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I want municipal fiber internet. :(
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olePigeon
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Mar 16, 2011, 01:11 PM
 
[rant]

So AT&T just announced they're capping downloads at 150 GBs per month. That limits you to roughly 3 hours of streaming videos from NetFlix per day to stay under the cap. That doesn't include emails, watching YouTube movies, games, game updates, application updates, OS updates, and everything else that takes up bandwidth.

AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon got in a tussle with NetFlix after a judged sided with NetFlix to allow them to use their pipes to deliver content. So their answers? Make it nearly impossible to stream NetFlix so you're forced to buy TV service.

Meanwhile, people living in a swamp get 50/50 synchronous fiber internet for $58 a month. It's not tiered, there are no caps, it's not throttled, it's not packetshaped, and there are no proprietary modems that prevent you from accessing competitive services.

I hate the telecoms.

[/rant]
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The Final Dakar
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Mar 16, 2011, 01:13 PM
 
Um, can you post a link to the judge siding with Netflix?
     
olePigeon  (op)
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Mar 16, 2011, 01:32 PM
 
I guess they didn't. Huh, I thought I read about it. Apparently the FCC is still looking into it.
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imitchellg5
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Mar 16, 2011, 01:41 PM
 
I have a 250 Gb cap on my internet and never even come close, with MacBooks, iMacs, and many smartphones on the network. I'm streaming Netflix in HD too all the time. The most I've ever used is 94 Gb.
     
The Final Dakar
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Mar 16, 2011, 01:43 PM
 
I'd just like to know why they are instituting caps rather than expanding infrastructure. If your customers are clamoring for more bandwidth (through usage) why are they going in the opposite direction?
     
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Mar 16, 2011, 01:44 PM
 
We get all of our TV and streaming through our Mac Mini. Sometimes we stream content to several devices at the same time, a movie on the TV, a show on the iPad, music through an iPhone in the kitchen.

We're capped at 125GB with Rogers and have never experienced any problems. I'm pretty sure we never went above 100GB.
     
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Mar 16, 2011, 02:38 PM
 
I visit Verizon's website every 6 months to see if FiOS is available in my area. And every time I leave disappointed.

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The Final Dakar
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Mar 16, 2011, 02:41 PM
 
Originally Posted by Stogieman View Post
I visit Verizon's website every 6 months to see if FiOS is available in my area. And every time I leave disappointed.
And everyone who leaves games you hosted on your current connection are disappointed as well.
     
imitchellg5
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Mar 16, 2011, 03:02 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
I'd just like to know why they are instituting caps rather than expanding infrastructure. If your customers are clamoring for more bandwidth (through usage) why are they going in the opposite direction?
Because you can't charge extra for expanding architecture but you can make money off of caps.
     
The Final Dakar
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Mar 16, 2011, 03:04 PM
 
Originally Posted by imitchellg5 View Post
Because you can't charge extra for expanding architecture but you can make money off of caps.
Why can't you charge extra? Are you saying this isn't about bandwidth like they're claiming?
     
imitchellg5
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Mar 16, 2011, 03:30 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
Why can't you charge extra? Are you saying this isn't about bandwidth like they're claiming?
Well they certainly can charge extra for more bandwidth, but the real race here I think is for coverage. Better bandwidth is simply a side effect.
     
The Final Dakar
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Mar 16, 2011, 03:32 PM
 
Coverage?
     
Arty50
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Mar 16, 2011, 10:32 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
I'd just like to know why they are instituting caps rather than expanding infrastructure. If your customers are clamoring for more bandwidth (through usage) why are they going in the opposite direction?
Because expanding infrastructure costs them money while instituting caps earns them money and squeezes their competitors.

For those who are saying the caps aren't onerous yet, you're forgetting one important thing. As technology has progressed, we've been consuming more and more bandwidth over time. Netflix alone has lead to a huge jump in the amount of bandwidth that is consumed. The caps may not be onerous today, but in a couple of years they could be wholly inadequate. Don't think for a second that AT&T and the others don't know this. There are people out there right now that exceed these caps already, especially people with families or roommates. I've read posts by quite a few on other forums around the web where this is being discussed. The fact of the matter is this though, despite the increased usage there is no bandwidth shortage. No ISP that has instituted caps has ever been able to prove that there is. They just say that there is. There has never been any data presented to back it up. This is a cash grab pure and simple.

