41–50 of 70 posts
Potentially silly question: Why did we dig ditches and bury cable? Why didn't we dig ditches and bury pipes that you can snake cable out of and into as needed? This makes our Internet seem less like a problem of feasibility, and more like a complete engineering fuck-up.
Switched to Sonic.net about 2 months ago and love it! Twice the speed (getting over 6 megabit now) of AT&T and for 1/2 the cost ($40/month vs. almost $80).
Hmmm, is that considered fast? On Comcast in SF I get about 20Mbps down and I never really thought of it being particularly speedy. edit: Someone should create a website that both tests your speed, but then also shares that result with the world (anonymously). I'd love to pop up a list of ISPs in a specific city and see exactly how accurate their listed speeds are before buying.
dslreports.com has speedtest results, down to zip code, though they don't include things like what service product and/or whether the service has some bandwidth cap.
Potentially silly question: Why did we dig ditches and bury cable? Why didn't we dig ditches and bury pipes that you can snake cable out of and into as needed? This makes our Internet seem less like a problem of feasibility, and more like a complete engineering fuck-up.
Cost. I would also say that most of the 'cable' is laid inside conduit, but conduit with limited space and owned by a particular carrier who has no incentive or regulation dictating that he share that conduit.
(Cue complaints of government interfering with business.)
Having just moved (and thus done my shopping for a new internet connection), I found it pretty galling that I was pretty much expected to either get a $30 land line or a $50 cable-TV package if I wanted to get internet. Technically I didn't need to get the bundle, but they didn't even list prices for an internet-only connection. I have line-of-sight to our local water tower, though, so I was able to get a wireless in…
Hey, as a WISP employee myself, thanks. It is really frustrating sometimes that potential customers have been trained that the duopoly the article mentioned is reality. In truth, there is a vibrant, resourceful, and outspoken group of entrepreneurs out to take all of the incumbents marbles. But, like the article says, we have to fight at every turn for access that telco's and cable co's take for granted.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Telco's don't usually advertise "naked DSL." If you search hard enough it's out there.
Same goes for cable companies here in the states. For example Comcast you can buy your own modem then pay $42 a month for Internet when u subscribe to local cable channels for additional $15. You can also just subscribe to Internet for $60 sans local cable. Further if you live in apartment complex an open wifi access point is the cheapest!
Be careful with this one, since a combination of some recent court cases could be used to argue that accessing an open access point is a violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and result in penalties more serious than if you'd stolen a gift card and used it to buy Internet access (IANAL).
Switched to Sonic.net about 2 months ago and love it! Twice the speed (getting over 6 megabit now) of AT&T and for 1/2 the cost ($40/month vs. almost $80).
Hmmm, is that considered fast? On Comcast in SF I get about 20Mbps down and I never really thought of it being particularly speedy. edit: Someone should create a website that both tests your speed, but then also shares that result with the world (anonymously). I'd love to pop up a list of ISPs in a specific city and see exactly how accurate their listed speeds are before buying.
Switched to Sonic.net about 2 months ago and love it! Twice the speed (getting over 6 megabit now) of AT&T and for 1/2 the cost ($40/month vs. almost $80).
Hmmm, is that considered fast? On Comcast in SF I get about 20Mbps down and I never really thought of it being particularly speedy. edit: Someone should create a website that both tests your speed, but then also shares that result with the world (anonymously). I'd love to pop up a list of ISPs in a specific city and see exactly how accurate their listed speeds are before buying.
Top download speeds by country:
The Western capitalist dogma is that state-run economies like those of China are inherently inefficient. But it seems to me that more and more recent evidence suggests that it may be that the partisan gridlock of Western democracies, dominated by monied interests and their lobbies, is more detrimental.
Decades from now when I near the end of my useful lifespan, I would not be in the least bit surprised to see that technological progression in the United States follows an S curve over time, with increasing life expectancy just giving even more inertia to the status quo.