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We've all paid for 45Mbps to our homes, now demand it!

muniwireless.com — U.S. Telcos have ripped us off. They've promised the people of the U.S. fiber to the curb and because of that they've gotten all kinds of rate increases approved and breaks from the government. It's time we demand our broadband!

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  • Slugo, on 10/12/2007, -6/+4Yep...Fiber to the curb....got it ....love it....Verizon Fios 30 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up......hope you all get what you were promised
  • Prod_Deity, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Glad you do. I'm still stuck on DSL that is lower than 1mbps down & less than 512 up.

    Is there anything we can do about this? Probably not.
  • tfsfloater, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1wow that's wierd i got 2-3mbps down in 1998 in SF/CA on DSL. Now my cable owns but am in a different city.
  • ryantollefson, on 10/12/2007, -0/+14Did you guys even read the article? It talks about how we should have a minimum of 45Mbps BOTH directions, and how the US is falling behind other countries who have connections up to 100Mbps. It basically says that we shouldn't be bending over for the phone companies and that we should demand that they offer better service.

    I'd love to see some comments on how to do this, not about how my 5 Mbps up is cool.
  • nater, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1i have some no-name phone company, Century-Tel, and i seriously doubt they ran fiber to all the homes in my community. Their HO is so tiny...
  • chuck2006, on 10/12/2007, -2/+1Yup, Fios is availible here in Northern Virginia as well. Came out last month in my neighborhood. $45/month for 15 MBPS down and 2MBPS up.
  • Konrad9, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0This is indeed bull, and everyone knows it.
    If I could somehow convince my dad (in charge of everything pertaining to the internet at a rather large newspaper chain) to talk to his counterparts and one day say "Hey guys, know those 100+ T1 and T3 lines we're paying you for? Go screw yourselves," something could happen.
    In a perfect world.
  • G00mper, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3>Yup, Fios is availible here in Northern Virginia as well. Came out last month in my neighborhood. $45/>month for 15 MBPS down and 2MBPS up.

    Holy crap. I'm in NY; we pay $50/month for 5mbps/256kbps. I feel sad now.
  • morganix, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1This pisses me off more than anything else! Oh damn am I mad, how do we ***** these ***** companys? And don't tell me it can't be done... they HAVE to be nailed to the wall for this.
  • nater, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0morganix

    form a consumer rights' organization and get more than just a few members and form a boycott. consumers have to stand together, good luck
  • idesign562, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0***** a

    makes me feel like a fool.
  • morganix, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0@nater

    I was thinking something more along the lines of this....

    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6289792780793293150
  • j0keR, on 10/12/2007, -2/+2Seriously. ***** THEM. We should call for nationwide protests outside their respective headquarters.
  • EmileVictor, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0Honestly, I have no idea what speeds I can get. Sometimes I get 1.0mbs, sometimes everything's really slow... The problem I think with demanding 45mb/s is that the servers themselves need to upgrade their speeds to satisfy customers. Has anyone noticed that messenger.msn.com has only 17kb/s downloads, no matter what your provider is? I'm happy with 1mb/s if the servers (i.e. google, yahoo, digg) can supply the speeds. OpenOffice.org is a good example, and apple.com is even better. Both produce blazing speeds for me to download their software, which means that a 79mb file from OOo will be downloaded faster than a 5.0mb file from messenger.msn.com. It just doesn't add up. Right now my only grudge against my ISP is that they can't provide me with any form of bandwidth speed limit.
    ----------------------------------------
    http://www.mediahug.com/
  • MadFlyer, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1You are not alone guys, Japan here...

    I paid YahooBB for a 12Mbps and get a little less than 1Mbps... their IP Phone can't be used at the sametime as a simple web browsing...

    Last time they tried to make me upgrade to 24Mbps I barely resisted the urge to sodomise the guy with a flamethrower.

    I was having better connection in France in 1999... way to go rottensushiland...
  • lostngone, on 10/12/2007, -3/+1I can get 45Mbps to house today I'm sure most of you can as well. For me it would be around twenty-thousand to thirty-thousand a month. Whats the big deal its only money?
  • zgf2022, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Dsl just became available less than six months ago here. 768k down, 256k up. $60/mo. After being stuck with dial-up for so long I don't care what i was supposed to have. I'm just happy not to be surfing the net at 42.2k. I doubt our local telco even has 45mbps total in either direction, let alone to the customers. When the customers in our area demanded that another town 30 miles away be in our local calling area (which took three years, but we finally got) so that we could get dial-up service for the first time. We had so many people tying up the circuits that we had to have another trunk cable run to the town. So, 45mbps? Not happening anytime soon here, that's for sure.
  • muikano, on 10/12/2007, -4/+3Oh please, everyone knows how slow broadband in the US is. But here's the rub. Japan and Korea are smaller than US by far, but with a higher pop. density. A little area with high broadband reaches a lot of people.

    Still, the Bell companies are doing a piss poor job of rolling out broadband. But that's what you get when you take out competition. But you can't blame it on our representatives. Americans vote. If you don't want to vote, you have no say in the direction of the country. If you want change, don't vote for Republican or Democrat. Vote for someone you admire. Like a CEO of some company.

