
Every ISP Is Trying to Scare You Into Paying for Internet You Don't Need - vaksel
http://gizmodo.com/5432332/basically-every-isp-is-trying-to-scare-you-into-paying-for-internet-you-dont-need
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ankeshk
This actually makes me sad.

Most consumers don't even get to choose anything over 1mbps in India. 512kbps
speeds is the norm (which is also like $22 per month in Mumbai - where I'm
based. $22 for 512kbps!)

On top of that, bandwidth capping and other such practices is still the norm
in India! A lot of ISPs don't allow you anything over 4gb or 6gb of bandwidth
per month!

Oh what I would give to see a chart by an Indian ISP that starts with minimum
speeds of 1.5mbps!

~~~
swernli
Ouch! $22/month for 512 kbps? I pay about $15/month for 30 mbps and at this
point couldn't imagine living without it. Downloading big updates, videos,
game demos, you name it, and by the time you're done naming it you're almost
done downloading it...

EDIT: To clarify, I get that in Redmond, WA. Definitely have a serious
advantage there.

~~~
cmelbye
In which country?

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timdorr
Reminds me of the days of streaming video over my 56K modem with Realplayer
and downloading a full CD from Napster over the course of an hour. That was
the future. Today's kids with their 1080p YouTube videos and 2GB game demos.
_grumble grumble_

And yes, I'm 27 :P

~~~
Periodic
Various speeds of modems didn't really seem to make a huge difference for me.
It wasn't until I went to a LAN party at a friend's house with cable. Since I
could download music at 18kBps I could actually listen to it as it downloaded!
That meant I didn't have to waste all that time downloading something I didn't
like.

What would be next? Radio on the internet? video? The world changed for me
that day.

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stan_rogers
Anybody else here remember trashing their handset-cradle 300 baud Kansas City
modem for one of them there shiny new 1200 baud Hayes machines? And now they
tell me that ten thousand or so times faster ain't enough?

~~~
cabalamat
300 baud??? You had it lucky, I used to use a 110 baud teletype.

~~~
Vivtek
We would have killed for 110 baud. We had a three baud modem and had to carry
all the 1 bits by hand.

~~~
DanielBMarkham
3 baud? Luxury.

We had 1 baud and we kept it in a box in the middle of the road. Every day
we'd get up, clean the box, read the bit, and then go to the factory to work
for 20 hours. And when we got home every night our father would cut us with a
knife.

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe1a1wHxTyo>

Merry Christmas!

~~~
cabalamat
And when you tell that to the young people today, they don't believe you!

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AlisdairO
Good lord. In the UK I get 24Mbit DSL (giving me effectively ~12Mbit speeds)
for about £8 per month after a rebate offer. Is it that expensive in the US
due to lack of competition, or just the sheer size of the areas you have to
cover?

~~~
teilo
Depends. Some areas have little competition. Telcos are being pushed to extend
DSL to more and more rural areas, which adds a whole lot of cost for very
little ROI, simply due to low population density. That drives costs up.

~~~
shpxnvz
In my rural area Verizon stopped adding new DSLAM capacity shortly after
rolling out service, and refuses to add more despite a deep waiting list of
new customers. Instead, they are focusing on adding FiOS to areas which are
already well-serviced by both DSL and cable, and trying to stop the county
government from running it's own fiber.

So, I pay $60 a month for a Sprint 3G connection thats run at about 1mbps for
my home network.

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rbritton
Business internet is far worse. Qwest DSL is $55.50/mo for 1.5 Mbps down.

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boredguy8
People don't want to wait. And many people are used to using their browser to
access a corporate LAN and usually pretty fat pipes to the 'net. And when
advertisements are increasingly large flash files...

Sure, the "concert tickets" line is funny, but I don't see this as wholly
unreasonable.

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colbyolson
Paying $100/month for 50mbps boost. Drops to 30-40mbps after a minute or two.
Using Comcast, living in south San Jose.

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Confusion
Hmmm, why are US lines so expensive? I'm on a 20Mbps/1Mbps line for 20 EUR
($29) per month (NL).

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GrandMasterBirt
20mbps up speed is essencial are you kidding? At 10mbps (approx) I have three
people online at the same time.

1 playing on facebook 2 playing twitch-based video games online (twitch
mechanics = it is important to know exactly where the other player is because
you are avoiding his bullets or fireball or whatever, WoW is not twitch based,
counterstrike is)

None of the 3 people experience anything less than perfect service, all
running on the same router.

~~~
i386
I live on a peninsula in the Sydney city area - we get about 5.5-6mbps here
because geographically the cables have to run around the (small) bay and back
to the CBD. And its plenty enough.

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euroclydon
Meanwhile all the content providers are trying to squeeze as much content per
KB into their streams as they can.