What really pisses me off is the fact that I'm stuck with DSL, which means I'm stuck with a 150GB cap. If I lived two blocks away, I'd be able to get U-Verse. But since AT&T has basically halted its U-Verse rollout throughout most of the nation, there's no chance of me getting it for the foreseeable future. U-Verse itself is a joke compared to FTTH, which by the way we were supposed to have years ago. Which makes me triply pissed. The American taxpayers essentially gave them 200 billion dollars to build fiber to everyone's home...

I, Cringely . The Pulpit . The $200 Billion Rip-Off | PBS

So basically they're lying about not having enough bandwidth while hoping that we ignore the fact that they stole money from us that should have been used to build out their capacity to our homes anyway. I wonder how much of the $146,869,844 they donated to Congress since 1998 helped with that. I also wonder how many homes that money could have brought U-Verse to. Here in the great state of Nevada, the telcos and cable cos even managed to spend a little money to help enact a legislative ban on municipal networks. So my city couldn't do it even if they wanted to. Awesome.

Want to get really pissed? Here's another reason why they're doing this. Netflix is already a competitor with U-Verse TV. You can stream a lot of movies and many TV shows with Netflix now. A streaming Netflix subscription costs $7.99/month. You can get a lot of other online content for free or not that much money. U-Verse TV starts at $29/month. So right now, you can "cut the cord" and get a lot of the content U-Verse TV offers but cheaper. What's really interesting is that U-Verse TV is IP based, but it magically doesn't count against your cap. So you can watch all the U-Verse content you want without incurring extra charges. But if you consume enough content from another TV provider, then you run the risk of incurring additional fees. So basically, AT&T (and any other provider that has caps) is artificially raising the price of competing services. That Netflix subscription is no longer $7.99 if you go over the cap. It quickly becomes $17.99 or higher if you do. If that's not an anti-competitive use of market power, I don't know what is.
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Eug
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Mar 16, 2011, 10:54 PM
 
I wonder how reliable their connection is.

I am on 25 down 7 up on VDSL2+ right now but truthfully I'm rather unimpressed. Bell FTTN still seems to be having some growing pains, which means my connection has gone down a few times a month recently. My 3 down 0.8 up DSL connection was more reliable. Interestingly, if I ever want to download it's usually almost as fast on DSL since everything is throttled.

The real-world big upgrade for me is the 7 up. It's really nice having the extra upload speed. I am not really uploading much video now (Vimeo), but at 0.8 up it takes a very long time.

P.S. For me 150 GB cap would be fine. I'm not sure if I've ever gone over 100 GB. If I have, it's just barely. The ISP I've usually gone with has a 300 GB cap though.
     
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Mar 17, 2011, 03:09 AM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
And everyone who leaves games you hosted on your current connection are disappointed as well.
And that is the main reason why I want to leave U-verse. I pay $65 a month for their Max Turbo internet package and it only offers 3.0 Mbs in upload speed. I had double that with Comcast and was only paying 45 a month. I'd switch back to Comcast but I hate them more than AT&T.

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Mar 17, 2011, 10:04 AM
 
Every time the abc player app freezes on the ipad so I can't watch a show, I suspect comcast is playing shenanigans with my connection.
     
The Final Dakar
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Mar 17, 2011, 10:15 AM
 
Originally Posted by Arty50 View Post
Because expanding infrastructure costs them money while instituting caps earns them money and squeezes their competitors.
You lost me at squeezes their competitors. Doesn't this give their competitors a leg up in the features department?
     
The Final Dakar
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Mar 17, 2011, 10:17 AM
 
Originally Posted by Stogieman View Post
And that is the main reason why I want to leave U-verse. I pay $65 a month for their Max Turbo internet package and it only offers 3.0 Mbs in upload speed. I had double that with Comcast and was only paying 45 a month. I'd switch back to Comcast but I hate them more than AT&T.
Tough deal, though I feel like you can say that about the majority of people with their bizarro Sophie's Choice of ISP selection.

As much as you guys like to make fun of me for having NetZero, it turns out I'm the only one in the area Verizon has offered a 7 Mbps connection to, which has been really useful the past year.
     
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Mar 17, 2011, 10:33 AM
 
Haha, you have NetZero.
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Mar 17, 2011, 12:12 PM
 
While the last mile speed may be good, what's the oversubscription level?

Also, the prices are before taxes/fees. Per the note at the bottom of the page, the $29/mo plan is really $44/mo.

Assumptions:
Average customer is on the 30Mbps / $45++ ($65?) plan
A third of the monthly fee goes to paying for bandwidth (which seems generous, since they have to pay for the capital and operating costs)
There's 120k people in Lafayette, of which 10% are geeky enough to subscribe

So that's $180k/mo (45/3*12e3) to pay for bandwidth. At that volume you're probably paying $10/Mbps, so 18Gbps or 1.5Mbps per subscriber. 20:1 oversubscribed.

