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cicerone
join:2007-09-05
San Francisco, CA
4 edits | US Prices are criminal I am paying $70/mo for 20/5 mbps (Comcast Cable Internet). With basic cable that drops $10. (What a deal, right?). They recently started offering 50mbps down at $140/mo (with cable).
The $20 ATT DSL option is only 768k. Incredible. "Elite" is $35/mo and only 6mbps! What a joke.
These are the only two providers to my particular neighborhood (in San Francisco). And I want the higher speeds so I'm stuck until FIOS comes around.
And most U.S. customers can only dream of these speeds, and often only have 1 provider. It's all relative. | |
|  | | Re: US Prices are criminal No, you are PAYING $70.00 for 250GB, EXACTLY the same amount of data you can get with a 768KB DSL line. Remember, you are not paying for 'speed', you are paying for bytes. If I was in your shoes, I would save the $50 dollars ($600 a year), and go with the $20.00 tier, as you can GET exactly the same amount of data. With FIOS however, even if you only get the 15mb tier (about $70.00), you can get 8TB/month (vs the .25 TB) at comcast, so FIOS is 32 times MORE effective than Comcrap, and DSL is about 3.5 times more effective than Comcrap. You are getting screwed, you just don't realize it. And god forbid you actually pay for the 50mb/sec tier, which means that FIOS is over 60 Times more cost effective than Comcrap
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The happiest countries are the most secular. The struggle AGAINST corporations is the struggle FOR humanity! | |
| | cicerone
join:2007-09-05
San Francisco, CA
1 edit | Re: US Prices are criminal I know I'm getting screwed and I can't wait for FIOS.
But don't tell me the actual load time of a Web page on a 768k connection is the same as Comcast. I've had DSL at various speeds and there's no comparision in the experience, at least in my building. | |
| | | fiberguyMy views are my own.Premium
join:2005-05-20
kudos:3 | Re: US Prices are criminal said by cicerone:I know I'm getting screwed and I can't wait for FIOS. I bet! ... so when are you moving out of California? | |
| | | | cicerone
join:2007-09-05
San Francisco, CA
3 edits | Re: US Prices are criminal Move out of CA just to get fiber? Ha ha. You do have to leave the house sometimes...
And it's not like FIOS is radically cheaper or faster anyway. As for the 250gb cap, I'm not even close and I'm streaming Hulu HD and playing online games on a regular basis...
Bottom line for me at this point: it's either get jacked by Comcast or put up with slow speeds. I made my "choice" (if you can call it that in this duopoly market of mine). | |
| | | | | fiberguyMy views are my own.Premium
join:2005-05-20
kudos:3 | Re: US Prices are criminal You're funny.. you make me laugh..
Okay.. First off 'FiOS' is a trademarked PRODUCT of Verizon Telephone Company. Second of all, FiOS is not available in San Francisco, AND Verizon is selling off it's systems in CA from what I hear.. so, either way, if you want FiOS, you're going to have to move cuz you ain't gonna get it living in San Francisco! .. that's the bottom line. | |
| | | | |  BitPremium
join:2009-02-19
00000 | And you can't run Hulu or Game on a 6Mb tier or Comcast's regular (8Mb?) tier? You MUST have 20Mb to run Hulu and play games? Hulu HD's 720P stream is a 2.4Mb bitrate. And gaming certainly doesn't require a fat pipe, just decent latency.
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| | BitPremium
join:2009-02-19
00000
2 edits | Web page loads, unless flash intensive are more subject to latency than actual throughput. Web pages for the most part are small and the page load time is largely the request delay. The HTTP standard is something like 4 concurrent connections for download page elements? 768kbps vs 7Mb isn't going to make much difference unless there is a large element like a big flash animation or something.
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| | | | cicerone
join:2007-09-05
San Francisco, CA | Re: US Prices are criminal Yeah, I remember the other argument that DSL is actually faster than cable because you're sharing the line. But in my experience (buildings with 10+ units), cable is radically faster.
As for the fact that Web pages are small, yes the first page itself is small, but with modern Web pages, a lot of stuff gets loaded into that, including Flash, AJAX calls, etc.
Again, in my experience, there was a big difference between 3mbps DSL, 6mbps cable and 20mbps cable, getting much faster every time. 768k vs 7mb isn't going to make much of a difference? That's why you're so smart and you're on a 768k connection, right? Not.
So, if FIOS doesn't come to S.F., I'm OK with that. Maybe I'll "downgrade" to our lowest tier (15mbps) to save a few bucks. But I'm definitely not going back to DSL. The whole point of my post is that we shouldn't have to pay so much to get these types of speeds when in other countries it's relatively cheap. | |
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| cacoPremium
join:2005-03-10
Whittier, AK | said by karlmarx:Remember, you are not paying for 'speed', you are paying for bytes. Most people are paying for the speed and will not get anywhere near the 250 cap anytime soon.
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»www.seabee.navy.mil | |
| | | | said by karlmarx:No, you are PAYING $70.00 for 250GB, EXACTLY the same amount of data you can get with a 768KB DSL line. If you were looking at a months total usage, yes. But in a minute, in a hour, in a day? How long does it take to hit that capacity and how often is capacity reached?
said by karlmarx:Remember, you are not paying for 'speed', you are paying for bytes. Wrong. I and most others are paying for speed because we NEVER hit capacity.
I and many others want a faster data RATE, we don't need more data CAPACITY. If a user averages 120 GB per month at 20 mbps with the max usage in a month of 140 GB over the last 12 months, a cap of 250 GB isn't a problem. Since we're no where near the limit, the cap doesn't concern us. But if we were only limited to 768K we'd jump ship in a heartbeat because it'd take too long to download what we want even if it was the same amount of data.
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| | | | | Re: US Prices are criminal "Most others" is relative. If the supply side is present, the bandwidth-intensive cap shattering services will develop. Eventually the masses will migrate to these new services and use them as frequently as they use the most basic internet services. There's a reason average data consumption per household has grown year after year.
One of the (relatively unknown) tenets of innovation is that it occurs during times of plenty, when there are more than enough resources to fund even the most inane and unlikely to succeed ideas. The only way for the internet to evolve is to have that surplus of supply, which wouldn't be that difficult for these companies making billions of dollars in profit per year to provide.
Besides, as I've mentioned before, caps don't do anything to manage network congestion. | |
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