AMDUSER
Premium
join:2003-05-28
Earth
clubs:
 ·RoadRunner Cable
1 edit | The results are not too surprising..
Verizon offers the fastest consumer internet access in the country..
as for Charter, their debt seems to cause problems for them.
...Even AOL has a higher rating than Charter!  |
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jc100
join:2002-04-10
1 edit | All ISPS Marginal
Most isps suck. We're paying 5x the cost of many countries with 50x the bandwidth. Isps in American simply give the least amount of service for the highest price they can offer. I am a big fan of the muni projects that these so called good isps love to kill off. They fear real competition and the fact that people are getting a good service at a low price. Quite frankly, I wouldn't be sad if every one of these companies went under. It's time we get our bang for the buck.
Instead of doing that, these companies are relying on copper and old technology to provide us with bandwidth. They have no intent on upgrading, as that means additional costs. Likewise, they love to throw caps around like it was a new sort of fad. Hell, I use Sprint EVDO on my laptop and I got a bandwidth counter. I remember when my isp (Time Warner), tried capping us at 15 GB first and then 40 GB. Quite frankly, if I used EVDO daily, i'd consume that in a heartbeat. No, I am not downloading illegal items. I like going to youtube and watching music videos. I like streaming the local radio station and listening to it when I am away from home. Simple web browsing consumes an easy 100 MB with images on websites. A one hour session might eat up 500 MB. If someone spent their day on the computer, you could easy use 5-6 GB by doing normal, legal, activities. The fact isps today want us to believe that normal users don't need bandwidth or consume a lot is a joke.
Hell, anyone that games, browses heavily, looks at music videos, will certainly become a high end user based on several isps standards. Maybe 20 percent of the people simply hop on, check their email, and do nothing else. I guess this is what these so called great isps compare the rest of us to. So my opinion, THERE IS NO GOOD ISP. Only Marginal ones giving a drop more than the BASIC amount of coverage and service. |
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DrModem
Premium
join:2006-10-19
USA | amen brotha. |
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Bobcat
Premium
join:2001-02-04
Bedminster, NJ | My experience...
My Verizon DSL is much more reliable that my Optimum Online service was.
I also note that they don't rate things like USENET servers. Verizon's news servers are fantastic. |
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jc100
join:2002-04-10
1 edit | Let's Do UNOFFICIAL SURVEY
Minus Verizon Fios / Optimum Online users which have higher end bandwidth but still marginal compared to the rest of the world, (Verizon, OOL don't offer symmetrical so they are not on par with other countries) let's see how much speed everyone else's isp actually gives.
Then you can see my point above, there are no GOOD ISPS. There are only marginal ones that give a bit more than basic to limited users (FIOS / OOL). The rest simply don't even do that.
Time Warner Western Ohio - 8 / 512 (Regular) & 15 / 768 turbo
Notice the huge disproportionate download to upload speeds. |
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evdogogo
@spcsdns.net
| Wireless Broadband
I killed my TWC cable modem earlier this year and am doing Sprint EVDO. I'll take the so-so performance for the mobility anywhere in metro and other cities. Don't miss wired at all, though I don't need huge bandwidth.
When WiMAX comes, more people will probably dump wired broadband. |
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nokiatech
join:2000-10-18
Stuart, FL | reply to jc100
Re: Let's Do UNOFFICIAL SURVEY
These "surveys" are pretty damn useless as the typical consumer doesn't have any real choice anyway. Who really gives a crap where your ISP ranks on the list when you don't have the option of picking another to begin with. |
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Phil
Rojo Sol
Premium
join:2001-06-11
Camarillo, CA | I have five options in my area: DSL Extreme (ADSL), Earthlink (ADSL), Verizon (ADSL), Time Warner (Cable) and dial-up. So it may matter to someone.
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Correcting one "looser" at a time. |
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ronpin
Imagine Reality
join:2002-12-06
Nirvana
 ·AT&T Southwest
| reply to DrModem
OMG - I must defend Charter?
17mbs is their answer to FiOS here in Keller. Their VoIP service is rock solid -- and $30. So I'm actually saving money over AT&T and getting much faster speeds (but yeah years ago I dumped 'em hard -- all's forgiven here  )
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Instant bugging and GPS location info -- thanks to your cell phone and Bush's warrantless NSA! |
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robbob340
K.U. Sweet 16
Premium
join:2001-02-15
Wichita, KS
| Yeah Right
Funny read. "My roommate and I play a lot of video games, like World of Warcraft. We switched to get our latency times down a little bit on the games," says Hesler, who now has the ability to download a 1GB document in just 20 minutes.
I would love to see what documents he downloads that are 1 gig in size.