So for $65/mo you get speeds equivalent to mid-range DSL at peak usage times.
( Last edited by mduell; Mar 17, 2011 at 12:48 PM. )
     
olePigeon  (op)
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Mar 17, 2011, 12:21 PM
 
Comcast already has the infrastructure, but they're purposefully congesting their lines so they can charge a premium. TATA, one of Comcast's backbone providers, showed graphs of traffic use by Comcast. Currently Comcast is utilizing less than 30% of their bandwidth, but then complain that their tubes are getting congested. Comcast was rerouting traffic through already congested areas to inflate their problems so they could complain to the FCC.
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Mar 17, 2011, 12:43 PM
 
Gah! AT&T just announced a 150GB cap in my area starting in May. It doesn't affect me because I pay for business service, but that really sucks for residential customers around here.

Originally Posted by olePigeon View Post
Comcast already has the infrastructure, but they're purposefully congesting their lines so they can charge a premium. TATA, one of Comcast's backbone providers, showed graphs of traffic use by Comcast. Currently Comcast is utilizing less than 30% of their bandwidth, but then complain that their tubes are getting congested. Comcast was rerouting traffic through already congested areas to inflate their problems so they could complain to the FCC.
Is there a link or something with details, it may be a good CA suit waiting to happen.
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Mar 17, 2011, 12:57 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
Coverage?
Yeah, like getting fiber optic or cable into areas that don't have it? Make sense?
     
The Final Dakar
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Mar 17, 2011, 01:00 PM
 
Originally Posted by imitchellg5 View Post
Yeah, like getting fiber optic or cable into areas that don't have it? Make sense?
That instituting caps makes your service more attractive customers? No, not really.
     
olePigeon  (op)
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Mar 17, 2011, 01:23 PM
 
Originally Posted by Shaddim View Post
Is there a link or something with details, it may be a good CA suit waiting to happen.
Comcast Accused of Congestion By Choice - Slashdot
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Mar 17, 2011, 04:57 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
You lost me at squeezes their competitors. Doesn't this give their competitors a leg up in the features department?
Sorry, I should have been more clear. I meant their competition in the video marketplace. Implementing caps allows them to squeeze Netflix since Netflix service now runs the risk of being more expensive that it really is due to the caps. See my last paragraph in the previous post.
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The Final Dakar
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Mar 17, 2011, 05:00 PM
 
Originally Posted by Arty50 View Post
Sorry, I should have been more clear. I meant their competition in the video marketplace. Implementing caps allows them to squeeze Netflix since Netflix service now runs the risk of being more expensive that it really is due to the caps. See my last paragraph in the previous post.
I have trouble keeping track of who owns what.

Edit: Will revisit this after work
     
olePigeon  (op)
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Mar 17, 2011, 05:03 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
I have trouble keeping track of who owns what. AT&T is in the media business too?
U-Verse is AT&T's digital package for TV, phone, and internet. It directly competes with Comcast.
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Mar 17, 2011, 05:49 PM
 
Tenured municipal internet engineers FTW. <sarcasm>
     
Arty50
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Mar 17, 2011, 07:27 PM
 
Originally Posted by olePigeon View Post
U-Verse is AT&T's digital package for TV, phone, and internet. It directly competes with Comcast.
Or Charter in my area. I really, really want to cancel my AT&T service right now but I hate Charter with the intensity of a thousand burning suns. I loved AT&T when they were PacBell, but ever since we allowed the Bells to get back together (seriously, do we ever learn...Ma Bell...Glass–Steagall...anger rising) and AT&T was reformed they have slowly plummeted to a place even lower than Charter. At least Charter has bothered to invest something in the area and you can get reasonably fast service with them across most of the city. The best AT&T can do at my house is 3M and the service has been flaky the past few months, which it hasn't been in years of being a customer with them.
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Mar 17, 2011, 09:11 PM
 
One of the most astounding "Only in America" stories I've ever heard involved municipal internet. A city with crappy net access decided to implement their own system, and a giant telco sued them for taking business from them, when the telco had refused to provide service in the first place.
     
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Originally Posted by lpkmckenna View Post
One of the most astounding "Only in America" stories I've ever heard involved municipal internet. A city with crappy net access decided to implement their own system, and a giant telco sued them for taking business from them, when the telco had refused to provide service in the first place.
Sad, but true. I guess there's some law that government can't compete with private business, even if that business provides lousy service. IMO, any service deemed to be essential (electricity, phone, water, etc.) ought to be either government-run or regulated. Internet in this day and age, belongs on that list too.
     
