The United States sad State of Broadband :(

kettch said:

Cupiditas said:

*snip*

figurres is right about geography in the US. I live in Oregon, which has a land area of 98,466 square miles. That is the 9th largest in the States, and bigger than two-thirds of the sovereign nations in the world. In general the population is pretty spread out, with a lot of rural communities.

Even taking into account greed, corruption, government interference, etc... running broadband to everybody is hideously expensive.

I live in a rural area. The local telco has been promising DSL, but i hasn't panned out yet. For the last couple of years, I've been using Clearwire. It's a solid 2Mb/256k for $50/month, but it's the only option for rural areas. The service may not be impressive, but I'm very pleased with the customer service. The reps are very easy to talk to, and things get really easy if they detect you are technically competent. For now I wait patiently for the day I can get something faster. Then the only problem will be to convince the telco to give me naked DSL.

Right now, the biggest and most consistent broadband network that I have used is my AT&T 3G service. Wherever I am I can use my phone (yes, it's a Windows Mobile device, and I like it, so nyah ) to do quite a bit, and tether it for everything else.

That is quite horrible. Guess flickr and youtube content aren't in your future either

intelman said:

kettch said:

*snip*

That is quite horrible. Guess flickr and youtube content aren't in your future either

Whaaa? It all works just fine for multimedia content. Depending on the server, I can sustain 200-300 KB/sec. It's not amazing, but it's just fine for day-to-day browsing.

kettch said:

intelman said:

*snip*

Whaaa? It all works just fine for multimedia content. Depending on the server, I can sustain 200-300 KB/sec. It's not amazing, but it's just fine for day-to-day browsing.

I meant for uploading.

intelman said:

kettch said:

*snip*

I meant for uploading.

It's going to get much worse. Time Warner recently introduced caps starting at 8 GB per month to 40 GB per month. This system is already a reality in many places in the USA, and they are thinking about spreading this everywhere. It was a bad idea to get addicted to the Internet.

Bass said:

intelman said:

*snip*

It's going to get much worse. Time Warner recently introduced caps starting at 8 GB per month to 40 GB per month. This system is already a reality in many places in the USA, and they are thinking about spreading this everywhere. It was a bad idea to get addicted to the Internet.

I sincerely hope they go bankrupt.

Bass said:

intelman said:

*snip*

It's going to get much worse. Time Warner recently introduced caps starting at 8 GB per month to 40 GB per month. This system is already a reality in many places in the USA, and they are thinking about spreading this everywhere. It was a bad idea to get addicted to the Internet.

Dang thats crazy.  I haven't had any problems with charter yet, and I download a lot.  This month alone I downloaded 20GB of mix video content, VS2010 CTP, Windows 7 Beta, and have watched over 40 episodes of TV on hulu.  Sure that may be extreme usage, but it was all completely legal.

pdev said:

Bass said:

*snip*

Dang thats crazy.  I haven't had any problems with charter yet, and I download a lot.  This month alone I downloaded 20GB of mix video content, VS2010 CTP, Windows 7 Beta, and have watched over 40 episodes of TV on hulu.  Sure that may be extreme usage, but it was all completely legal.

USA is a big land, that's why internet upgrade is such an issue. South California alone is like crazy area, but, the profit return is low because the density is low. You can't blame for low density in SoCal though, because that's what make SoCal so fun and great.

Bass said:

intelman said:

*snip*

It's going to get much worse. Time Warner recently introduced caps starting at 8 GB per month to 40 GB per month. This system is already a reality in many places in the USA, and they are thinking about spreading this everywhere. It was a bad idea to get addicted to the Internet.

You guys have some kind of weird tradeoff...
Over here you get the fastest consumer connection for about 30 EUR including free national phone calls and no cap anywhere, but you can't get anything faster.
Over there, it's more expensive, but if there be need you can get the speed you want for a premium price that doesn't involve paying for the road to get new and thicker copper wires. I don't quite know what's better.

magicalclick said:

pdev said:

*snip*

USA is a big land, that's why internet upgrade is such an issue. South California alone is like crazy area, but, the profit return is low because the density is low. You can't blame for low density in SoCal though, because that's what make SoCal so fun and great.

I'm in a low density area myself, which is probably why they don't care about my internet usage.  It's an "out post" community surrounded by farmland with a population of around 3000.  We've got 10 meg cable here, so it could be worse... but I miss the 30 meg I had in paris.

Anyway, I don't think the problem is in the cost of upgrading the infrastructure.  Here at least, it seems to be part of the business model.  Without upgrading anything, every 6 months or so they raise the limit on normal broadband as well as the +$5/mo premium package.  By doing this slower, it gets more people to pay the upgrade fee and makes it seem like they're actually making progress.  (I hope that doesn't just sound like a conspiracy theory, its true )

Kyle

pdev said:

magicalclick said:

*snip*

I'm in a low density area myself, which is probably why they don't care about my internet usage.  It's an "out post" community surrounded by farmland with a population of around 3000.  We've got 10 meg cable here, so it could be worse... but I miss the 30 meg I had in paris.

Anyway, I don't think the problem is in the cost of upgrading the infrastructure.  Here at least, it seems to be part of the business model.  Without upgrading anything, every 6 months or so they raise the limit on normal broadband as well as the +$5/mo premium package.  By doing this slower, it gets more people to pay the upgrade fee and makes it seem like they're actually making progress.  (I hope that doesn't just sound like a conspiracy theory, its true )

Kyle

Heh, cable companies charge whatever they can.

really.

if you had 2 cable companies the price would go down, they would be motiviated to compete.

I have seen the same cable brand have different prices just a few miles away from the other franchise, the difference?

county a had 2 cable systems -- lower price
county b had one system -- higher price
same services, same channels, same geography

"Rasing the limit"

simple any DOCSIS cable modem has a config file that caps your speeds
they just send a new config and you can get burst speeds upto that cap.
as long as they do not have to many homes per node that are active at one time
it makes it faster.... and they spent maby $10 max editing a centeral profile that pushed the config to your modem.

but if a bunch of folks use that max-cap you will see slower speeds.

I had a few talks with the guys who make this stuff.... well the ones that work for Moto anyway.

figuerres said:

pdev said:

*snip*

Heh, cable companies charge whatever they can.

really.

if you had 2 cable companies the price would go down, they would be motiviated to compete.

I have seen the same cable brand have different prices just a few miles away from the other franchise, the difference?

county a had 2 cable systems -- lower price
county b had one system -- higher price
same services, same channels, same geography

"Rasing the limit"

simple any DOCSIS cable modem has a config file that caps your speeds
they just send a new config and you can get burst speeds upto that cap.
as long as they do not have to many homes per node that are active at one time
it makes it faster.... and they spent maby $10 max editing a centeral profile that pushed the config to your modem.

but if a bunch of folks use that max-cap you will see slower speeds.

I had a few talks with the guys who make this stuff.... well the ones that work for Moto anyway.

A single company controlling a large part of a market is a bad thing? Am I on the right forums?

Bass said:

figuerres said:

*snip*

A single company controlling a large part of a market is a bad thing? Am I on the right forums?

Bass you have no idea...

Look I was showing folks Linux back in like 1994
I was building my own kernels and all that.
I have also contributed to the internet work group on email SPAM, went thu a bunch of rounds with folks about should smtp change to meet the needs of todays email system.
I have also met the guy who was [EDIT wrote] the orignal sendmail software.
I used to do cgi-perl on sun boxes.

I like somethings MSFT does but not all of them.

I am no ones "fanboy" I  go with what works and try to be honest with folks.

OK?