    Hell, even if that CEO is corrupt, it's someone new. Keep voting for someone new until things get fixed. And make sure they aren't Republican or Democrat.
  • hopwoods, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Well here in the UK I recvently got upgraded to 2mb down but I think upload is 128k. The chances of seeing anything over 8mb (available if your are willing to pay a premium) are very low. BT runs the show when it comes to DSL (I'm on NTL cable). I heard NTL is supposed to be doing a 18mb service soon but god know how true that is.
  • mika76, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Well, in South Africa I'm paying R800 (+- $133) per month for 512Kb Down/ 128Kb up and a 5Gb cap. Very sad. the forums at http://myadsl.co.za are full of people complaining and moaning and even trying different things to make an impact, but the Telkom monopoly is really killing us over here.
    • derosion, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Here in South Africa I'm paying 599 ZAR (89 USD) per GB bandwidth used - both up and down counted. Used to go through 30GB a month in the UK, have to cut that down drastically... Fair play, it is 3G wireless connectivity, but that's only because living more than 20min away from a major city means no ADSL. Hell, I can't even get a phone line.

      I'm not saying that North Americans shouldn't demand what they were promised. That idea of a geek parade outside a corporate head office because you can't surf even faster for even cheaper is more than a little humerous.
  • Spacko, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1$59.95 AUD for 256/128 ADSL here.

    I fken hate Telstra.

  • PeeOnYou, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0They just began the process of rolling out fiber to the home in Houston. They estimate it to take a couple years to complete. I know verizon had been planning on rolling it out in Philly as well, they very well may have begun there too. It's coming, albeit slowly, and the service will of course be restricted so they can charge more for higher-data rates - because that obviously makes sense... right?
  • auto444988, on 10/12/2007, -3/+0word puff puff give
  • cbanne, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0In Canada we're paying about $40 US for 5mbps down, 768kbps up, 60GB cap/month
  • chiklit, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0We're paying $19.95 a month here for 1.5Mbps down and 128kbps up DSL. As far as I know FIOS still isn't avaliable here. My dad works for Verizon though so we used to get a discount, but then they lowered everyone's price so now we're paying the same as everyone else.
  • MioTheGreat, on 10/12/2007, -0/+11meg/1meg DSL, It's like 50 or 60 a month. I hate it.
  • Kericr, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4Verizon was in the process of running fiber in the Tampa Bay area last year, but apparently they hired a bunch of installers who didn't know their ass from a hole in the ground, as they had several run-ins with the utilities by cutting power lines, cable lines, their own phone lines, and finally busted a water pipe that made everybody in the area have to boil their water for a week to assure it to be safe to drink. The city promptly revoked their permits and Verizon has been lobbying ever since to get them reinstated.

    Can't say they're not trying, so I have no room to complain, and it's also the reason why I'm not digging this.
  • Wombat3, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0arn't companies supposed to check with some central place to make sure they don't dig up a power line and fry a truck? if they can't do that properly, then verizon needs to find someone with half a brain to contract for digging. digg, the prices/speeds in US are mostly bullcrap. I get a better price in Jordan than in some parts of the US, and DSL internet has been here for only a few years, as opposed to like 10 years in America. if the benefits the ISPs got were in return for having truly high speed internet everywhere by 2006, they ought to be somewhat closer than they are now.
  • NoOneButMe, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0"Yep...Fiber to the curb....got it ....love it....Verizon Fios 30 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up......hope you all get what you were promised"
    Well, wth the 15/2 package, i got 15.2mbit down, 1.8mbit up - so yeah - you do get what you pay for with verizon - the full thing :)
  • GhostFreeman, on 10/12/2007, -5/+1This is what happens when you get a Bush appointee as head of the FCC.
  • technonoob, on 10/12/2007, -2/+0oooooooooooooohhh I'll get that wascally wabbit!!!
  • superal1394, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0so yeah, i've used T3, and got spoiled... cable is slow to me... i cant wait till fibre to the door
  • nestormakhno, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I'm in the UK with NTL cable (who are a it rubbish) - but having said that, I get 2Mb up and 512k down unlimted for £8.99 a month (say $17?) - and can't complain. For most internet purposes it's perfectly ok.

    When visiting friends in the US late last year I was amazed at how expensive internet access was for most people. It really does seem that big business is ripping people off...
  • geminitojanus, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Adelphia, yes the crooks that looted the company and got slammed in prison for it.