The Final Dakar
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Mar 18, 2011, 10:51 AM
 
Originally Posted by Arty50 View Post
So basically they're lying about not having enough bandwidth while hoping that we ignore the fact that they stole money from us that should have been used to build out their capacity to our homes anyway. I wonder how much of the $146,869,844 they donated to Congress since 1998 helped with that. I also wonder how many homes that money could have brought U-Verse to. Here in the great state of Nevada, the telcos and cable cos even managed to spend a little money to help enact a legislative ban on municipal networks. So my city couldn't do it even if they wanted to. Awesome.

Want to get really pissed? Here's another reason why they're doing this. Netflix is already a competitor with U-Verse TV. You can stream a lot of movies and many TV shows with Netflix now. A streaming Netflix subscription costs $7.99/month. You can get a lot of other online content for free or not that much money. U-Verse TV starts at $29/month. So right now, you can "cut the cord" and get a lot of the content U-Verse TV offers but cheaper. What's really interesting is that U-Verse TV is IP based, but it magically doesn't count against your cap. So you can watch all the U-Verse content you want without incurring extra charges. But if you consume enough content from another TV provider, then you run the risk of incurring additional fees. So basically, AT&T (and any other provider that has caps) is artificially raising the price of competing services. That Netflix subscription is no longer $7.99 if you go over the cap. It quickly becomes $17.99 or higher if you do. If that's not an anti-competitive use of market power, I don't know what is.
Originally Posted by Arty50 View Post
Sorry, I should have been more clear. I meant their competition in the video marketplace. Implementing caps allows them to squeeze Netflix since Netflix service now runs the risk of being more expensive that it really is due to the caps. See my last paragraph in the previous post.
Originally Posted by olePigeon View Post
U-Verse is AT&T's digital package for TV, phone, and internet. It directly competes with Comcast.
Jesus Christ, what a mess. I didn't realize U-Verse was their own property, I had assumed they were partnering with someone else, much like verizon offers me a DirectTV bundle, or my cable company broadband through partnering with an ISP. Without a doubt it not counting towards the cap is shady.

You also make it sound like this is Comcasts fault (directly or indirectly) because this propelled AT&T to create a service bundle that competed with them directly.

I haven't seen it clarified here, but I assume this cap imposed by AT&T applies everywhere, even where U-Verse isn't available. Hence, this is still retarded business sense (As well some nice lying).
     
The Final Dakar
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Mar 18, 2011, 10:59 AM
 
Originally Posted by lpkmckenna View Post
One of the most astounding "Only in America" stories I've ever heard involved municipal internet. A city with crappy net access decided to implement their own system, and a giant telco sued them for taking business from them, when the telco had refused to provide service in the first place.
This comes to mind.
Monticello had just become one of the only US cities in which twin, parallel fiber networks were being built at the same time. Backers of the muni fiber plan were outraged; not only could TDS build a modern fiber network on a moment's notice when it wanted to do so, but the lawsuits prevented the city from doing much of its installation even as TDS moved ahead.
     
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Mar 18, 2011, 02:30 PM
 
That's the exact story I was thinking of.
     
The Final Dakar
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Mar 18, 2011, 02:31 PM
 
I think there are one or two more examples out there that would fit your description, because I'm pretty sure one of those telco suits won.
     
The Final Dakar
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Mar 18, 2011, 03:44 PM
 
AT&T data cap explanation invites skepticism
Do AT&T's own claims therefore add up when other competitors still manage to have higher or nonexistent caps? (Indeed, AT&T appears to be lowering its network operations spending, which would help to address congestion issues.)

If the concern was congestion, one might expect more of a focus on an actual congestion throttling systems like Comcast's, where heavy users find their traffic slowed a bit during periods of actual network congestion and then restored to full speed when congestion disappears. Monthly data caps don't actually discourage people from using the Internet during the busiest times, though they may lower some total monthly usage.
     
olePigeon  (op)
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Mar 18, 2011, 05:17 PM
 
Originally Posted by lpkmckenna View Post
One of the most astounding "Only in America" stories I've ever heard involved municipal internet. A city with crappy net access decided to implement their own system, and a giant telco sued them for taking business from them, when the telco had refused to provide service in the first place.
You probably read one of a number of different stories. LUSFIber (the one I linked to) was sued by BellSouth. Then there was in Monticello, Minnesota, sued by Bidgewater (TDS), and Chattanooga, Tennessee, sued by Comcast. Fortunately in all three cases, the municipality prevailed.
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The Final Dakar
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Mar 23, 2011, 03:14 PM
 
     
Arty50
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Mar 23, 2011, 05:25 PM
 
California has 2. That's really, really sad. You'd think the entire Bay Area would be filled with markers. Hmmmm...I wonder who the local telco is...