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Join #dslr unofficial chat! |
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Jameson
10-8
Premium
join:2004-05-28
Fallbrook, CA
clubs: | Heh
The last should have been Hughesnet. |
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Insider101
join:2006-09-19
Brooklyn, NY
| reply to Phil
Re: Let's Do UNOFFICIAL SURVEY
Who cares about symmetrical speeds?
I am a LIGHT user of OOL BOOST.
There are other users who make my speeds and totals look like a joke. |
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olegy
join:2003-06-02
San Diego, CA
1 edit | Surprises
Surprises.
Weird survey.
Earthlink's customer and tech support ranked as average - very high, paying into attention, that it is virtually inexistent.
TW Cable upload is above average (???) - may be for some. But for the most of the country 384K upload is definitely below average.
Earthlink cable uses the same network as TW cable, so upload speeds are exactly equal, but it ranked as average in upload and TW ranked as above average.
AT&T Yahoo upload is below average - but it offers Elite package with 768K upload, which is higher for sure, than "above average" TW cable's 384K. |
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DSLTech
join:2000-12-30
San Jose, CA
| Dont be spoiled consumers
Most ISPs are doing what they can to stay in business while providing an "all you can eat" interface to the Internet.
Other countries are doing better due to government assistance, smaller footprint, less legacy equipment, etc., not because the ISPs have somehow found the holy grail of consumer satisfaction.
If the US wanted to move forward in this area, the govmt would have to provide more incentives and support because, having worked with ISPs for years now, I know that most of the time there really isnt any money being made. Only the ISPs who can afford to lose money for the longest duration will survive - most likely ATT and VZ on the telephone side. Those two have other sources of income that companies such as Earthlink and Speakeasy don't.
NOw with everyone downloading movies all the time, ISPs will be forced to upgrade cabling/circuits and hardware to accomodate the inreased bandwidth needs. What do they get from that from you, the consumer? Nothing. Just more b*tching because the connections are now clogged.
The future will most likely see download limitations. And for ISPs who don't limit, they will be flooded with bandwidth hogs from other ISPs, and eventually suffer the consequences and be forced to make hard choices.
Back in the day "unlimited" was viable, but with today's video splurge, dont fool yourselves. If ther's nothing to gain from continual upgrades of infrastructure resources, dont be surprised to get a call one day from your ISP informing you that they're not interested in you as their customer since all you do is download HD-DVD pirated movies from Giganews 24/7, and to find somewhere else to do it. |
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druber
join:2000-04-11
Marlborough, MA | reply to jc100
Re: Let's Do UNOFFICIAL SURVEY
It's also not really fair to compare a large, spread-out country like the US to, say, Japan or South Korea, where it isn't hard to provide high-speed BW to the public, due to population density. |
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SyNiSt3r
join:2007-04-26
Morristown, TN | reply to olegy
Re: Surprises
Finally,a report that backs what ive been saying for years.
Charter sucks. |
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robbob340
K.U. Sweet 16
Premium
join:2001-02-15
Wichita, KS | reply to DSLTech
Re: Dont be spoiled consumers
Pirated HD-DVD movies at Giganews? You don't say!  |
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jc100
join:2002-04-10
| reply to DSLTech
DSLTECH,
First, we have population densities that meet or far exceed those of other countries. I mean, I am not advocating we wire remote parts of Alaska here. However, we have MAJOR metropolitan cities (Atlanta, Chicago, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Las Vegas, etc) with highly dense populations. These areas could easily be wired for fiber and provided to everyone in a cost effective way that makes money. In most large cities, people are relatively close to one another. Hence, the excuse we are not Japan etc is B.S. in it's full capacity. Second, we pay PLENTY of taxes and these same companies get PLENTY of kickbacks from our tax money to build out. Don't give me that long story about how these companies would need more money. Hell, most are already given exclusive rights to areas and tons of money to build in subsidies. The only difference, the companies in Japan, Sweden, Korea use it to build fiber. The companies here pocket most of it, and build a craptastic network that barely suits capacity. |
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ninjatutle
Premium
join:2006-01-02
San Ramon, CA
 ·Sprint Mobile Broa..
| reply to robbob340
Re: Yeah Right
I got a newsletter made with word one time where it was 4 pages but 30mb. Someone dropped in photos that were never resized and straight from the camera. This was from a new person who wanted to create a newsletter for our department. It was sent to over 60 people  |
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Cabal
Premium
join:2007-01-21
Boston, MA
| All those ad-filtered pages...
And they couldn't do a section for most filtered versus unfiltered Internet access? Sorry, but no speed is going to impress me when it comes bundled with significant arbitrary port blocking. With the ever-increasing filtering that Verizon is doing, I'm surprised they use public IPs at all.
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Interested in open source engine management for your Subaru? |
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