    Advertised 6Mb/1Mb, actual performance ~3Mb/~128kb. Recommending against at all costs.
  • dysfunction, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0I have 768kbits/128kbits, in the US. I pay $15/mo (Verizon). I don't really expect to get 96kBytes all the time, but come on! The highest I ever get sustained is around 75kBytes, and half the time it's under 50. Sometimes I actually get what my upload should be for sustained periods of time (16kBytes), but often it's more like 10. I know I have a relatively cheap service, but I should be getting what it advertised. My dad called Verizon asking for a higher speed, and they fed him some BS, recognizing that he wasn't very savvy, that they would double our speed to 1.5Mbits. Of course that never happened, I'm still stuck at 768kbits, and often more like 512 or even 384.
  • Akufen, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0My speed just got doubled mid January. It is now at 20mbps (down).
    Upload speeds are at a crippling 512k, what's worse though is that we have an upload limit of 5 gigs a month and a download limit of 30 gigs. This is the most expensive option they offer at about € 50. The normal version is at 15 gig down and 2gig up. Which costs about €10 less if I'm not mistaking.

    I can now download 120 MB/minute, that's a complete CD in 5 or 6 minutes, about 50-60 CD's fit in that 30 gig limit, so I can pass my download limit in about 5 hours. Then spend the rest of the month at 4KB/s.

    Be careful what you wish for :)
  • sphykik, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0i pay about 50 dollars a month for 3 meg down and 256k up, luckily i get ~2.7 meg down and 200-ish up. still expensive though...
  • osbjmg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0Let's calm down... I'm not going to cry over your upload bandwidth.
  • MrBananas, on 10/12/2007, -1/+6Gotta love the American political hegemony. Leave up to the Democrats to subsidize a telco monopoly to deliver a pipe dream and leave it up to the Republicans to keep monopolistic big business fat and happy. This country has become such a scam.
  • aptmunich, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I pay 44$ for 2,5Mb down and 192kb up here in Germany...
  • jeromehorwitz, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Geez another contractor abusing government funding, and then no one doing anything about it? Big surprise, no?
  • mrmagoo, on 10/12/2007, -4/+0eh. Fiber is coming. Bandwidth is going up and prices are going down. I don't think anyone is getting ripped off.
  • Goldenatom, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Im in Japan and I have a "30Mb" connection, but it never gets anywhere near that. I think a big part of the problem is that servers just can't serve stuff up that fast....I get really nice downloads from Apple...all the stuff from Twit too, now that AOL radio did the server switch over. Still, I've never seen the 30mb...
  • gnomicide, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2So, let's talk about this.

    I assumed the guy was going to say that the US gov't had given the telco's 200 billion in pork to build an information infrastructure, and they hadn't.

    But what he's really saying is : since the US deregulated the phone business, all the excess profits should be spent on whatever congress wants.

    You kind of saw this sort of argument during the prescription drug deal a few years back : i.e., anything short of nationalizing a company is a 'corporate giveaway'.

    Only an idiot would assume that any company would voluntarily throw away money, which is what "fiber to every door" is. Of course other countries have better broadband than us, we're all over the freaking place. Look at this population density by country. You'll notice that South Korea is 12th, Japan is 18th, and the US is 143rd.

    Plus, I'm not sure what activity requires all that bandwidth besides fileswapping. Games take tons of bandwidth and I've never had a problem, even when multiple people are playing the same game.
  • gnomicide, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Oh, I guess you can't put href links in your comment :)

    Population density chart is at

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_population_density
  • Lyph3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+0Adelphia offers a 4Mbit/512kbit service for $30-40 with a premium upgrade that puts you up to 7Mbit/768kbit for $20 more. Luckily for me, the people at Adelphia have no idea what they're doing, so I have 7.5Mbit/768 for $40.

    I wouldn't mind a better upload speed, but this isn't bad.

    All the overseas people who say "My connection never maxes out" are starting to see why the company can offer that kind of speed. If you're accessing servers in the US, you're going across the ocean, and there's a little slowdown there.
  • Lyph3, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Forgot to mention that there's no cap, and I downloaded almost 1TB in a 3 month period.
  • jmichaelg, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1Bust the monopolies. Cable is a local monopoly and telcos are state monopolies.

    If you want decent prices for broadband, lobby city hall. It's your local city that dictates how many cable providers your town gets. Write your state assembly person and tell them you want preferential treatment for the telcos to cease - anyone who wants to set up a telco should be able to but they're a state monopoly.

    Watch the Aviator and see how Howard Hughes' TWA got screwed by Pan Am owning a Senator. Pan Am was offering piss-poor service but was able to get away with it because they had a government granted monopoly that they bought by buying a senator. Though that happened over 50 years ago, the rules of the game haven't changed. It's what Jack Abramoff is all about.It's why you should get pissed about Alaska's Bridge to Nowhere. As long as they get away with it, they'll keep doing it and you'll keep paying more than you should for broadband.
  • just101, on 10/12/2007, -1/+1FYI: Fiber will never roll to your door. It hits a node first. The node takes the optical and throws it back onto copper feeder to your tap out front. A node in my local system serves about 5000 homes. You have no idea how much $ it would cost to actually roll fiber to your door. There will always be copper in the system.
  • echimu, on 10/12/2007, -1/+0I am surprised to see that most Americans are crying on speed Just go to else where in the world and people still use Dial up slow connections. Here I pay $20 for 256Kbps DSL. I must say you guys are lucky. Besides this what you will do with all 45Mbps at home.. run your web server?
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