In a total shocker, Nevada has one. The state has a defacto ban on muni networks. Rock on, Fallon!!! Reno is in dire need of this. The U-Verse deployment area is a joke; and the only other option is Charter, which is one of the worst companies on the planet. I mean, how do you go bankrupt when you have a cable monopoly?

DSLReports Home : Broadband ISP Reviews News Tools and Forums has some excellent reporting on all of this also.

This is a gem:
Bell: Metering Is About Cashing In On Internet Video - A Brief Moment of Candor by Bell CEO Cope | DSLReports.com, ISP Information
"..as we see a growth in video usage on the internet, making sure we’re monetizing that for our shareholders through the bandwidth usage charges."
- Bell (Canada) CEO George Cope

Yeah, caps are definitely required due to congestion...
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Mar 23, 2011, 06:36 PM
 
I've got a 95 gig cap via Rogers. I doubt I'll top it in the next year, unless I start downloading HD movies at a stupid rate.
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Mar 23, 2011, 06:55 PM
 
Originally Posted by The Final Dakar View Post
Funny you mention this. TDS has been the primary telco in my home town of New London, NH for about a decade now.

New London, with a dozen other town in the Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee Region have/had a group going to build a Municipal Fibre Net across the region and was going to resell the bandwidth to private companies including ISPs (read: competition across the net, helping keep prices down) for FTTH.

Not wanting another Monticello debacle or competition that would have sprung up, TDS got their Fibre Net up in New London and the neighboring town of Wilmot in, considering the geography, topography, and wildly spread out population, record time to essentially every resident.

What really stinks is that where New London is a very well off town and would have provided a great deal of funding for the Municipal project, many of the other towns are far less financially endowed and are covered by Fairpoint for Telco so it'll be decades if ever before they get Fibre. When/if they do, if they only have a sole provider, most of the residents won't be able to afford it.
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Mar 23, 2011, 07:06 PM
 
The higher they aim with prices/overage fees, the more likely someone else will swoop in to rake those outraged customers.
     
Oisín
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Mar 23, 2011, 07:18 PM
 
Originally Posted by olePigeon View Post
Meanwhile, people living in a swamp get 50/50 synchronous fiber internet for $58 a month. It's not tiered, there are no caps, it's not throttled, it's not packetshaped, and there are no proprietary modems that prevent you from accessing competitive services.
Meanwhile, some people (read: those who live in dorms serviced by Forskningsnettet; read: me) get an uncapped synchronous 1 Gb fibre connection for about $3.50 a month.

Just thought I’d throw that out there and see if it made you feel any better …





No?
     
ShortcutToMoncton
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Mar 24, 2011, 12:04 PM
 
Smells like dirty socialism to me
Mankind's only chance is to harness the power of stupid.
     
The Final Dakar
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Mar 24, 2011, 12:09 PM
 
Originally Posted by Oisín View Post
No?
Shouldn't you be out designing terribly named furniture or something?
     
mduell
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Mar 24, 2011, 01:35 PM
 
Originally Posted by Oisín View Post
Meanwhile, some people (read: those who live in dorms serviced by Forskningsnettet; read: me) get an uncapped synchronous 1 Gb fibre connection for about $3.50 a month.
What's the oversubscription level? 3000:1?
     
Spheric Harlot
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Mar 24, 2011, 03:12 PM
 
Originally Posted by mduell View Post
What's the oversubscription level? 3000:1?
Considering that you have to be a student and actually live in the thus-connected dorms, probably 1:1 or lower.

I get 100Mbit/10Mbit fibre-optic ADSL for €30 including a landline phone flat, and I'm not complaining, either.

     
mduell
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Mar 24, 2011, 06:42 PM
 
I don't think you understand what oversubscription means.

The last mile is very fast, but what's the real bandwidth to the rest of the world outside the university/ISP?
     
Oisín
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Mar 30, 2011, 04:23 AM
 
Originally Posted by mduell View Post
I don't think you understand what oversubscription means.

The last mile is very fast, but what's the real bandwidth to the rest of the world outside the university/ISP?
Well, obviously not as high.

Still, when downloading from sites like Rapidshare, I manage about 4–500 Mbit download.
     
 
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