know our upload speed limit.

That 10 megabit line translates to 1.25 megabytes per second maximum download speed, going by there are 8 bits per byte.

Well, oddly enough either my father got the figures wrong, my computer screwed up, or something really strange was happening a while back when I was downloaded the cata patch from Sierra's website. I say something odd happened because as the patch downloaded, I watched the download speed indicator. It was higher than I had ever seen, going past one megabyte per second, then two, and finally going higher than three megabytes per second on my 'puny' 10 Mbit line before the download was finished in something crazy like two seconds for a multi-megabyte package. I never did get speeds like that again, though I have noticed that I can open up huge numbers of downloads without affecting the speeds of any one of them. Damned servers are all too slow or something:/ Or maybe they capped the amount one file can be sent over our network? That'd be retarded, and I don't even know if its feasible, but it'd account for why I can DL twenty things at once each at 50 kb/s *shrug*

[hayabusa01]

only 32k a second. that seems slow. Of course that was mostly stuff being downloaded at night while i slept, which is only usually 7 hours or so.....so can you re-figure that? ;)

Well that figure isn't the calculated speed; that was the average data downloaded each second. Kind of like when they say the average American drives 14,000 miles a year, which breaks down to 1.59 miles traveled per hour; that's not saying that the average American drives at speeds of 1.59 MPH (omg I'd die if people did).

Besides, calculating your average speed throughout the month would require knowing the time lapsed with each download.

[jpaugh78]

i was just saying that because i knew i was getting close to 100k/ second for the most part, i knew what it meant. I would comment about what it was that took up 80GB worth of data, but i like coming here....sooo.